The Household Book of Poetry

With good cheer enough to furnish every old With a new fashioned hall, built where the room, old one stood,

And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and Hung round with new pictures, that do the man dumb;

Like an old courtier of the queen's,
And the queen's old courtier.

With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,

That never hawked, nor hunted, but in his own grounds;

poor no good;

With a fine marble chimney, wherein burns neither coal nor wood;

And a new smooth shovelboard, whereon no
victuals ne'er stood;

Like a young courtier of the king's,
And the king's young courtier.

Who, like a wise man, kept himself within With a new study, stuft full of pamphlets and

his own bounds,

And when he dyed, gave every child a thou-
sand good pounds;

Like an old courtier of the queen's,
And the queen's old courtier.

But to his eldest son his house and land he assigned,

Charging him in his will to keep the old bountiful mind

To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours be kind:

But in the ensuing ditty you shall hear how
he was inclined,

Like a young courtier of the king's,
And the king's young courtier.

plays;

And a new chaplain, that swears faster than

he prays;

With a new buttery hatch, that opens once

in four or five days,

And a new French cook, to devise fine kick-
shaws, and toys;

Like a young courtier of the king's,
And the king's young courtier.

With a new fashion, when Christmas is drawing on

On a new journey to London straight we all must be gone,

And leave none to keep house, but our new porter John,

Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come Who relieves the poor with a thump on the

With a new gentleman-usher, whose carriage is complete;

With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat;

With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat

With a new-fangled lady, that is dainty, nice, Who, when her lady has dined, lets the ser

and spare,

Who never knew what belonged to good

housekeeping or care;

Who buys gaudy-colored fans to play with

wanton air,

vants not eat;

Like a young courtier of the king's,
And the king's young courtier.

And seven or eight different dressings of other With new titles of honour bought with his

women's hair;

Like a young courtier of the king's,
And the king's young courtier.

father's old gold,

For which sundry of his ancestors' old manors

are sold:

For Trinity Feast is over,

And has brought no news from Dover;

And Easter is past, moreover,

And Malbrouck still delays.

Milady in her watch-tower
Spends many a pensive hour,
Not knowing why or how her

Dear lord from England stays.

While sitting quite forlorn in
That tower, she spies returning
A page clad in deep mourning,

With fainting steps and slow.

“O page, prythee, come faster!

What news do you bring of your master? I fear there is some disaster

Your looks are so full of woe." "The news I bring, fair lady," With sorrowful accent said he, "Is one you are not ready

So soon, alas! to hear.

"But since to speak I'm hurried," Added this page quite flurried, "Malbrouck is dead and buried!"

-And here he shed a tear.

"He's dead! he's dead as a herring! For I beheld his berring, And four officers transferring

His corpse away from the field.

"One officer carried his sabre; And he carried it not without labor, Much envying his next neighbor,

Who only bore a shield.

"The third was helmet-bearerThat helmet which on its wearer Filled all who saw with terror,

And covered a hero's brains.

"Now, having got so far, I

Find, that by the Lord Harry!The fourth is left nothing to carry ;So there the thing remains."

Translation of FATHER PROUT.

405

ANONYMOUS (French).

THE HAG.

THE hag is astride,

This night for to ride-
The devil and she together;

Through thick and through thin,
Now out and then in,

Though ne'er so foul be the weather.

A thorn or a burr

She takes for a spur;

With a lash of a bramble she rides now Through brakes and through briers, O'er ditches and mires,

She follows the spirit that guides now.

No beast, for his food,

Dares now range the wood,

But husht in his lair he lies lurking;
While mischiefs, by these,

On land and on seas,
At noon of night are a-working.

The storm will arise,

And trouble the skies,

This night; and, more the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb
Affrighted shall come,

Called out by the clap of the thunder.

