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