"My curls and hair are all awry, my face is quite begrimed;
In whose house lives the girl so ugly as your slave?
'Tis only because that every day the tea I'm forced to pick;
The soaking rains and driving winds have spoiled my former charms.
"Each picking is with toilsome labor, but yet I shun it not;
My maiden curls are all askew, my pearly fingers all benumbed;
But I only wish our tea to be of a superfine kind,--
To have it equal his 'Sparrow's Tongue' and their 'Dragon's Pellet.'
"For a whole month where can I catch a single leisure day?
For at the earliest dawn I go to pick, and not till dusk return;
Till the deep midnight I'm still before the firing-pan.
Will not labor like this my pearly complexion deface?
"But if my face is lank, my mind is firmly fixed
So to fire my golden buds they shall excel all beside.
But how know I who'll put them into the gemmy cup?
Who at leisure will with her taper fingers give them to the maid to
draw?"
Will any one say, after this, that there is no poetry connected with
tea?
The theme, in truth, is replete with poetical associations, and of a
kind that we look in vain for in connection with any other potable.
Unlike the Anacreontic in praise of the grape,--song suggestive chiefly
of bacchanal revels and loose jollity,--the verse which extols "the cup
that cheers, but not inebriates," brings to mind home comforts and a
happy household.
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