LITTLE GERTY.

She is bright and debonnaire,

Softly falls her golden hair;

I all other loves forswear:

Little fairy.

Little Gerty swears she's true,

Gives me kisses not a few;

Do I doubt her?

Hearts are often bought and sold;

Is it glitter, is it gold?

Half my grief could not be told

Were I without her.

Gerty scolds me if I roam,

Wonders what I want from home,

With sly glances—

Looks that seem to me to say,

"I have waited all the day;

You were very wrong to stray,
Naughty Francis."

LITTLE GERTY.

If I whisper, "We must part,"

Gerty, sighing, breaks her heart;
Awkward, very.

When I say that I'll remain,

All her smiles return again,

Like warm sunshine after rain;

We are merry.

If my sweetheart knows her mind,

Love is mad as well as blind.

Little Gerty

Says she means to marry me;

She is only six, you see;

I-alas, that it should be !—

WOMAN.

A

LL honor to woman, the sweetheart, the wife,

The delight of our firesides by night and

by day,

Who never does anything wrong in her life,

Except when permitted to have her own way.

And tippling all night long.

Now, tho' these cautious knaves I scorn,

For once I'll not disdain

To tell them why I sit till morn,

And fill my glass again:

THE TOPER'S APOLOGY.

'Tis by the glow my bumper gives

Life's picture's mellow made;

The fading light then brightly lives,
And softly sinks the shade;

Some happier tint still rises there

With every drop I drain

And that I think's a

reason fair

To fill my glass again.

My Muse, too, when her wings are dry

No frolic flight will take;

But round a bowl she'll dip and fly,

Like swallows round a lake.

Then if the nymph will have her share

Before she'll bless her swain

Why that I think's a reason fair

To fill my glass again.

In life I've rung all changes too,

Run every pleasure down,

THE TOPER'S APOLOGY.

Tried all extremes of fancy through,

And lived with half the town;

For me there's nothing new or rare,

Till wine deceives my brain

And that I think's a reason fair

To fill my glass again.

Then, many a lad I liked is dead,
And many a lass grown old;

And as the lesson strikes my head,

My weary heart grows cold.

But wine, awhile, drives off despair,

Nay, bids a hope remain

And that I think's a reason fair

To fill my glass again.

Then, hipp'd and vex'd at England's state

In these convulsive days,

I can't endure the ruin'd fate

My sober eye surveys;