Chapter III (3)

The time for sleep had come at last;
And there was the bed, so soft, so vast,
Quite a field of Bedfordshire clover;
Softer, cooler, and calmer, no doubt,
From the piece of work just ravell’d out,
For one of the pleasures of having a rout
Is the pleasure of having it over.

No sordid pallet, or truckle mean,
Of straw, and rug, and tatters unclean;
But a splendid, gilded, carved machine,
That was fit for a Royal Chamber.
On the top was a gorgeous golden wreath;
And the damask curtains hung beneath,
Like clouds of crimson and amber;

Curtains, held up by two little plump things,
With golden bodies and golden wings,--
Mere fins for such solidities--
Two Cupids, in short,
Of the regular sort,
But the housemaid call’d them “Cupidities.”

No patchwork quilt, all seams and scars,
But velvet, powder’d with golden stars,
A fit mantle for _Night_-Commanders!
And the pillow, as white as snow undimm’d
And as cool as the pool that the breeze has skimm’d,
Was cased in the finest cambric, and trimm’d
With the costliest lace of Flanders.

And the bed--of the Eider’s softest down,
’Twas a place to revel, to smother, to drown
In a bliss inferr’d by the Poet;
For if Ignorance be indeed a bliss,
What blessed ignoaance equals this,
To sleep--and not to know it?

Oh, bed! oh, bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head;
But a place that to name would be ill-bred,
To the head with a wakeful trouble--
’Tis held by such a different lease!
To one, a place of comfort and peace,
All stuff’d with the down of stubble geese,
To another with only the stubble!

To one, a perfect Halcyon nest,
All calm, and balm and quiet, and rest,
And soft as the fur of the cony--
To another, so restless for body and head,
That the bed seems borrow’d from Nettlebed,
And the pillow from Stratford the Stony!

To the happy, a first-class carriage of ease,
To the Land of Nod, or where you please;
But alas! for the watchers and weepers,
Who turn, and turn, and turn again,
But turn, and turn, and turn in vain,
With an anxious brain,
And thoughts in a train,
That does not run upon _sleepers_!

Wide awake as the mousing owl,
Night-hawk, or other nocturnal fowl,--
But more profitless vigils keeping,--
Wide awake in the dark they stare,
Filling with phantoms the vacant air,
As if that Crook-back’d Tyrant Care
Had plotted to kill them sleeping.

And oh! when the blessed diurnal light
Is quench’d by the providential night,
To render our slumber more certain!
Pity, pity the wretches that weep,
For they must be wretched, who cannot sleep
When God himself draws the curtain!

The careful Betty the pillow beats,
And airs the blankets, and smooths the sheets,
And gives the mattress a shaking--
But vainly Betty performs her part,
If a ruffled head and a rumpled heart,
As well as the couch, want making.

There’s Morbid, all bile, and verjuice, and nerves,
Where other people would make preserves,
He turns his fruits into pickles:
Jealous, envious, and fretful by day,
At night, to his own sharp fancies a prey,
He lies like a hedgehog roll’d up the wrong way,
Tormenting himself with his prickles.

But a child--that bids the world good night,
In downright earnest and cuts it quite--
A Cherub no Art can copy,--
’Tis a perfect picture to see him lie
As if he had supp’d on a dormouse pie,
(An ancient classical dish, by the by)
With a sauce of syrup of poppy.

Oh, bed! bed! bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head,
Whether lofty or low its condition!
But instead of putting our plagues on shelves,
In our blankets how often we toss ourselves,
Or are toss’d by such allegorical elves
As Pride, Hate, Greed, and Ambition!

The independent Miss Kilmansegg
Took off her independent Leg
And laid it beneath her pillow,
And then on the bed her frame she cast,
The time for repose had come at last,
But long, long, after the storm is past
Rolls the turbid, turbulent billow.

No part she had in vulgar cares
That belong to common household affairs--
Nocturnal annoyances such as theirs,
Who lie with a shrewd surmising,
That while they are couchant (a bitter cup!)
Their bread and butter are getting up,
And the coals, confound them, are rising.

No fear she had her sleep to postpone,
Like the crippled Widow who weeps alone
And cannot make a doze her own,
For the dread that mayhap on the morrow,
The true and Christian reading to baulk,
A broker will take up her bed and walk
By way of curing her sorrow.

No cause like these she had to bewail,
But the breath of applause had blown a gale,
And winds from that quarter seldom fail
To cause some human commotion;
But whenever such breezes coincide
With the very spring-tide
Of human pride,
There’s no such swell on the ocean!

Peace, and ease, and slumber lost,
She turn’d, and roll’d, and tumbled and toss’d
With a tumult that would not settle:
A common case, indeed, with such
As have too little, or think too much,
Of the precious and glittering metal.

Gold!--she saw at her golden foot
The Peer whose tree had an olden root,
The Proud, the Great, the Learned to boot,
The handsome, the gay, and the witty--
The Man of Science--of Arms--of Art,
The man who deals but at Pleasure’s mart,
And the man who deals in the City.

Gold, still gold--and true to the mould!
In the very scheme of her dream it told;
For, by magical transmutation,
From her Leg through her body it seem’d to go,
Till, gold above, and gold below,
She was gold, all gold, from her little gold toe
To her organ of Veneration!

And still she retain’d through Fancy’s art,
The Golden Bow and Golden Dart,
With which she had play’d a Goddess’s part,
In her recent glorification:
And still, like one of the self-same brood,
On a Plinth of the self-same metal she stood
For the whole world’s adoration.

