And are you fond of lanes and brooks—
A votary of the sylvan Muses?
Or do you con the little books
Which Baron Brougham and Vaux diffuses?
Or do you love to knit and sow—
The fashionable world’s Arachne?
Or do you canter down the Row
Upon a very long-tailed hackney?
And do you love your brother James?
And do you pet his mares and setters?
And have your friends romantic names?
And do you write them long, long letters?
And are you—since the world began
All women are—a little spiteful?
And don’t you dote on Malibran?
And don’t you think Tom Moore delightful?
I see they’ve brought you flowers to-day;
Delicious food for eyes and noses;
But carelessly you turn away
From all the pinks and all the roses;
Say, is that fond look sent in search
Of one whose look as fondly answers?
And is he, fairest, in the Church?
Or is he—ain’t he—in the Lancers?
And is your love a motley page
Of black and white, half joy, half sorrow?
Are you to wait till you’re of age?
Or are you to be his to-morrow?
Or do they bid you, in their scorn,
Your pure and sinless flame to smother?
Is he so very meanly born?
Or are you married to another?
Whate’er you are, at last, adieu!
I think it is your bounden duty
To let the rhymes I coin for you
Be prized by all who prize your beauty.
From you I seek nor gold nor fame;
From you I fear no cruel strictures;
I wish some girls that I could name
Were half as silent as their pictures!
APRIL FOOLS.
——“passim
Palantes error certo de tramite pellit;
Ill sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit.”
—Horace.
This day, beyond all contradiction,
This day is all thine own, Queen Fiction!
And thou art building castles boundless
Of groundless joys, and griefs as groundless;
Assuring Beauties that the border
Of their new dress is out of order,
And schoolboys that their shoes want tying,
And babies that their dolls are dying.
Lend me—lend me some disguise;
I will tell prodigious lies;
All who care for what I say
Shall be April Fools to-day!
First, I relate how all the nation
Is ruined by Emancipation;
How honest men are sadly thwarted,
How beads and faggots are imported,
How every parish church looks thinner,
How Peel has asked the Pope to dinner;
And how the Duke who fought the duel,
Keeps good King George on water gruel.
Thus I waken doubts and fears
In the Commons and the Peers;
If they care for what I say,
They are April Fools to-day!
Next, I announce to hall and hovel
Lord Asterisk’s unwritten novel;
It’s full of wit, and full of fashion,
And full of taste, and full of passion;
It tells some very curious histories,
Elucidates some charming mysteries,
And mingles sketches of society
With precepts of the soundest piety.
Thus I babble to the host
Who adore the Morning Post;
If they care for what I say,
They are April Fools to-day!