E v’ry grace in her combine,L ove and truth and friendship join,I n one source without reserve,Z ealous all her friends to serve,A nd diffuse true harmony. H appy nymph of chaste repose,U nsullied as the vernal rose.G ay — majestic — yet serene,H andsome, with a graceful mien;E v’ry charm in her appear,S he is lovely, chaste and fair.
by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
With the ladies’ permission, most humbly I’d mention
How much we’re obliged by all their attention;
We sink with the weight of the huge obligation
Too long & too broad to admit compensation.
For us (and I blush while I speak I declare)
The charming enchanters be-torture their hair
Till gently it rises and swells like a knoll
Thirty inches at least from the dear little poll;
From the tip-top of which all peer out together
The ribband, the gause & the ostrich’s feather;
Composing a sight for an Arab to swear at
Or huge Patagonian a fortnight to stare at.
Then hoops at right angles that hang from ye knees
And hoops at the hips in connection with these
Set the fellows’s presumptuous who court an alliance
And ev’ry pretender at awful defiance.
And I have been told (though I must disbelieve
For the tidings as fact I would never receive)
That billets of cork have supplied the place
Of something the Fair-ones imagine a grace;
But whether ’tis placed behind or before,
The shoulders to swell or the bosom to shoar,
To raise a false wen or expand a false bump
Project a false hip or protrude a false rump,
Was never ascertain’d, and fegs I declare
To make more enquiry I never will dare.
by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
An elegy on the death of MONTGOMERY TAPPEN who dies at Poughkeepsie on the 20th of Nov. 1784 in the ninth year of his age.
The sweetest, gentlest, of the youthful train,
Here lies his clay cold upon the sable bier!
He scarce had started on life’s varied plain,
For dreary death arrested his career.
His cheek might vie with the expanded rose,
And Genius sparkled in his azure eyes!
A victim so unblemish’d Heaven chose,
And bore the beauteous lambkin to the skies.
Adieu thou loveliest child! Adieu adieu!
Our wishes fain would follow thee on high.
What more can friendship; what more fondness do,
But drop the unbidden tear & heave the sigh?
Ye youths whose ardent bosoms virtue fires,
Who eager wish applause and pant for fame,
Press round MONTGOMERY’S hearse, the NAME inspires
And lights in kindred souls its native flame.
COLUMBIA grateful hails the tender sound
And when MONTGOMERY’S nam’d still drops a tear,
From shore to shore to earth’s remotest bound
Where LIBERTY is known that NAME is dear.
by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
Of RISPAH. (who had been the concubine of King SAUL) when DAVID hanged her children, because their father had done amiss.
From morn to eve from eve to rosy morn,
On this bleak rock I’ll lay me all forlorn;
Here will I stay, tho’ tempests frown around,
Fierce lightnings glare, or earthquakes rock the ground.
The prowling wolves, the hungry birds of prey,
Pierc’d with my moans, will rove another way:
Less steel’d than man, with hearts dissolv’d they go,
And lose their nature at the voice of woe.
And did ye, O my hapless offspring! bleed
For your unhappy father’s thoughtless deed?
He fell, alas! on Gilboa’s fatal plain,
And gave his life ‘mong thousands nobly slain.
–He had his faults; but he was kind and brave,
And with him all his errors found a grave;
— Thus fondly I
With cursed, deadly hate
Against his house are hurl’d the bolts of state;
For royal David, wrapt in purple-grieves
While one of Saul’s unfort’nate lineage lives:
His word is fate — myself, my children all,
Must in an undistinguish’d ruin fall.
by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
