A
Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed
Or, near Fleet-Ditch’s
oozy brinks, Surrounded with a
hundred stinks, Belated, seems on watch
to lie, And snap some cully
passing by; Or, struck with fear,
her fancy runs On watchmen, constables
and duns, From whom she meets with
frequent rubs; But, never from
religious clubs; Whose favor she is sure
to find, Because
she pays ’em all in kind. Corinna
wakes. A dreadful sight! Behold the ruins of the
night! A wicked rat her plaster
stole, Half eat, and dragged it
to his hole. The crystal eye, alas,
was missed; And puss had on her plumpers pissed. A pigeon picked her
issue-peas; And Shock her tresses
filled with fleas. The
nymph, tho’ in this mangled plight, Must ev’ry
morn her limbs unite. But how shall I describe
her arts To
recollect the scattered parts?
Or shew the anguish,
toil, and pain, Of gath’ring up herself again? The bashful muse will
never bear In
such a scene to interfere. Corinna in the morning dizened, Who sees, will spew; who
smells, be poison’d.
Jonathan Swift, 1734
Corinna, pride of Drury-Lane
For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a battered, strolling toast;
No drunken rake to pick her up,
No cellar where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour;
Four stories climbing to her bow’r;
Then, seated on a three-legged chair,
Takes off her artificial hair:
Now, picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.
Now dexterously her plumpers draws,
That serve
to fill her hollow jaws.
Untwists a wire; and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes.
Pulls out the rags contrived to prop
Her flabby dugs and down they drop.
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