University of Virginia Library


424

ODE TO HYMEN.

O tell me, Hymen, how it comes to pass,
That folks live not in unison, alas!
That all thy votaries are not always blest?
Thy pretty fane is enter'd all so billing,
So am'rous, so obliging, smiling, willing;
When lo! Love's passion sinks at once to rest!
An ignorant poor bachelor am I,
And stupid, knowing not the reason why!
Love seems at first within the torrid zone,
Now to the temperate, lo, his course he bends;
Now to the frigid limpeth with a groan,
And now the sweetest of all passions ends!
Look to the simple state, the state of clowns,
Born in a hut, and seldom from their downs!
Thus Lubin, in a Glo'ster hamlet bred,
Soon as the honey-moon began to shine;
‘Now, Deary (I suppose the pair in bed)
Now put thy pretty little totes to mine.’
But when, ah me! the honey-moon was over,
Adieu the lover!
And what the soul of delicacy shocks,
Instead of ‘Put thy pretty totes to mine,’
He turn'd his back, and grunted like a swine,
‘Why dost not heave away thy d*mn'd greea hocks?’
 

An abbreviation, I presume, of pettitoes, frequently used in Gloucestershire.