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Beyond all things a baby

Is to the schoolgirl dear;

Next to herself the nursemaid loves

Her dashing grenadier;

Only with life the sailor

Parts from the British flag;

While one hope lingers, the cracksman's fingers

Drop not his hard-earned 'swag.'

But, as hares do my second

Thro' green Calabria's copses,

As females vanish at the sight
Of short-horns and of wopses;

So, dropping forks and teaspoons,

[blocks in formation]

They gave him-did the judges

As much as was his due.

And, Saxon, should'st thou e'er be led

To deem this tale untrue;

Then-any night in winter,

When the cold north wind blows,

And bairns are told to keep out cold

By tallowing the nose:

When round the fire the elders

Are gathered in a bunch,

And the girls are doing crochet,

And the boys are reading Punch :—

Go thou and look in Leech's book;

There haply shalt thou spy

A stout man on a staircase stand,

With aspect anything but bland,

And rub his right shin with his hand,

To witness if I lie.

PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

Introductory.

RT thou beautiful, O my daughter, as the

ᎪᎡᎢ

budding rose of April?

Are all thy motions music, and is poetry throned in

thine eye?

Then hearken unto me; and I will make the bud

a fair flower,

I will plant it upon the bank of Elegance, and water it with the water of Cologne;

And in the season it shall "come out," yea bloom,

the pride of the parterre;

Ladies shall marvel at its beauty, and a Lord shall

pluck it at the last.

H

Of Propriety.

Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Pole

star

Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair;

Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society;

The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall ap

proach unblamed her Eros.

Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being

naked;

Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice:

And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not

herself again.

I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the

Yew,

Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in im

penetrable shade;

Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked

a tree clipt into shape,

(The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilahshears of Decorum ;)

And I said, "Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!"

I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over

the blue sky,

And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo!

I blessed him as he rose;

Foolish for far better is the trained boudoir

bulfinch,

Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and me

chanically draweth up water:

And the reinless steed of the desert, though his

neck be clothed with thunder,

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