But Fashion to their eyes her fruitful store Of gay accomplishment did ne’er unroll: Chill penury repressed each livelier pow’r, And nipp’d the tender flow’rets of the soul. Full many a Luttrell’s mental ray serene The wide uncultured bogs of Erin bear: Full many a Hope is born to blush unseen, Or waste her sweetness at a village fair. Some nameless Ward, whose master-wit repress’d The alehouse patriot’s dull disloyal arts, Some bright untoasted Hertford here may rest―― Some Jersey, guiltless of our broken hearts. The Morning Post’s applause to bear away, To tease the envious mob of aping cits, To scatter plenty at a _fête ornée_, To learn of Statesmen, and to live with wits, Their lot forbade: a power supremely wise Their fate, their fashion, and their faults confin’d: Forbade, to deal destruction with their eyes, And shut the gates of mercy _on mankind_: The modest throes of struggling truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenious shame, To vie with demireps in paint and pride, And swell the calendar of evil fame. Far from St. James’s, far from all the Squares, Their vulgar footsteps never learn’d to stray; About St. Martin’s Lane, or Lambeth Stairs, They keep the noisy tenor of their way. Yet, that ev’n these may taste their due delights, Some Evening Tea-garden with holly fence, From caxon’d quizzes, and from flounce-cloak’d frights, Obtains the tribute of their eighteen pence. Their cakes, their ale, brought by a tidy maid, The place of venison and champagne supply: And cocks and hens are clipp’d from yew-tree shade, That meet their taste for rural scenery. For who, in Nature’s favourite month of June, Seeks not the velvet of some verdant sod? Feels the warm ray of Sunday afternoon, Nor casts one restless, roving look abroad? Tax’d carts unnumber’d roll through Bethnal Green, By Hatchett’s door a knot of coaches wait: On Greenwich Hill are some smart ankles seen, Even at the Horns some fearless husbands bait. For thee, who, mindful of a friendless race, Dost in these rhymes their little lives define, If chance, when years have sped their silent pace, Some kindred spirit shall enquire of thine, Haply, some gentle dowager may say,―― “Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn, “Kicking from painted floors the chalk away, “While sleepy chaperons would sit and yawn. “There, where the Palace fronts St. James’s Street, “And rears its old fantastic tow’rs so high, “The rattling carriages he loved to meet, “And gossip with the folk that babbled by. “From rout to rout, now laughing at the tricks “Of wayward jilts and dandies he would rove: “Now deeply wrapt in chit chat politics, “Or slyly jesting on some corner-love.