While gods look down, With envy frown On such uncommon blisses; Dame Juno leers, Jove tells his peers He'd give his ears For such an hour as this is! Now tug and squeeze! Now whine and wheeze! O smack! O hug! (Humbúg! humbúg!) O rarely!-Oh! how rarely!!!* Tanto et ipse primam arctione nexu! Now thy teeth shall vengeful bite, &c. * Humbug! humbug! This beautiful and delicious line is intended merely for the use of certain reviewers, in England, who mistook the object of a certain publication. It is as much as to say— gentlemen, this is indeed irony!! While gods look down, With envy frown, On such uncommon blisses; Dame Juno leers, Jove tells his peers He'd give his ears For such an hour as this is! Good reader, since You stare and wince At this our dainty ditty, Exclaim enough Of this sad stuff! Which moves my spleen and pity; I'll even stop, And shut up shop, For female ware is brittle; But would you wish To taste a dish Of tainted fish, Go, read the songs of Little! "LOVE'S LABOUR LOST." PETER PUMPKIN-HEAD DEFEATED BY TABITHA TOWZER. CANTO I.* "My passion is like mustard strong," &c. OF Tabitha Towzer I sing, Pray list to my delicate ditty, My verse like brass kettle shall ring, Or sleigh bells, which gingle so pretty. * The first canto of this poem is somewhat similar to Gay's Song of Similes. Then loud as a conch shell* I'll sound, In Tabitha Towzer's friend Peter. Miss Tabitha Towzer is fair, No guinea-pig ever was neater, Like a hakmatak slender and spare, And sweet as a mush-squash, or sweeter. Miss Tabitha Towzer is sleek, When dress'd in her pretty new tucker, * In the New England states almost every farmer is possessed of a large conch shell, a species of the alatus, with a hole perforated through the end. The sound produced, by blowing into this, is very similar to that of a huntsman's horn, only much louder. It is usually lodged with the cook-maid, who, when dinner is prepared, applies her ruby lips to the "vocal shell," and affords to the hungry labourer as delightful musick as does the echoing horn to the sons of the chase. That is principally composed of English dactylicks, like "Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum;" which Virgil says, represents the running of a horse. Like an otter that paddles the creek, In quest of a mud pout, or sucker.* Her forehead is smooth as a tray, And turn'd, as a body may say, Like a delicate neat wooden-bowl. To what shall I liken her hair, As straight as a carpenter's line, For similes sure must be rare, When we speak of a nymph so divine. Not the head of Nazarite seer, That never was shaven or shorn, Nought equals the locks of my dear My dear has a beautiful nose, With a sled-runner crook in the middle, * Mud-pout and sucker are two kinds of fishes of little value, common enough in muddy streams. The otter pursues these with peculiar avidity. |