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Lost was that sweet simplicity;
Her eye's bright lustre fled;
And o'er her cheeks, where roses bloomed,
A sickly paleness spread.

So fades the flower before its time,
Where cankerworms assail;

So droops the bud upon its stem
Beneath the sickly gale.

What is Life?

And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still-repeated dream.

Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought. And Happiness? A bubble on the stream,

That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought. And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn, That robs each flowret of its gem-and dies; A cobweb, hiding disappointment's thorn,

Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise. And what is Death? Is still the cause unfound? That dark mysterious name of horrid sound?

A long and lingering sleep the weary crave. And Peace? Where can its happiness abound? No where at all, save heaven and the grave. Then what is Life! When stripped of its disguise, A thing to be desired it cannot be; Since everything that meets our foolish eyes Gives proof sufficient of its vanity. 'Tis but a trial all must undergo,

To teach unthankful mortal how to prize That happiness vain man's denied to know, Until he's called to claim it in the skies.

Summer Morning.

'Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze,
Or list the giggling of the brook;
Or, stretched beneath the shade of trees,
Peruse and pause on nature's book.
When nature every sweet prepares
To entertain our wished delay-
The images which morning wears,

The wakening charms of early day!
Now let me tread the meadow paths,

Where glittering dew the ground illumes, As sprinkled o'er the withering swaths

Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes. And hear the beetle sound his horn, And hear the skylark whistling nigh, Sprung from his bed of tufted corn, A hailing minstrel in the sky. First sunbeam, calling night away To see how sweet thy summons seems; Split by the willow's wavy gray,

And sweetly dancing on the streams.
How fine the spider's web is spun,

Unnoticed to vulgar eyes;
Its silk thread glittering in the sun
Arts bungling vanity defies.
Roaming while the dewy fields

'Neath their morning burthen lean, While its crop my searches shields,

Sweet I scent the blossomed bean.

Making oft remarking stops;
Watching tiny nameless things
Climb the grass's spiry tops
Ere they try their gauzy wings.

So emerging into light,

From the ignorant and vain Fearful genius takes her flight, Skimming o'er the lowly plain.

The Primrose-A Sonnet.

Welcome, pale primrose! starting up between Dead matted leaves of ash and oak that strew The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through, 'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green;

How much thy presence beautifies the ground! How sweet thy modest unaffected pride Glows on the sunny bank and wood's warm side! And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found, The schoolboy roams enchantedly along,

Plucking the fairest with a rude delight: While the meek shepherd stops his simple song, O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight; The welcome news of sweet returning spring.

The Thrush's Nest-A Sonnet.

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush
That overhung a molehill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound
With joy-and oft an unintruding guest,

I watched her secret toils from day to day; How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay. And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue:

And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.*

First-Love's Recollections.

First-love will with the heart remain
When its hopes are all gone by;
As frail rose-blossoms still retain

Their fragrance when they die:
And joy's first dreams will haunt the mind
With the shades 'mid which they sprung,
As summer leaves the stems behind
On which spring's blossoms, hung.
Mary, I dare not call thee dear,
I've lost that right so long;
Yet once again I vex thine ear
With memory's idle song.

I felt a pride to name thy name,
But now that pride hath flown,
And burning blushes speak my shame,
That thus I love thee on.

How loath to part, how fond to meet,
Had we two used to be;

At sunset, with what eager feet
I hastened unto thee!

Scarce nine days passed us ere we met
In spring, nay, wintry weather;
Now nine years' suns have risen and set,
Nor found us once together.

Thy face was so familiar grown,
Thyself so often nigh,

A moment's memory when alone,
Would bring thee in mine eye;

*Montgomery says quaintly but truly of this sonnet,Here we have in miniature the history and geography of a thrush's nest, so simply and naturally set forth, that one might think such strains

No more difficile

Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle.

But let the heartless critic who despises them try his own hand either at a bird's nest or a sonnet like this; and when he has succeeded in making the one, he may have some hope of being able to make the other.'

But now my very dreams forget
That witching look to trace;
Though there thy beauty lingers yet,
It wears a stranger's face.

