| |
| IN vain, poor nymph, to please our youthful sight | |
| You sleep in cream and frontlets all the night, | |
| Your face with patches soil, with paint repair, | |
| Dress with gay gowns, and shade with foreign hair. | |
| If truth, in spite of manners, must be told, | 5 |
| Why really fifty-five is something old. | |
| Once you were young; or one, whose life’s so long | |
| She might have borne my mother, tells me wrong: | |
| And once, since envy’s dead before you die, | |
| The women own, you played a sparkling eye, | 10 |
| Taught the light foot a modish little trip, | |
| And pouted with the prettiest purple lip. | |
| To some new charmer are the roses fled, | |
| Which blew, to damask all thy cheek with red; | |
| Youth calls the Graces there to fix their reign, | 15 |
| And airs by thousands fill their easy train. | |
| So parting summer bids her flowery prime | |
| Attend the sun to dress some foreign clime, | |
| While withering seasons in succession, here, | |
| Strip the gay gardens, and deform the year. | 20 |
| But thou, since nature bids, the world resign, | |
| ’Tis now thy daughter’s daughter’s time to shine. | |
| With more address, or such as pleases more, | |
| She runs her female exercises o’er, | |
| Unfurls or closes, raps or turns the fan, | 25 |
| And smiles, or blushes at the creature man. | |
| With quicker life, as gilded coaches pass, | |
| In sideling courtesy she drops the glass. | |
| With better strength, on visit-days she bears | |
| To mount her fifty flights of ample stairs. | 30 |
| Her mein, her shape, her temper, eyes, and tongue, | |
| Are sure to conquer—for the rogue is young: | |
| And all that’s madly wild, or oddly gay, | |
| We call it only pretty Fanny’s way. | |
| Let time, that makes you homely, make you sage, | 35 |
| The sphere of wisdom is the sphere of age. | |
| ’Tis true, when beauty dawns with early fire, | |
| And hears the flattering tongues of soft desire, | |
| If not from virtue, from its gravest ways | |
| The soul with pleasing avocation strays. | 40 |
| But beauty gone, ’tis easier to be wise, | |
| As harpers better, by the loss of eyes. | |
| Henceforth retire, reduce your roving airs, | |
| Haunt less the plays, and more the public prayers, | |
| Reject the Mechlin head, and gold brocade, | 45 |
| Go pray in sober Norwich crape arrayed. | |
| Thy pendant diamonds let thy Fanny take, | |
| (Their trembling lustre shows how much you shake); | |
| Or bid her wear your necklace rowed with pearl, | |
| You’ll find your Fanny an obedient girl. | 50 |
| So for the rest, with less incumbrance hung, | |
| You walk through life, unmingled with the young, | |
| And view the shade and substance as you pass, | |
| With joint endeavour trifling at the glass, | |
| Or folly drest, and rambling all her days, | 55 |
| To meet her counterpart, and grow by praise: | |
| Yet still sedate yourself, and gravely plain, | |
| You neither fret, nor envy at the vain. | |
| ’Twas thus, if man with woman we compare | |
| The wise Athenian cross’d a glittering fair, | 60 |
| Unmoved by tongue and sights, he walked the place, | |
| Through tape, toys, tinsel, gimp, perfume, and lace; | |
| Then bends from Mar’s hill his awful eyes, | |
| And—What a world I never want? he cries: | |
| But cries unheard: for folly will be free. | 65 |
| So parts the buzzing gaudy crowd and he: | |
| As careless he for them, as they for him: | |
| He wrapt in wisdom, and they whirl’d by whim. | |
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