Kind Mater smiles again to me,

As bright as when we parted;
I seem again the frank, the free,
Stout-limbed, and simple-hearted!
Pursuing every idle dream,

And shunning every warning;
With no hard work but Bovney stream,
No chill except Long Morning:

Now stopping Harry Vernon's ball

That rattled like a rocket;

Now hearing Wentworth's "Fourteen all!"

And striking for the pocket;

Now feasting on a cheese and flitch,

Now drinking from the pewter;

Now leaping over Chalvey ditch,
Now laughing at my tutor.

Where are my friends? I am alone;
No playmate shares my beaker:

Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,
And some before the Speaker;

And some compose a tragedy,

And some compose a rondo;
And some draw sword for Liberty,
And some draw pleas for John Doe.

Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes
Without the fear of sessions;
Charles Medlar loathed false quantities,
As much as false professions;
Now Mill keeps order in the land,

A magistrate pedantic;

And Medlar's feet repose

unscanned

Beneath the wide Atlantic.

Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din,

Does Dr. Martext's duty;

And Mullion, with that monstrous chin,

Is married to a Beauty;

And Darrell studies, week by week,

His Mant, and not his Manton;

And Ball, who was but poor at Greek,

And I am eight-and-twenty now; –

The world's cold chains have bound me; And darker shades are on my brow

And sadder scenes around me:

In Parliament I fill my seat,

With

many other noodles;

And lay my head in Jermyn Street,
And sip my hock at Boodle's.

But often, when the cares of life
Have set my temples aching,

When visions haunt me of a wife,
When duns await my waking,
When Lady Jane is in a pet,
Or Hoby in a hurry,

When Captain Hazard wins a bet,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry,—

For hours and hours I think and talk
Of each remembered hobby;

I long to lounge in Poets' Walk,

To shiver in the lobby;

I wish that I could run away

From House, and Court, and Levee, Where bearded men appear to-day Just Eton boys grown heavy,

That I could bask in childhood's sun
And dance o'er childhood's roses,
And find huge wealth in one pound one,
Vast wit in broken noses,

And play Sir Giles at Datchet Lane,

And call the milk-maids Houris,

That I could be a boy again,-
A happy boy,-at Drury's.

PALINODIA

Nec meus hic sermo est, sed quem præcepit. - HORACE.

THERE was a time, when I could feel
All passion's hopes and fears;

And tell what tongues can ne'er reveal
By smiles, and sighs, and tears.

The days are gone! no more—no more
The cruel Fates allow;

And, though I'm hardly twenty-four,

I'm not a lover now.

Lady, the mist is on my sight,

The chill is on my brow;

My day is night, my bloom is blight;
I'm not a lover now!

I never talk about the clouds,
I laugh at girls and boys,

I'm growing rather fond of crowds,
And very fond of noise;