Next the drums they arouse,
But with dull row-de-dows,

And they give but a somnolent sound;
While the foot and horse, both,

Very slowly and loth,

Begin drowsily mustering round.

To the right and left hand,
They fall in, by command,
In a line that might be better dressed;
While the steeds blink and nod,

And the lancers think odd

To be roused like the spears from their rest.

With their mouth of wide shape,
Mortars seem all agape,

Heavy guns look more heavy with sleep;
And, whatever their bore,

Seem to think it one more

In the night such a field-day to keep.

Then the arms, christened small,
Fire no volley at all,

But go off, like the rest, in a doze ;

And the eagles, poor things,

Tuck their heads 'neath their wings,

And the band ends in tunes through the nose.

Till each pupil of Mars

Takes a wink like the stars

Open order no eye can obey:
If the plumes in their heads.

Were the feathers of beds,

Never top could be sounder than they!

So, just wishing good night,
Bows Napoleon polite ;

But instead of a loyal endeavor
To reply with a cheer,

Not a sound met his ear,

Though each face seemed to say, " Nap for ever!"

POETRY, PROSE, AND WORSE.

"Esaad Kiuprili solicited in verse permission to resign the government of Candia. The Grand Vizier, Hafiz Pasha, addressed a Ghazel to the Sultan to urge the necessity of greater activity in military preparations; and Murad, himself a poet, answered likewise in rhyme. Ghazi Gherai clothed in Ghazels his official complaint to the Sultan's preceptor. The Grand Vizier, Mustafa Pasha Bahir, made his reports to the Sultan in verse."-Vide VON HAMMER on Othoman Literature, in the Athenæum for Δίου. 14, 1835.

O TURKEY! how mild are thy manners,
Whose greatest and highest of men
Are all proud to be rhymers and scanners,
And wield the poetical pen!

Thy Sultan rejects-he refuses—
Gives orders to bowstring his man;
But he still will coquet with the Muses,
And make it a song if he can.

The victim cut shorter for treason,

Though conscious himself of no crime,
Must submit, and believe there is reason
Whose sentence is turned into rhyme!

He bows to the metrical firman,
As dulcet as song of the South,

And his head, like self-satisfied German,
Rolls off with its pipe in its mouth.

A tax would the Lord of the Crescent?
He levies it still in a lay,

And is perhaps the sole Bard at this present
Whose Poems are certain to pay.

State edicts unpleasant to swallow

He soothes with the charms of the Muse, And begs rays of his brother Apollo To gild bitter pills for the Jews.

When Jealousy sets him in motion,
The fair one on whom he looks black,
He sews up with a sonnet to Ocean,

And sends her to drown in her sack.

His gifts, they are poesies latent

With sequins rolled up in a purse, And in making Bashaws, by the patent Their tails are all "done into verse."

He sprinkles with lilies and roses
The path of each politic plan,
And, with eyes of Gazelles, discomposes
The beards of the solemn Divan.

The Czar he defies in a sonnet,
And then a fit nag to endorse
With his Pegasus, jingling upon it,
Reviews all his Mussulman horse.

He sends a short verse, ere he slumbers,
Express unto Meer Ali Beg,

Who returns in poetical numbers

The thousands that die of the plague.

He writes to the Bey of a city

In tropes of heroical sound, And is told in a pastoral ditty

The place is burnt down to the ground.

He sends a stern summons, but flowery,
To Melek Pasha, for some wrong,
Who describes the dark eyes of his Houri,
And throws off his yoke with a song.

His Vizier presents him a trophy,
Still, Mars to Calliope weds-
With an amorous hymn to St. Sophy,
A hundred of pickled Greek heads.

Each skull with a turban upon it
By Royal example is led:

Even Mesrour the Mute has a Sonnet
To Silence composed in his head.

E'en Hassan, while plying his hammer
To punish short weight to the poor,

With a stanza attempts to enamor
The ear that he nails to a door.

O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own;

Where the times are so muddy and murky,
We want a poetical tone!

Suppose that the Throne in addresses—
For verse there is plenty of scope—

In alluding to native distresses,

Just quoted the "Pleasures of Hope."

Methinks 'twould enliven and chirp us,
So dreary and dull is the time,

Just to keep a State Poet on purpose

To put the King's speeches in rhyme.

When bringing new measures before us,
As bills for the Sabbath or poor,
Let both Houses just chant them in chorus,
And perhaps they would get an encore !

No stanzas invite to pay taxes

In notes like the notes of the south;
But we're dunned by a fellow what axes
With prose and a pen in his mouth.

Suppose as no payers are eager

Hard times and a struggle to live-
That he sung at our doors like a beggar
For what one thought proper to give?

Our Law is of all things the dryest
That earth in its compass can show!

Of poetical efforts its highest

The rhyming its Doe with its Roe.

No documents tender and silky

Are writ such as poets would pen,
When a beadle is sent after Wilkie,*
Or bailiffs to very shy men.

* Vide the advertisement of "The Parish Beadle after Wilkie," issued by Moon & Co.