Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/532

 MATTHEW PRIOR

43 6 The Lady who offers her Looking- Glass to Venus

VENUS, take my votive glass: Since I am not what I was, What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see.

��A Letter

to Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles-Harley, when a Child Y noble, lovely, little Peggy,

Let this my First Epistle beg yc, At dawn of morn, and close of even, To lift your heart and hands to Heaven. In double duty say your prayer: Our Father first, then Notre Pere. And, dearest child, along the day, In every thing you do and say, Obey and please my lord and lady, So God bhall love and angels aid ye.

If to these precepts you attend, No second letter need I send, And so I rest your constant friend.

43 8 Jinny the Just

RELEASED from the noise of the butcher and baker Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her, And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker,

From chiding the footmen and watching the lasses, From Nell that burn'd milk, and Tom that broke glasses (Sad mischiefs thro* which a good housekeeper passes')

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