And hymns and incense around her roll’d,
From Golden Harps and Censers of Gold,--
For Fancy in dreams is as uncontroll’d
As a horse without a bridle:
What wonder, then, from all checks exempt,
If, inspired by the Golden Leg, she dreamt
She was turn’d to a Golden Idol?

HER COURTSHIP.

When leaving Eden’s happy land
The grieving Angel led by the hand
Our banish’d Father and Mother,
Forgotten amid their awful doom,
The tears, the fears, and the future’s gloom,
On each brow was a wreath of Paradise bloom,
That our Parents had twined for each other.

It was only while sitting like figures of stone,
For the grieving angel had skyward flown,
As they sat, those Two in the world alone,
With disconsolate hearts nigh cloven,
That scenting the gust of happier hours,
They look’d around for the precious flow’rs,
And lo!--a last relic of Eden’s dear bow’rs--
The chaplet that Love had woven!

And still, when a pair of Lovers meet,
There’s a sweetness in air, unearthly sweet,
That savours still of that happy retreat
Where Eve by Adam was courted:
Whilst the joyous Thrush, and the gentle Dove,
Woo’d their mates in the boughs above,
And the Serpent, as yet, only sported.

Who hath not felt that breath in the air,
A perfume and freshness strange and rare,
A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere,
When young hearts yearn together?
All sweets below, and all sunny above,
Oh! there’s nothing in life like making love,
Save making hay in fine weather!

Who hath not found amongst his flow’rs
A blossom too bright for this world of ours,
Like a rose among snows of Sweden?
But to turn again to Miss Kilmansegg,
Where must Love have gone to beg,
If such a thing as a Golden Leg
Had put its foot in Eden!

And yet--to tell the rigid truth--
Her favour was sought by Age and Youth--
For the prey will find a prowler!
She was follow’d, flatter’d, courted, address’d,
Woo’d, and coo’d, and wheedled, and press’d,
By suitors from North, South, East, and West,
Like that Heiress, in song, Tibbie Fowler!

But, alas! alas! for the Woman’s fate,
Who has from a mob to choose a mate!
’Tis a strange and painful mystery!
But the more the eggs, the worse the hatch;
The more the fish, the worse the catch;
The more the sparks, the worse the match;
Is a fact in Woman’s history.

Give her between a brace to pick,
And mayhap, with luck to help the trick,
She will take the Faustus, and leave the Old Nick--
But her future bliss to baffle,
Amongst a score let her have a voice,
And she’ll have as little cause to rejoice,
As if she had won the “Man of her choice”
In a matrimonial raffle!

Thus, even thus, with the Heiress and Hope,
Fulfilling the adage of too much rope,
With so ample a competition,
She chose the least worthy of all the group,
Just as the vulture makes a stoop,
And singles out from the herd or troop
The beast of the worst condition.

A Foreign Count--who came incog.,
Not under a cloud, but under a fog,
In a Calais packet’s fore-cabin,
To charm some lady British-born,
With his eyes as black as the fruit of the thorn,
And his hooky nose, and his beard half-shorn,
Like a half-converted Rabbin.

And because the Sex confess a charm
In the man who has slash’d a head or arm,
Or has been a throat’s undoing,
He was dress’d like one of the glorious trade,
At least when Glory is off parade,
With a stock, and a frock, well trimm’d with braid
And frogs--that went a-wooing.

Moreover, as Counts are apt to do,
On the left-hand side of his dark surtout,
At one of those holes that buttons go through,
(To be a precise recorder,)
A ribbon he wore, or rather a scrap,
About an inch of ribbon mayhap,
That one of his rivals, whimsical chap,
Described as his “Retail Order.”

And then--and much it help’d his chance--
He could sing, and play first fiddle, and dance,
Perform charades, and Proverbs of France--
Act the tender, and do the cruel;
For amongst his other killing parts,
He had broken a brace of female hearts,
And murder’d three men in duel!

Savage at heart, and false of tongue,
Subtle with age, and smooth to the young,
Like a snake in his coiling and curling--
Such was the Count--to give him a niche--
Who came to court that Heiress rich,
And knelt at her foot--one needn’t say which--
Besieging her castle of _Sterling_.

With pray’rs and vows he open’d his trench,
And plied her with English, Spanish, and French,
In phrases the most sentimental:
And quoted poems in High and Low Dutch,
With now and then an Italian touch,
Till she yielded, without resisting much,
To homage so continental.

And then--the sordid bargain to close--
With a miniature sketch of his hooky nose,
And his dear dark eyes, as black as sloes,
And his beard and whiskers as black as those,
The lady’s consent he requited--
And instead of the lock that lovers beg,
The count received from Miss Kilmansegg
A model, in small, of her Precious leg--
And so the couple were plighted!

But, oh! the love that gold must crown!
Better--better, the love of the clown,
Who admires his lass in her Sunday gown,
As if all the fairies had dress’d her!
Whose brain to no crooked thought gives birth,
Except that he never will part on earth
With his true love’s crooked tester!

Alas! for the love that’s linked with gold!
Better--better a thousand times told--
More honest, happy, and laudable,
The downright loving of pretty Cis,
Who wipes her lips, though there’s nothing amiss,
And takes a kiss, and gives a kiss,
In which her heart is audible!

Pretty Cis, so smiling and bright,
Who loves--as she labours--with all her might,
And without any sordid leaven!
Who blushes as red as haws and hips,
Down to her very finger-tips,
For Roger’s blue ribbons--to her, like strips
Cut out of the azure of Heaven!

