Apology for Not Accepting His Invitation to a Masquerade-Ball at His Seat, Drakelow, in Staffordshire

Ah, Gresley! skill’d to deck the festal rite With Taste’s coy art, and Fancy’s various light, Charm’d when the summon’d train forsake their home, Grotesque and gay, to fleet beneath thy dome; Could I, amid the jocund band, convene Youth, health, or spirit, to the glittering scene, Then should my pen thy flattering passport greet With gladden’d heart, and with acceptance meet; But long-precarious health, life’s faded bloom, And recent ravage of the ruthless tomb, Clos’d o’er my friends, forbid the pageant bowers To shine before me with magnetic powers.

When graver Pleasures, and domestic Mirth, Rise the soft Lares of that glowing hearth, Where Drakelow, white as o’er the vale she gleams, Eyes her fair form in Trent’s pellucid streams, Mine may it be to share the joys benign, More grateful to existence’ dim decline; To view expanding mind, with effluence warm, Illume thy lov’d MARIA’S youthful form; To mark around that ever liberal board, Bless’d by glad welcome from its graceful lord, With sportive glee his lovely infants sit, And bright LOUISA lance the darts of wit; While most his sense and spirit render gay The golden leisure of the social day.