This quandary
Vexed the fairy—
Flew she down to Ealing.
“Georgie, stop it!
Pray you, drop it;
Hark to my appealing:
To this foolish
Papal rule-ish
Twaddle put an ending;
This a swerve is
From our Service
Plain and unpretending.”
He, replying,
Answered, sighing,
Hawing, hemming, humming,
“It’s a pity—
They’re so pritty;
Yet in mode becoming,
Mother tender,
I’ll surrender—
I’ll be unaffected—”
But his Bishop
Into his shop
Entered unexpected!
“Who is this, sir,—
Ballet miss, sir?”
Said the Bishop coldly.
“’T is my mother,
And no other,”
Georgie answered boldly.
“Go along, sir!
You are wrong, sir;
You have years in plenty,
While this hussy
(Gracious mussy!)
Isn’t two and twenty!”
(Fairies clever
Never, never
Grow in visage older;
And the fairy,
All unwary,
Leant upon his shoulder!)
Bishop grieved him,
Disbelieved him;
George the point grew warm on;
Changed religion,
Like a pigeon, {12}
And became a Mormon!
A maiden sat at her window wide,
Pretty enough for a Prince’s bride,
Yet nobody came to claim her.
She sat like a beautiful picture there,
With pretty bluebells and roses fair,
And jasmine-leaves to frame her.
And why she sat there nobody knows;
But this she sang as she plucked a rose,
The leaves around her strewing:
“I’ve time to lose and power to choose;
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,
But the gallant’s way of wooing!”
A lover came riding by awhile,
A wealthy lover was he, whose smile
Some maids would value greatly—
A formal lover, who bowed and bent,
With many a high-flown compliment,
And cold demeanour stately,
“You’ve still,” said she to her
suitor stern,
“The ’prentice-work of your craft to learn,
If thus you come a-cooing.
I’ve time to lose and power to choose;
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,
As the gallant’s way of wooing!”
A second lover came ambling by—
A timid lad with a frightened eye
And a colour mantling highly.
He muttered the errand on which he’d come,
Then only chuckled and bit his thumb,
And simpered, simpered shyly.
“No,” said the maiden, “go your
way;
You dare but think what a man would say,
Yet dare to come a-suing!
I’ve time to lose and power to choose;
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,
As the gallant’s way of wooing!”
A third rode up at a startling pace—
A suitor poor, with a homely face—
No doubts appeared to bind him.
He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist,
And off he rode with the maiden, placed
On a pillion safe behind him.
And she heard the suitor bold confide
This golden hint to the priest who tied
The knot there’s no undoing;
With pretty young maidens who can choose,
’Tis not so much the gallant who woos,
As the gallant’s way of wooing!”