HER MARRIAGE.

’Twas morn--a most auspicious one!
From the Golden East, the Golden Sun
Came forth his glorious race to run,
Through clouds of most splendid tinges;
Clouds that lately slept in shade,
But now seem’d made
Of gold brocade,
With magnificent golden fringes.

Gold above, and gold below,
The earth reflected the golden glow,
From river, and hill, and valley
Gilt by the golden light of morn,
The Thames--it look’d like the Golden Horn,
And the Barge, that carried coal or corn,
Like Cleopatra’s Galley!

Bright as clusters of Golden-rod,
Suburban poplars began to nod,
With extempore splendour furnish’d;
While London was bright with glittering clocks,
Golden dragons, and Golden cocks,
And above them all,
The dome of St. Paul,
With its Golden Cross and its Golden Ball,
Shone out as if newly burnish’d!

And lo! for Golden Hours and Joys,
Troops of glittering Golden Boys
Danced along with a jocund noise,
And their gilded emblems carried!
In short, ’twas the year’s most Golden Day,
By mortals call’d the First of May,
When Miss Kilmansegg,
Of the Golden Leg,
With a Golden Ring was married!

And thousands of children, women, and men,
Counted the clock from eight till ten,
From St. James’s sonorous steeple;
For next to that interesting job,
The hanging of Jack, or Bill, or Bob,
There’s nothing so draws a London mob
As the noosing of very rich people.

And a treat it was for the mob to behold
The Bridal Carriage that blazed with gold!
And the Footman tall and the Coachman bold,
In liveries so resplendent--
Coats you wonder’d to see in place,
They seem’d so rich with golden lace,
That they might have been independent.

Coats, that made those menials proud
Gaze with scorn on the dingy crowd,
From their gilded elevations:
Not to forget that saucy lad
(Ostentation’s favourite cad),
The Page, who look’d so splendidly clad,
Like a Page of the “Wealth of Nations.”

But the Coachman carried off the state,
With what was a Lancashire body of late
Turn’d into a Dresden Figure;
With a bridal Nosegay of early bloom,
About the size of a birchen broom,
And so huge a White Favour, had Gog been Groom,
He need not have worn a bigger.

And then to see the Groom! the Count!
With Foreign Orders to such an amount,
And whiskers so wild--nay, bestial;
He seem’d to have borrow’d the shaggy hair
As well as the Stars of the Polar Bear,
To make him look celestial!

And then--Great Jove!--the struggle, the crush,
The screams, the heaving, the awful rush,
The swearing, the tearing, the fighting,--
The hats and bonnets smash’d like an egg--
To catch a glimpse of the Golden Leg,
Which between the steps and Miss Kilmansegg
Was fully display’d in alighting!

From the Golden Ankle up to the Knee
There it was for the mob to see!
A shocking act had it chanced to be
A crooked leg or a skinny:
But although a magnificent veil she wore,
Such as never was seen before,
In case of blushes, she blush’d no more
Than George the First on a guinea!

Another step, and lo! she was launched!
All in white, as Brides are _blanched_
With a wreath of most wonderful splendour--
Diamonds, and pearls, so rich in device,
That, according to calculation nice,
Her head was worth as royal a price,
As the head of the Young Pretender.

Bravely she shone--and shone the more
As she sail’d through the crowd of squalid and poor,
Thief, beggar, and tatterdemalion--
Led by the Count, with his sloe-black eyes
Bright with triumph, and some surprise,
Like Anson on making sure of his prize
The famous Mexican Galleon!

Anon came Lady K., with her face
Quite made up to act with grace,
But she cut the performance shorter;
For instead of pacing stately and stiff,
At the stare of the vulgar she took a miff,
And ran, full speed, into Church, as if
To get married before her daughter.

But Sir Jacob walk’d more slowly, and bow’d
Right and left to the gaping crowd,
Wherever a glance was seizable:
For Sir Jacob thought he bow’d like a Guelph,
And therefore bow’d to imp and elf,
And would gladly have made a bow to himself,
Had such a bow been feasible.

And last--and not the least of the sight,
Six “Handsome Fortunes,” all in white,
Came to help in the marriage rite,--
And rehearse their own hymneals;
And then the bright procession to close,
They were followed by just as many Beaux
Quite fine enough for Ideals.

Glittering men, and splendid dames,
Thus they enter’d the porch of St. James’,
Pursued by a thunder of laughter;
For the Beadle was forced to intervene,
For Jim the Crow, and his Mayday Queen,
With her gilded ladle, and Jack i’ the Green,
Would fain have follow’d after!

Beadle-like he hush’d the shout;
But the temple was full “inside and out,”
And a buzz kept buzzing all round about
Like bees when the day is sunny--
A buzz universal, that interfered
With the right that ought to have been revered,
As if the couple already were smear’d
With Wedlock’s treacle and honey!

Yet Wedlock’s a very awful thing!
’Tis something like that feat in the ring,
Which requires good nerve to do it--
When one of a “Grand Equestrian Troop”
Makes a jump at a gilded hoop,
Not certain at all
Of what may befall
After his getting through it!

But the count he felt the nervous work
No more than any polygamous Turk,
Or bold piratical skipper,
Who, during his buccaneering search,
Would as soon engage a hand in church
As a hand on board his clipper!

And how did the Bride perform her part?
Like any bride who is cold at heart,
Mere snow with the ice’s glitter;
What but a life of winter for her!
Bright but chilly, alive without stir,
So splendidly comfortless,--just like a Fir
When the frost is severe and bitter.

