The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

Before I send this scrawl away,
I seize a moment, just to say,
There's some parts of the Turkish system
So vulgar, 'twere as well you miss'd 'em.
For instance—in Seraglio matters—
Your Turk, whom girlish fondness flatters,
Would fill his Haram (tasteless fool!)
With tittering, red-cheek'd things from school.
But here (as in that fairy land,
Where Love and Age went hand in hand ;
Where lips, till sixty, shed no honey,
And Grandams were worth any money,)

107

Our Sultan has much riper notions—
So, let your list of she-promotions
Include those only, plump and sage,
Who've reach'd the regulation-age;
That is, (as near as one can fix
From Peerage dates) full fifty-six.

This rule's for fav'rites—nothing more—
For, as to wives, a Grand Signor,
Though not decidedly without them,
Need never care one curse about them.

The learned Colonel must allude here to a description of the Mysterious Isle, in the History of Abdalla, Son of Hanif, where such inversions of the order of nature are said to have taken place.—“A score of old women and the same number of old men played here and there in the court, some at chuck-farthing, others at tip-cat or at cockles.”— And again, “There is nothing, believe me, more engaging than those lovely wrinkles,” &c. &c.—See Tales of the East, vol. iii. pp. 607, 608.