Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Air.- Cotillon.

Turn, my fairest, turn, if ever

Strephon caught thy ravish'd eye;
Pity take on your swain so clever,

Who without your aid must die.

Yes, I shall die; hu, hu, hu, hu!

Yes, I must die; ho, ho, ho, ho!

[Da capo.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Let all the old pay homage to your merit:
Give me the young, the gay, the men of spirit.

Ye travel'd tribe, ye macaroni train,

Of French friseurs, and nosegays, justly vain

Who take a trip to Paris once a-year

To dress, and look like awkward Frenchmen here

Lend me your hands. Oh! fatal news to tell:

Their hands are only lent to the Heinel.

MISS CATLEY.

Ay, take your travelers-travelers indeed!

Give me my bonny Scot, that travels from the Tweed.

[blocks in formation]

Where are the chiels? Ah, ah! I well discern
The smiling looks of each bewitching bairn,

Air. A bonnie young lad is my Jockey.

I'll sing to amuse you by night and by day,
And be unco merry when you are but gay;
When you with your bagpipes are ready to play,
My voice shall be ready to carol away

With Sandy, and Sawney, and Jockey,

With Sawney, and Jarvie, and Jockey.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Ye gamesters, who, so eager in pursuit,

Make but of all your fortune one va toute;

Ye jockey tribe, whose stock of words are few

-

"I hold the odds-done, done, with you, with you;"

Ye barristers, so fluent with grimace

66

My lord, your lordship misconceives the case;"

Doctors, who cough and answer every misfortuner –

"I wish I'd been call'd in a little sooner :"

54

Assist my cause with hands and voices hearty;
Come, end the contest here, and aid my party.

MISS CATLEY.

Air.- Ballinamony.

Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack-
Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack;

For sure I don't wrong you, you seldom are slack,

When the ladies are calling, to. blush and hang back; For you're always polite and attentive,

Still to amuse us inventive,

And death is your only preventive:

Your hands and your voices for me.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Well, madam, what if, after all this sparring,

We both agree, like friends, to end our jarring?

MISS CATLEY.

And that our friendship may remain unbroken,

What if we leave the epilogue unspoken?

68

[blocks in formation]

Un-epilogued the poet waits his sentence:

Condemn the stubborn fool who can't submit

To thrive by flattery-though he starves by wit.

[blocks in formation]

[Exeunt.

FF

EPILOGUE

WRITTEN FOR

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.'

THERE is a place-so Ariosto sings

A treasury for lost and missing things;

Lost human wits have places there assign'd them And they who lose their senses, there may find them. But where's this place, this storehouse of the age? The moon, says he—but I affirm, the stage:

1 From The Miscellaneous Works, 1801.—This epilogue, which had been given by its author to the Rev. Thomas Percy, was first published in the above collection. It is there described as An epilogue intended for Mrs. Bulkley; but it is stated, in a note, "for what comedy it was intended is not remembered." Neither Steevens nor Reed could give the information required. Now, the letter appended to the quarreling epilogue decides the question: it is the second attempt of its author

« AnteriorContinuar »