"Now, the Kilmansegg moon, it must be told,
Though instead of silver it tipped with gold,
Shone rather wan, and distant, and cold;
And before its days were thirty,
Such gloomy clouds began to collect,
With an ominous ring of ill-effect,
As gave but too much cause to expect
Such weather as seamen call dirty.
"She hated lanes, she hated fields,
She hated all that the country yields,
And barely knew turnips from clover;
She hated walking in any shape,
And a country stile was an awkward scrape,
Without the bribe of a mob to gape
At the leg in clambering over.
"Gold, still gold, her standard of old—
All pastoral joys were tried by gold,
Or by fancies golden and crural,
Till ere she had passed one week unblest
As her agricultural uncle's guest,
Her mind was made up and fully imprest
That felicity could not be rural."
And the Count?
"To the snow-white lambs at play,
And all the scents and sights of May,
And the birds that warbled their passion,
His ears, and dark eyes, and decided nose,
Were as deaf, and as blind, and as dull as those
That overlook the Bouquet de Rose,
The Huile Antique,
And Parfum Unique,
In a Barber's Temple of Fashion.
"And yet had that fault been his only one,
The pair might have had few quarrels or none,
For their tastes thus far were in common;
But faults he had that a haughty bride
With a golden leg could hardly abide—
Faults that would even have roused the pride
Of a far less metalsome woman.
* * * * *
"He left her, in spite of her tender regards,
And those loving murmurs described by bards,
For the rattling of dice and the shuffling of cards
And the poking of balls into pockets.
"Moreover, he loved the deepest stake
And the heaviest bets the players would make,
And he drank—the reverse of sparely!
And he used strange curses that made her fret;
And when he played with herself at picquet,
She found to her cost—
For she always lost—
That the Count did not count quite fairly.