TO THE HONOURABLE

MRS. NORTON.

FOR the groundwork of the following Poem I am indebted to a memorable Fête, given some years since, at Boyle Farm, the seat of the late Lord Henry Fitzgerald. In commemoration of that evening-of which the lady to whom these pages are inscribed was, I well recollect, one of the most distinguished ornaments - I was induced at the time to write some verses, which were afterwards, however, thrown aside unfinished, on my discovering that the same task had been undertaken by a noble poet,* whose playful and happy jeu-d'esprit on the subject has since been published. It was but lately, that, on finding the fragments of my own sketch among my papers, I thought of founding on them such a description of an imaginary Fête as might Furnish me with situations for the introduction of music.

• Lord Francis Egerton.

Such is the origin and object of the following Poem, and to Mrs. NORTON it is, with every feeling of admiration and regard, inscribed by her father's warmly attached friend,

Sloperton Cottage

Nov. 1831.

THOMAS MOORE.

THE SUMMER FÊTE.

"WHERE are ye now, ye summer days, "That once inspired the poet's lays?

"Blest time! ere England's nymphs and swains, "For lack of sunbeams, took to coals "Summers of light, undimm'd by rains, "Whose only mocking trace remains "In watering-pots and parasols."

Thus spoke a young Patrician maid,
As, on the morning of that Fête
Which bards unborn shall celebrate,
She backward drew her curtain's shade,
And, closing one half-dazzled eye,
Peep'd with the other at the sky -
Th' important sky, whose light or gloom
Was to decide, this day, the doom
Of some few hundred beauties, wits,
Blues, Dandies, Swains, and Exquisites.

Faint were her hopes; for June had now
Set in with all his usua' rigour!

Young Zephyr yet scarce knowing how
To nurse a bud, or fan a bough,

But Eurus in perpetual vigour;
And, such the biting summer air,
That she, the nymph now nestling there
Snug as her own bright gems recline,
At night, within their cotton shrine
Had, more than once, been caught of late
Kneeling before her blazing grate,
Like a young worshipper of fire,

With hands uplifted to the flame,

Whose glow as if to woo them nigher,

Through the white fingers flushing came.

But oh! the light, the unhoped-for light,
That now illumed this morning's heaven!
Up sprung Iänthe at the sight,

Though― hark! the clocks but strike eleven And rarely did the nymph surprise

Mankind so early with her eyes.

Who now will say that England's sun

(Like England's self, these spendthrift days) His stock of wealth hath near outrun, And must retrench his golden rays—

Pay for the pride of sunbeams past,
And to mere moonshine come at last?

"Calumnious thought!" Iänthe cries, While coming mirth lit up each glance,

And, prescient of the ball, her eyes
Already had begun to dance:

For brighter sun than that which now
Sparkled o'er London's spires and towers,
Had never bent from heaven his brow

To kiss Firenze's City of Flowers.

What must it be if thus so fair

Mid the smoked groves of Grosvenor SquareWhat must it be where Thames is seen

Gliding between his banks of green,

While rival villas, on each side,

Peep from their bowers to woo his tide,
And, like a Turk between two rows
Of Harem beauties, on he goes

A lover, loved for ev'n the grace

With which he slides from their embrace

In one of those enchanted domes,

One, the most flowery, cool, and bright

Of all by which that river roams,
The Fête is to be held to-night —

That Fête already link'd to fame,

Whose cards, in many a fair one's sight
(When look'd for long, at last they came,)
Seem'd circled with a fairy light; –
That Fête to which the cull, the flower
Of England's beauty, rank and power,
From the young spinster, just come out,

To the old Premier, too long in