summer days are over,
The town, ah me! has flown,
Through Dover, or to clover--
And I am all alone.'

It has long been held, among a certain class, that to be seen in town
during the Recess is to forfeit all pretensions to _haut ton_. And so
'the last man' of the Season is naturally represented by Bayly as
somewhat ashamed of himself. 'He'll blush,' we are told, 'if you ask him
the reason Why he with the rest is not gone':

'He'll seek you with shame and with sorrow,
He'll smile with affected delight;
He'll swear he leaves London to-morrow,
And only came to it last night!'

He will tell you that he is in general request--that the difficulty is
to know where not to go:

'So odd you should happen to meet him;
So strange, as he's just passing through.'

The Season may be said to go to its grave with parting volleys from the
sportsmen on the moors. One is fired on 'the Twelfth,' the other on 'the
First.' The one is associated with grouse, the other with partridges.
And Haynes Bayly makes his fashionable matron only too conscious of
these facts. 'Don't talk of September,' she says; 'a lady

'Must think it of all months the worst;
The men are preparing already
To take themselves off on the First.'

'Last month, their attention to quicken,
A supper I knew was the thing;
But now, from my turkey and chicken,
They're tempted by birds on the wing!
They shoulder their terrible rifles
('Tis really too much for my nerves!)
And, slighting my sweets and my trifles,
Prefer my Lord Harry's preserves!'

And she goes on to say:

'Oh, marriage is hard of digestion,
The men are all sparing of words;
And now 'stead of popping the question,
They set off to pop at the birds.'

Life at English country houses has been depicted by more than one poet.
Pope, for instance, tells us what happened when Miss Blount left
town--how

'She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks...
(To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire.'

Lord Lyttelton's 'beauty in the country' complains that

'Now with mamma at tedious whist I play,
Now without scandal drink insipid tea;'

while Lady Mary Montagu's 'bride in the country' deplores the fact that
she is

'Left in the lurch,
Forgot and secluded from view,
Unless when some bumpkin