“ While melting music steals upon the sky,
And softened sounds along the waters die;
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play,
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.
All but the Sylph—with careful thoughts oppressed,
Th’ impending woe sat heavy on his breast.
He summons straight his denizens of air;
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:
Soft o’er the shrouds aërial whispers breathe,
That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath.
Some to the sun their insect wings unfold,
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ”

“ Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board.
As many more Manillio forced to yield,
And marched a victor from the verdant field.
Him Basto followed, but his fate more hard
Gained but one trump and one plebeian card.
With his broad sabre next, a chief in years,
The hoary Majesty of Spades appears,
Puts forth one manly leg, to sight revealed,
The rest, his many-coloured robe concealed.
The rebel Knave, who dares his prince engage,
Proves the just victim of his royal rage. ”

“ THE REVE’S TALE. At Trumpington, near Cambridge, if you look,
There goeth a bridge, and under that a brook,
Upon which brook there stood a flour-mill;
And this is a known fact that now I tell.
A Miller there had dwelt for many a day;
As any peacock he was proud and gay.
He could pipe well, and fish, mend nets, to boot,
Turn cups with a lathe, and wrestle well, and shoot.
A Norman dirk, as brown as is a spade,
Hung by his belt, and eke a trenchant blade.
A jolly dagger bare he in his pouch:
There was no man, for peril, durst him touch. ”

“ A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At every word a reputation dies.
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine;
The merchant from the Exchange returns in peace,
And the long labours of the toilet cease.
Belinda now whom thirst of fame invites,
Burns to encounter two adventurous knights,
At Ombre singly to decide their doom ”

“ Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound,
Earth shakes her nodding towers, the ground gives way,
And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce’s height
Clapped his glad wings, and sate to view the fight;
Propped on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.
While through the press enraged Thalestris flies,
And scatters death around from both her eyes,
A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.
“O cruel nymph! ”

“ But, at her smile, the beau revived again.
Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men’s wits against the ladies’ hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
See, fierce Belinda on the Baron flies,
With more than usual lightning in her eyes:
Nor feared the chief the unequal fight to try,
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
But this bold lord with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued:
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw ”

“ Think not, when woman’s transient breath is fled,
That all her vanities at once are dead;
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And though she plays no more, o’erlooks the cards.
Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive,
And love of ombre, after death survive. ”

“ In hell, good sir, where ye have your estate?”
“Nay, certainly,” quoth he, “there have we none;
But whoso liketh it, he taketh one;
And so we make folk think us what we please.
Sometimes we go like apes, sometimes like bees,
Like man, or angel, black dog, or black crow:—
Nor is it wondrous that it should be so.
A sorry juggler can bewilder thee;
And ’faith, I think I know more craft than he.”
“But why,” inquired the Sumner, “must ye don
So many shapes, when ye might stick to one?”
“We suit the bait unto the fish,” quoth he. ”

“ Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place.
Behold, four Kings in majesty revered,
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;
And four fair Queens whose hands sustain a flower,
The expressive emblem of their softer power;
Four Knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand;
And particoloured troops, a shining train,
Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain.
The skilful Nymph reviews her force with care:
“Let Spades be trumps!” she said, and trumps they were.
Now move to war her sable Matadores,
In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors. ”

“ As many a year as now is passed and done,
Since that my tap of life began to run.
For certainly when I was born, I trow,
Death drew the tap of life, and let it flow;
And ever since the tap so fast hath run,
That well-nigh empty now is all the tun.
The stream of life but drips from time to time;
The silly tongue may well ring out and chime
Of wretchedness, that passéd is of yore:
With aged folk, save dotage, there’s nought more. ”

“ We pay for nothing but hearing sounds:
Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law,
Parliamentary jabber and jaw,
Pious cant, and moral saw,
Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw,
And empty sounds not worth a straw;
Why, it costs a guinea, as I’m a sinner,
To hear the sounds at a public dinner!
One pound one thrown into the puddle,
To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle!
Not to forget the sounds we buy
From those who sell their sounds so high,
That, unless the managers pitch it strong,
To get a signora to warble a song,
You must fork out the blunt with a haymaker’s prong! ”

“ What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel
The conquering force of unresisting steel?
CANTO IV. But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,
And secret passions laboured in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seized alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau’s pinned awry,
E’er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravished hair. ”

“ What then remains but well our power to use,
And keep good-humour still whate’er we lose?
And trust me, dear! good-humour can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”
So spoke the dame, but no applause ensued;
Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her Prude.
“To arms, to arms!” the fierce virago cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
All side in parties, and begin the attack;
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack ”

“ Of fever; and most frightful things have haunted in my dreams—
Hyenas—cats—blood-loving bats—and apes with hateful stare—
Pernicious snakes, and shaggy bulls—the lion, and she-bear—
Strong enemies, with Judas looks, of treachery and spite—
Detested features, hardly dimmed and banished by the light!
Pale-sheeted ghosts, with gory locks, upstarting from their tombs—
All phantasies and images that flit in midnight glooms—
Hags, goblins, demons, lemures, have made me all aghast,—
But nothing like that Grimly One who stood beside the mast! ”

