But, when the Multifarious forsook
Bo-hea, Pe-koe, and Wiry-leaf’d
Gun-pow-der,
To revel in the lip and sunny look
Of the young stranger; spite
of all they’d vow’d her,
The ladies each with jealous anger shook,
And rail’d against the
simple maid aloud—Ah!
This woman’s pride is a fine thing
to tell us of—
But a small matter serves her to be jealous
of.
One said she was indecorously florid—
One thought “she only
squinted, nothing more—”
A third, convulsively pronounced her “horrid
“—
While Bo-hea, who was low
(at four-and-four),
Glanced from her fingers up at Hy-son’s
forehead,
Who, inkling such a tendency
before,
Cared for no rival’s nails—but
paid—I own,
Particular attention to her own.
Well, this was bad enough; but worse than
this
Were the attentions of our
ancient hero,
Whose frequent vow, and frequenter caress,
Unwelcome were for any one
to hear, who
Had charms for better pleasure than a
kiss
From feeble dotard ten degrees
from zero.
So, as one does when circumstances harass
one,
Hy-son began to draw up a comparison.
“Was ever maiden so abused as I
am?
Teazed into such a marriage—then
to be
Dosed with my husband twenty times per
diem,
With repetetur haustus
after tea!
And, if he should die, what can I get
by him?
A jointure’s nothing
among fifty-three!
I’m meek enough—but this
I can not bear—
I wish: I wish:—I wish
a girl might swear!”
In such a mood, she—(stop!
I’ll mend my pen;
For now all our preliminaries
are done,
And I am come unto the crisis, when
Her fate depends on a kind
reader’s pardon)—
Wandering forth beyond the ladies’
ken,
She thought she spied a male
face in the garden—
She hasten’d thither—she
was not mistaken,
For sure enough, a man was there a-raking.
A man complete he was who own’d
the visage,
A man of thirty-three, or
may-be longer—
So young, she could not well distinguish
his age—
So old, she knew he had one
day been younger.
Now thirty-three, although a very nice
age,
Is not so nice as twenty,
twenty-one, or
So; but of lovers when a lady’s
caught one,
She seldom stops to stipulate what sort
o’ one.
Now, the first moment Hy-son saw the gardener—
A gardener, by his tools and
dress she knew—
She felt her bosom round her heart in
a—
A—just as if her
heart was breaking through;
And so she blush’d, and hoped that
he would pardon her
Intruding on his grounds—“so
nice they grew!—
Such roses! what a pink!—and
then that peony;
Might she die if she ever look’d
to see any!”