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Yet, as most of “The Fashion” are journeying now,
With the brown hues of summer on cheek and on brow,
The few “gens comme il faut” who are lingering here,
Are, like fruits out of season, more welcome and dear,
Like “the last rose of summer, left blooming alone,”
Or the last snows of winter, pure ice of haut ton,
Unmelted, undimmed by the sun’s brightest ray,
And, like diamonds, making night’s darkness seem day.
One meets them in groups, that Canova might fancy,
At our new lounge at evening, the Opera Français,¹⁴
In nines like the Muses, in threes like the Graces,
Green spots in a desert of commonplace faces.
The Queen, Mrs. Adams, goes there sweetly dressed
In a beautiful bonnet, all golden and flowery;
While the King, Mr. Bonaparte, smiles on Celeste,
Heloise, and Hutin, from his box at the Bowery.

For news, Parry still the North Sea is exploring,
And the Grand Turk has taken, they say, the Acropolis,
And we, in Swamp Place,¹⁵ have discovered, in boring,
A mineral spring to refine the metropolis.
The day we discovered it was, by-the-way,
In the life of the Cockneys, a glorious day.
For we all had been taught, by tradition and reading,
That to gain what admits us to levees of kings,
The gentleness, courtesy, grace of high breeding,
The only sure way was to “visit the Springs.”
So the whole city visited Swamp Spring en masse,