invited!

                      Shrieked Spite, "Silence, gaby!

                     Let's look at the baby."

                    The Queen, in a tremble,

                      Her fears to dissemble,

          Said, Here is the darling—papa she'll resemble.

                      You'd like, p'rhaps, to take her,

                     But please not to wake her,

  She sleeps." "Sleeps!" said Spite, "does she really? I 'll make her

            Of sleep, ma'am, have plenty"

              (Here—"Chorus "Attente!")*

     "If she touches a spindle before she is twenty!

     "For if she does, a heavy sleep
     Shall over all your palace creep,

     And you, with your whole court, shall keep
     Buried in leaden fetters deep!"

     "Until"—here Fairy Number Twelve,

     Who, as we know, was forced to shelve
     Her gift because the banquet waited,

     Broke in and capped what Spite had stated—

     "Until a prince shall come to wake
  The Sleeping Beauty, and so break
  The spell wherewith old Spite in vain
  Would her young life for aye enchain!"

  #####

  The King sent heralds through the land
  Proclaiming spindles contraband,

          Pronouncing penalties and pains

           'Gainst distaffs, treadles, rocks, and skeins.

                    And so to spin
                    Became a sin;

  Wheels were bowled out, and looms came in.

  No more old women were allowed to meddle

                                   With wheel or treadle;

  There were no spinsters left, the fair deceivers

                                   All became weavers;

                     * The passage I quote in this wild dithyramb you'll
                     assuredly find in Act I. of "Sonnambula."
  The very name and uses of a spindle

                         To nought did dwindle;

  The fashion was, folks said,

                            Entirely dead,

  Expired—past human effort to re-kindle.

          Time's wonted pace
          Is not a rapid race;

  His motto seems to be "Festina lente."
          But yet he passed away,

       Until at length the day—

  Approached on which the Princess would be twenty.

           What consultations!

           What preparations!

  What busy times for people of all stations!

          What scouring out of rooms
          With mops and brooms!

  What scouring to and fro of hurried grooms!

           No leisure, not the least,

          For man or beast,

  Because His Majesty had fixed a feast—

           Acres of eatables and seas of ale,

          A banquet that should make all others pale,

    E'en those of Heliogabalus, deceased—

    To celebrate the day his child was quite
    Beyond the malice of old Fairy Spite!