With the ladies' permission, most humbly I'd mention <br />How much we're obliged by all their attention; <br />We sink with the weight of the huge obligation <br />Too long & too broad to admit compensation. <br />For us (and I blush while I speak I declare) <br />The charming enchanters be-torture their hair <br />Till gently it rises and swells like a knoll <br />Thirty inches at least from the dear little poll; <br />From the tip-top of which all peer out together <br />The ribband, the gause & the ostrich's feather; <br />Composing a sight for an Arab to swear at <br />Or huge Patagonian a fortnight to stare at. <br /> <br />Then hoops at right angles that hang from ye knees <br />And hoops at the hips in connection with these <br />Set the fellows's presumptuous who court an alliance <br />And ev'ry pretender at awful defiance. <br /> <br />And I have been told (though I must disbelieve <br />For the tidings as fact I would never receive) <br />That billets of cork have supplied the place <br />Of something the Fair-ones imagine a grace; <br />But whether 'tis placed behind or before, <br />The shoulders to swell or the bosom to shoar, <br />To raise a false wen or expand a false bump <br />Project a false hip or protrude a false rump, <br />Was never ascertain'd, and fegs I declare <br />To make more enquiry I never will dare.<br /><br />Henry Livingston Jr.<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/acknowledgement/
