Page:The Bab Ballads.djvu/27

Rh Hung from the "flies" in air,
 * She acts a palpable lie,

She's as little a fairy there
 * As unpoetical I!
 * I hear you asking, Why—

Why in the world I sing This tawdry, tinselled thing?

No airy fairy she,
 * As she hangs in arsenic green,

From a highly impossible tree,
 * In a highly impossible scene
 * (Herself not over clean).

For fays don't suffer, I'm told, From bunions, coughs, or cold.

And stately dames that bring
 * Their daughters there to see,

Pronounce the "dancing thing"
 * No better than she should be.
 * With her skirt at her shameful knee,

And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, which of us is? (And, in sooth, it oft occurs
 * That while these matrons sigh,

Their dresses are lower than hers,
 * And sometimes half as high;