University of Virginia Library

Then every necromantic burgess
Secures a seat for the Walpurgis;
With cloth of gold are lined the ditches,
Reserved for sixteen-quarter witches;
The lower on the sulphur roll,
With broad-cloth must their tails console.
Then every precipice's crupper
Sustains a regular-bred supper.
There's not the most ill-featured rock
But has its compliment of hock;
There's not an oak dares show a branch
Without a sirloin or a haunch;
The peach hangs out among the brambles—
In short, it shames our May Fair scrambles!
(How oft, amid the dear five hundred,
I've seen the struggling footman plundered—
Seen the orgeat by belles waylaid,
The war for life and limonade,
And not a sandwich left to tell
The fate that all its tribe befell.)
Then, while the moon above them halts,
Rings all the welkin with the waltz;
And every hill plays harp or horn
Till comes the hateful air of morn—
Its vulgar breath of pinks and roses
Offensive to their sulphur noses.
Each from her pocket plucks her salts
Each on her maneged broomstick vaults,
Settles her petticoats for flight,
And vows “a most delightful night!”
While, as he mounts his chaise of flame,
The master of the melodrame
Consigns it to the Earth below,
Aux soins de Goethe, G*w*r & Co.