Everyday Characters V - Portrait Of A Lady
IN THE EXHIBITION OP THE ROYAL
ACADEMY
What are you, Lady ? — nought is here
To tell us of your name or story,
To claim the gazer's smile or fear.
To dub you Whig, or damn you Tory ;
It is beyond a poet's skill
To form the slightest notion, whether
We e'er shall walk through one quadrille.
Or look upon one moon together.
You're very pretty! — all the world
Are 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 then
Is 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 vermillion ;
Fame rides a most prodigious pace ;
Oblivion follows on the pillion;
And all who in these sultry rooms
To-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 debts
By persons who are used to borrow ;
Forgotten — as the sun that sets,
When shines a new one on the morrow ;
Forgotten — like the luscious peach
That blessed the schoolboy last September ;
Forgotten — like a maiden speech,
Which all men praise, but none remember.
Yet, ere you sink into the stream
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poem by Winthrop Mackworth Praed
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