'The maid, and thereby hangs a tale, For such a maid no Whitsun'-ale Could ever yet produce: No grape that's kindly ripe could be So round, so plump, so soft as she, Nor half so full of juice.
'Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light: But oh! she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter-day Is half so fine a sight.
'Her cheeks, so rare a white was on, No daisy makes comparison; Who sees them is undone; For streaks of red were mingled there. Such as are on a Catherine pear, The side that's next the sun.
'Her lips were red; and one was thin, Compared to that was next her chin, Some bee had stung it newly; But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face, I durst no more upon them gaze, Than on the sun in July.
'Her mouth so small when she doth speak, Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break, That they might passage get; But she so handled still the matter, They came as good as ours, or better, And are not spent a whit.
'Passion, O me! how I run on; There's that that would be thought upon, I trow, beside the bride: The business of the kitchen's great, For it is fit that men should eat; Nor was it there denied.
'Now hats fly off, and youths carouse; Healths first go round, and then the house, The bride's came thick and thick; And when 'twas named another's health, Perhaps he made it hers by stealth; And who could help it, Dick?
'O' th' sudden up they rise and dance; Then sit again and sigh and glance; Then dance again and kiss. Thus sev'ral ways the time did pass, Till every woman wished her place, And every man wished his.
'By this time all were stolen aside To counsel and undress the bride; But that he must not know-- But yet 'twas thought he guessed her mind, And did not mean to stay behind Above an hour or so.'
What can be finer than the verse commencing, 'Her feet beneath her petticoat,' or that which follows: 'Her cheeks,' etc.? That Suckling could write like this, proves that there was in him the dawning of no ordinary genius. He challenges our admiration, not so much for what he has done, as for what he might have done, had his life been spared. Or we should say, rather, what he might have done had he devoted half as much of the life that was granted him to literary labors, as he did to pleasure and dissipation.