Sappho Burns Her Books and Cultivates the Culinary Arts (On Miss R.P.'s Saying she would find Love only if she did so.)

Companions of my favourite hours,
By winter's fire, in summer's bowers,
That wont to chase my bosom's care,
And plant your pleasing visions there!
Guarini, Dante, honoured names,
Ah, doomed to feel devouring flames!
Alas, my Petrarch's gentle loves!
My Tasso's rich enchanted groves!
My Ariosto's fairy dreams,
And all my loved Italian themes!
I saw you on the pile expire,
Weeping I saw the invading fire;
There fixed remained my aching sight,
Till the last ray of parting light
The last pale flame consumed away,
And all dissolved your relics lay.

   Goddess of Culinary Art,
Now take possession of my heart!
Teach me more winning arts to try,
To salt the ham, to mix the pie;
To make the paste both light and thin,
To smooth it with a rolling pin;
With taper skewer to print it round,
Last ruder touch the surface wound.
Then teach thy votary how to make
That fair rotundo--a plum-cake;
To shake the compound sweets together,
To bake it light as any feather,
That, when complete, its form may show
A rising hillock topped with snow;
And how to make the cheesecake, say,
To beat the eggs and turn the whey,
To strain my jelly fair and clear,
That here no misty fog appear;
But plain to view each form may rise
That in its glassy bosom lies.

   Now fancy soars to future times,
When all extinct are Sappho's rhymes;
And naught but recipes her fame.
When sweetest numbers she'll despise,
When Pope shall sing beneath minced-pies,
And Eloise in her tin shall mourn
Disastrous fate and love forlorn;
Achilles too, that godlike man
Shall bluster in the patty-pan;
And many a once-loved Grecian chief
Shall guard from flames the roasting beef.

   Then, when this transformation's made,
And Sappho's vestments speak her trade;
When girt in towels she is seen,
With cuffs to keep the elbows clean:
Then, Sorceress, she'll call on thee!
Accomplish then thy fair decree!
If, like your sisters of the heath,
Whose mystic sound betrayed Macbeth,
Fallacious charms your arts dispense,
To cheat her with ambiguous sense;
Severest torments may you prove!--
Severest--disappointed love.

(1798)