’Tis hard, you’ll tell me, but ’tis true--
Thanks to that heathen dog, Mahomet--
In Turkey if you want to woo--
But, by the bye, you’d best keep from it--
The object of your love must hide
Her face from every idle gazer--
A wholesome check on female pride
I think; and what’s _your_ notion, pray sir?
“Where beechen boughs their shade diffuse”
’Twas once my lot to hear a ditty,
Fill’d with such stuff as lovers use
To melt the maiden heart with pity,
Recited by a Turk: ’twas queer
I thought that one like him, who never
Had _seen_ his mistress, should appear
In “puff” and “eulogy” so clever.
“Two swains were smoking,” tales, you know,
Of love begin and end in vapour--
“Beside a purling stream, when lo!
By came a maiden, slim and taper.
Her eyes were like two stars at night”--
No matter how I came to know it--
The one beholds her with delight.
And all at once becomes a poet.
“Why sits thy soul within those eyes?”
The other asks, “resume your smoking,”
The lover hears him with surprise
And answers, “Set aside all joking,
The pipe has now no charms for me;
My heart is, as a fig, transported
To the thick foliage of some tree,
And there a bright-eyed bird has caught it.”
Now hear a _moral_! Love’s a sly
And roguish fellow: look about ye
Watch all he does with careful eye,
Or else ’tis ten to one he’ll flout ye.
Give him an inch he’ll take an ell;
And, if he once make conquest o’er ye,
Then sense, wit, reason, will, farewell!--
Thus ends this _seasonable_ story.
Δ
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