In the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1831

What are you, lady?--naught is hereTo tell us of your name or story,To claim the gazer’s smile or tear,To dub you Whig or damn you Tory;It is beyond a poet’s skillTo form the slightest notion whetherWe e’er shall walk through one quadrille,Or look upon one moon together.

You’re very pretty!--all the worldIs talking of your bright brow’s splendour.And of your locks, so softly curled,And of your hands, so white and slender;Some think you’re blooming in Bengal;Some say you’re blowing in the City;Some know you’re nobody at all:I only feel--you’re very pretty.

But bless my heart! it’s very wrong;You’re making all our belles ferocious;Anne “never saw a chin so long;”And Laura thinks your dress “atrocious:”And Lady Jane, who now and thenIs taken for the village steeple,Is sure you can’t be four feet ten,And “wonders at the taste of people.”

Soon pass the praises of a face;Swift fades the very best vermilion;Fame rides a most prodigious pace;Oblivion follows on the pillion;And all who in these sultry roomsTo-day have stared, and pushed, and fainted,Will soon forget your pearls and plumes,As if they never had been painted.

You’ll be forgotten--as old debtsBy persons who are used to borrow;Forgotten as the sun that sets,When shines a new one on the morrow;Forgotten--like the luscious peachThat blessed the schoolboy last September;Forgotten like a maiden speech,Which all men praise, but none remember.

Yet, ere you sink into the streamThat whelms alike sage, saint, and martyr,And soldier’s sword, and minstrel’s theme,And Canning’s wit, and Gatton’s charter,Here, of the fortunes of your youth,My fancy weaves her dim conjectures,Which have, perhaps, as much of truthAs passion’s vows, or Cobbett’s lectures.

Was’t in the north, or in the southThat summer breezes rocked your cradle?And had you in your baby mouthA wooden or a silver ladle?And was your first unconscious sleepBy Brownie banned, or blessed by Fairy?And did you wake to laugh or weep?And were you christened Maud or Mary?

And was your father called “Your Grace?”And did he bet at Ascot races?And did he chat of commonplace?And did he fill a score of places?And did your lady-mother’s charmsConsist in picklings, broilings, bastings?Or did she prate about the armsHer brave forefathers wore at Hastings?

Where were you finished? tell me where?Was it at Chelsea or at Chiswick?Had you the ordinary shareOf books and backboard, harp and physic?And did they bid you banish pride,And mind your Oriental tinting?And did you learn how Dido died?And who found out the art of printing?

And are you fond of lanes and brooks--A votary of the sylvan Muses?Or do you con the little booksWhich Baron Brougham and Vaux diffuses?Or do you love to knit and sow--The fashionable world’s Arachne?Or do you canter down the RowUpon a very long-tailed hackney?

And do you love your brother James?And do you pet his mares and setters?And have your friends romantic names?And do you write them long, long letters?And are you--since the world beganAll women are--a little spiteful?And don’t you dote on Malibran?And don’t you think Tom Moore delightful?

I see they’ve brought you flowers to-day;Delicious food for eyes and noses;But carelessly you turn awayFrom all the pinks and all the roses;Say, is that fond look sent in searchOf one whose look as fondly answers?And is he, fairest, in the Church?Or is he--ain’t he--in the Lancers?

And is your love a motley pageOf black and white, half joy, half sorrow?Are you to wait till you’re of age?Or are you to be his to-morrow?Or do they bid you, in their scorn,Your pure and sinless flame to smother?Is he so very meanly born?Or are you married to another?

Whate’er you are, at last, adieu!I think it is your bounden dutyTo let the rhymes I coin for youBe prized by all who prize your beauty.From you I seek nor gold nor fame;From you I fear no cruel strictures;I wish some girls that I could nameWere half as silent as their pictures!