Tuesday 25 June 2013

Signs of Love at Oxford



She’s
as light
as the
Greyhound
and as fair
as the Angel;
Her looks than the Mitre
more sanctified are;
But she flies like the Roebuck
and leaves me to range ill,
Still looking to her as my true polar Star.
New Inn-ventions I try, with new art to adore,
But my fate is, alas! To be voted a Boar;
My Goats I forsook to contemplate her charms,
And must own she is fit for our noble King’s Arms.
Now Cross’d and now Jockey’d, now sad, now elate,
The Chequers appear but a map of my fate;
I blushed like a Blue-cur to send her a Pheasant,
But she call’d me a Turk, and rejected my present.
So I moped to the Barley-mow, griev’d in my mind,
That the Ark from the flood ever rescu’d mankind!
My dreams Lion’s roar, and the Green Dragon grins
And fiends rise in shape of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Then I ogle the Bells, should I see her approach,
Skip like a Nag and jump into the Coach.
She is crimson and white like a Shoulder of Mutton,
Not the red of the Ox was so bright, when first put on,
Like the Hollybush prickles, she scratches my liver,
While I moan and I die like the Swan by the river.

Can anyone tell me how many of the above
Oxford hostelries are still in existence
and are they on the InterNet.

(The Table Book 182?)

Signs of Love at Oxford
By an Inn-consolable Lover