STUDY first Propriety, for she is indeed the pole-star

Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair;

Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society,

The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros.

Verily, Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed, being naked;

Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice;

And when she is drest, behold, she knoweth not herself again!

I walked in the forest, and above me stood the yew—

Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade;

Then I pass’d into the citizen’s garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape

(The giant’s locks had been shorn by the Delilah-shears of Decorum),

And I said, “Surely Nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!”

I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky,

Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch,

Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up the water;

And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder,

Must yield to him that danceth and “moveth in the circles” at Astley’s.

For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade,

And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another.

A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upward,

And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety;

He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure;

Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.