“Fool that I was to let a baby face—
A full one—like a hunter’s—round and red—
Ass that I am, to give her more a place
Within this heart”—and here he struck his head.
“’Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead?
But no—’tis all an artifice—a trick,
Some newer face—some dandy under-bred—
[Pg 301]
Well—be it so—of all the sex I’m sick!”
Here Juno wonder’d why she got a kick.
“‘The moon is full’—where’s her infernal scrawl?
‘And you are in my thought: that silver ray
Will ever your dear image thus recall’—
My image? Mine! She’d barter it away
For Pretty Poll’s on an Italian’s tray!
Three weeks, full weeks,—it is too plain—too bad—
Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day!
My senses have not crazed—but if they had—
Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!
“Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip
So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest
Deceit so angel-like?” With sudden rip
He tore six new buff buttons from his vest
And groped with hand impetuous at his breast,
As if some flea from Juno’s fleecy curls
Had skipp’d to batten on a human chest,
But no—the hand comes forth, and down it hurls
A lady’s miniature beset with pearls.
Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry,
Before another outrage could be plann’d:
Poor Juno, who had learn’d to fetch and carry,
Pick’d up and brought it to her master’s hand,
Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann’d;
Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth,
He only saw in that fair face, so bland,
Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south.
A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.
............