Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses:
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 gay,
And the heart of friendship colder;
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 FEBRUARY.

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 vapours
To see you on Valentine's Day.

SONG FOR THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.

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

I'll sit with my arms crost, like Spain,
Till joys, which are vanishing daily,
Come back in their lustre again :
Oh! shall I look over the waters,
Or shall I look over the way,

177

For the brightest and best of Earth's daughters, To rhyme to, on Valentine's Day?

Shall I crown with my worship, for fame's sake, Some goddess whom Fashion has starred, Make puns on Miss Love and her namesake, pray for a pas with Brocard?

Or

Shall I flirt, in romantic idea,

With Chester's adorable clay,

*

Or whisper in transport "Si mea
Cum Vestris"-on Valentine's Day?

Shall I kneel to a Sylvia or Celia,
Whom no one e'er saw, or may see,

A fancy-drawn Laura Amelia,

An ad libit. Anna Marie ?

Shall I court an initial with stars to it,
Go mad for a G. or a J.,

Get Bishop to put a few bars to it,

And print it on Valentine's Day?

* "Si mea cum vestris valuissent votą !"-OVID, Met. VOL. II.

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