In Due Season
C YPRUS to wit: Sweet Lips versus Fine Eyes,
Before the Chamber of Precedencies.
The case was opened by Sweet Lips, who said,
‘I summon Hearts. Let their reports be read
Let them decide, my Lords, which of us two
Has most to say, to charm with, and to do
Do, did I say? I'm ready to take oath,
I've more than I can do, though nothing loth:
Only it seems, I've not the happy art,
Of shedding tears, like Eyes! With all my heart:
My glory centres not in sight alone:
I satisfy three senses, they but one.
Odours and sounds to my sweet state belong,
And to delightful words I join a charming song.
My very sighs exhale a world of sweets,
Like zephyrs in the time of violets:
I have such ways to make a lover blest,
Such heaps—your Lordships will excuse the list:
And then, if Fine Eyes lay a wager with us,
To see who first can strike some heart beneath us,
Lord! how Fine Eyes go toiling round and round,
While, speak we but a word—the man 's on ground:
We want no tricks, not we, to give the rosy wound.
Let Fine Eyes shut, they're no such wonder, they:
Sweet Lips has always treasures to display:
Coral without, and precious pearl within;
Who, when I deign to play, can hope to win?
Let presents fall in oriental showers,
The favours I bestow beat all their dowers.
Thirty-two pearls I wear about me here,
Of which the least in beauty and least clear,
Surpasses all with which the East is lit;
As many millions should not purchase it’
Thus spoke Sweet Lips: on which was seen to rise
A lover, who was counsel for Fine Eyes.
He said, as you may guess, that for their part,
Love, without them, could never find the heart:
That as to tears, he felt, he must own, shocked,
To hear their very tenderness rebuked.
What could sighs do, he should be glad to know,
Unless their warrants stood prepared to flow?
The fact was, both were good, and Sweet Lips there
Wronged her own cause, and hurt her character.
There are delicious tears; and there are sighs,
On t'other hand, not over good or wise;
And Lips had better, as she says she can,
Have gained the cause by silence than this plan.
‘What are the silent charms, the godlike powers,
To show for her cause, when compared with ours?
We charm a hundred and a thousand ways,
By sweetness, by a stealth, by sparkling rays,
And by what Sweet Lips blames—but is the part
We glory in the most—the gentle art
Of melting with a tear the manliest heart.
Where Sweet Lips gains a single conquest, we
Roll in a round of ceaseless victory:
And for one song in which she bears the prize,
A hundred thousand sparkle with Fine Eyes.
In courts and cities, in the poet's groves,
What is there heard of but our darts and loves?
Such sudden strokes we deal, such deeds we vaunt,
That those do well, who say that we enchant:
We come, and all surrender up their arms:
Though often in the whirl of those alarms,
Sweet Lips comes following in, and then pretends her charms.
Heaven grant the people ask not who she is,
Or she may speak, and ‘thank the Gods amiss’.
'Tis true, she has two words of magic touch,
‘I love;’ but cannot Fine Eyes say as much?
We have a tongue that with no words at all
Can ask, and hint, and tell a tale, and call,
And ravish more than all the pearls and songs,
Which Sweet Lips musters round her tongue of tongues.’
The Counsel started here, and took occasion
To make a very happy peroration.
He caught a lady's eye, just coming in,
With an approach the sweetest ever seen:
He changed his tone, and with a gravity,
Seconded well by a reposing eye,
Said—‘I've been taking up your Lordship's time
With trifling matters fitter for a rhyme;
Look there: my Lords, I think 'twould be absurd,
After that sight, to add another word.
Pray give the sentence:—we are quite secure:
My client would not tire the court, I'm sure.’
The lady, with a pretty shame, looked round
With speaking eyes, which dealt so wide a wound,
That all hands dropt their papers for surprise,
And not a heart but gave it for Fine Eyes.
Sweet Lips at this, seeing how matters went,
And forced to raise some new astonishment,
Resumed, and said—‘To what has just been dropt,
(Which, by the way, is shockingly corrupt)
There is one word alone I wish to say!
My Lords, Fine Eyes do little but by day:
That silent tongue of theirs, when in the dark,
Makes but a sorry kind of frigid spark:
What I can do, needs surely no remark.’
This reason settled the dispute instanter :
Fine Eyes were much, but Sweet Lips the Enchanter.
Fine Eyes, however, took it in good part,
And Sweet Lips gave the Judge a kiss with all her heart.
