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TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE.

"Rien n'est changé, mes amis."-Charles X.

I HEARD a sick man's dying sigh,
And an infant's idle laughter,

The Old Year went with mourning by

The New came dancing after!
Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle;
Bring boughs of cypress for the bier,

Fling roses on the cradle;

Mutes to wait on the funeral state;
Pages to pour the wine;

A requiem for Twenty-Eight,

And a health to Twenty-Nine!

Alas for human happiness!

Alas for human sorrow!

Our yesterday is nothingness,

What else will be our morrow?

Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,

And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses;
VOL. II.-8

While sages prate and courts debate,

The same stars set and shine;

And the world as it rolled through Twenty-Eight, Must roll through Twenty-Nine.

Some King will come, in Heaven's good time,

To the tomb his father came to ;

Some Thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim to;

Some suffering land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her;
And gather the links of the broken chain

To fasten them proudly round her;
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat and combine;

And much where we were in Twenty-Eight,
We shall be in Twenty-Nine.

O'Connell will toil to raise the Rent,
And Kenyon to sink the Nation;
And Sheil will abuse the Parliament,
And Peel the Association;

And the thought of bayonets and swords

Will make ex-chancellors merry;

And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords,
And throats in the County Kerry;

And writers of weight will speculate
On the Cabinet's design;

And just what it did in Twenty-Eight
It will do in Twenty-Nine.

John Thomas Mugg, on a lonely hill,

Will do a deed of mystery;

The Morning Chronicle will fill

Five columns with the history;
The jury will be all surprise,
The prisoner quite collected,
And Justice Park will wipe his eyes
And be very much affected;
And folks will relate poor Corder's fate
As they hurry home to dine,
Comparing the hangings of Twenty-eight
With the hangings of Twenty-nine.

And the Goddess of Love will keep her smiles,
And the God of Cups his orgies;

And there'll be riots in St. Giles,
And weddings in St. George's;
And mendicants will sup like Kings,
And Lords will swear like lacqueys;
And black eyes oft will lead to rings,
And rings will lead to black eyes;
And pretty Kate will scold her mate,
In a dialect all divine;

Alas! they married in Twenty-Eight,
They will part in Twenty-Nine.

And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of Pleasure grows less
And the heart of Friendship colder;

gay,

But still I shall be what I have been,

Sworn foe to Lady Reason,

And seldom troubled with the spleen,

And fond of talking treason;

I shall buckle my skait, and leap my gate,
And throw and write my line;

And the woman I worshipped in Twenty-Eight
I shall worship in Twenty-Nine.

(JANUARY 1, 1829.)

SONG FOR THE FOURTEENTH OF FEB

RUARY.

BY A GENERAL LOVER.

"Mille gravem telis, exhaustâ pene pharetrâ.”

APOLLO has peeped through the shutter,
And wakened the witty and fair;
The boarding-school belle's in a flutter,
The two-penny post's in despair;
The breath of the morning is flinging
A magic on blossom, on spray,
And cockneys and sparrows are singing
In chorus on Valentine's Day.

Away with ye, dreams of disaster,
Away with ye, visions of law,
Of cases I never shall master,

Of pleadings I never shall draw!
Away with ye, parchments and papers,
Red tapes, unread volumes, away!
It gives a fond lover the vapors
To see you on Valentine's Day.

I'll sit in my night-cap, like Hayley,

I'll sit with my arms crost, like Spain,

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