When last that gentle cheek I prest,
And heard thee feign adieu,
I little thought that seeming jest
Would prove a word so true!
A fate like this hath oft befell

Even loftier hopes than ours; Spring bids full many buds to swell, That ne'er can grow to flowers.

Dawnings of Genius.

In those low paths which poverty surrounds,
The rough rude ploughman, off his fallow grounds
(That necessary tool of wealth and pride),

While moiled and sweating, by some pasture's side,
Will often stoop, inquisitive to trace
The opening beauties of a daisy's face;
Oft will he witness, with admiring eyes,
The brook's sweet dimples o'er the pebbles rise;
And often bent, as o'er some magic spell,
He'll pause and pick his shaped stone and shell:
Raptures the while his inward powers inflame,
And joys delight him which he cannot name;
Ideas picture pleasing views to mind,

For which his language can no utterance find;
Increasing beauties, freshening on his sight,
Unfold new charms, and witness more delight;
So while the present please, the past decay,
And in each other, losing, melt away.
Thus pausing wild on all he saunters by,
He feels enraptured, though he knows not why;
And hums and mutters o'er his joys in vain,
And dwells on something which he can't explain.
The bursts of thought with which his soul's perplexed,
Are bred one moment, and are gone the next;
Yet still the heart will kindling sparks retain,
And thoughts will rise, and Fancy strive again.
So have I marked the dying ember's light,
When on the hearth it fainted from my sight,
With glimmering glow oft redden up again,
And sparks crack brightening into life in vain;
Still lingering out its kindling hope to rise,
Till faint, and fainting, the last twinkle dies.

Dim burns the soul, and throbs the fluttering heart,
Its painful pleasing feelings to impart;
Till by successless sallies wearied quite,
The memory fails, and Fancy takes her flight:
The wick, confined within its socket, dies,
Borne down and smothered in a thousand sighs.

[Scenes and Musings of the Peasant Poet.]
[From the Village Minstrel."]

Each opening season, and each opening scene,
On his wild view still teemed with fresh delight;
E'en winter's storms to him have welcome been,
That brought him comfort in its long dark night,
As joyful listening, while the fire burnt bright,
Some neighbouring labourer's superstitious tale,
How 'Jack-a-lantern,' with his wisp alight,
To drown a 'nighted traveller once did fail,
He knowing well the brook that whimpered down the
vale.

And tales of fairyland he loved to hear,
Those mites of human forms, like skimming bees,
That fly and flirt about but everywhere;
The mystic tribes of night's unnerving breeze,
That through a lock-hole even creep with ease:
The freaks and stories of this elfin crew,
Ah! Lubin gloried in such things as these;
How they rewarded industry he knew,

And how the restless slut was pinched black and blue.

How ancient dames a fairy's anger feared,
From gossip's stories Lubin often heard;
How they on every night the hearthstone cleared,
And, 'gainst their visits, all things neat prepared,
As fays nought more than cleanliness regard;
When in the morn they never failed to share
Or gold or silver as their meet reward,
Dropt in the water superstition's care,

To make the charm succeed, had cautious placed there.

And thousands such the village keeps alive;
Beings that people superstitious earth,
That e'er in rural manners will survive,

As long as wild rusticity has birth

To spread their wonders round the cottage-hearth. On Lubin's mind these deeply were impressed; Oft fear forbade to share his neighbour's mirth: And long each tale, by fancy newly dressed, Brought fairies in his dreams, and broke his infant rest. He had his dreads and fears, and scarce could pas A churchyard's dreary mounds at silent night, But footsteps trampled through the rustling grass, And ghosts 'hind grave-stones stood in sheets of white;

Dread monsters fancy moulded on his sight; Soft would he step lest they his tread should hear, And creep and creep till past his wild affright; Then on wind's wings would rally, as it were, So swift the wild retreat of childhood's fancied fear. And when fear left him, on his corner-seat Much would he chatter o'er each dreadful tale; Tell how he heard the sound of 'proaching feet, And warriors jingling in their coats of mail; And lumping knocks as one would thump a flail; Of spirits conjured in the charnel floor; And many a mournful shriek and hapless wail, Where maids, self-murdered, their false loves deplore;

And from that time would vow to tramp on nights no

more.

