I'm busy, now, with state affairs; I ask the price of rail-road shares, I watch the turns of stocks. I save a fortune in perfumes ;- I may be yet, what others are, Come shower or sunshine, hope or fear, My heart and lute are broken here ;- Lady, the mist is on my sight, The chill is on my brow; My day is night, my bloom is blight; TIME'S SONG. O'ER the level plains, where mountains greet me as I go, War his weary watch was keeping,—I have crushed his spear; Grief within her bower was weeping,—I have dried her tear; Pleasure caught a minute's hold,—then I hurried by, Power had won a throne of glory: where is now his fame ? Genius said, "I live in story:" who hath heard his name? Love beneath a myrtle bough whispered "Why so fast?" And the roses on his brow withered as I past. I have heard the heifer lowing o'er the wild wave's bed; I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed ; Where began my wandering? Memory will not say! Where will rest my weary wings? Science turns away! THE HOOPOE'S INVOCATION TO THE NIGHTINGALE. (From the Birds of Aristophanes, 1. 209.) WAKEN, dear one, from thy slumbers; Of a mother's agony. Echo, ere the murmurs fade, Bear them from the yew tree's shade Listens long, and loves to suit Peals from the immortal throng. GOOD NIGHT TO THE SEASON. "So runs the world away."-Hamlet. GOOD night to the Season !-'Tis over! Except my good uncle and spouse; Good night to the Season !-the lobbies, Their changes, and rumours of change, Which startled the rustic Sir Bobbies, And made all the Bishops look strange; The breaches, and battles, and blunders, Performed by the Commons and Peers; The Marquis's eloquent blunders, The Baronet's eloquent ears; Denouncings of Papists and treasons, And misunderstandings of notes. Good night to the Season !-the buildings The paintings, and plasterings, and gildings The hell, where the fiend in his glory Good night to the Season!-the dances, The pleasures which Fashion makes duties, Good night to the Season!-the rages Miss Fennel's macaw, which at Boodle's As hot and as black as a coal, In bearskins and grease, from the Pole. Good night to the Season !-the Toso, Miss Ayton, whose singing was so-so, The lovely one out of her drilling, Good night to the Season !-the splendour A bottle of perfume, a girdle, A lithographed Riego, full grown, Whom bigotry drew on a hurdle That artists might draw him on stone; A small panorama of Seville, A trap for demolishing flies, A caricature of the Devil, And a look from Miss Sheridan's eyes. |