black cows? 
Do we go calling about, when it’s church time, like the noisy Billingsgate
      vermin,
And disturb the parson with “All alive O!” in the middle of a funeral
      sermon? 
But the fish won’t keep, not the mackerel won’t, is the cry of the
      Parliament elves,
Everything, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep themselves!  Lord help us! what’s to become of us if we mustn’t cry no more?  We shan’t do for black mutes to go a standing at a death’s door.  And we shan’t do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot nations, For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our
      situations! 
And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve ladies of
      quality nimbly,
For when we were drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large frills, all
      clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they pleased to desire
      us to sweep the hearth, we couldn’t resist the chimbley.

THE DESERT-BORN[34]

    “Fly to the desert, fly with me.”—­LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

[Footnote 34:  For the purposes of his pun on “night-mare,” Hood adroitly utilizes the story of the famous Lady Hester Stanhope, whom Kinglake, in his Eothen, first made familiar to so many of us.  He there speaks of the “quiet women in Somersetshire,” and their surprise when they learned that “the intrepid girl who used to break their vicious horses for them” was reigning over the wandering tribes of Western Asia!]

’Twas in the wilds of Lebanon, amongst its barren hills,—­
To think upon it, even now, my very blood it chills!—­
My sketch-book spread before me, and my pencil in my hand,
I gazed upon the mountain range, the red tumultuous sand,
The plumy palms, the sombre firs, the cedars tall and proud,—­
When lo! a shadow pass’d across the paper like a cloud,
And looking up I saw a form, apt figure for the scene,
Methought I stood in presence of some oriental queen!

The turban on her head was white as any driven snow;
A purple bandalette past o’er the lofty brow below,
And thence upon her shoulders fell, by either jewell’d ear;
In yellow folds voluminous she wore her long cachemere;
Whilst underneath, with ample sleeves, a turkish robe of silk
Enveloped her in drapery the color of new milk;
Yet oft it floated wide in front, disclosing underneath
A gorgeous Persian tunic, rich with many a broider’d wreath,
Compelled by clasps of costly pearls around her neck to meet—­
And yellow as the amber were the buskins on her feet! 
Of course I bowed my lowest bow—­of all the things on earth,
The reverence due to loveliness, to rank, or ancient birth,
To pow’r, to wealth, to genius, or to anything uncommon,
A man should bend the lowest in a Desert to a Woman! 
Yet some strange influence stronger still, though