Such were the future man and wife!
Whose bale or bliss to the end of life
A few short words were to settle--
“Wilt thou have this woman?”
“I will”--and then,
“Wilt thou have this man?”
“I will,” and “Amen”--
And those Two were one Flesh, in the Angels’ ken,
Except one Leg--that was metal.

Then the names were sign’d--and kiss’d the kiss:
And the Bride, who came from her coach a Miss,
As a Countess walk’d to her carriage--
Whilst Hymen preen’d his plumes like a dove,
And Cupid flutter’d his wings above,
In the shape of a fly--as little a Love
As ever look’d in at a marriage!

Another crash--and away they dash’d,
And the gilded carriage and footman flash’d
From the eyes of the gaping people--
Who turn’d to gaze at the toe-and-heel
Of the Golden Boys beginning a reel,
To the merry sound of a wedding-peal
From St. James’s musical steeple.

Those wedding-bells! those wedding-bells!
How sweetly they sound in pastoral dells
From a tow’r in an ivy-green jacket!
But town-made joys how dearly they cost;
And after all are tumbled and tost,
Like a peal from a London steeple, and lost
In town-made riot and racket.

The wedding-peal, how sweetly it peals
With grass or heather beneath our heels,--
For bells are Music’s laughter!
But a London peal, well mingled, be sure,
With vulgar noises and voices impure,--
What a harsh and discordant overture
To the Harmony meant to come after!

But hence with Discord--perchance, too soon
To cloud the face of the honeymoon
With a dismal occultation!--
Whatever Fate’s concerted trick,
The Countess and Count, at the present nick,
Have a chicken, and not a crow, to pick
At a sumptuous Cold Collation.

A Breakfast--no unsubstantial mess,
But one in the style of Good Queen Bess,
Who,--hearty as hippocampus,--
Broke her fast with ale and beef,
Instead of toast and the Chinese leaf,
And--in lieu of anchovy--grampus.

A breakfast of fowl, and fish, and flesh,
Whatever was sweet, or salt, or fresh;
With wines the most rare and curious--
Wines, of the richest flavour and hue;
With fruits from the worlds both Old and New;
And fruits obtain’d before they were due
At a discount most usurious.

For wealthy palates there be, that scout
What is _in_ season, for what is _out_,
And prefer all precocious savour:
For instance, early green peas, of the sort
That costs some four or five guineas a quart;
Where the _Mint_ is the principal flavour.

And many a wealthy man was there,
Such as the wealthy City could spare,
To put in a portly appearance--
Men, whom their fathers had help’d to gild:
And men, who had had their fortunes to build,
And--much to their credit--had richly fill’d
Their purses by _pursy-verance_.

Men, by popular rumour at least,
Not the last to enjoy a feast!
And truly they were not idle!
Luckier far than the chestnut tits,
Which, down at the door, stood champing their bits,
At a different sort of bridle.

For the time was come--and the whisker’d Count
Help’d his Bride in the carriage to mount,
And fain would the Muse deny it,
But the crowd, including two butchers in blue,
(The regular killing Whitechapel hue,)
Of her Precious Calf had as ample a view
As if they had come to buy it!

Then away! away! with all the speed
That golden spurs can give to the steed,--
Both Yellow Boys and Guineas, indeed,
Concurr’d to urge the cattle--
Away they went, with favours white,
Yellow jackets, and panels bright,
And left the mob, like a mob at night,
Agape at the sound of a rattle.

Away! away! they rattled and roll’d,
The Count, and his Bride, and her Leg of Gold--
That faded charm to the charmer!
Away, through old Brentford rang the din,
Of wheels and heels, on their way to win
That hill, named after one of her kin,
The Hill of the Golden Farmer!

Gold, still gold--it flew like dust!
It tipp’d the post-boy, and paid the trust;
In each open palm it was freely thrust;
There was nothing but giving and taking!
And if gold could ensure the future hour,
What hopes attended that Bride to her bow’r,
But alas! even hearts with a four-horse pow’r
Of opulence end in breaking!

HER HONEYMOON.

The moon--the moon, so silver and cold,
Her fickle temper has oft been told,
Now shady--now bright and sunny--
But of all the lunar things that change,
The one that shows most fickle and strange,
And takes the most eccentric range
Is the moon--so call’d--of honey!

To some a full-grown orb reveal’d,
As big and as round as Norval’s shield,
And as bright as a burner Bude-lighted;
To others as dull, and dingy, and damp,
As any oleaginous lamp,
Of the regular old parochial stamp,
In a London fog benighted.

To the loving, a bright and constant sphere,
That makes earth’s commonest things appear
All poetic, romantic, and tender:
Hanging with jewels a cabbage-stump,
And investing a common post, or a pump,
A currant-bush or a gooseberry-clump,
With a halo of dreamlike splendour.

A sphere such as shone from Italian skies,
In Juliet’s dear, dark liquid eyes,
Tipping trees, with its argent braveries--
And to couples not favour’d with Fortune’s boons
One of the most delightful of moons,
For it brightens their pewter platters and spoons
Like a silver service of Savory’s!

For all is bright, and beauteous, and clear,
And the meanest thing most precious and dear
When the magic of love is present:
Love, that lends a sweetness and grace,
To the humblest spot and the plainest face--
That turns Wilderness Row into Paradise Place,
And Garlic Hill to Mount Pleasant!

Love that sweetens sugarless tea,
And makes contentment and joy agree
With the coarsest boarding and bedding:
Love, that no golden ties can attach,
But nestles under the humblest thatch,
And will fly away from an Emperor’s match
To dance at a Penny Wedding!