O! who can speak his joys when spring's young

morn,

From wood and pasture, opened on his view! When tender green buds blush upon the thorn, And the first primrose dips its leaves in dew: Each varied charm how joyed would he pursue, Tempted to trace their beauties through the day; Gray-girdled eve and morn of rosy hue Have both beheld him on his lonely way, Far, far remote from boys, and their unpleasing play.

Sequestered nature was his heart's delight;
Him would she lead through wood and lonely plain,
Searching the pooty from the rushy dike;
And while the thrush sang her long-silenced strain,
He thought it sweet, and mocked it o'er again;
And while he plucked the primrose in its pride,
He pondered o'er its bloom 'tween joy and pain;
And a rude sonnet in its praise he tried,
Where nature's simple way the aid of art supplied.

The freshened landscapes round his routes unfurled,
The fine-tinged clouds above, the woods below,
Each met his eye a new-revealing world,
Delighting more as more he learned to know;
Each journey sweeter, musing to and fro.
Surrounded thus, not Paradise more sweet;
Enthusiasm made his soul to glow;

His heart with wild sensations used to beat;
As nature seemly sang, his mutterings would repeat.
Upon a molehill oft he dropt him down,
To take a prospect of the circling scene,
Marking how much the cottage roof's thatch brown
Did add its beauty to the budding green

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Of sheltering trees it humbly peeped between ; The stone-rocked wagon with its rumbling sound; The windmill's sweeping sails at distance seen; And every form that crowds the circling round, Where the sky, stooping, seems to kiss the meeting ground.

And dear to him the rural sports of May,
When each cot-threshold mounts its hailing bough,
And ruddy milkmaids weave their garlands gay,
Upon the green to crown the earliest cow;
When mirth and pleasure wear a joyful brow;
And join the tumult with unbounded glee,
The humble tenants of the pail and plough:
He loved old sports,' by them revived, to see,
But never cared to join in their rude revelry.

O'er brook-banks stretching, on the pasture-sward
He gazed, far distant from the jocund crew;
'Twas but their feats that claimed a slight regard;
Twas his-his pastimes lonely to pursue
Wild blossoms creeping in the grass to view,
Scarce peeping up the tiny bent as high,
Betinged with glossy yellow, red or blue,
Unnamed, unnoticed but by Lubin's eye,

That like low genius sprang, to bloom their day and die.

O! who can tell the sweets of May-day's morn,
To waken rapture in a feeling mind;

When the gilt east unveils her dappled dawn,
And the gay woodlark has its nest resigned,
As slow the sun creeps up the hill behind;
Morn reddening round, and daylight's spotless hue,
As seemingly with rose and lily lined;

While all the prospect round beams fair to view, Like a sweet opening flower with its unsullied dew.

Ah! often brushing through the dripping grass,
Has he been seen to catch this early charm,
Listening the 'love-song' of the healthy lass
Passing with milk-pail on her well-turned arm;
Or meeting objects from the rousing farm-
The jingling plough-teams driving down the steep,
Wagon and cart; and shepherd-dogs' alarm,
Raising the bleatings of unfolding sheep,

As o'er the mountain top the red sun 'gins to peep.
Nor could the day's decline escape his gaze;
He loved the closing as the rising day,
And oft would stand to catch the setting rays,
Whose last beams stole not unperceived away;
When, hesitating like a stag at bay,

The bright unwearied sun seemed loath to drop,
Till chaos' night-hounds hurried him away,
And drove him headlong from the mountain top,
And shut the lovely scene, and bade all nature stop.
With contemplation's stores his mind to fill,
O doubly happy would he roam as then,
When the blue eve crept deeper round the hill,
While the coy rabbit ventured from his den,
And weary labour sought his rest again;
Lone wanderings led him haply by the stream,
Where unperceived he 'joyed his hours at will,
Musing the cricket twittering o'er its dream,
Or watching o'er the brook the moonlight's dancing

beam.

