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So runs the world away.—Hamlet.
GOOD-NIGHT to the Season! ’T is over! | |
| Gay dwellings no longer are gay; | |
| The courtier, the gambler, the lover, | |
| Are scattered like swallows away: | |
| There’s nobody left to invite one | 5 |
| Except my good uncle and spouse; | |
| My mistress is bathing at Brighton, | |
| My patron is sailing at Cowes: | |
| For want of a better employment, | |
| Till Ponto and Don can get out, | 10 |
| I’ll cultivate rural enjoyment, | |
| And angle immensely for trout. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the lobbies, | |
| Their changes, and rumours of change, | |
| Which startled the rustic Sir Bobbies, | 15 |
| And made all the Bishops look strange; | |
| The breaches, and battles, and blunders, | |
| Performed by the Commons and Peers; | |
| The Marquis’s eloquent thunders, | |
| The Baronet’s eloquent ears; | 20 |
| Denouncings of Papists and treasons, | |
| Of foreign dominion and oats; | |
| Misrepresentations of reasons, | |
| And misunderstandings of notes. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the buildings | 25 |
| Enough to make Inigo sick; | |
| The paintings, and plasterings, and gildings | |
| Of stucco, and marble, and brick; | |
| The orders deliciously blended, | |
| From love of effect, into one; | 30 |
| The club-houses only intended, | |
| The palaces only begun; | |
| The hell, where the fiend in his glory | |
| Sits staring at putty and stones, | |
| And scrambles from story to story, | 35 |
| To rattle at midnight his bones. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the dances, | |
| The fillings of hot little rooms, | |
| The glancings of rapturous glances, | |
| The fancyings of fancy costumes; | 40 |
| The pleasures which fashion makes duties, | |
| The praisings of fiddles and flutes, | |
| The luxury of looking at Beauties, | |
| The tedium of talking to mutes; | |
| The female diplomatists, planners | 45 |
| Of matches for Laura and Jane; | |
| The ice of her Ladyship’s manners, | |
| The ice of his Lordship’s champagne. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the rages | |
| Led off by the chiefs of the throng, | 50 |
| The Lady Matilda’s new pages, | |
| The Lady Eliza’s new song; | |
| Miss Fennel’s macaw, which at Boodle’s | |
| Was held to have something to say; | |
| Mrs. Splenetic’s musical poodles, | 55 |
| Which bark “Batti Batti” all day; | |
| The pony Sir Araby sported, | |
| As hot and as black as a coal, | |
| And the Lion his mother imported, | |
| In bearskins and grease, from the Pole. | 60 |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the Toso, | |
| So very majestic and tall; | |
| Miss Ayton, whose singing was so-so, | |
| And Pasta, divinest of all; | |
| The labour in vain of the ballet, | 65 |
| So sadly deficient in stars; | |
| The foreigners thronging the Alley, | |
| Exhaling the breath of cigars; | |
| The loge where some heiress (how killing!) | |
| Environed with exquisites sits, | 70 |
| The lovely one out of her drilling, | |
| The silly ones out of their wits. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the splendour | |
| That beamed in the Spanish Bazaar; | |
| Where I purchased—my heart was so tender— | 75 |
| A card-case, a pasteboard guitar, | |
| A bottle of perfume, a girdle, | |
| A lithographed Riego, full-grown, | |
| Whom bigotry drew on a hurdle | |
| That artists might draw him on stone; | 80 |
| A small panorama of Seville, | |
| A trap for demolishing flies, | |
| A caricature of the Devil, | |
| And a look from Miss Sheridan’s eyes. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—the flowers | 85 |
| Of the grand horticultural fête, | |
| When boudoirs were quitted for bowers, | |
| And the fashion was—not to be late; | |
| When all who had money and leisure | |
| Grew rural o’er ices and wines, | 90 |
| All pleasantly toiling for pleasure, | |
| All hungrily pining for pines, | |
| And making of beautiful speeches, | |
| And marring of beautiful shows, | |
| And feeding on delicate peaches, | 95 |
| And treading on delicate toes. | |
| |
| Good-night to the Season!—Another | |
| Will come, with its trifles and toys, | |
| And hurry away, like its brother, | |
| In sunshine, and odour, and noise. | 100 |
| Will it come with a rose or a briar? | |
| Will it come with a blessing or curse? | |
| Will its bonnets be lower or higher? | |
| Will its morals be better or worse? | |
| Will it find me grown thinner or fatter, | 105 |
| Or fonder of wrong or of right, | |
| Or married—or buried?—no matter: | |
| Good-night to the Season—good-night! | |
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