A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look;
She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill,
Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille.'
And now (as oft in some distempered state)
On one nice trick depends the gen'ral fate.
An ace of hearts steps forth; the king unseen
Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive queen
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace,
And falls like thunder on the prostrate ace.
The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky;
The walls, the woods, and long canals reply.
O thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate.
Sudden, these honours shall be snatched away,
And cursed for ever this victorious day.
For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round:2
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide:
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
Straight hover round the fair her airy band;
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned,
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes displayed,
Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade.
Coffee (which makes the politicians wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain
New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.
Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late,
Fear the just Gods, and think of Scylla's fate!
Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
She dearly pays for Nisus' injured hair!3
1 If either of the two playing against "Ombre " made more tricks than he did, the winner took the pool, and the "Ombre" had to replace it for the next game.
2 It was the fashion to grind as well as make the coffee in the
3 Nisus, King of Megara, had on his head a certain purple lock of hair; and it was decreed by fate that he should never be conquered as long as that lock remained on his head. Minos, King of Crete, made war upon Megara, and Scylla, the king's daughter, beholding the enemy of her father from a high tower, fell in love with him. She resolved to give up the city to him: stole in the night to her father's sleeping room and cut off the fatal lock She bore it out of the city to Minos, and told him that Megara was now his own, But
But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace
A two-edged weapon from her shining case;
So ladies in romance assist their knight,
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight,
He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers' ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.
Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair,
A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair;
And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear;
Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near.
Just in that instant anxious Ariel sought
The close recesses of the virgin's thought;
As on the nosegay in her breast reclined,
He watched th' ideas rising in her mind,
Sudden he viewed in spite of all her art,
An earthly lover lurking at her heart.
Amazed, confused, he found his pow'r expired,
Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired.
The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide,
T' inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev'n then, before the fatal engine closed,
A wretched sylph toa fondly interposed;
Fate urged the shears and cut the sylph in twain,
(But airy substance soon unites again1)
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, forever, and forever!
Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror, rend th'affrighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast, When husbands, or when lapdogs breath their last; Or when rich china vessels fall'n from high, In glittering dust and painted fragments lie!
"Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine, (The victor cried) the glorious prize is mine While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,
the just king shrank from her in abhorrence; gave equitable terms to the conquered city, and sailed from the island. Scylla was turned into a bird, constantly pursued by a sea-eagle, into which her father had been metamorphosed.-Vide. Ovid. Metam. 8.
1 See Miiton. lib, vi, of Satan cut asunder by the angel Michael.Pope.
The parodies are the most exquisite parts of this poem.-Warton,
Or in a coach and six the British fair,
As long as Atalantis shall be read,1
Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed,
While visits shall be paid on solemn days,"
When num'rous wax lights in bright order blaze,
While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!”
What time would spare, from steel receives its date,
And monuments, like men, submit to fate!
Steel could the labour of the gods destroy,
And strike to dust th' imperial tow'rs of Troy;
Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,
And hew triumphal arches to the ground.
What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel3
The conquering force of unresisted steel!
BUT anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,*
And secret passions laboured in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seized alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravished hair.
For, that sad moment, when the sylphs withdrew,
And Ariel weeping from da flew,
1 A famous book written abo t thi. time by a woman; full of court and party scandal; and in a oos effemir y of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste o he better vulgar.- Warburton.
The writer was Mrs. de la Riviere Manley, supposed to have been the Sappho of the "Tatler," and daughter of Sir Roger Manley. She was a woman of very bad character.
2 Visits were then sometimes received in ladies' bedrooms, when the bed was decorated with a handsome counterpane and a small lace-trimmed pillow.
3"Ille quoque aversus mons est, &c.
Quid faciant crines, cum ferro talia cedant?”—Catull, De Com
Berenices.-Pope.
4 At regina gravi, &c.-Virg. Æn. iv. 1,-Pope,
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth his proper scene,
Repaired to search the gloomy cave of Spleen
Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome,
And in a vapour, reached the dismal dome.
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.
Here in a grotto, sheltered close from air,
And screened in shades from day's detested glare,
She sighs forever on her pensive bed,
Pain at her side and Megrim at her head.
Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place,
But diff'ring far in figure and in face.
Here stood Ill-nature like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed;
With store of pray'rs for mornings, nights, and noons,
Her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons.
There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practised to lisp and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
Wrapped in a gown, for sickness, and for show.
The fair ones feel such maladies as these,
When each new night-dress gives a new disease.
A constant vapour o'er the palace flies;
Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise:
Dreadful, as hermits' dreams in haunted shades,
Or bright, as visions of expiring maids.
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,
Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires;
Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes,
And crystal domes, and angels in machines.
Unnumbered throngs on ev'ry side are seen,
Of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen.
Here living tea-pots stand, one arm held out,
One bent; the handle this, and that the spout:
A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks1
1 See Hom. " 'Iliad," xviii. of Vulcan's walking tripods,-Pope. This is the passage in Pope's translations:
"That day no common task his labour claimed,
Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed,
That placed on living wheels of massy geld
(Wond'rous to tell), instinct with spirit rolled
From place to place, around the blest adoes
Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods,"
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pie talks;'
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works,
And maids turned bottles, called aloud for corks.
Safe past the gnome through this fantastic band,
A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand.
Then thus addressed the pow'r: "Hail, wayward
queen!
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:
Parent of vapours and of female wit,
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays;
Who cause the proud their visits to delay,
And send the godly in a pet to pray.
A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains,
And thousands more in equal mirth maintains.
But oh! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace,
Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face,
Like citron-waters matrons' cheeks inflame,
Or change complexions at a losing game;
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads,
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds,
Or caused suspicion when no soul was rude,
Or discomposed the head-dress of a prude,
Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease,
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease;
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin,
That single act gives half the world the spleen."
The goddess with a discontented air
Seems to reject him, though she grants his pray'r.
A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds,
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds;
There she collects the force of female lungs,
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues,
A vial next she fills with fainting fears,
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.
The gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,
Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day.
Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he found,
Her eyes dejected and her hair unbound.
Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent,
And all the furies issued at the vent.
1 Alludes to a real fact, a lady of distinction imagined herself in this condition.-Pope.
|