Disappointment
Ye Aldermen! list to my lay—
Oh, list, ere your bumpers ye fill—
Her Majesty’s dead!—lack-a-day!
She remember’d me not in her will.
Oh, folly! oh baneful ill-luck!
That I ever to court her begun;
She was Queen, and I could not but suck—
But she died, and poor Matty’s undone!
Perhaps I was void of all thought,
Perhaps it was plain to foresee,
That a Queen so complete would be sought
By a courtier more knowing than me.
But self-love each hope can inspire,
It banishes wisdom the while;
And I thought she would surely admire
My countenance, whiskers, and smile.
She is dead though, and I am undone!
Ye that witness the woes I endure,
Oh let me instruct you to shun
What I cannot instruct you to cure:
Beware how you loiter in vain
Amid nymphs of a higher degree;
It is not for me to explain
How fair and how fickle they be.
Alas! that her lawyers e’er met,
They alone were the cause of my woes;
Their tricks I can never forget—
Those lawyers undid my repose.
Yet the Times may diminish my pain,
If the Statesman and Traveller agree—
Which I rear’d for her pleasure in vain—
Yes, the Times shall have comfort for me.
Mrs. W—d, ope your doors then apace;
To your deepest recesses I fly;
I must hide my poor woe-begone face.
I must vanish from every eye.
But my sad, my deplorable lay,
My reed shall resound with it still:—
How her Majesty died t’other day,
And remember’d me not in her will.
| A my bad knee. | D my well leg. |
| B my beard. | E the place where my hair was when I was young. |
| C my crural tendon, | |
| ″ or muscle— | |
| ″ or artery— | |
| ″ or something,—as big as your fist. |