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IN A LETTER to A.R.C. ON HER WISHING TO BE CALLED ANNA.

1 FORGIVE me, if I wound your ear,
2 By calling of you Nancy,
3 Which is the name of my sweet friend,
4 The other's but her fancy.
5 Ah, dearest girl! how could your mind
6 The strange distinction frame?
7 The whimsical, unjust caprice,
8 Which robs you of your name.
[Page 23]
9 Nancy agrees with what we see,
10 A being wild and airy;
11 Gay as a nymph of Flora's train,
12 Fantastic as a fairy.
13 But Anna's of a different kind,
14 A melancholy maid;
15 Boasting a sentimental soul,
16 In solemn pomp array'd.
17 Oh ne'er will forsake the sound,
18 So artless and so free!
19 Be what you will with all mankind.
20 But Nancy, still with me.

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Title (in Source Edition): IN A LETTER to A.R.C. ON HER WISHING TO BE CALLED ANNA.
Author: (Mary) Matilda Betham
Themes:
Genres: ode

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Source edition

Betham, Mary Matilda, 1776-1852. Elegies and Other Small Poems, by Matilda Betham. Ipswich: Printed by W. Burrell, and sold by Longman, Paternoster-Row, and Jermyn and Forster, Ipswich, 1797, pp. [22]-23.  (ESTC T143264)

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