Oh, happy, happy, thrice happy state,
When such a bright Planet governs the fate
Of a pair of united lovers!
’Tis theirs, in spite of the Serpent’s hiss,
To enjoy the pure primeval kiss,
With as much of the old original bliss
As mortality ever recovers!

There’s strength in double joints, no doubt,
In double X Ale, and Dublin Stout,
That the single sorts know nothing about--
And the fist is strongest when doubled--
And double aqua-fortis of course,
And double soda-water, perforce,
Are the strongest that ever bubbled!

There’s double beauty whenever a Swan
Swims on a Lake with a double thereon;
And ask the gardener, Luke or John,
Of the beauty of double-blowing--
A double dahlia delights the eye;
And it’s far the loveliest sight in the sky
When a double rainbow is glowing!

There’s warmth in a pair of double soles;
As well as a double allowance of coals--
In a coat that is double-breasted--
In double windows and double doors;
And a double U wind is blest by scores
For its warmth to the tender-chested.

There’s a twofold sweetness in double pipes;
And a double barrel and double snipes
Give the sportsman a duplicate pleasure:
There’s double safety in double locks;
And double letters bring cash for the box;
And all the world knows that double knocks
Are gentility’s double measure.

There’s double sweetness in double rhymes,
And a double at Whist and a double Times
In profit are certainly double--
By doubling, the Hare contrives to escape;
And all seamen delight in a doubled Cape,
And a double-reef’d topsail in trouble.

There’s a double chuck at a double chin,
And of course there’s a double pleasure therein,
If the parties were brought to telling:
And however our Dennises take offence,
A double meaning shows double sense;
And if proverbs tell truth,
A double tooth
Is Wisdom’s adopted dwelling!

But double wisdom, and pleasure, and sense,
Beauty, respect, strength, comfort and thence
Through whatever the list discovers,
They are all in the double blessedness summ’d,
Of what was formerly double-drumm’d,
The Marriage of two true Lovers!

Now the Kilmansegg Moon, it must be told--
Though instead of silver it tipp’d with gold--
Shone rather wan, and distant, and cold,
And before its days were at thirty,
Such gloomy clouds began to collect,
With an ominous ring of ill effect,
As gave but too much cause to expect
Such weather as seamen call dirty!

And yet the moon was the “Young May Moon,”
And the scented hawthorn had blossom’d soon,
And the thrush and the blackbird were singing--
The snow-white lambs were skipping in play,
And the bee was humming a tune all day
To flowers, as welcome as flowers in May,
And the trout in the stream was springing!

But what were the hues of the blooming earth,
Its scents--its sounds--or the music and mirth
Of its furr’d or its feather’d creatures,
To a Pair in the world’s last sordid stage,
Who had never look’d into Nature’s page,
And had strange ideas of a Golden Age,
Without any Arcadian features?

And what were joys of the pastoral kind
To a Bride--town-made--with a heart and a mind
With simplicity ever at battle?
A bride of an ostentatious race,
Who, thrown in the Golden Farmer’s place,
Would have trimm’d her shepherds with golden lace,
And gilt the horns of her cattle.

She could not please the pigs with her whim,
And the sheep wouldn’t cast their eyes at a limb
For which she had been such a martyr:
The deer in the park, and the colts at grass,
And the cows unheeded let it pass;
And the ass on the common was such an ass,
That he wouldn’t have swapp’d
The thistle he cropp’d
For her Leg, including the Garter!

She hated lanes and she hated fields--
She hated all that the country yields--
And barely knew turnips from clover;
She hated walking in any shape,
And a country stile was an awkward scrape,
Without the bribe of a mob to gape
At the Leg in clambering over!

O blessed nature, “O rus! O rus!”
Who cannot sigh for the country thus,
Absorb’d in a worldly torpor--
Who does not yearn for its meadow-sweet breath,
Untainted by care, and crime, and death,
And to stand sometimes upon grass or heath--
That soul, spite of gold, is a pauper!

But to hail the pearly advent of morn,
And relish the odour fresh from the thorn,
She was far too pamper’d a madam,
Or to joy in the daylight waxing strong,
While, after ages of sorrow and wrong,
The scorn of the proud, the misrule of the strong,
And all the woes that to man belong,
The Lark still carols the self-same song
That he did to the uncurst Adam!

The Lark! she had given all Leipsic’s flocks
For a Vauxhall tune in a musical box;
And as for the birds in the thicket,
Thrush or ousel in leafy niche,
The linnet or finch, she was far too rich
To care for a Morning Concert, to which
She was welcome without any ticket.

Gold, still gold, her standard of old,
All pastoral joys were tried by gold,
Or by fancies golden and crural--
Till ere she had pass’d one week unblest,
As her agricultural Uncle’s guest,
Her mind was made up, and fully imprest,
That felicity could not be rural!

And the Count?--to the snow-white lambs at play
And all the scents and the sights of May,
And the birds that warbled their passion,
His ears and dark eyes, and decided nose,
Were as deaf and as blind and as dull as those
That overlooked the Bouquet de Rose,
The Huille Antique,
And Parfum Unique,
In a Barber’s Temple of Fashion.

To tell, indeed, the true extent
Of his rural bias so far it went
As to covet estates in ring fences--
And for rural lore he had learn’d in town
That the country was green, turn’d up with brown,
And garnish’d with trees that a man might cut down
Instead of his own expenses.

