Maidens speed those simple orgies,

Betsey Jane with Betsey Ann.

As they love thee in St. Giles's

Thou art loved in Grosvenor Square: None of those engaging smiles is Unreciprocated there."

Often, ere yet thou hast hammer'd
Through thy four delicious airs,
Coins are flung thee by enamour'd
Housemaids upon area stairs:

E'en the ambrosial-whisker'd flunkey
Eyes thy boots and thine unkempt
Beard and melancholy monkey
More in pity than contempt..

There he woo'd and won a dusky
Bride, of instincts like his own;
Talk'd of love till he was husky
In a tongue to us unknown:

Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage
The potato ground, or cut
Down the unsuspecting savage

With the well-aim'd cocoa-nut:

Till the miscreant Stranger tore him Screaming from his blue-faced fair; And they flung strange raiment o'er him, Raiment which he could not bear:

Sever'd from the pure embraces

Of his children and his spouse,

He must ride fantastic races
Mounted on reluctant sows :

But the heart of wistful Jocko
Still was with his ancient flame
In the nutgroves of Morocco;
Or if not it's all the same.

Grinder, winsome grinsome Grinder!
They who see thee and whose soul
Melts not at thy charms, are blinder
Than a trebly-bandaged mole:

They to whom thy curt (yet clever)
Talk, thy music and thine ape,

KNOW not why my soul is rack'd: Why I ne'er smile as was my wont: I only know that, as a fact,

I don't,

I used to roam o'er glen and glade
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
And not unfrequently I made
A joke.

A minstrel's fire within me burn'd.

I'd sing, as one whose heart must break, Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd

To shake.

All day I sang; of love, of fame,

Of fights our fathers fought of yore,

Until the thing almost became

A bore.

I cannot sing the old songs now!

It is not that I deem them low;
'Tis that I can't remember how
They go.

I could not range the hills till high
Above me stood the summer moon:
And as to dancing, I could fly
As soon.

The sports, to which with boyish glee
I sprang erewhile, attract no more;
Although I am but sixty-three
Or four.

Nay, worse than that, I've seem'd of late
To shrink from happy boyhood-boys
Have grown so noisy, and I hate
A noise.

They fright me, when the beech is green,
By swarming up its stem for eggs :
They drive their horrid hoops between
My legs :-

It's idle to repine, I know;

I'll tell you what I'll do instead:
I'll drink my arrowroot, and go
To bed.

FIRST LOVE

MY earliest love, who, ere I number'd

Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!

Will a swallow-or a swift, or some bird—

Fly to her and say, I love her still?

Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:

Never, never-although three times married-
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.

No, mine own! though early forced to leave you,
Still my heart was there where first we met;
In those "Lodgings with an ample sea-view,"
Which were, forty years ago, "To Let."

There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest
Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun,-who (so they say) beholdest
Everything,-hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.

There she sat-so near me, yet remoter
Than a star-a blue-eyed bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.

And I loved her, and our troth we plighted
On the morrow by the shingly shore:
In a fortnight to be disunited.

By a bitter fate for evermore.

O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed!
To be young once more, and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I'd
Give no inconsiderable sum.

Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed, Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn: