Pluto's hall? She fancied those Elysian shades The sweetest place for masquerades; How pleasant on the banks of Styx, To troll it in a coach and six! What pride a female heart inflames? How endless are ambition's aims:      Cease, haughty nymph; the Fates decree Death must not be a spouse for thee; For, when by chance the meagre shade Upon thy hand his finger laid, Thy hand as dry and cold as lead, His matrimonial spirit fled; He felt about his heart a damp, That quite extinguished Cupid's lamp:      Away the frighted spectre scuds, And leaves my lady in the suds. 

      [Footnote 1: Megaera, one of three Furies, beautifully described by Virgil, "Aeneid," xii, 846.—. W. E. B.]       [Footnote 2: Periwigs with long tails.]       [Footnote 3: Where the College of Physicians was situated at that time. See Cunningham's "Handbook of London."—W. E. B.] 

  

  

       DAPHNE     

      Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex, and how to please; But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex. Never woman more devised Surer ways to be despised; Paradoxes weakly wielding, Always conquer'd, never yielding. To dispute, her chief delight, Without one opinion right:      Thick her arguments she lays on, And with cavils combats reason; Answers in decisive way, Never hears what you can say; Still her odd perverseness shows Chiefly where she nothing knows; And, where she is most familiar, Always peevisher and sillier; All her spirits in a flame When she knows she's most to blame. Send me hence ten thousand miles, From a face that always smiles:      None could ever act that part, But a fury in her heart. Ye who hate such inconsistence, To be easy, keep your distance:      Or in folly still befriend her, But have no concern to mend her; Lose not time to contradict her, Nor endeavour to convict her. Never take it in your thought, That she'll own, or cure a fault. Into contradiction warm her, Then, perhaps, you may reform her:      Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong; And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spight. No—that scheme will ne'er succeed, She has better learnt her creed; She's too cunning and too skilful, When to yield, and when be wilful. Nature holds her forth two mirrors, One for truth, and one 

 Prev. P 50/284 next