And yet had that fault been his only one,
The Pair might have had few quarrels or none,
For their tastes thus far were in common;
But faults he had that a haughty bride
With a Golden Leg could hardly abide--
Faults that would even have roused the pride
Of a far less metalsome woman!

It was early days indeed for a wife,
In the very spring of her married life,
To be chill’d by its wintry weather--
But instead of sitting as Love-Birds do,
On Hymen’s turtles that bill and coo--
Enjoying their “moon and honey for two”
They were scarcely seen together!

In vain she sat with her Precious Leg
A little exposed, _à la_ Kilmansegg,
And roll’d her eyes in their sockets!
He left her in spite of her tender regards,
And those loving murmurs described by bards,
For the rattling of dice and the shuffling of cards,
And the poking of balls into pockets!

Moreover he loved the deepest stake
And the heaviest bets the players would make;
And he drank--the reverse of sparely,--
And he used strange curses that made her fret;
And when he played with herself at piquet,
She found, to her cost,
For she always lost,
That the Count did not count quite fairly.

And then came dark mistrust and doubt,
Gather’d by worming his secrets out,
And slips in his conversations--
Fears, which all her peace destroy’d,
That his title was null--his coffers were void--
And his French Château was in Spain, or enjoy’d
The most airy of situations.

But still his heart--if he had such a part--
She--only she--might possess his heart,
And hold his affections in fetters--
Alas! that hope, like a crazy ship,
Was forced its anchor and cable to slip
When, seduced by her fears, she took a dip
In his private papers and letters.

Letters that told of dangerous leagues;
And notes that hinted as many intrigues
As the Count’s in the “Barber of Seville”--
In short such mysteries came to light,
That the Countess-Bride, on the thirtieth night,
Woke and started up in affright,
And kick’d and scream’d with all her might,
And finally fainted away outright,
For she dreamt she had married the Devil!

HER MISERY.

Who hath not met with home-made bread,
A heavy compound of putty and lead--
And home-made wines that rack the head,
And home-made liqueurs and waters?
Home-made pop that will not foam,
And home-made dishes that drive one from home,
Not to name each mess,
For the face or dress,
Home-made by the homely daughters?

Home-made physic that sickens the sick;
Thick for thin and thin for thick;
In short each homogeneous trick
For poisoning domesticity?
And since our Parents, call’d the First,
A little family squabble nurst,
Of all our evils the worst of the worst
Is home-made infelicity.

There’s a Golden Bird that claps its wings,
And dances for joy on its perch, and sings
With a Persian exultation:
For the Sun is shining into the room,
And brightens up the carpet-bloom,
As if it were new, bran new, from the loom,
Or the lone Nun’s fabrication.

And thence the glorious radiance flames
On pictures in massy gilded frames--
Enshrining, however, no painted Dames,
But portraits of colts and fillies--
Pictures hanging on walls, which shine,
In spite of the bard’s familiar line,
With clusters of “Gilded lilies.”

And still the flooding sunlight shares
Its lustre with gilded sofas and chairs,
That shine as if freshly burnish’d--
And gilded tables, with glittering stocks
Of gilded china, and golden clocks,
Toy, and trinket, and musical box,
That Peace and Paris have furnish’d.

And lo! with the brightest gleam of all
The glowing sunbeam is seen to fall
On an object as rare as splendid--
The golden foot of the Golden Leg
Of the Countess--once Miss Kilmansegg--
But there all sunshine is ended.

Her cheek is pale, and her eye is dim,
And downward cast, yet not at the limb,
Once the centre of all speculation;
But downward drooping in comfort’s dearth,
As gloomy thoughts are drawn to the earth--
Whence human sorrows derive their birth--
By a moral gravitation.

Her golden hair is out of its braids,
And her sighs betray the gloomy shades
That her evil planet revolves in--
And tears are falling that catch a gleam
So bright as they drop in the sunny beam,
That tears of _aqua regia_ they seem,
The water that gold dissolves in;

Yet, not filial grief were shed
Those tears for a mother’s insanity;
Nor yet because her father was dead,
For the bowing Sir Jacob had bow’d his head
To Death--with his usual urbanity;
The waters that down her visage rill’d
Were drops of unrectified spirit distill’d
From the limbeck of Pride and Vanity.

Tears that fell alone and uncheckt,
Without relief, and without respect,
Like the fabled pearls that the pigs neglect,
When pigs have that opportunity--
And of all the griefs that mortals share,
The one that seems the hardest to bear
Is the grief without community.

How bless’d the heart that has a friend
A sympathising ear to lend
To troubles too great to smother!
For as ale and porter, when flat, are restored
Till a sparkling bubbling head they afford,
So sorrow is cheer’d by being pour’d
From one vessel into another.

But friend or gossip she had not one
To hear the vile deeds that the Count had done,
How night after night he rambled;
And how she had learnt by sad degrees
That he drank, and smoked, and worse than these,
That he “swindled, intrigued, and gambled.”

How he kiss’d the maids, and sparr’d with John!
And came to bed with his garments on;
With other offences as heinous--
And brought _strange_ gentlemen home to dine,
That he said were in the Fancy Line,
And they fancied spirits instead of wine,
And call’d her lap-dog “Wenus.”

Of “making a book” how he made a stir
But never had written a line to her,
Once his idol and Cara Sposa;
And how he had storm’d, and treated her ill,
Because she refused to go down to a mill,
She didn’t know where, but remember’d still
That the Miller’s name was Mendoza.

