title: Cant Phrases
author: Henry Livingston Jr.
date: 1795
source: Weekly Museum (New York) and Poughkeepsie Journal, 1795 (earliest known), reprinted widely; site: "we take it out, we put it back, endlessly". URL: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/cantphrases.htm (fetched via https://web.archive.org/web/20250522014530/https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/cantphrases.htm)
form: anapestic trimeter (quatrains; song)
lines: 40
attribution: doubtful
notes: Comic song built on similes ("as sound as a nut"). Attributed on style alone; the site itself wavers. Site heading/headnote: Cant Phrases | [Weekly Museum]

AS sound as a nut, o'er the plain
I of late whistled, chock full of glee;
A stranger to sorrow and pain,
As happy, as happy could be.

As plump as a partridge I grew,
My heart being lighter than cork;
My slumbers were calmer than dew!
My body was fatter than pork.

Thus happy I hop'd I should pass,
Sleek as grease down the current of time;
But pleasures are brittle as glass,
Although as a fiddle, there fine.

Jemima, the pride of the vale,
Like a top, nimbly danc'd o'er our plains;
With envy the lasses were pale--
With wonder stood gaping the swains.

She smil'd like a basket of chips--
As tall as a hay-pole her size--
As sweet as molasses her lips--
As bright as a button her eyes.

Admiring I gaz'd on each charm,
My peace that would trouble so soon,
And thought not of danger nor harm,
Any more than the man in the moon.

But now to my sorrow I find,
Her heart is as hard as a brick;
To my passion forever unkind,
Tho' of passion I'm full as a tic.

I sought her affection to win,
In hopes of obtaining relief,
Till I like a hatchet grew thin,
And she like a haddock grew deaf.

I late was as fat as a doe,
And playsome and spry as a cat;
But now I am dull as a hoe,
And lean and as weak as a rat.

Unless the unpitying fates
With passion as ardent shall cram her,
As certain of death or as rates,
I soon shall be dead as a hammer.