Great D draws near — the Duchess sure is come,
Open the doors of the withdrawing-room:
Her daughters decked most daintily I see,
The dowager grows a perfect double D.
E enters next and with her Eve appears.
Not like yon dowager depressed with years:
What ease and elegance her person grace,
Bright beaming as the evening-star her face.
Queen Esther next — how fair e'en after death;
Then one faint glimpse of Queen Elizabeth;
No more, our Esthers now are nought but Hetties,
Elizabeths all dwindled into Betties.
In vain you think to find them under E,
They're all diverted into H and B.
F follows fast the fair — and in his rear
See folly, fashion, foppery straight appear,
All with fantastic clues, fantastic clothes,
With fans and flounces, fringe and furbelows.
Here Grub-street geese presume to joke and jeer,
All, all but Grannam Osborne's.
High heaves his hugeness H: methinks we see
Henry the Eighth's most monstrous majesty.
But why on such grandeur should we dwell?
H mounts to heaven and H descends to hell.
As H the Hebrew found, so I the Jew:
See Isaac, Joseph, Jacob pass in view.
The walls of old Jerusalem appear,
See Israel and all Judah thronging there. [...]
P pokes his head out, yet has not a pain:
Like Punch he peeps, but soon pops in again.
Pleased with his pranks, the pisgys calls him Puck,
Mortals he loves to prick and pinch and pluck.
Now a pert prig, he perks upon your face;
Now peers, pores, ponders with profound grimace;
Now a proud prince, in pompous purple dressed,
And now a player, a peer, a pimp or priest,
A pea, a pin, in a perpetual round,
Now seems a penny, and now shows a pound.
Like perch or pike in pond you see him come;
He in plantations hangs like pear or plum,
Pippin or peach, then perches on the spray,
In form of parrot, pye or popinjay.
P, Proteus-like, all tricks, all shapes can show,
The pleasantest person in the Christ-cross Row. [...]
As K a king, Q represents a queen,
And seems small difference the sounds between.
K as a man with hoarser accent speaks;
In shriller notes Q like a female squeaks.
Behold, K struts as might a king become;
Q draws her train along the drawing-room.
Slow follow all the quality of state:
Queer Queensberry only does refuse to wait. [...]
Thus great R reigns in town, while different far,
Rests in retirement rural R;
Remote from cities lives in lone retreat,
With rooks and rabbit-burrows round his seat.
S sails the swan slow down the silver stream. [...]
So, big with weddings, waddles W,
And brings all womankind before your view:
A wench, a wife, a widow and a w[hor]e,
With woe behind and wantonness before.