Daylight Dinners73
When Summer’s smiles rejoice the plains,
And deck the vale with flowers;
And blushing nymphs, and gentle swains,
With love beguile the hours;
Oh! then conceive the ills that mock
The well-dress’d London sinner,
Invited just at seven o’clock
To join a “daylight dinner.”
The sun, no trees the eye to shade,
Glares full into the windows,
And scorches widow, wife, and maid
Just as it does the Hindoos;
One’s shoes look brown, one’s black looks grey,
One’s legs if thin, look thinner;
There’s nothing equals, in its way,
A London daylight dinner.
The cloth seems blue, the plate’s like lead,
The faded carpet dirty,
Grey hairs peep out from each dark head,
And twenty looks like thirty.
You sit beside an heiress gay,
And do your best to win her,
But oh!—what can one do or say,
If ’tis a daylight dinner?
A lovely dame just forty-one,
At night a charming creature,
My praise unqualified had won,
In figure, form, and feature,
That she was born, without a doubt,
Before the days of Jenner,
By sitting next her, I found out,
Once at a daylight dinner.
Freckles, and moles, and holes, and spots,
The envious sun discloses,
And little bumps, and little dots,
On chins, and cheeks, and noses.
Last Monday, Kate, when next me placed
(A most determined grinner),
Betray’d four teeth of mineral paste,
Eating a daylight dinner.