And here the rural muse might aptly say, As sober evening sweetly siles along, How she has chased black ignorance away, And warmed his artless soul with feelings strong, To teach his reed to warble forth a song; And how it echoed on the even-gale, All by the brook the pasture-flowers among: But ah! such trifles are of no availThere's few to notice him, or hear his simple tale.

O Poverty! thy frowns were early dealt O'er him who mourned thee, not by fancy led To whine and wail o'er woes he never felt, Staining his rhymes with tears he never shed, And heaving sighs a mock song only bred : Alas! he knew too much of every pain That showered full thick on his unsheltered head; And as his tears and sighs did erst complain, His numbers took it up, and wept it o'er again.

JAMES AND HORACE SMITH.

JAMES SMITH (1775-1839) was a lively and amusing author both in prose and verse. His father, Mr Robert Smith, was an eminent legal practitioner in London, and solicitor to the Board of Ordnancea gentleman of learning and accomplishments, whose

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James Smith.

latter years were gratified by the talents and reputation of his two sons, James and Horace. James, the eldest, was educated at a school at Chigwell, in Essex, and was usually at the head of his class. For this retired schoolboy spot' he ever retained a strong affection, rarely suffering, as his brother relates, a long interval to elapse without paying it a visit, and wandering over the scenes that recalled the truant excursions of himself and chosen playmates, or the solitary rambles and musings of his youth. Two of his latest poems are devoted to his reminiscences of Chigwell. After the completion of his education, James Smith was articled to his father, was taken into partnership in due time, and eventually succeeded to the business, as well as to the appointment of solicitor to the Ordnance. With a quick sense of the ridiculous, a strong passion for the stage and the drama, and a love of London society and manners, Smith became a town wit and humorist-delighting in parodies, theatrical colloquies, and fashionable criticism. His first pieces appear to have been contributed to the Pic-Nic newspaper established by Colonel Henry Greville, which afterwards merged into The Cabinet, both being solely calculated for the topics and feelings of the day. A selection from the Pic-Nic papers, in two small volumes, was published in 1803. He next joined the writers for the London Review-a journal established by Cumberland the dramatist, on the novel principle of affixing the writer's name to his critique.

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The Review proved a complete failure. The system right, which had been originally offered to Mr Mur of publishing names was an unwise innovation, de-ray for L.20, was purchased by that gentleman, in stroying equally the harmless curiosity of the reader, and the critical independence of the author; and Cumberland, besides, was too vain, too irritable and poor, to secure a good list of contributors. Smith then became a constant writer in the Monthly Mirror (wherein Henry Kirke White first attracted the notice of what may be termed the literary world), and in this work appeared a series of poetical imitations, entitled Horace in London, the joint production of James and Horace Smith. These parodies were subsequently collected and published in one volume in 1813, after the success of the Rejected Addresses had rendered the authors famous. Some of the pieces display a lively vein of town levity and humour, but many of them also are very trifling and tedious. In one stanza, James Smith has given a true sketch of his own tastes and character :

Me toil and ease alternate share,
Books, and the converse of the fair,
(To see is to adore 'em);

With these, and London for my home,
I envy not the joys of Rome,

The Circus or the Forum!

To London he seems to have been as strongly at

tached as Dr Johnson himself. A confirmed metropolitan in all his tastes and habits, he would often

1819, after the sixteenth edition, for L.131. The articles written by James Smith consisted of imita tions of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, and a few travesties. Some of them are inimitable, particularly the parodies on Cobbett and Crabbe, which were also among the most popular. Horace Smith contributed imitations of Walter Scott, Moore, Monk Lewis, Lord Byron, W. T. Fitzgerald (whose Loyal Effusion' is irresistibly ludicrous for its extravagant adulation and fustian), Dr Johnson, &c. The amount of talent displayed by the two brothers was pretty equal; for none of James Smith's parodies are more felicitous than that of Scott by Horace. The popularity of the Rejected Addresses' seems to have satisfied the ambition of the elder poet. He afterwards confined himself to short anonymous pieces in the New Monthly Maga zine and other periodicals, and to the contribution of some humorous sketches and anecdotes towards Mr Mathews's theatrical entertainments, the authorship of which was known only to a few. The Country Cousins, Trip to France, and Trip to America, mostly written by Smith, and brought out by Mathews at the English Opera House, not only brought the witty writer a thousand pounds—a sum filled the theatre, and replenished the treasury, but to which, we are told, the receiver seldom made ejaculating, A thousand pounds for nonsense! allusion without shrugging up his shoulders, and Mr Smith was still better paid for a trifling exer

the late Mr Strahan, the king's printer, then suffer-
ing from gout and old age, though his faculties re-
mained unimpaired, he sent him next morning the
following jeu d'esprit :

Your lower limbs seemed far from stout
When last I saw you walk;
The cause I presently found out
When you began to talk.

