The political and occasional poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed ::

Fair Lady, from whose lips and eyes
The Royal Bourbon snatches
Oblivion of rebellious cries,
Thick legs and thicker Deputies,
Short wit and long despatches,
Sweet Sorceress, at whose smile or frown,
The Father of all France

Sinks all the sorrows of the Crown,
And leaves the Duke to take the town,
Or else—to take his chance;
Forgive me if I dare intrude
On your exalted station,
And venture—I was always rude—
To greet you in your solitude
With song and salutation.

Queen of the play-house and the Press,
Of operas and of odes,
Supreme o'er dances and o'er dress,
All-influencing patroness
Of ministers and modes,
'Tis yours—'tis yours to bring again
Legitimacy's glorious reign,
And fill again the arms of kings
With liaisons and twenty things
Which fled in horror from the scene
Of Sansculotte and Guillotine.

Yours is the great and varied sway
Which politics and pins obey;
Yours is the empire, as is fit,
O'er Church and Senate, war and wit,
Curés and canons, marshals, misses,
Cards, compliments, charades, and kisses,
The soldier's sash, the poet's dream,
New bonnets, and the old régime.

The fair and faded Marquis flies
To tell his griefs to you,
With dingy coat and twitching eyes,
Cold sentiments and burning sighs,
Long stories and long queue.
To you the happy author brings
His dry though dripping sheet,
And reads, and raves, and swears, and sings,
And eulogizes limping kings
In very limping feet;
And advocates fill up the crowd
Immensely ignorant and loud,
And officers with bloodless blades,
Who practise grins and gasconnades,
And doat on laces and liqueur,
Love, glory, and the Moniteur;
And the Prince-Prelate—for he knows
How all the pageant comes and goes,
Looks on in silence all the while
With shaking head and quiet smile,
And smothers, till a proper season,
His studied jest and plotted treason.

Thrice blest is he for whom you deck
Your boudoir and your curls,
For whom you clothe your snowy neck
In perfumes and in pearls;

Thrice blest, for he remembers not
That horrible Convention,
The perils of his exiled lot,
His patrons, and his pension;
And Spain is low, and Rentes are high,
In spite of Lafayette;
And Paris is in ecstasy,
And England is in debt;
And Soult and Suchet fret and grieve,
And pretty Poissardes bellow “Vive!”
And Murder sleeps in St. Helena,
And Moncey is besieging Mina;
And that dark day can ne'er come back,
When stars and ribbands went to wrack,
When Gallia lost her lord and master,
And Peace fled fast, and he fled faster;
And all the fops who drank and dressed,
And wore a trinket at the breast,
In peril of their life and limb,
Packed up their trunks, and followed him.

University of Virginia Library

IV. LETTERS TO ILLUSTRIOUS CHARACTERS.

II.—TO LA DESIRÉE OF LE DESIRÉ.