“ If the first player who follows the Ombre’s lead with a better card, and has in his hand so good a game that he desires, by winning the trick, to obtain the lead, he declares that aloud by saying Gano, that is, “I win.” His partner then lets him win, if he can. Thus, Ombre has played a spade, which the next player wins with the Queen, saying Gano when he does so. If the third player has the King in his hand he refrains from playing it, unless he have no spade in his hand of smaller value, in which case he is obliged to follow suit and win the trick against his partner. ”

“ The two who play against the Ombre are only half in the position of partners at whist, because one of them, when his hand is strong enough, can be the only winner.
The hands having been thus settled, the game begins, from the hand on the right of the dealer. After a trick has been taken, the lead, as at other games, is with the winner of the trick, the order of play being still from left to right.
As at whist, a suit led must be followed, and a player who cannot follow suit is not obliged to play a trump unless he please. ”

“ Know’st thou for what a tongue that’s hasty serveth?
Right as a sword forecutteth and forecarveth
An arm in two, my dear son, even so
A tongue clean-cutteth friendship at a blow.
A jangler is to God abominable:
Read Solomon, so wise and honourable;
Read David in his Psalms, read Seneca;
My son, a nod is better than a say;
Be deaf, when folk speak matter perilous ”

“ In some lone isle, or distant Northern land,
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e’er taste Bohea;
There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye,
Like roses that in deserts bloom and die! ”

“ And make a clucking with palate and tongue,
Like the call of Partlet to gather her young,
A sound, when human, that always proclaims
At least a thousand pities and shames;
But still the darker the tale of sin,
Like certain folks, when calamities burst,
Who find a comfort in “hearing the worst,”
The farther she poked the Trumpet in. ”

“ Had scouts in plenty ready to his hand,
Like any hawks, the sharpest in the land,
Watching their birds to pluck, each in his mew,
Who told him all the secrets that they knew,
And lured him game, and gat him wondrous profit ”

“ When kind occasion prompts their warm desires,
When music softens, and when dancing fires?
’Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know,
Though honour is the word with men below.
“Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,
For life predestined to the gnomes’ embrace. ”

“ For making all families one concern,
And learning whatever there was to learn
In the prattling, tattling village of Tringham—
As, who wore silk? and who wore gingham?
And what the Atkins’s shop might bring ’em?
How the Smiths contrived to live? and whether
The fourteen Murphys all pigged together?
The wages per week of the Weavers and Skinners,
And what they boiled for their Sunday dinners? ”

“ Trumps being exhausted, and the Baron having won a trick and the lead, it is his turn now to win three tricks in succession with the King, Queen, and Knave of Diamonds. At the third round of the Diamonds Belinda has left in her hand only the King and Queen of Hearts. She gives up the Queen.
Each has now four tricks. It is the Baron’s lead. If his card be best he has more tricks than the Ombre, and will win Codille. If his card be a club or a diamond—spades are played out—Belinda’s King of Hearts will be unable to follow suit. He will be taken. ”

“ There is no addition to the value of the Ace of Diamonds when Hearts are trumps. The Ace of a red suit of trumps, having become in this way the fourth trump in order of value, is called Punto.
In order of their value, counted from the highest to the lowest, I now place in parallel columns the trumps in black suits and the trumps in red:—
The three chief trumps, Spadille, Manille, and Basto, are called Matadores, and have powers which, together with their name, are passed to the trumps following them, so far as they are found in sequence in the Ombre’s hand. ”

“ To inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide.
Even then, before the fatal engine closed,
A wretched sylph too fondly interposed;
Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain
(But airy substance soon unites again) ,
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend the affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast,
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last ”

“ If the player who proposes to be Ombre has a safe game in his hand—five Matadores, for example—he names the trump and elects to play Sans-prendre, that is to say, without discarding. Whoever plays Sans-prendre, if he win, receives three counters from each of the other players, and pays three counters to each if he should lose the game.
When the Ombre plays Sans-Prendre, his opponents have more cards from which to draw, and the first who discards is even free to change all his nine cards; but he usually limits his discard to six or seven, and avoids encroachment on the share of the next player. ”

“ THE GAME OF OMBRE
was invented by the Spaniards, and called by them El Hombre, or The Man, El Hombre being he (or she) who undertakes the game against the other players.
There were variations in the way of playing, and there were sometimes four or even five players; but usually there were three players, as described by Pope in the third canto of The Rape of the Lock, where Belinda played as Ombre against the Baron and another, and the course of the game is faithfully described. ”

“ Powell’s disposal three other pieces which I did long ago, but revised the other day. They are ‘The Manciple’s Tale,’ ‘The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,’ and twenty-four stanzas of ‘Troilus and Cressida.’ This I have done mainly out of my love and reverence for Chaucer, in hopes that, whatever may be the merits of Mr. Powell’s attempt, the attention of other writers may be drawn to the subject; and a work hereafter produced, by different persons, which will place the treasures of one of the greatest of poets within the reach of the multitude, which now they are not. ”

“ And Mab, his merry Queen, by night
Bestrides young folks that lie upright,
(In elder times the mare that hight) ,
Which plagues them out of measure.
Hence shadows, seeming idle shapes,
Of little frisking elves and apes
To earth do make their wanton scapes,
As hope of pastime hastes them ”