Good Night to the Season

Good night to the Season!--’Tis over!Gay dwellings no longer are gay;The courtier, the gambler, the lover,Are scattered like swallows away:There’s nobody left to invite oneExcept my good uncle and spouse;My mistress is bathing at Brighton,My patron is sailing at Cowes:For want of a better enjoyment,Till Ponto and Don can get out,I’ll cultivate rural employment,And angle immensely for trout.

Good night to the Season!--the lobbies,Their changes, and rumours of change,Which startled the rustic Sir Bobbies,And made all the Bishops look strange;The breaches, and battles, and blunders,Performed by the Commons and Peers;The Marquis’s eloquent blunders,The Baronet’s eloquent ears;Denouncings of Papists and treasons,Of foreign dominion and oats;Misrepresentations of reasons,And misunderstandings of notes.

Good night to the Season!--the buildingsEnough to make Inigo sick;The paintings, and plasterings, and gildingsOf stucco, and marble, and brick;The orders deliciously blended,From love of effect, into one;The club-houses only intended,The palaces only begun;The hell, where the fiend in his glorySits staring at putty and stones,And scrambles from storey to storey,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;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, plannersOf 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 ragesLed off by the chiefs of the throng,The Lady Matilda’s new pages,The Lady Eliza’s new song;Miss Fennel’s macaw, which at Boodle’sWas held to have something to say;Mrs. Splenetic’s musical poodles,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.

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,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,The lovely one out of her drilling,The silly ones out of their wits.

Good night to the Season!--the splendourThat beamed in the Spanish Bazaar;Where I purchased--my heart was so tender--A card-case, a pasteboard guitar,A bottle of perfume, a girdle,A lithographed Riego, full grown,Whom bigotry drew on a hurdleThat artists might draw him on stone;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 flowersOf the grand Horticultural fête,When boudoirs were quitted for bowers,And the fashion was--not to be late;When all who had money and leisureGrew rural o’er ices and wines,All pleasantly toiling for pleasure,All hungrily pining for pines,And making of beautiful speeches,And massing of beautiful shows,And feeding on delicate peaches,And treading on delicate toes.

Good night to the Season!--AnotherWill come, with its trifles and toys,And hurry away, like its brother,In sunshine, and odour, and noise.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,Or fonder of wrong or of right,Or married--or buried?--no matter:Good night to the Season--good night!