STUDY first Propriety: for she is indeed the Pole-star Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair; Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society; The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed ber Eros. Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked; Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice: And when she is dressed, behold! she knoweth not herself again.-- I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the Yew, Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade; Then I passed into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipped into shape, (The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilah-shears of Decorum:) And I said, 'Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!' I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky, And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he rose; Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch, Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up water: And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder, Must yield to him that danceth and 'moveth in the circles' at Astley's. For verily. O my daughter, the world is a masquerade, And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another: A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards, And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety: He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure. Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork. |