How enviously the ladies look,
When they surprise me at my book!
And sure as they're alive at night
As soon as gone will show their spite:
Good lord! what can my lady mean,
Conversing with that rusty dean!
She's grown so nice, and so penurious,
With Socrates and Epicurius!
How could she sit the livelong day,
Yet never ask us once to play?
But I admire your patience most;
That when I'm duller than a post,
Nor can the plainest word pronounce,
You neither fume, nor fret, nor flounce;
Are so indulgent, and so mild,
As if I were a darling child.
So gentle is your whole proceeding,
That I could spend my life in reading.
You merit new employments daily:
Our thatcher, ditcher, gardener, baily.
And to a genius so extensive
No work is grievous or offensive:
Whether your fruitful fancy lies
To make for pigs convenient styes;
Or ponder long with anxious thought
To banish rats that haunt our vault:
Nor have you grumbled, reverend dean,
To keep our poultry sweet and clean;
To sweep the mansion house they dwell in,
And cure the rank unsavoury smelling.
Now enter as the dairy handmaid;
Such charming butter[1] never man made.
- ↑ A way of making butter for breakfast, by filling a bottle with cream, and shaking it till the butter comes.