How often he waked her up at night,
And oftener still by the morning light,
Reeling home from his haunts unlawful;
Singing songs that shouldn’t be sung,
Except by beggars and thieves unhung--
Or volleying oaths that a foreign tongue
Made still more horrid and awful!

How oft, instead of otto of rose,
With vulgar smells he offended her nose,
From gin, tobacco, and onion!
And then how wildly he used to stare!
And shake his fist at nothing, and swear,--
And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,
Till he look’d like a study of Giant Despair
For a new Edition of Bunyan!

For dice will run the contrary way,
As well is known to all who play,
And cards will conspire as in treason;
And what with keeping a hunting-box,
Following fox--
Friends in flocks,
Burgundies, Hocks,
From London Docks;
Stultz’s frocks,
Manton and Nock’s
Barrels and locks,
Shooting blue rocks,
Trainers and jocks,
Buskins and socks,
Pugilistical knocks,
And fighting cocks,
If he found himself short in funds and stocks
These rhymes will furnish the reason!

His friends, indeed, were falling away--
Friends who insist on play or pay--
And he fear’d at no very distant day
To be cut by Lord and by cadger,
As one, who has gone, or is going, to smash,
For his checks no longer drew the cash,
Because, as his comrades explain’d in flash,
“He had overdrawn his badger.”

Gold, gold--alas! for the gold
Spent where souls are bought and sold,
In Vice’s Walpurgis revel!
Alas! for muffles, and bulldogs, and guns,
The leg that walks, and the leg that runs,--
All real evils, though Fancy ones,
When they lead to debt, dishonour, and duns,
Nay, to death, and perchance the devil!

Alas! for the last of a Golden race!
Had she cried her wrongs in the market-place,
She had warrant for all her clamour--
For the worst of rogues, and brutes, and rakes,
Was breaking her heart by constant aches,
With as little remorse as the Pauper, who breaks
A flint with a parish hammer!

HER LAST WILL.

Now the Precious Leg while cash was flush,
Or the Count’s acceptance worth a rush,
Had never excited dissension;
But no sooner the stocks began to fall,
Than, without any ossification at all,
The limb became what people call
A perfect bone of contention.

For alter’d days brought alter’d ways,
And instead of the complimentary phrase,
So current before her bridal--
The Countess heard, in language low,
That her Precious Leg was precious slow,
A good ‘un to look at but bad to go,
And kept quite a sum lying idle.

That instead of playing musical airs,
Like Colin’s foot in going up-stairs--
As the wife in the Scottish ballad declares--
It made an infernal stumping.
Whereas a member of cork, or wood,
Would be lighter and cheaper and quite as good,
Without the unbearable thumping.

P’rhaps she thought it a decent thing
To show her calf to cobbler and king,
But nothing could be absurder--
While none but the crazy would advertise
Their gold before their servants’ eyes,
Who of course some night would make it a prize,
By a Shocking and Barbarous Murder.

But spite of hint, and threat, and scoff,
The Leg kept its situation.
For legs are not to be taken off,
By a verbal amputation.
And mortals when they take a whim,
The greater the folly the stiffer the limb
That stand upon it or by it--
So the Countess, then Miss Kilmansegg,
At her marriage refused to stir a peg,
Till the Lawyers had fasten’d on her Leg
As fast as the Law could tie it.

Firmly then--and more firmly yet--
With scorn for scorn, and with threat for threat,
The Proud One confronted the Cruel:
And loud and bitter the quarrel arose
Fierce and merciless--one of those,
With spoken daggers, and looks like blows,
In all but the bloodshed a duel!

Rash, and wild, and wretched, and wrong,
Were the works that came from Weak and Strong,
Till madden’d for desperate matters,
Fierce as tigress escaped from her den,
She flew to her desk--’twas open’d--and then,
In the time it takes to try a pen,
Or the clerk to utter his slow Amen,
Her Will was in fifty tatters!

But the Count, instead of curses wild,
Only nodded his head and smiled,
As if at the spleen of an angry child;
But the calm was deceitful and sinister!
A lull like the lull of the treacherous sea--
For Hate in that moment had sworn to be
The Golden Leg’s sole Legatee,
And that very night to administer!

HER DEATH.

’Tis a stern and startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving;
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife,
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living!

Ay, Beauty the Girl, and Love the Boy,
Bright as they are with hope and joy,
How their souls would sadden instanter,
To remember that one of those wedding bells,
Which ring so merrily through the dells,
Is the same that knells
Our last farewells,
Only broken into a canter!

But breath and blood set doom at nought--
How little the wretched Countess thought,
When at night she unloosed her sandal,
That the Fates had woven her burial-cloth,
And that Death, in the shape of a Death’s Head Moth,
Was fluttering round her candle!

As she look’d at her clock of or-molu,
For the hours she had gone so wearily through,
At the end of a day of trial--
How little she saw in her pride of prime
The dart of Death in the Hand of Time--
That hand which moved on the dial!

As she went with her taper up the stair,
How little her swollen eye was aware
That the Shadow which follow’d was double!
Or when she closed her chamber door,
It was shutting out, and for evermore,
The world--and its worldly trouble.

Little she dreamt, as she laid aside
Her jewels--after one glance of pride--
They were solemn bequests to Vanity--
Or when her robes she began to doff,
That she stood so near to the putting off
Of the flesh that clothes humanity.

And when she quench’d the taper’s light,
How little she thought as the smoke took flight,
That her day was done--and merged in a night
Of dreams and duration uncertain--
Or along with her own,
That a Hand of Bone
Was closing mortality’s curtain!

