EZRA: The knife that spreads the butter Will slice the loaf. But it’s sharper than my teeth. ELIZA: Ay, tongues cut deeper than any fang can bite, Sore-rankling wounds. EZRA: You talk of tongues! I’m deaf: But, for my sins, I cannot be deaf to yours, Nattering me into my grave; and, likely, your words Will flaffer about my lugs like channering peesweeps, When I lie cold. ELIZA: Yes, I was young, and agape For your wheedling flum, till it fleeched my self from me. There’s something in a young girl seems to work Against her better sense, and gives her up, Almost in spite of her. EZRA: It’s nature. ELIZA: Then Nature has more than enough to answer for. Young, ay! And you, as gallant as the stallion, With ribboned tail and mane, that pranced to the crack Of my father’s whip, when first I saw you gaping, Kenspeckle in that clamjamfrey of copers. EZRA: Love at first sight! ELIZA: And I was just as foolish As you were braw. EZRA: Well, we’d our time of it, Fools, or no fools. And you could laugh in those days, And didn’t snigger like the ginger fizgig. Your voice was a bird’s: but you laugh little now; And--well, maybe, your voice is still a bird’s. There’s birds and birds. Then, ’twas a cushy-doo’s That’s brooding on her nest, while the red giglet’s Was a gowk’s at the end of June. Do you call to mind We sat the livelong day in a golden carriage, Squandering a fortune, forby the tanner I dropt? They wouldn’t stop to let me pick it up; And when we alighted from the roundabout, Some skunk had pouched it: may he pocket it Red-hot in hell through all eternity! If I’d that fortune now safe in my kist! But I was a scatterpenny: and you were bonnie-- Pink as a dog-rose were your plump cheeks then: Your hair’d the gloss and colour of clean straw: And when, at darkening, the naphtha flares were kindled, And all the red and blue and gold aglitter-- Drums banging, trumpets braying, rattles craking; And we were rushing round and round, the music-- The music and the dazzle ... ELIZA: Ay: that was it-- The rushing and the music and the dazzle. Happen ’twas on a roundabout that Jim Won Phœbe Martin. EZRA: And when you were dizzy, And all a hazegaze with the hubblyshew; You cuddled up against me, snug and warm: And round and round we went--the music braying And beating in my blood: the gold aglitter ... ELIZA: And there’s been little dazzle since, or music. EZRA: But I was merry, till I fetched you home, To swarm the house with whinging wammerels. ELIZA: You fetched me from my home. If I’d but known Before I crossed the threshold. I took my arles, And had to do my darg. And another bride Comes now. They’ll soon be here: the train was due At half-past one: they’d walk it in two hours, Though bride and groom.