Everyday Characters Iii - The Belle Of The Ball Room

Years, years ago, ere yet my dreams
Had been of being wise and witty;
Ere I had done wth writing themes,
Or yawn'd o'er this infernal Chitty; --
Years, years ago, while all my joy
Was in my fowling-piece and filly;
In short, while I was yet a boy,
I fell in love with Laura Lily.

I saw her at the County Ball;
There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall
Of hands across and down the middle,
Hers was the subtlest spell by far
Of all that set young hearts romancing:
She was our queen, our rose, our star;
And then she danced -- oh, Heaven, her dancing!

Dark was her hair, her hand was white;
Her voice was exquisitely tender;
Her eyes were full of liquid light;
I never saw a waist so slender;
Her every look, her every smile,
Shot right and left a score of arrows;
I though 'twas Venus from her isle,
And wonder'd where she left her sparrows.

Through sunny May, through sultry June,
I loved her with a love eternal;
I spoke her praises to the moon,
I wrote them to the Sunday Journal.
My mother laugh'd; I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling:
My father frown'd, but how should gout
See any happiness in kneeling?

She was the daughter of a dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother just thriteen,
Whose color was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother, for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,
And lord-lieutenant of the county.

But titles and the three-per-cents,
And mortgages, and great relations,
And India bonds, and tithes and rents,
Oh! what are they to love's sensations?
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks, --
Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses;
He cares as little for the stocks,
As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.

She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach,
Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading;
She botanized; I envied each
Young blossom in her boudoir fading;
She warbled Händel; it was grand, --
She made the Catalina jealous;
She touch'd the organ; I could stand
For hours and hours to blow the bellows.

She kept an album, too, at home,
Well fill'd with all an album's glories;
Paintings of butterfiles, and Rome,
Patterns for trimming, Persian stories,
Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo,
Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter;
And autographs of Prince Lèboo,
And recipes for elder-water.

And she was flatter'd, worshipp'd, bored;
Her steps were watch'd, her dress was noted;
Her poodle-dog was quite adored,
Her saying were extremely quoted.
She laugh'd, and every heart was glad,
As if the taxes were abolish'd;
She frown'd, and every look was sad,
As if the Opera were demolished.

She smil'd on many just for fun, --
I knew that there was nothing in it;
I was the first, the only one
Her heart had thought of for a minute.
I knew it, for she told me so,
In phrase which was divinely moulded;
She wrote a charming hand, and oh,
How sweetly all her notes were folded!

Our love was like most other loves, ---
A little glow, a little shiver,
A rosebud and a pair of gloves,
And 'Fly Not Yet,' upon the river;
Some jealousy of some one's heir,
Some hopes of dying broken-hearted;
A miniature, a lock of hair,
The usual vows -- and then we parted.

We parted -- months and years roll'd by;
We met again four summers after;
Our parting was all sob and sigh --
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter;
For in my heart's most secret cell,
There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ball-room's belle,
But only -- Mrs. Something Rogers.

Everyday Characters Ii - Quince

Fallentis semita vit*. — Hor.


Near a small village in the West,
Where many very worthy people
Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best
To guard from evil Church and steeple.
There stood — alas! it stands no more! —
A tenement of brick and plaster,
Of which, for forty years and four,
My good friend Quince was lord and master.

Welcome was he in hut and hall
To maids and matrons, peers and peasants ;
He won the sympathies of all
By making puns, and making presents.
Though all the parish were at strife.
He kept his counsel, and his carriage,
He laughed, and loved a quiet life,
And shrank from Chancery suits — and marriage.

Sound was his claret — and his head;
Warm was his double ale — and feelings;
His partners at the whist club said
That he was faultless in his dealings :
He went to church but once a week ;
Yet Dr. Poundtext always found him
An upright man, who studied Greek,
And liked to see his friends around him.

Asylums, hospitals and schools,
He used to swear, were made to cozen ;
All who subscribed to them were fools, —
And he subscribed to half-a-dozen :
It was his doctrine, that the poor
Were always able, never willing ;
And so the beggar at his door
Had first abuse, and then — a shilling.

Some public principles he had,
But was no flatterer, nor fretter ;
He rapped his box when things were bad.
And said 'I cannot make them better!'
And much he loathed the patriot's snort,
And much he scorned the placeman's snuffle ;
And cut the fiercest quarrels short
With — ' ' Patience, gentlemen — and shuffle ! ' '

For full ten years his pointer Speed
Had couched beneath her master's table ;
For twice ten years his old white steed
Had fattened in his master's stable ;
Old Quince averred, upon his troth,
They were the ugliest beasts in Devon ;
And none knew why he fed them both,
With his own hands, six days in seven.

Whene'er they heard his ring or knock.
Quicker than thought, the village slatterns
Flung down the novel, smoothed the frock,
And took up Mrs. Glasse, and patterns;
Adine was studying baker's bills ;
Louisa looked the queen of knitters ;
Jane happened to be hemming frills ;
And Bell, by chance, was making fritters.

But all was vain ; and while decay
Came, like a tranquil moonlight, o'er him.
And found him gouty still, and gay,
With no fair nurse to bless or bore him,
His rugged smile and easy chair,
His dread of matrimonial lectures,
His wig, his stick, his powdered hair.
Were themes for very strange conjectures.

Some sages thought the stars above
Had crazed him with excess of knowledge;
Some heard he had been crost in love
Before he came away from College ;
Some darkly hinted that his Grace
Did nothing, great or small, without him ;
Some whispered, with a solemn face,
That there was 'something odd about him ! '

I found him, at threescore and ten,
A single man, but bent quite double;
Sickness was coming on him then
To take him from a world of trouble :
He prosed of slipping down the hill.
Discovered he grew older daily ;
One frosty day he made his will, —
The next, he sent for Doctor Bailey.

And so he lived, — and so he died! —
When last I sat beside his pillow
He shook my hand, and 'Ah!' he cried,
'Penelope must wear the willow.
Tell her I hugged her rosy chain
While life was flickering in the socket;
And say, that when I call again,
I '11 bring a licence in my pocket.

'I've left my house and grounds to Fag, —
I hope his master's shoes will suit him ;
And I've bequeathed to you my nag,
To feed him for my sake, — or shoot him,
The Vicar's wife will take old Fox, —
She '11 find him an uncommon mouser, -
And let her husband have my box,
My Bible, and my Assmanshauser.

' Whether I ought to die or not.
My Doctors cannot quite determine ;
It 's only clear that I shall rot.
And be, like Priam, food for vermin.
My debts are paid : — but Nature's debt
Almost escaped my recollection :
Tom! — we shall meet again; — and yet
I cannot leave you my direction ! '