Jackets may do to ride or race,
Or row in, when one's in a boat,
But in the boudoir, sure, for grace
There's nothing like Dick's long-tail'd cost,
Of course in climbing up a tree,
On terra-firma, or afloat,
To mount the giddy topmast, he
Would doff awhile his long-tail'd coat.
What makes you simper, then, and sneer?
From out your own eye pull the mote!
A PRETTY thing for you to jeer—
Haven't YOU, too, got a long-tail'd coat?
Oh! "Dick's scarce old enough," you mean.
Why, though too young to give a note,
Or make a will, yet, sure Fifteen
's a ripe age for a long-tail'd coat.
What! would you have him sport a chin
Like Colonel Stanhope, or that goat
O' German Mahon, ere begin
To figure in a long-tail'd coat?
Suppose he goes to France—can he
Sit down at any table d' hote,
With any sort of decency,
Unless he's got a long-tail'd coat?
Why Louis Philippe, Royal Cit,
There soon may be a sans culotte,
And Nugent's self may then admit
The advantage of a long-tail'd coat.
Things are not now as when, of yore,
In tower encircled by a moat,
The lion-hearted chieftain wore
A corselet for a long-tail'd coat;
Then ample mail his form embraced,
Not like a weasel or a stoat,
"Cribb'd and confined" about the waist,
And pinch'd in like Dick's long-tail'd coat
With beamy spear or biting ax,
To right and left he thrust and smote—
Ah! what a change! no sinewy thwacks
Fall from a modern long-tail'd coati