EXTEMPORE EPITAPH ON ANNE, COUNTESS OF DORSET.
Now clean, now hideous, mellow now, now gruff, She swept, she hiss'd, she ripen'd, and grew rough, At Brougham, Pendragon, Appleby, and Brough.
GREAT D draws near-the dutchess sure is come,
Open the doors of the withdrawing-room;
Her daughters deck'd most daintily I see,
The dowager grows a perfect double D.
E enters next, and with her Eve appears,
Not like yon dowager deprest with years;
What ease and elegance her person grace,
Bright beaming, as the evening-star, her face;
Queen Esther next-how fair e'en after death,
Then one faint glimpse of Queen Elizabeth;
No more, our Esthers now are nought but Hetties,
Elizabeths all dwindled into Betties;
In vain you think to find them under E,
They're all diverted into H and B.
F follows fast the fair-and in his rear,
See folly, fashion, foppery, straight appear,
All with fantastic clews, fantastic clothes,
With fans and flounces, fringe and furbelows.
Here Grub-street geese presume to joke and jeer,
All, all, but Grannam Osborne's Gazetteer.
High heaves his hugeness H; methinks we see
Henry the Eighth's most monstrous majesty;
But why on such mock grandeur should we dwell?
H mounts to heaven, and H descends to hell.
As H the Hebrew found, so I the Jew,
See Isaac, Joseph, Jacob, pass in view;
The walls of old Jerusalem appear,
See Israel, and all Judah thronging there.
P pokes his head out, yet has not a pain;
Like Punch, he peeps, but soon pops in again;
Pleased with his pranks, the Pisgys call him Puck,
Mortals he loves to prick, and pinch, and pluck;
Now a pert prig, he perks upon your face,
Now peers, pores, ponders, with profound grimace,
Now a proud prince, in pompous purple drest,
And now a player, a peer, a pimp, or priest;
A pea, a pin, in a perpetual round,
Now seems a penny, and now shows a pound;
Like perch or pike, in pond you see him come,
He in plantations hangs like pear or plum,
Pippin or peach; then perches on the spray,
In form of parrot, pye, or popinjay.
P, Proteus-like, all tricks, all shapes can show,
The pleasantest person in the Christ-Cross row.
As K a king, Q represents a queen,
And seems small difference the sounds between ;
K, as a man, with hoarser accents speaks,
In shriller notes Q like a female squeaks;
Behold K struts, as might a king become,
Q draws her train along the drawing room,
Slow follow all the quality of state,
Queer Queensbury only does refuse to wait.
Thus great R reigns in town, while different far, Rests in retirement little rural R;
Remote from cities lives in lone retreat,
With rooks and rabbit burrows round his seat
S sails the swan slow down the silver stream.
So big with weddings, waddles W,
And brings all womankind before your view;
A wench, a wife, a widow, and a w―e,
With woe behind and wantonness before.
LIB. III. ELEG. V. v. 19.
"Me juvat in primâ coluisse Helicona juventâ," &c.
LONG as of youth the joyous hours remain,
Me may Castalia's sweet recess detain,
Fast by the umbrageous vale lull'd to repose,
Where Aganippe warbles as it flows;
Or roused by sprightly sounds from out the trance,
I'd in the ring knit hands, and join the Muses' dance.
Give me to send the laughing bowl around,
My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound;
Let on this head unfading flowers reside,
There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride;
And when, our flames commission'd to destroy,
Age step 'twixt Love and me, and intercept the joy;
|