The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

215
In garden-silks, brocades, and laces?
Are they not such another sight,
When met upon a birth-day night?
The clouds delight to change their fashion:
(Dear ladies be not in a passion!)
Nor let this whim to you seem strange,
Who every hour delight in change.
In them and you alike are seen
The sullen symptoms of the spleen;
The moment that your vapors rise,
We see them dropping from your eyes.
In evening fair you may behold
The clouds are fring'd with borrow'd gold;
And this is many a lady's case,
Who flaunts about in borrow'd lace.
[Footnote: Not Flauders-lace, but gold and silver lace. By borrowed, I
mean such as run into honest tradesmen's debts, for which they were
not able to pay, as many of them did for French silver lace, against
the last birth-day. Vide the shopkeepers' books.]
Grave matrons are like clouds of snow,
Where words fall thick, and soft, and slow;
While brisk coquettes,* like rattling hail,
*[Footnote: Girls who love to hear themselves prate, and put on a
number of monkey-airs to catch men.]
Our ears on every side assail.
Clouds when they intercept our sight,
Deprive us of celestial light:
So when my Chloe I pursue,
No heaven besides I have in view.
Thus, on comparison,* you see,
*[Footnote: I hope none will be so uncomplaisant to the ladies as to
think these comparisons are odious.]
In every instance they agree;
So like, so very much the same,
That one may go by t'other's name,
Let me proclaim* it then aloud,
*[Footnote: Tell the whole world; not to proclaim them as robbers and
rapparees.]
That every woman is a cloud.