ROBERT HERRICK.

springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing This verse to Caryl, muse! is due;
This, e'en Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, goddess! could
compel

A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle?
O, say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
In tasks so bold can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwell such mighty rage?
Sol through white curtains shot a timorous

ray,

Or virgins visited by angel powers With golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers

Hear and believe! thy own importance know,

Nor bound thy narrow views to things below. Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed,

To maids alone and children are revealed; What though no credit doubting wits may give?

The fair and innocent shall still believe. Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly

The light militia of the lower sky;
These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box, and hover round the ring.
Think what an equipage thou hast in air,
And view with scorn two pages and a chair.
As now your own, our beings were of old,
And once enclosed in woman's beauteous
mould;

Thence, by a soft transition, we repair
From earthly vehicles to these of air.

And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the Think not, when woman's transient breath is day.

fled,

Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing That all her vanities at once are dead;

And the pressed watch returned a silver And love of ombre, after death survive;

sound.

Belinda still her downy pillow prestHer guardian sylph prolonged the balmy rest; 'T was he had summoned to her silent bed The morning-dream that hovered o'er her head:

For when the fair in all their pride expire, To their first elements their souls retire; The sprites of fiery termagant in flame Mount up, and take a salamander's name; Soft yielding minds to water glide away, And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea;

A youth more glittering than a birthnight The graver prude sinks downward to 8

(That e'en in slumber caused her cheek to In search of mischief still on earth to roam;

glow,)

Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say: "Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care Of thousand bright inhabitants of air!

The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the fields of air.

"Know further yet; whoever fair and

chaste

Rejects mankind, is by some sylph embraced: If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought| For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease Of all the nurse and all the priest have Assume what sexes and what shapes they

taught,

Of airy elves by moonlight-shadows seen, The silver token, and the circled green;

please.

What guards the purity of melting maids, In courtly balls and midnight masquerades,

spark,

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

407

Safe from the treacherous friend, the daring Warned by the sylph, O pious maid, beware!
This to disclose is all thy guardian can;
Beware of all, but most beware of man!"
He said; when Shock, who thought she
slept too long,

The glance by day, the whisper in the darkWhen kind occasion prompts their warm desires,

When music softens, and when dancing fires? 'Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know, Though honor is the word with men below. "Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,

For life predestined to the gnome's embrace;
These swell their prospects and exalt their
pride,

When offers are disdained, and love denied;
Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain,
While peers, and dukes, and all their sweep-
ing train,

And garters, stars, and coronets appear,
And in soft sounds, 'Your Grace,' salutes
their ear.

'Tis these that early taint the female soul,
Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll;
Teach infant cheeks a bidden blush to know,
And little hearts to flutter at a beau.

"Oft when the world imagine women
stray,

The sylphs through mystic mazes guide their

way;

Through all the giddy circle they pursue,
And old impertinence expel by new.
What tender maid but must a victim fall
To one man's treat, but for another's ball?
When Florio speaks, what virgin could with-
stand,

If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?
With varying vanities from every part
They shift the moving toy-shop of their heart;
Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots

sword-knots strive,

Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his
tongue.

'T was then, Belinda, if report say true,
Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux;
Wounds, charms, and ardors, were no sooner
read,

But all the vision vanished from thy head.
And now, unveiled, the toilet stands dis-

played,

Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, robed in white, the nymph intent
adores,

With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers.
A heavenly image in the glass appears-
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various offerings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glittering
spoil.

This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here, and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs-the speckled, and the
white.

Here files of pins extend their shining rows;
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,

Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.

drive.

This erring mortals levity may call-
O, blind to truth! the sylphs contrive it all.
"Of these am I, who thy protection claim;
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.
Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air,
In the clear mirror of thy ruling star,
I saw,
alas! some dread event impend,
Ere to the main this morning's sun descend;
But Heaven reveals not what, or how, or
where:

The busy sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and these divide the hair;
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the
gown;

And Betty's praised for labors not her own.

CANTO II.

Not with more glories, in th' ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.

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