Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
Nor virtue teach austerity, till now.
Serenely purest of her sex that live;
But wanting one sweet weakness,—to forgive;
Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
She deems that all could be like her below:
Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue’s friend;
For Virtue pardons those she would amend.
But to the theme, now laid aside
too long,—
The baleful burthen of this honest
song.
Though all her former functions
are no more,
She rules the circle which she served
before.
If mothers—none know
why—before her quake;
If daughters dread her for the mothers’
sake;
If early habits—those
false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest
mind—
Have given her power too deeply
to instil
The angry essence of her deadly
will;
If like a snake she steal within
your walls
Till the black slime betray her
as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she
wind,
And leave the venom there she did
not find,
What marvel that this hag of hatred
works
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
To make a Pandemonium where she
dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic
hells?
Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal’s
tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,
While mingling truth with falsehood,
sneers with smiles,
A thread of candour with a web of
wiles;
A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken
seeming,
To hide her bloodless heart’s
soul-hardened scheming;
A lip of lies; a face formed to
conceal,
And, without feeling, mock at all
who feel;
With a vile mask the Gorgon would
disown;
A cheek of parchment, and an eye
of stone.
Mark how the channels of her yellow
blood
Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there
to mud!
Cased like the centipede in saffron
mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion’s
scale,
(For drawn from reptiles only may
we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or
face,)—
Look on her features! and behold
her mind
As in a mirror of itself defined.
Look on the picture! deem it not
o’ercharged;
There is no trait which might not
be enlarged:
Yet true to ‘Nature’s
journeymen,’ who made
This monster when their mistress
left off trade,
This female dog-star of her little
sky,
Where all beneath her influence
droop or die.