On the Fly-Leaf of a Book of Old Plays

Walter Learned. Written for the present collection.

At Cato’s-Head in Russell Street
These leaves she sat a-stitching;
I fancy she was trim and neat,
Blue-eyed and quite bewitching.

Before her, in the street below,
All powder, ruffs, and laces,
There strutted idle London beaux
To ogle pretty faces;

While, filling many a Sedan chair
With hoop and monstrous feather,
In patch and powder London’s fair
Went trooping past together.

Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap
They sauntered slowly past her,
Or printer’s boy, with gown and cap
For Steele, went trotting faster.

For beau nor wit had she a look,
Nor lord nor lady minding;
She bent her head above this book,
Attentive to her binding.

And one stray thread of golden hair,
Caught on her nimble fingers,
Was stitched within this volume, where
Until to-day it lingers.

Past and forgotten, beaux and fair;
Wigs, powder, all out-dated;
A queer antique, the Sedan chair;
Pope, stiff and antiquated.

Yet as I turn these odd old plays,
This single stray lock finding,
I’m back in those forgotten days
And watch her at her binding.