title: The Acknowlegment
author: Henry Livingston Jr.
date: 1787
source: Henry Livingston's manuscript poetry book (Thomas Collection; scans and transcription on henrylivingston.com); printed anonymously in Country Journal and Poughkeepsie Advertiser (Poughkeepsie Journal), 7 Feb 1787 ("For the Poughkeepsie Advertiser ... Translated from a Fragment of Anacrean"). URL: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/acknow.htm (fetched via https://web.archive.org/web/20250421174902/http://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/acknow.htm)
form: anapestic tetrameter
lines: 26
attribution: certain
notes: Comic satire on ladies' fashions (hair, hoops, cork). The site page gives the printed text with the MS scan. Site heading/headnote: Country Journal and Poughkeepsie Advertiser | Feb 7, 1787 | For the Poughkeepsie Advertiser. | The Acknowlegment. | Translated from a Fragment of Anacrean, | lately found among the ruins of a | Theater in Epirus. MS scan: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/doublepages/doublepage48-49.htm

With the ladies' permission, most humbly I'd mention
How much w'ere obliged by all their attention;
We sink with the weight of the huge obligation,
Too long, and too broad, to admit compensation.
For us -- (and I blush while I speak I declare)
The charming enchanters be-torture their hair,
Till gently it rises, and swells like a knoll,
Thirty inches at least from the dear little pole;
On the tip-top of which, all peer out together,
The ribband, the gauze, and the ostritche's feather,
Composing a sight for an Arab to swear at,
Or huge Patagonian a fortnight to stare at.
Then hoops at right angles that hang from the knees
And hoops at the hips in connection with these,
Set the fellows presumptuous, who court an alliance,
And ev'ry pretender, at awful defiance.
And I have been told (tho' I must disbelieve,
For the tidings as fact, I would never receive)
That billets of cork have supplied the place,
Of something, the fair ones imagine a grace;
But whether 'tis placed behind or before;
The shoulders to swell, or the bosom to shoar,
To raise a false wen, or to expand a false bump,
Project a false hip, or protrude a false r--p,
Was never ascertain'd; and fegs I declare
To make more enquiry I never will dare.