Classic Poem

Dear Mary, you've gazed on the Serpentine skaters,
As agile as swallows, as fleet on the wing;
Far-darting Apollos, in cloth boots and gaiters,
Whose tills and whose tournaments make the ice ring.
Of all the blithe gala, come, paint me a picture —
From Vulcan's red glances your countenance screen;
And ere you deposit your furry constrictor,
Report what you've heard, and depict what you've seen.

Say, who were the leaders, the gaze of the million,
Who spanned the wide channel on iron-bound keel?
What light unapproachables swam a cotillion,
(In this Anno Domini dubbed a quadrille?)
What Jersey, looked after by mothers and daughters,
What Bligh, what Argyll, the elite of the set,
Like Pope's young Camilla, fled over the waters?
What Caulfield sprang round in a brisk pirouette?

You smile, gentle Mary, yet those were the leaders,
In days long departed, as Mercury fleet;
But Time with his scythe, has pronounced them seceders,
And clipped the light pinions that feathered their feet.
I, " once an Arcadian, " like them too could measure
The stream, and alert o'er the Serpentine dart;
But warned by the gout, I abjure the chill pleasure,
And gaze on the game where I once took a part.

A little red robin, high perched on a willow
That droops o'er the margin your foot lately press'd,
Has sung in my ear, that the ice-fettered bottom
Bore one whom you gazed on far more than the rest:
'Twas handsome John Selby — that screen, blushing Mary,
Is shifting its place while my theme I pursue;
Your hand seems resolved its position to vary,
And raise it a rampart between me and you.

Nay! pardon the hint: 'twas not meant to affright you —
Those dark downward orbs prithee rise up again;
Should Love not play truant, and Hymen unite you,
May peace and prosperity rivet the chain!
Those spirits of youth may misfortune ne'er sober —
May blooming felicity call you her own;
Till Time-shall have mellow'd your May to October,
And Mary and John shall be Darby and Joan.