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May Fair

In four cantos [by George Croly]
  

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DEDICATION. TO ------
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


141

DEDICATION. TO ------

Sweet ------, by that host of spells
That break the hearts of all our belles;

142

By those two lips, a rosy wreath
Around those more than pearly teeth;
By those two eyes of living light;
I swear to live thy faithful knight.
Though all the girls that feed on Greek;
Though all the girls that tint a cheek;

143

Though all the girls from sixty downwards,
That force their gouty fathers townwards;
Though all the girls whom coronets
Keep practising in morning sets;
Though all the girls of of mathematics;
Though all the Amazons or Attics;
Though all the lovely premature,
Devote themselves to work my cure;—
Yet, till the hour I make my will,
Thou, thou shalt be my empress still.
Three Cantos, like Canova's Graces,
Three charmers with three sister-faces,

144

Free, fond, and frolic as the wind,
By this time have the world entwined:
Now, o'er my loveliest and my last
The lustre of thy smile be cast;
With Beauty's Sovereign on my side,
I wish the world were twice as wide.
Idol, that might'st have sat or stood
For Venus rising from the flood;

145

Fresh sparkling from the morning dip,
Ere breeze of earth profaned her lip;
Ere touched her ivory foot the ground,
Ere felt her bosom woe or wound,
Ere from her locks had dropt a pearl,
The model of a “taking girl”—
The prettiest pattern of coquette,
That ever made man foolish yet:
The sweetest sinner of fifteen,
That ever play'd coquette or queen.