Page 9 - Poetry-Romance

The Belles

“We find the following parody in one of the city papers, where it
appears anonymously. It is on Poe’s famous poem, ‘The Bells.’ Our
fair readers will judge for themselves how far ‘The Belles’ excel the
original:”

What uncomfortable feelings their merriment compels!
How I shiver, shiver, shiver,
Lest my collar isn’t right,
And my nerves begin to quiver,
Lest my waistcoat they diskiver
Isn’t scrupulously white;
And they laugh, laugh, laugh,
As I fidget with my scarf,
For I dread the cachinnation that so musically swells
From the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles—
From the witty and the pretty cruel belles.

Hear the very learned belles,
Azure belles!
What vast erudition their conversation tells!
Through the quiet hours of night
How laboriously they write:
With their pretty-colored ink
And golden pen!
How all manly spirits shrink
In their estimation; how inferior they think
Stupid men!
From the publishers’ dark cells
What a lot of commonplace voluminously wells!
How it swells!
But never sells,
For the Future rings its knells;
Then what is it that impels
To the writing and inditing
Of the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles—
To the rhyming waste-of-timing of the belles?

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