University of Virginia Library

Fair Lady, nor less good than fair,
When I have watched your various bounty
Diffusing, like the liberal air,
Its love and life through half the county;
When I have seen, in hut or shed,
By which your fairy foot has glided,
The supper dressed, the pillow spread,
The fuel stored, the drug provided;
When I have witnessed round your path
Averted vengeance, softened wrath—
The sluggard roused to honest labour,
The miser won to clothe his neighbour,
The tears of sorrow wiped away,
The lips of childhood taught to pray;
Thus, I have thought, to clasp the tie
That links the humble to the high,
To make the coronet more bright
Before a grateful people's sight,
And show in wealth the copious source
Whence mercy takes its constant course—
This, more than sharp and shrill debate
About the sins of Church or State,
Is noble Woman's public duty—
The patriotism of British beauty.

But belles there are, whose proud enjoyment
Affects a more sublime enjoyment;
Who love their country with such kindness,
Despite its baseness and its blindness,
That, not content to charm and bless it,
They must reform it and redress it;
Who, bright with every natural grace,
With ---'s figure, ---'s face,
To make themselves quite overpowering,
Must write like Bentham, talk like Bowring.

Go, gaze on all the wondrous things,
The skinny, scaly, feathery, furry,
Which science from the wide world brings
To pine in Middlesex and Surrey—
Read tomes of travels—Clarke's and Cook's—
And lounge through gallery and Museum,
And open all the folio books
Of pictures at the Athenæum;
You'll own at last, of all the creatures,
With various forms and various features,
That daily walk, and swim, and fly
About the earth, the sea, the sky,
You find the oddest on your notes—
A Radical in petticoats.

Thanks to Sir Matthew's useful Bill,
Once more the house is counted out;
We'll step to George Street if you will,
And look at Lady Daisy's Rout.

Since every beast and every bird
In the huge Ark together trembled,
Oh when was such a motley herd
Of living creatures e'er assembled?
Quacks, knaves of every rank and station
And creed and tongue and hue and nation,
Precursors, Liberators, Chartists,
Christinos, Masons, Bonapartists,
Cigar consumers, opium chewers,
Bad novelists and worse reviewers,
Commissioners, inspectors, clerks,
John Wood, John Mill, Joe Hume, Joe Parkes!
Sweet Lady Daisy, formed by Venus
Best specimen of all the genus—
For since man's ears by trash were tickled
Trash ne'er from lips more lovely trickled—
Oh what could make her, with those eyes
As deeply blue as summer's heaven,
So sagely witty, gaily wise,
And hardly—hardly twenty-seven,
With such a person, such a purse,
So many thousand pounds and graces,
With such a pen for prose and verse,
Such taste in lovers and in laces—
Oh what could make her bear to be
The very curious thing we see?
A radiant jewel vilely set,
Half Jacobin and half coquette,
A rebel in the softest silks,
A kind of muslin Mr. Wilkes,
Bright student, but of dullest knowledge,
Fair scholar, but in foulest college,
In spite of nature's lavished store—
Youth, beauty, talent, wit—a bore!
When Johnny Campbell, in a queer rage,
Denounces all the British Peerage,
And tears to rags the robe his heir
A few years hence intends to wear—
When Joseph Hume, the cunning man,
The wondrous Cocker of Kilkenny,
Elucidates the newest plan
To spend a pound and spare a penny—
When Colonel Thompson's loyal warning
Reminds us of the hallowed morning

On which prophetic cricks perplex
The stiffness of all royal necks—
When Lord John Russell vents his spleen
Against a Bishop or a Dean—
When great O'Connell dubs at once
Wellesley a dastard, Peel a dunce,
The world admits, in all such cases,
How well the work the workman graces;
But out alas!—'tis what in France
Our neighbours call a “false position,”
When elephants will hornpipes dance,
Or Lady Daisy lisp sedition!

What strange and unconnected matter
You hear the lovely lady chatter!
'Tis now the Spirit of the Time,
And now the fashions of the season,
And here a little bit of rhyme,
And there a little bit of reason;
That clever paper in the Globe,
And Lady Jersey's charming robe;
Ingenious Carson's newest toque,
And funny Buller's latest joke;
Deep thoughts upon the nation's debt,
Fine praise of Elsler's pirouette,
[Sermons] against patrician vices,
And eulogies of Gunter's ices!