society is but a game,
'The royal game of Goose,' as I may say,
Where every body has some separate aim,
An end to answer, or a plan to lay--
The single ladies wishing to be double,
The married ones to save the virgins trouble.

I don't mean this as general, but particular
Examples may be found of such pursuits:
Though several also keep their perpendicular
Like poplars, with good principles for roots;
Yet many have a method more reticular--
'Fishers for men,' like sirens with soft lutes:
For talk six times with the same single lady,
And you may get the wedding dresses ready.

Perhaps you 'll have a letter from the mother,
To say her daughter's feelings are trepann'd;
Perhaps you 'll have a visit from the brother,
All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand
What 'your intentions are?'--One way or other
It seems the virgin's heart expects your hand:
And between pity for her case and yours,
You 'll add to Matrimony's list of cures.

I 've known a dozen weddings made even thus,
And some of them high names: I have also known
Young men who--though they hated to discuss
Pretensions which they never dream'd to have shown--
Yet neither frighten'd by a female fuss,
Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone,
And lived, as did the broken-hearted fair,
In happier plight than if they form'd a pair.

There 's also nightly, to the uninitiated,
A peril--not indeed like love or marriage,
But not the less for this to be depreciated:
It is--I meant and mean not to disparage
The show of virtue even in the vitiated--
It adds an outward grace unto their carriage--
But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot,
'Couleur de rose,' who 's neither white nor scarlet.

Such is your cold coquette, who can't say 'No,'
And won't say 'Yes,' and keeps you on and off-ing
On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow--
Then sees your heart wreck'd, with an inward scoffing.
This works a world of sentimental woe,
And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin;
But yet is merely innocent flirtation,
Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

'Ye gods, I grow a talker!' Let us prate.
The next of perils, though I place it sternest,
Is when, without regard to 'church or state,'