For a "mixt company " implies that, save
Yourself and friends, and half a hundred
Whom you may bow to without looking
This is the case in England; at least was
During the dynasty of Dandies, now
Perchance succeeded by some other class
Of imitated imitators :- how
Irreparably soon decline, alas!
The demagogues of fashion: all below
Is frail; how easily the world is lost
By love, or war, and now and then by frost!
Crush'd was Napoleon by the northern Thor,
Who knock'd his army down with icy
hammer,
Stopp'd by the elements, like a whaler, or
A blundering novice in his new French
grammar;
Good cause had he to doubt the chance of
war,
And as for Fortune - but I dare not d-n
her,
Because were I to ponder to infinity,
The more I should believe in her divinity.
She rules the present, past, and all to be yet,
She gives us luck in lotteries, love and
marriage;
I cannot say that she's done much for me
yet;
Not that I mean her bounties to disparage,
We've not yet closed accounts, and we
shall see yet
How much she'll make amends for past
miscarriage;
Meantime the goddess I'll no more impor tune,
Unless to thank her when she's made my fortune.
To turn, and to return; -the devil take it,
This story slips for ever through my
fingers,
Because, just as the stanza likes to make it,
It needs must be-and so it rather lingers;
This form of verse began, I can't well break it,
But must keep time and tune like public
singers;
But if I once get through my present
measure, I'll take another when I'm next at leisure.
They went to the Ridotto: ('tis a place
To which I mean to go myself to-morrow,
Just to divert my thoughts a little space,
Because I'm rather hippish, and may borrow
Some spirits, guessing at what kind of
face
The rest are but a vulgar set, the bore
Of public places, where they basely brave May lurk beneath each mask, and as my
The fashionable stare of twenty score
Of well-bred persons, called "the World; " | Slackens its pace
Although I know them, really don't know Something shall why.
leave it half an hour behind.)