Gilded margins count a sin;
Let thy leaves attraction win
By thy Golden Rules within:

Sayings, fetch'd from Sages old;
Saws, which Holy Writ unfold,
Worthy to be writ in Gold:

Lighter Fancies not excluding;
Blameless wit, with nothing rude in,
Sometimes mildly interluding

Amid strains of graver measure:--
Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure
In sweet Muses' groves of leisure.

Riddles dark, perplexing sense;
Darker meanings of offence;
What but _shades_, be banish'd hence.

Whitest Thoughts, in whitest dress--
Candid Meanings--best express
Mind of quiet Quakeress.

Dear B.B.--"I am ill at these numbers;" but if the above be not too
mean to have a place in thy Daughter's Sanctum, take them with pleasure.
I assume that her Name is Hannah, because it is a pretty scriptural
cognomen. I began on another sheet of paper, and just as I had penn'd
the second line of Stanza 2 an ugly Blot [_here is a blot_] as big as
this, fell, to illustrate my counsel.--I am sadly given to blot, and
modern blotting-paper gives no redress; it only smears and makes it
worse, as for example [_here is a smear_]. The only remedy is scratching
out, which gives it a Clerkish look. The most innocent blots are made
with red ink, and are rather ornamental. [_Here are two or three blots
in red ink._] Marry, they are not always to be distinguished from the
effusions of a cut finger.

Well, I hope and trust thy Tick doleru, or however you spell it, is
vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that Tick, and do
altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the Tick of a Death Watch. I
take it to be a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the Sanctity, writing
to "one of the men called Friends"). I knew a young Lady who could dance
no other, she danced thro' life, and very queer and fantastic were her
steps. Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep thee from the Foul
Fiend, who delights to lead after False Fires in the night,
Flibbertigibit, that gives the web and the pin &c. I forget what else.--

From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30 Sep. 24. C.L.

[The verses were for the album of Barton's daughter, Lucy (afterwards
Mrs. Edward FitzGerald). Lucy was her only name. Lamb afterwards printed
them in his _Album Vers