THE FIRST COOK!
Oh! the first Cook, in that ambrosial, unwithering
Halcyon, rapturous, and honeymooning prime!—
She, who, aware of Helen's babyish and blithering
Innocence, did a lot of mischief in her time.
Oh! for her soup, a weird, insuperable fearfulness,
Compound of arrowroot, and gelatine, and lard;
Hard, to reject it, when a bride besought, with tearfulness,
Hard, to accept, and to assimilate it, hard!
