The Major is going to travel--
Miss Hyacinth threatens a rout--
The walk is laid down with fresh gravel--
Papa is laid up with the gout:
And Jane has gone on with her easels,
And Anne has gone off with Sir Paul;
And Fanny is sick of the measles,--
And I'll tell you the rest at the Ball.

You'll meet all your Beauties;--the Lily,
And the Fairy of Willowbrook Farm,
And Lucy, who made me so silly
At Dawlish, by taking your arm--
Miss Manners, who always abused you,
For talking so much about Hock--
And her sister who often amused you,
By raving of rebels and Rock;
And something which surely would answer,
A heiress, quite fresh from Bengal--
So, though you were seldom a dancer,
You'll dance, just for once, at our Ball.

But out on the world!--from the flowers
It shuts out the sunshine of truth;
It blights the green leaves in the bowers,
It makes an old age of our youth:
And the flow of our feeling, once in it,
Like a streamlet beginning to freeze,
Though it cannot turn ice in a minute,
Grows harder by sullen degrees--