“Miss Kilmansegg!-- Full glasses I beg!-- Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg!” And away went the bottle careering! Wine in bumpers! and shouts in peals! Till the clown didn’t know his head from his heels; The Mussulman’s eyes danced two-some reels, And the Quaker was hoarse with cheering! HER DREAM. Miss Kilmansegg took off her leg, And laid it down like a cribbage-peg, For the Rout was done and the riot: The Square was hush’d; not a sound was heard; The sky was gray, and no creature stirr’d, Except one little precocious bird, That chirp’d--and then was quiet. So still without,--so still within;-- It had been a sin To drop a pin-- So intense is silence after a din, It seem’d like Death’s rehearsal! To stir the air no eddy came; And the taper burnt with as still a flame, As to flicker had been a burning shame, In a calm so universal. The time for sleep had come at last; And there was the bed, so soft, so vast, Quite a field of Bedfordshire clover; Softer, cooler, and calmer, no doubt, From the piece of work just ravell’d out, For one of the pleasures of having a rout Is the pleasure of having it over. No sordid pallet, or truckle mean, Of straw, and rug, and tatters unclean; But a splendid, gilded, carved machine, That was fit for a Royal Chamber. On the top was a gorgeous golden wreath; And the damask curtains hung beneath, Like clouds of crimson and amber; Curtains, held up by two little plump things, With golden bodies and golden wings,-- Mere fins for such solidities-- Two Cupids, in short, Of the regular sort, But the housemaid call’d them “Cupidities.” No patchwork quilt, all seams and scars, But velvet, powder’d with golden stars, A fit mantle for _Night_-Commanders! And the pillow, as white as snow undimm’d And as cool as the pool that the breeze has skimm’d, Was cased in the finest cambric, and trimm’d With the costliest lace of Flanders. And the bed--of the Eider’s softest down, ’Twas a place to revel, to smother, to drown In a bliss inferr’d by the Poet; For if Ignorance be indeed a bliss, What blessed ignoaance equals this, To sleep--and not to know it? Oh, bed! oh, bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head; But a place that to name would be ill-bred, To the head with a wakeful trouble-- ’Tis held by such a different lease! To one, a place of comfort and peace, All stuff’d with the down of stubble geese, To another with only the stubble!