| |
| FROM those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, | |
| Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; | |
| Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, | |
| And deal from iron hands the spare repast; | |
| Where truant ’prentices, yet young in sin, | 5 |
| Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; | |
| Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, | |
| Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; | |
| Where tiny thieves not destin’d yet to swing, | |
| Beat hemp for others, riper for the string: | 10 |
| From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date, | |
| To tell Maria her Esopus’ fate. | |
| |
| “Alas! I feel I am no actor here!” | |
| ’Tis real hangmen real scourges bear! | |
| Prepare Maria, for a horrid tale | 15 |
| Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale; | |
| Will make thy hair, tho’ erst from gipsy poll’d, | |
| By barber woven, and by barber sold, | |
| Though twisted smooth with Harry’s nicest care, | |
| Like hoary bristles to erect and stare. | 20 |
| The hero of the mimic scene, no more | |
| I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar; | |
| Or, haughty Chieftain, ’mid the din of arms | |
| In Highland Bonnet, woo Malvina’s charms; | |
| While sans-culottes stoop up the mountain high, | 25 |
| And steal from me Maria’s prying eye. | |
| Blest Highland bonnet! once my proudest dress, | |
| Now prouder still, Maria’s temples press; | |
| I see her wave thy towering plumes afar, | |
| And call each coxcomb to the wordy war: | 30 |
| I see her face the first of Ireland’s sons, | |
| And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze; | |
| The crafty Colonel leaves the tartan’d lines, | |
| For other wars, where he a hero shines: | |
| The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred, | 35 |
| Who owns a Bushby’s heart without the head, | |
| Comes ’mid a string of coxcombs, to display | |
| That veni, vidi, vici, is his way: | |
| The shrinking Bard adown the alley skulks, | |
| And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks: | 40 |
| Though there, his heresies in Church and State | |
| Might well award him Muir and Palmer’s fate: | |
| Still she undaunted reels and rattles on, | |
| And dares the public like a noontide sun. | |
| What scandal called Maria’s jaunty stagger | 45 |
| The ricket reeling of a crooked swagger? | |
| Whose spleen (e’en worse than Burns’ venom, when | |
| He dips in gall unmix’d his eager pen, | |
| And pours his vengeance in the burning line,)— | |
| Who christen’d thus Maria’s lyre-divine | 50 |
| The idiot strum of Vanity bemus’d, | |
| And even the abuse of Poesy abus’d?— | |
| Who called her verse a Parish Workhouse, made | |
| For motley foundling Fancies, stolen or strayed? | |
| |
| A Workhouse! ah, that sound awakes my woes, | 55 |
| And pillows on the thorn my rack’d repose! | |
| In durance vile here must I wake and weep, | |
| And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep; | |
| That straw where many a rogue has lain of yore, | |
| And vermin’d gipsies litter’d heretofore. | 60 |
| |
| Why, Lonsdale, thus thy wrath on vagrants pour? | |
| Must earth no rascal save thyself endure? | |
| Must thou alone in guilt immortal swell, | |
| And make a vast monopoly of hell? | |
| Thou know’st the Virtues cannot hate thee worse; | 65 |
| The Vices also, must they club their curse? | |
| Or must no tiny sin to others fall, | |
| Because thy guilt’s supreme enough for all? | |
| |
| Maria, send me too thy griefs and cares; | |
| In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares. | 70 |
| As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls, | |
| Who on my fair one Satire’s vengeance hurls— | |
| Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain coquette, | |
| A wit in folly, and a fool in wit! | |
| Who says that fool alone is not thy due, | 75 |
| And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true! | |
| |
| Our force united on thy foes we’ll turn, | |
| And dare the war with all of woman born: | |
| For who can write and speak as thou and I? | |
| My periods that deciphering defy, | 80 |
| And thy still matchless tongue that conquers all reply! | |
| |