The power that props the body's length,
In due proportion spread,

In you mounts upwards, and the strength
All settles in the head.

quaintly observe, that London was the best place in summer, and the only place in winter; or quote Dr Johnson's dogma-"Sir, the man that is tired of London is tired of existence." At other times hetion of his muse; for, having met at a dinner party would express his perfect concurrence with Dr Mosley's assertion, that in the country one is always maddened with the noise of nothing: or laughingly quote the Duke of Queensberry's rejoinder on being told one sultry day in September that London was exceedingly empty-" Yes, but it's fuller than the country." He would not, perhaps, have gone quite so far as his old friend Jekyll, who used to say, that "if compelled to live in the country, he would have the approach to his house paved like the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to drive up and down the street all day long;" but he would relate, with great glee, a story showing the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at a country house, when a gentleman, informing him that the family were all out, proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure-grounds. "Stroll! why, don't you see my gouty shoe ?" "Yes, but what then? you don't really mean to say that you have got the gout? I thought you had only put on that shoe to avoid being shown over the improvements."* There is some good-humoured banter and exaggeration in this dislike of ruralities; and accordingly we find that, as Johnson found his way to the remote Hebrides, Smith occasionally transported himself to Yorkshire and other places, the country seats of friends and noblemen. The 'Rejected Addresses' appeared in 1812, having engaged James and Horace Smith six weeks, and proving one of

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the luckiest hits in literature.' The directors of Drury Lane theatre had offered a premium for the best poetical address to be spoken on opening the

new edifice; and a casual hint from Mr Ward, secre

Mr Strahan was so much gratified by the compli
ment, that he made an immediate codicil to his
will, by which he bequeathed to the writer the sum
of L.3000! Horace Smith, however, mentions that
Mr Strahan had other motives for his generosity,
for he respected and loved the man quite as much
as he admired the poet. James made a happier,
though, in a pecuniary sense, less lucky epigram
on Miss Edgeworth:-

That refuge, Miss Edgeworth, can never be thine.
We every-day bards may 'anonymous' sign
Thy writings, where satire and moral unite,
Must bring forth the name of their author to light.
Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth;
The bad own their EDGE, and the good own their

WORTH.

The easy social bachelor-life of James Smith was tary to the theatre, suggested to the witty brothers perately, and at his club-dinner restricted himself to much impaired by hereditary gout. He lived ter the composition of a series of humorous addresses, his half-pint of sherry; but as a professed joker and professedly composed by the principal authors of the day. The work was ready by the opening of the over-indulgence and irregular hours. Attacks of 'diner out,' he must often have been tempted to theatre, and its success was almost unexampled. gout began to assail him in middle life, and he gra Eighteen editions have been sold; and the copy-dually lost the use and the very form of his lim bearing all his sufferings, as his brother states, with an undeviating and unexampled patience.' One of

* Memoir prefixed to Smith's Comic Miscellanies, 2 vols.

1841.

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POETS.

the stanzas in his poem on Chigwell displays his
philosophic composure at this period of his life :-

World, in thy ever busy mart
I've acted no unnoticed part-
Would I resume it? oh no!

Four acts are done, the jest grows stale;
The waning lamps burn dim and pale,
And reason asks-Cui bono?

