_Blackwood's Magazine._
* * * * *
DANCING.
I never to a ball will go,
That poor pretence for prancing,
Where Jenkins dislocates a toe,
And Tomkins _thinks_ he's dancing:
And most I execrate that ball,
Of balls the most atrocious,
Held yearly in old Magog's hall,
The feasting and ferocious.
I execrate the mob, the squeeze,
The rough refreshment-scramble:
The dancers, keeping time with knees
That knock as down they amble;
Between two lines of bankers' clerks,
Stared at by two of loobies--
All mighty fine for city sparks,
But all and each one boobies:--
Boobies with heads like poodle-dogs,
With curls like clew-lines dangling;
With limbs like galvanizing frogs,
And necks stiff-starched and strangling;
With pigeon-breasts and pigeon-wings,
And waists like wasps and spiders;
With whiskers like Macready's kings',
Mustachios like El Hyder's.
Miss Jones, the Moorfields milliner,
With Toilinet, the draper,
May waltz--for none are _willinger_
To cut cloth or a caper.--
Miss Moses of the Minories,
With Mr. Wicks of Wapping,
May love such light tracasseries,
Such shuffle shoe and hopping:
Miss Hicks, the belle of Holywell,
And pride of Norton Falgate,
In waltzing may the world excel,
Except Miss Hicks of Aldgate.
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