Before the Chamber of Precedencies.
The case was opened by Sweet Lips, who said,
‘I summon Hearts. Let their reports be read
Let them decide, my Lords, which of us two
Has most to say, to charm with, and to do
Do, did I say? I'm ready to take oath,
I've more than I can do, though nothing loth:
Only it seems, I've not the happy art,
Of shedding tears, like Eyes! With all my heart:
My glory centres not in sight alone:
I satisfy three senses, they but one.
Odours and sounds to my sweet state belong,
And to delightful words I join a charming song.
My very sighs exhale a world of sweets,
Like zephyrs in the time of violets:
I have such ways to make a lover blest,
Such heaps—your Lordships will excuse the list:
And then, if Fine Eyes lay a wager with us,
To see who first can strike some heart beneath us,
Lord! how Fine Eyes go toiling round and round,
While, speak we but a word—the man 's on ground:
We want no tricks, not we, to give the rosy wound.
Let Fine Eyes shut, they're no such wonder, they:
Sweet Lips has always treasures to display:
Coral without, and precious pearl within;
Who, when I deign to play, can hope to win?
Let presents fall in oriental showers,
The favours I bestow beat all their dowers.
Thirty-two pearls I wear about me here,
Of which the least in beauty and least clear,
Surpasses all with which the East is lit;
As many millions should not purchase it’
Thus spoke Sweet Lips: on which was seen to rise
A lover, who was counsel for Fine Eyes.
He said, as you may guess, that for their part,
Love, without them, could never find the heart:
That as to tears, he felt, he must own, shocked,
To hear their very tenderness rebuked.
What could sighs do, he should be glad to know,
Unless their warrants stood prepared to flow?
The fact was, both were good, and Sweet Lips there
Wronged her own cause, and hurt her character.
There are delicious tears; and there are sighs,
On t'other hand, not over good or wise;
And Lips had better, as she says she can,
Have gained the cause by silence than this plan.
‘What are the silent charms, the godlike powers,
To show for her cause, when compared with ours?
We charm a hundred and a thousand ways,
By sweetness, by a stealth, by sparkling rays,
And by what Sweet Lips blames—but is the part
We glory in the most—the gentle art
Of melting with a tear the manliest heart.
Where Sweet Lips gains a single conquest, we
Roll in a round of ceaseless victory:
And for one song in which she bears the prize,
A hundred thousand sparkle with Fine Eyes.
In courts and cities, in the poet's groves,
What is there heard of but our darts and loves?
Such sudden strokes we deal, such deeds we vaunt,
That those do well, who say that we enchant:
We come, and all surrender up their arms:
Though often in the whirl of those alarms,
Sweet Lips comes following in, and then pretends her charms.
Heaven grant the people ask not who she is,
Or she may speak, and ‘thank the Gods amiss’.
'Tis true, she has two words of magic touch,
‘I love;’ but cannot Fine Eyes say as much?
We have a tongue that with no words at all
Can ask, and hint, and tell a tale, and call,
And ravish more than all the pearls and songs,
Which Sweet Lips musters round her tongue of tongues.’
The Counsel started here, and took occasion
To make a very happy peroration.
He caught a lady's eye, just coming in,
With an approach the sweetest ever seen:
He changed his tone, and with a gravity,
Seconded well by a reposing eye,
Said—‘I've been taking up your Lordship's time
With trifling matters fitter for a rhyme;
Look there: my Lords, I think 'twould be absurd,
After that sight, to add another word.
Pray give the sentence:—we are quite secure:
My client would not tire the court, I'm sure.’
The lady, with a pretty shame, looked round
With speaking eyes, which dealt so wide a wound,
That all hands dropt their papers for surprise,
And not a heart but gave it for Fine Eyes.
Sweet Lips at this, seeing how matters went,
And forced to raise some new astonishment,
Resumed, and said—‘To what has just been dropt,
(Which, by the way, is shockingly corrupt)
There is one word alone I wish to say!
My Lords, Fine Eyes do little but by day:
That silent tongue of theirs, when in the dark,
Makes but a sorry kind of frigid spark:
What I can do, needs surely no remark.’
This reason settled the dispute instanter :
Fine Eyes were much, but Sweet Lips the Enchanter.
Fine Eyes, however, took it in good part,
And Sweet Lips gave the Judge a kiss with all her heart.
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