The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/A Party of Lovers
A Party of Lovers
'Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers—not to dinner but to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old.' Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, September 17, 1819. The play on names seems to indicate some trifling reference to Keats's publishers of Taylor and Hessey.
Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes,
Nibble their toast, and cool their tea with sighs,
Or else forget the purpose of the night,
Forget their tea—forget their appetite.
See with cross'd arms they sit—ah! happy crew,
The fire is going out and no one rings
For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.
A fly is in the milk-pot—must he die
By a humane society?
No, no; there Mr. Werter takes his spoon,
Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon
The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark,
Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark.
Arise! take snuffers by the handle,
There 's a large cauliflower in each candle.
A winding-sheet, ah me! I must away
To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay.
'Alas, my friend! your coat sits very well;
Where may your Taylor live?' 'I may not tell.
O pardon me—I'm absent now and then.
Where might my Taylor live? I say again
I cannot tell, let me no more be teaz'd—
He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleas'd.'