“Des traditions étrangeres,
En parlant sans obscurité
Mais dans ces sources mensongères,
Necherchons point la vérité.”—GRESSET.
“Nous avons changé tout cela.”—MOLIERE.
Lily, I’ve made a sketch, to show
How all the world will alter
The tournament in Ivanhoe,
As painted by Sir Walter;
Those jousting days have all gone by,
And heaven be praised they’re over!
“When brains were out, the man would die,”
A swain may now recover!
Yet, Lily! Love has still his darts,
And Beauty still her glances;
Her trophies now are wounded hearts,
Instead of broken lances!
Soft tales are told, though not with flowers,
But in a simple letter,
And on the whole, this world of ours
Is altered for the better!
Your stalwart chiefs, and men of might,
Though fine poetic sketches,
Contrasted with a modern knight,
Were sad, unpolished wretches;
They learned, indeed, to poise a dart,
Or breathe a bold defiance,
But “reading” was a mystic art,
And “writing” quite a science!
Our heroes still wear spur on heel,
And falchion, cap, and feather;
But for your surcoats made of steel,
And doublets made of leather,—
Good heavens! just fancy, at a ball,
How very incommodious!
And then, they never shaved at all—
’Twas positively odious!
A warrior wasted half his life
In wild crusades to Mecca,
In previous penance for a wife,
Like Jacob for Rebecca!
Or captive, held some twenty years
At Tunis or Aleppo,
Came back, perchance, without his ears,
A yellow fright, like Beppo!
Then heads were made to carry weight,
And not to carry knowledge;
Boys were not “brought up for the state,”
Girls were not sent to college;
Now (oh! how this round world improves!)
We’ve “Essays” by mechanics,
“Courses” of wisdom with removes,
And ladies’ calisthenics!
In the olden time, when youth had fled,
A lady’s life was over;
For might she not as well be dead
As live without a lover?
But now, no foolish date we fix,
So brisk our Hymen’s trade is,
Ladies are now at fifty-six
But “elderly young ladies.”
And husbands now, with bolts and springs,
Ne’er cage and frighten Cupid,
They know that if they clip his wings,
They only make him stupid;
Their married ladies had no lutes
To sigh beneath their windows,
They treated them, those ancient brutes,
As cruelly as Hindoos!
They moped away their lives, poor souls!
By no soft vision brightened,
Perched up in castle pigeon-holes,
Expecting to be frightened!
Or hauled away through field, or fray,
To dungeon, or to tower;
They ne’er were neat for half a day,
Or safe for half an hour.
’Twas easy too, by fraud or force,
A wife’s complaints to stifle;
To starve her was a thing of course,—
To poison her a trifle!
Their wrongs remain no longer dumb,
For now the laws protect them;
And canes “no thicker than one’s thumb”
Are suffered to correct them.
Then dwell not, Lily! on an age
Of Fancy’s wild creation,
Our own presents a fairer page
For Beauty’s meditation;
Though you share no Bois Guilbert’s bed,
No Front de Bœuf’s vagaries,
You may be comfortably wed
Some morning at St. Mary’s!