See Day, triumphant from the Night, restored!

Then know this truth, ye Sons of Men!

(Thus ends thy moral tale):

Your darkest terrors may be vain,

Your brightest hopes may fail!

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN
Spoken by Miss Fontenelle on her benefit night

While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,

The fate of empires and the fall of Kings;

While quacks of State must each produce his plan,

And even children lisp the Rights of Man;

Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,

The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

First, in the sexes’ intermix’d connexion,

One sacred Right of Woman is Protection:

The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,

Helpless must fall before the blasts of fate,

Sunk on the earth, defac’d its lovely form,

Unless your shelter ward th’ impending storm.

Our second Right – but needless here is caution –

To keep that right inviolate’s the fashion:

Each man of sense has it so full before him,

He’d die before he’d wrong it – ’tis Decorum!

There was, indeed, in far less polish’d days,

A time, when rough rude Man had naughty ways:

Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,

Nay, even thus invade a lady’s quiet!

Now, thank our stars! these Gothic times are fled;

Now, well-bred men – and you are all well-bred –

Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)

Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.

For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest:

That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest,

Which even the Rights of Kings, in low prostration,

Most humbly own – ’tis dear, dear Admiration!

In that blest sphere alone we live and move;

There taste that life of life – Immortal Love.

Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs;

’Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares?

When aweful Beauty joins with all her charms,

Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?

But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,

With bloody armaments and revolutions;

Let Majesty your first attention summon,

Ah! ça ira! THE MAJESTY OF WOMAN!!!

WHY SHOULDNA POOR FOLK MOWE
Tune: The Campbells are comin

When Princes and Prelates and het-headed zealots

All Europe hae set in a lowe,

The poor man lies down, nor envies a crown,

And comforts himsel with a mowe.

CHORUS

And why shouldna poor folk mowe, mowe, mowe,

And why shouldna poor folk mowe:

The great folk hae siller, and houses and lands,

Poor bodies hae naething but mowe.

When Brunswick’s great Prince cam a cruising to France

Republican billies to cowe,

Bauld Brunswick’s great Prince wad hae shawn better sense,

At hame with his Princess to mowe.

Out over the Rhine proud Prussia wad shine,

To spend his best blood he did vow;

But Frederic had better ne’er forded the water,

But spent as he docht in a mowe.

By sea by shore! the Emperor swore,

In Paris he’d kick up a row;

But Paris sae ready just leugh at the laddie