But life is sweet, and mortality blind,
And youth is hopeful, and Fate is kind
In concealing the day of sorrow;
And enough is the present tense of toil--
For this world is, to all, a stiffish soil--
And the mind flies back with a glad recoil
From the debts not due till to-morrow.

Wherefore else does the Spirit fly
And bid its daily cares good-bye,
Along with its daily clothing?
Just as the felon condemn’d to die--
With a very natural loathing--
Leaving the Sheriff to dream of ropes,
From his gloomy cell in a vision elopes
To a caper on sunny gleams and slopes,
Instead of the dance upon nothing.

Thus, even thus, the Countess slept,
While Death still nearer and nearer crept,
Like the Thane who smote the sleeping--
But her mind was busy with early joys,
Her golden treasures and golden toys:
That flash’d a bright
And golden light
Under lids still red with weeping.

The golden doll that she used to hug!
Her coral of gold, and the golden mug!
Her godfather’s golden presents!
The golden service she had at her meals,
The golden watch, and chain, and seals,
Her golden scissors, and thread, and reels,
And her golden fishes and pheasants!

The golden guineas in silken purse--
And the Golden Legends she heard from her nurse
Of the Mayor in his gilded carriage--
And London streets that were paved with gold--
And the Golden Eggs that were laid of old--
With each golden thing
To the golden ring
At her own auriferous Marriage?

And still the golden light of the sun
Through her golden dreams appear’d to run,
Though the night, that roared without, was one
To terrify seamen or gipsies--
While the moon, as if in malicious mirth,
Kept peeping down at the ruffled earth,
As though she enjoy’d the tempest’s birth,
In revenge of her old eclipses.

But vainly, vainly, the thunder fell,
For the soul of the Sleeper was under a spell
That time had lately embitter’d--
The Count, as once at her foot he knelt--
That foot, which now he wanted to melt!
But--hush!--’twas a stir at her pillow she felt--
And some object before her glitter’d.

’Twas the Golden Leg!--she knew its gleam!
And up she started and tried to scream,--
But ev’n in the moment she started--
Down came the limb with a frightful smash,
And lost, in the universal flash
That her eyeballs made at so mortal a crash,
The Spark, call’d Vital, departed!

* * * * *

Gold, still gold! hard, hard yellow, and cold,
For gold she had lived, and she died for gold--
By a golden weapon--not oaken;
In the morning they found her all alone--
Stiff, and bloody, and cold as stone--
But her Leg, the Golden Leg, was gone,
And the “Golden Bowl was broken!”

Gold--still gold! it haunted her yet--
At the Golden Lion the Inquest met--
Its foreman a carver and gilder--
And the Jury debated from twelve till three
What the Verdict ought to be,
And they brought it in as Felo de Se,
“Because her own Leg had kill’d her!”

HER MORAL.

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammer’d and roll’d;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, barter’d, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrow’d, squander’d, doled:
Spurn’d by the young, but hugg’d by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousand-fold!
How widely its agencies vary--
To save--to ruin--to curse--to bless--
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp’d by the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.

JOHN TROT.

A BALLAD.

I.

John Trot he was as tall a lad
As York did ever rear--
As his dear Granny used to say,
He’d make a grenadier.

II.

A serjeant soon came down to York,
With ribbons and a frill;
My lads, said he, let broadcast be,
And come away to drill.

III.

But when he wanted John to ‘list,
In war he saw no fun,
Where what is call’d a raw recruit,
Gets often over-done.

IV.

Let others carry guns, said he,
And go to war’s alarms,
But I have got a shoulder-knot
Impos’d upon my arms.

V.

For John he had a footman’s place
To wait on Lady Wye--
She was a dumpy woman, tho’
Her family was high.

VI.

Now when two years had past away,
Her Lord took very ill,
And left her to her widowhood,
Of course more dumpy still.

VII.

Said John, I am a proper man,
And very tall to see;
Who knows, but now her Lord is low,
She may look up to me?

VIII.

A cunning woman told me once,
Such fortune would turn up;
She was a kind of sorceress,
But studied in a cup!

IX.

So he walk’d up to Lady Wye,
And took her quite amazed,--
She thought, tho’ John was tall enough,
He wanted to be raised.

X.

But John--for why? she was a dame
Of such a dwarfish sort--
Had only come to bid her make
Her mourning very short.

XI.

Said he, your Lord is dead and cold,
You only cry in vain;
Not all the Cries of London now,
Could call him back again!

XII.

You’ll soon have many a noble beau,
To dry your noble tears--
But just consider this, that I
Have follow’d you for years.

XIII.

And tho’ you are above me far,
What matters high degree,
When you are only four feet nine
And I am six foot three.

XIV.

For tho’ you are of lofty race,
And I’m a low-born elf;
Yet none among your friends could say
You matched beneath yourself.

XV.

Said she, such insolence as this
Can be no common case;
Though you are in my service, sir,
Your love is out of place.

XVI.

O Lady Wye! O Lady Wye!
Consider what you do;
How can you be so short with me,
I am not so with you?

XVII.

Then ringing for her serving men,
They show’d him to the door:
Said they, you turn out better now,
Why didn’t you before?

XVIII.

They stripp’d his coat, and gave him kicks
For all his wages due;
And off, instead of green and gold,
He went in black and blue.

XIX.

No family would take him in,
Because of this discharge;
So he made up his mind to serve
The country all at large.

XX.

Huzza! the Serjeant cried, and put
The money in his hand,
And with a shilling cut him off
From his paternal land.