He held it a humiliation to be ill, and never com-
plained or alluded to his own sufferings. He died
on the 24th December 1839, aged 65. Lady Bles-
sington said, If James Smith had not been a witty
man, he must have been a great man.' His extensive
information and refined manners, joined to an in-
exhaustible fund of liveliness and humour, and a
bappy uniform temper, rendered him a fascinating
companion. The writings of such a man give but
a faint idea of the original; yet in his own walk of
literature James Smith has few superiors. Anstey
comes most directly into competition with him; yet
it may be safely said that the Rejected Addresses'
will live as long as the New Bath Guide.'

The surviving partner of this literary duumvirate -the most constant and interesting, perhaps, since that of Beaumont and Fletcher, and more affectionate from the relationship of the parties-has distinguished himself by his novels and historical romances, and by his generosity to various literary men. Mr Horace Smith has also written some copies of verses, one of which, the Address to the Mummy, is a felicitous compound of fact, humour, and sentiment, forcibly and originally expressed.

The Theatre.-By the Rev. G. C. [Crabbe.]
'Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six,
Our long wax candles, with short cotton wicks,
Touched by the lamplighter's Promethean art,
Start into light, and make the lighter start:
To see red Phoebus through the gallery pane
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane,
While gradual parties fill our widened pit,
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit.

What various swains our motley walls contain !
Fashion from Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane;
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort,
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court;
From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain,
Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane;
The lottery corinorant, the auction shark,
The full-price master, and the half-price clerk;
Boys who long linger at the gallery door,

With pence twice five, they want but twopence more,
Till some Samaritan the twopence spares,
And sends them jumping up the gallery stairs.
Critics we boast who ne'er their malice baulk,

But talk their minds, we wish they'd mind their talk;
Big worded bullies, who by quarrels live,
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give;
Jews from St Mary Axe, for jobs so wary,
That for old clothes they'd even axe St Mary;
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate,
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait;
Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse
With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house.

Yet here, as elsewhere, chance can joy bestow,
Where scowling fortune seemed to threaten wo.
John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs's shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn cutter a safe employ;

In Holywell Street, St Pancras, he was bred
(At number twenty-seven, it is said),
Facing the pump, and near the Granby's head.
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down:
Pat was the urchin's name, a red-haired youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.
Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongues in awe,
The muse shall tell an accident she saw.

Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat;
But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat;
Down from the gallery the beaver flew,
And spurned the one, to settle in the two.
How shall he act! Pay at the gallery door
Two shillings for what cost when new but four!
Or till half price, to save his shilling, wait,
And gain his hat again at half-past eight?
Now, while his fears anticipate a thief,
John Mullins whispers, Take my handkerchief.
Thank you, cries Pat, but one won't make a line;
Take mine, cried Wilson; and, cried Stokes, take mine.
A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties,
Where Spitalfields with real India vies.
Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted hue,
Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue,
Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new.
George Green below, with palpitating hand,
Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band;
Upsoars the prize; the youth, with joy unfeigned,
Regained the felt, and felt what he regained,
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat
Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat. * *

The Baby's Debut.-By W. W. [Wordsworth.]
[Spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of
age, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by
Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter.]

My brother Jack was nine in May,
And I was eight on New Year's Day;
So in Kate Wilson's shop
Papa (he's my papa and Jack's)
Bought me, last week, a doll of wax,
And brother Jack a top.

Jack's in the pouts, and this it is,
He thinks mine came to more than his,
So to my drawer he goes,
Takes out the doll, and, oh my stars!
He pokes her head between the bars,
And melts off half her nose!

Quite cross, a bit of string I beg,
And tie it to his peg top's peg,

And bang, with might and main,
Its head against the parlour door:
Off flies the head, and hits the floor,
And breaks a window-pane.

This made him cry with rage and spite;
Well, let him cry, it serves him right.
A pretty thing, forsooth!

If he's to melt, all scalding hot,
Half my doll's nose, and I am not
To draw his peg top's tooth!
Aunt Hannah heard the window break,
And cried, 'O naughty Nancy Lake,
Thus to distress your aunt:
No Drury Lane for you to-day!'
And while papa said, ' Pooh, she may!'
Mamma said, 'No, she shan't!'
Well, after many a sad reproach,
They got into a hackney coach,

And trotted down the street.

I saw them go: one horse was blind;
The tails of both hung down behind;
Their shocs were on their feet.

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