Make some fond woman to me fly.
No matter what her form be;
If she has lost a leg or eye,
She still with love may charm me.
If she loves work, Oh! what delight,
What joy it will afford her,
To darn our clothes from morn to night,
And keep us all in order.
Would some kind dame but hear my plaint,
And would thou to me give her,
St. Andrew!—he shall be my saint,
And thou his clerk for ever.
Dear Tom, may all thy joys increase,
And to thee be it given,
When singing here on earth shall cease,
To pitch the key in Heaven.
George Bloomfield.
Nov. 3, 1803.
Prefixed to some MS. verses, written by George Bloomfield in 1808, is the subjoined account of the occasion that awakened his muse.
“The April Fool.
“When on the wrong side of fifty I married a second time! My best friends declared it was madness to risk a second family, &c. &c. We married 7th of February, 1807. Early in 1808 it was discovered I should have an increase, and Charles Blomfield, Esq. asked me when it would happen. I answered, in April. ‘Sure,’ says he, ‘it won’t happen on the First!’—I felt the force of the remark—the probability of my being an April Fool—and wrote the following lines, and sent them to Mr. B., from whom I received a note enclosing another, value one pound. The note said, ‘My daughters are foolish enough to be pleased with your April Fool, and I am so pleased to see them pleased, I send the enclosed, &c.’”
Trifles like these are only of importance as traits of the individual. The next is abstracted from a letter to an overseer, with whom George Bloomfield necessarily corresponded, as may be surmised from the contents.