For months still I lingered in hope and in doubt,
While her form it grew wasted and thin;
But the last dying spark of existence went out,
As the oysters were just coming in!

She died, and she left me the saddest of men,
To indulge in a widower's moan;

O, I felt all the power of solitude then,

As I ate my first natives alone!

But when I beheld Virtue's friends in their cloaks,
And with sorrowful crape on their hats,

O, my grief poured a flood! and the out-of-door folks
Were all crying-I think it was sprats!

THE CARELESSE NURSE MAYD.

I SAWE a Mayd sitte on a Bank,
Beguiled by Wooer fayne and fond ;

And whiles His flatterynge Vowes She drank,
Her Nurselynge slipt within a Pond!

All Even Tide they Talkde and Kist,
For She was fayre and He was Kinde;
The Sunne went down before She wist
Another Sonne had sett behinde!

With angrie Hands and frownynge Browe,
That deemd Her owne the Urchine's Sinne,
She pluckt Him out, but he was nowe
Past being Whipt for fallynge in.

She then beginnes to wayle the Ladde
With Shrikes that Echo answerede round
O foolishe Mayd to be soe sadde

The Momente that her Care was drownd!

ODE TO PERRY,

THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN.

"In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum - fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity-slow and retentive in cases of deliberation - never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service all things as it were with all men, - ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mahometan, heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew, in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn." - PERRY'S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER.

O! PATENT Pen-inventing Perrian Perry!
Friend of the goose and gander,

That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,
About the happy fen,

Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,

For which they chant thy praise all Britain through, From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!

Friend to all Author-kind, Whether of Poet or of Proser,

Thou art composer unto the composer

Of pens, —— yea, patent vehicles for Mind

To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive

Perrygrinations through the realms of thought; Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive, An Omnibus of intellectual sort!

Modern improvements in their course we feel;
And while to iron-railroads heavy wares,

Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,

Mind flies on steel,

To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance;
Nay, penetrates, perchance,

To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!

In times bygone, when each man cut his quill,
With little Perryan skill,

What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appeared the writing implements home-made!
What Pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby,
Stumpy and stubby;

Some capable of ladye-billets neat,

Some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk,

And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,

Equal to ships, and wiggy heads, and swans!

To try in any common inkstands, then,
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,

Was like a dip into a lucky box :

You drew, and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurly-burly;
The next unslit, and square at end, a spade;
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turned upwards, like a rabbit's tail;

And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James or John,

Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making "roast-beef!”

Not so thy Perryan Pens!

True to their M's and N's,

They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split,
Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,
Or drop large dots,

Huge full-stop blots,

Where even semicolons were unfit.

They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge
In sable sludge

Nay, bought at proper "Patent Perryan" shops,
They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops:
Compose both prose and verse, the sad and merry
For when the editor, whose pains compile

The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile,
Vaunteth his articles, not women's, men's,
But lays "by the most celebrated Pens,"
What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry ?

Pleasant they are to feel!

So firm! so flexible! composed of steel
So finely tempered fit for tenderest Miss
To give her passion breath,

Or kings to sign the warrant stern of death
But their supremest merit still is this,
Write with them all your days,
Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays--
(No dramatist should ever be without 'em).
And, just conceive the bliss, -

There is so little of the goose about 'em,
One's safe from any hiss!

Ah! who can paint that first great awful night,
Big with a blessing or a blight,

When the poor dramatist, all fume and fret,
Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,
Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness

more f's yet:

Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat,
Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that;
Funeral, fate-foreboding sits in doubt,

Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage,
To see his play upon the stage come out
No stage to him! it is Thalia's carriage,
And he is sitting on the spikes behind it,
Striving to look as if he didn't mind it!

Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat
His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt:
He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat,
Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt,
That went a beaver in, comes out a rat!
Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright,
Upon Rienzi's night

Gnawed up one long kid glove, and all her bag,

Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail
Of water backing him, all down his spine, --
"The ice-brook's temper" - pleasant to the chine!
For fear that Simpson and his Co, should fail.
Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental prayer,
Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows where?
Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth,
While doubtful of Nell Gwynne's eventful luck,
Squeeze out and suck