BY ONE WHO PASS’D FOR CHAMBERMAID: Poetry, by Ebenezer Cook

BY ONE WHO PASS’D FOR CHAMBERMAID

By one who pass’d for Chamber-Maid. Tho’ by her loose and sluttish Dress, She rather seem’d a Bedlam-Bess. Curious to know from whence she came, I prest her to declare her Name. She Blushing, seem’d to hide her Eyes, And thus in Civil Terms replies: In better Times, e’er to this Land, I was unhappily Trapann’d. Perhaps as well I did appear, As any Lord or Lady here, not then a Slave for twice two’ Year. My Cloaths were fashionably new, nor were my Shifts of Linnen Blue. But things are changed now at the Hoe, I daily work and Bare-foot go, in weeding Corn or feeding Swine, I spend my melancholy Time. Kidnap’d and Fool’d, I hither fled, to shun a hated Nuptial Bed, and to my cost already find, Worse Plagues than those I left behind.

(Ebenezer Cook)