Alas! poor Biddy’s occupation’s gone.

No laundress of the vulgar sort was she,

(Cruel the fate which thus could snatch her from me,)

A faithful soul, and from pretence so free,

It went against her grain to wash a “Tommy.”

Full many a worshipper at Fashion’s shrine,

Owed half his neatness to her starch and iron;

From swells who sport their shirts of cambric fine,

To dandy boys with collars à la Byron.

Not all the symmetry of well made suits,