'You are right again,' I frankly said,

'The best of poets earn hard bread, And a mere metre-ballad-monger

Deserves to feel the pangs of hunger.'

'Exactly so, the idle scamps,

Should all be taken up as tramps,
And picking oakum for a time

Might teach them to untwist their rhyme.
Perhaps the creatures mean no harm,

But now like summer flies they swarm,
And change sometimes from verse to prose,

And tell what everybody knows ;

But dullest prose is not so bad

As verse when it is prose run mad.'

He laugh'd, and then resumed the theme

Which did his favourite topic seem,

The great improvements of the Town,

How shops went up, how huts went down,
And in their stead rose cottages,

For poor folk perfect palaces,

Fair to the eye, and snug within,

To keep men home from beer and gin;
New churches, chapels, banks and schools,
New sewers, and no more fever pools,

New Guildhall, markets, streets, and mansions,

Quite a new town, with vast expansions;

All, Sir, or most, done by one person,

The Duke! whom you might pen a verse on.'

'Yes-but you have left out new graves,
Which faster rise than architraves.'

But there I touch'd on tender ground,
And thoughtless probed a recent wound;
And, when he gave his parting grip,

I saw the smile had left his lip.

H.

THE HOTEL.

I REACH'D the porch and changed my mind,

Enter'd, and left my cares behind.

There's something genial in an Inn,
That even makes a sallow skin

Glow with a tinge of early morn,

Though that's a simile much worn,

And rather far-fetch'd seems to me

To bring into a hostelry.

The Landlord I had known long since,
As his warm greeting did evince;

A portly man he was, and able

To set example at the table;

Could join the converse, give a toast

And do all that becomes a host.

Not one of your white-neck cloth'd prigs,
Who mince their words as they were figs,
And with their sham civilities

Offend more people than they please.

And well I knew his stalwart sire,
Who did long since from life retire;
A landlord of the olden time,

A theme for Chaucer's graphic rhyme,
Fit to preside at the Tabard;

His gibes had hit the pilgrims hard,

Or his droll tales had made them merry,

As they rode down to Canterbury.

But such methinks was not his bent;

To Plymouth he not seldom went

On his stout cob, and on his road

Homeward, having settled what he owed,
And got full change, he always slept,

And no account of milestones kept;

Nor woke until his trusty hack

Brought him straight to his own house back.

So safe the roads, and such the men
And horses bred in England then.

No more of him, now to the Bar!

How comely barmaids always are!

How glib their tongues, as does befit,

How sparkling is their ready wit!

How stored their minds with useful knowledge,

As scholars find from every college,

And

every traveller can prove !

How gracefully their fingers move,
Knitting their mittens as they talk,
Or neatly copying out your chalk !

More charming still, when for some friend

To draw the Bass' they condescend!

But where's the Bar, and where am I?

So tired, so stupid, and so dry,
And yet not see the lady here
Dispensing smiles-not to say beer,
Although it neither stale nor flat is;
Sitting like damsel at her lattice,