Miss Mary Bennet

A young lady of deep reflection am I.
I make extracts of homilies, pound my scales,
while Lizzy and Jane, hard at work, catch the eye
of gallant lads with lots of land. To such males
of fortune, we trade my sisters’ pretty bodies.
My goods weren’t good enough for my own cousin,
though I’d have picked him over those London dandies.
To me, living with just one idiot doesn’t
sound so bad. He would never think to explore
what I keep inside books bound as Fordyce’s Sermons
To Young Ladies, or, by Miss Hannah More,
Strictures on the Modern System of Young Women’s
Education. Open those tomes from which I cite
my platitudes, and you’ll find extracts, all right–
of Malthus, Blake, the Philosophy of Right.
I know just for what those wild Frenchmen fight.