And husbands now, with bolts and springs,
Ne’er cage and frighten Cupid,
They know that if they clip his wings,
They only make him stupid;
Their married ladies had no lutes
To sigh beneath their windows,
They treated them, those ancient brutes,
As cruelly as Hindoos!
They moped away their lives, poor souls!
By no soft vision brightened,
Perched up in castle pigeon-holes,
Expecting to be frightened!
Or hauled away through field, or fray,
To dungeon, or to tower;
They ne’er were neat for half a day,
Or safe for half an hour.
’Twas easy too, by fraud or force,
A wife’s complaints to stifle;
To starve her was a thing of course,—
To poison her a trifle!
Their wrongs remain no longer dumb,
For now the laws protect them;
And canes “no thicker than one’s thumb”
Are suffered to correct them.
Then dwell not, Lily! on an age
Of Fancy’s wild creation,
Our own presents a fairer page
For Beauty’s meditation;
Though you share no Bois Guilbert’s bed,
No Front de Bœuf’s vagaries,
You may be comfortably wed
Some morning at St. Mary’s!
THE CONJURER.
“Marry come up! I can see as far into a wall as another!”
If you’ll tell me the reason why Lucy de Vere
Thinks no more of her silks, or her satins;
If you’ll tell me the reason why, cloudy or clear,
She goes both to vespers and matins:
Then I think I can tell why young Harry de Vaux,
Who once cared for naught but his wine, has
Been seen, like a saint, for a fortnight or so,
In a niche, at St. Thomas Aquinas!
If you’ll tell me the reason Sir Rowland will ride
As though he’d a witch on his crupper,
Whenever he hopes to join Rosalie’s side,
Or is going to meet her at supper;
Then I think I can tell how it is that his groom,
With a horse that is better and faster,
Though the coaches make way, and the people make room,
Can never keep up with his master!
If you’ll tell me the reason why Isabel’s eyes
Sparkle brighter than Isabel’s rubies;
If you’ll tell me the reason why Isabel’s sighs
Turn sensible men into boobies:
Then I think I can tell,—when she promised last night
To waltz, and my eye turned to thank hers,—
Why it was that my heart felt so wondrously light,
Though I hadn’t a sou at my bankers!
If you’ll tell me the reason a maiden must sigh
When she looks at a star or a planet;
If you’ll tell me the reason she flings her book by,
When you know she has hardly began it;
If her cheek has grown pale, and if dim is her eye,
And her breathing both fevered and faint is,
Then think it exceedingly likely that I
Can tell what that maiden’s complaint is!