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CCXCV.

Her golden hair is out of its braids,
And her sighs betray the gloomy shades
That her evil planet revolves in–
And tears are falling that catch a gleam
So bright as they drop in the sunny beam,
That tears of aqua regia they seem,
The water that gold dissolves in;

CCXCVI.

Yet, not in filial grief were shed
Those tears for a mother’s insanity;
Nor yet because her father was dead,
For the bowing Sir Jacob had bow’d his head
To Death–with his usual urbanity;
The waters that down her visage rill’d
Were drops of unrectified spirit distill’d
From the limbeck of Pride and Vanity.

CCXCVII.

Tears that fell alone and unchecked,
Without relief, and without respect,
Like the fabled pearls that the pigs neglect,
When pigs have that opportunity–
And of all the griefs that mortals share,
The one that seems the hardest to bear
Is the grief without community.

CCXCVIII.

How bless’d the heart that has a friend
A sympathising ear to lend
To troubles too great to smother!
For as ale and porter, when flat, are restored
Till a sparkling bubbling head they afford,
So sorrow is cheer’d by being pour’d
From one vessel into another.

CCXCIX.

But a friend or gossip she had not one
To hear the vile deeds that the Count had done,
How night after night he rambled;
And how she had learn’d by sad degrees
That he drank, and smoked, and worse than these,
That he “swindled, intrigued, and gambled.”

CCC.

How he kiss’d the maids, and sparr’d with John;
And came to bed with his garments on;
With other offences as heinous–
And brought strange gentlemen home to dine
That he said were in the Fancy Line,
And they fancied spirits instead of wine,
And call’d her lap-dog “Wenus.”

CCCI.

Of “Making a book” how he made a stir,
But never had written a line to her,
Once his idol and Cara Sposa:
And how he had storm’d, and treated her ill,
Because she refused to go down to a mill,
She didn’t know where, but remember’d still
That the Miller’s name was Mendoza.

CCCII.

How often he waked her up at night,
And oftener still by the morning light,
Reeling home from his haunts unlawful;
Singing songs that shouldn’t be sung,
Except by beggars and thieves unhung–
Or volleying oaths, that a foreign tongue
Made still more horrid and awful!

CCCIII.

How oft, instead of otto rose,
With vulgar smells he offended her nose,
From gin, tobacco, and onion!
And then how wildly he used to stare!
And shake his fist at nothing, and swear,–
And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,
Till he look’d like a study of Giant Despair
For a new Edition of Bunyan!

CCCIV.

For dice will run the contrary way,
As well is known to all who play,
And cards will conspire as in treason:
And what with keeping a hunting-box,
Following fox–
Friends in flocks,
Burgundies, Hocks,
From London Docks,
Stultz’s frocks,
Manton and Nock’s
Barrels and locks,
Shooting blue rocks,
Trainers and jocks,
Buskins and socks,
Pugilistical knocks,
And fighting-cocks,
If he found himself short in funds and stocks,
These rhymes will furnish the reason!

CCCV.

His friends, indeed, were falling away–
Friends who insist on play or pay–
And he fear’d at no very distant day
To be cut by Lord and by cadger,
As one, who has gone, or is going, to smash,
For his checks no longer drew the cash,
Because, as his comrades explain’d in flash,
“He had overdrawn his badger.”