"Before you had those timber toes,
Your love I did allow,

But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now !

"O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!

For all your jeering speeches, At duty's call, I left my legs, In Badajos's breaches!"

"Why then," said she, "you 've lost the feet

Of legs in war's alarms,

And now you cannot wear your
Upon your feats of arms!"

shoes

"O, false and fickle Nelly Gray!

I know why you refuse: Though I've no feet

some other man

Is standing in my shoes!

"I wish I ne'er had seen your face;

But, now, a long farewell!
For you will be my death; - alas
You will not be my Nell!"

Now, when he went from Nelly Gray,

His heart so heavy got,

And life was such a burthen grown,

It made him take a knot!

So round his melancholy neck

A rope he did entwine,
And, for his second time in life,

Enlisted in the Line!

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,

And, as his legs were off, of course,

-

He soon was off his legs!

And there he hung, till he was dead
any nail in town,-

As

For, though distress had cut him up,

It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,

To find out why he died

And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside!

THE FLOWER.

ALONE, across a foreign plain,
The exile slowly wanders,
And on his isle beyond the main
With saddened spirit ponders;

This lovely isle beyond the sea,
With all its household treasures,
Its cottage homes, its merry birds,
And all its rural pleasures;

Its leafy woods, its shady vales,
Its moors, and purple heather,
Its verdant fields bedecked with stars
His childhood loved to gather;

When, lo! he starts, with glad surprise,
Home-joys come rushing o'er him,
For "modest, wee, and crimson-tipped,”
He spies the flower before him!

With eager haste he stoops him down,
His eyes with moisture hazy,
And as he plucks the simple bloom

He murmurs, "Lawk-a-daisy!"

THE SEA-SPELL.

“Cauld, cauld, he lies beneath the deep.”—Old Scotch Ballad

Ir was a jolly mariner!

The tallest man of three,

He loosed his sail against the wind,

And turned his boat to sea:

The ink-black sky told every eye

A storm was soon to be!

But still that jolly mariner
Took in no reef at all,
For, in his pouch, confidingly,
He wore a baby's caul;

A thing, as gossip-nurses know,
That always brings a squall!

His hat was new, or, newly glazed,
Shone brightly in the sun;
His jacket, like a mariner's,
True blue as e'er was spun:

His ample trousers, like St. Paul,
Bore forty stripes save one.

And now the fretting, foaming tide
He steered away to cross;
The bounding pinnace played a game
Of dreary pitch and toss;

A game that, on the good dry land,
Is apt to bring a loss!

Good Heaven befriend that little boat,

And guide her on her way!

A boat, they say, has canvas wings,

But cannot fly away!

Though, like a merry singing-bird,
She sits upon the spray!

Still south by east the little boat,
With tawny sail, kept beating:
Now out of sight, between two waves,
Now o'er the horizon fleeting;
Like greedy swine that feed on mast,-
The waves her mast seemed eating!

The sullen sky grew black above,
The wave as black beneath;
Each roaring billow showed full soon
A white and foamy wreath;
Like angry dogs that snarl at first,
And then display their teeth.

The boatman looked against the wind,
The mast began to creak,

The wave, per saltum, came and dried, In salt, upon his cheek!

The pointed wave against him reared, As if it owned a pique!

Nor rushing wind nor gushing wave

The boatman could alarm,

But still he stood away to sea,

And trusted in his charm;

He thought by purchase he was safe,

And armed against all harm!

Now thick and fast and far aslant
The stormy rain came pouring,
He heard, upon the sandy bank,
The distant breakers roaring,-
A groaning intermitting sound,
Like Gog and Magog snoring!

The sea-fowl shrieked around the mast,
Ahead the grampus tumbled,

And far off, from a copper cloud,
The hollow thunder rumbled;

It would have quailed another heart,
But his was never humbled.

For why? he had that infant's caul;
And wherefore should he dread?
Alas! alas! he little thought,
Before the ebb-tide sped,-

That, like that infant, he should die,
And with a watery head!

The rushing brine flowed in apace;
His boat had ne'er a deck:
Fate seemed to call him on, and he
Attended to her beck;

And so he went, still trusting on,
Though reckless - to his wreck !

For as he left his helm, to heave
The ballast-bags a-weather,

Three monstrous seas came roaring on,

Like lions leagued together.

The two first waves the little boat

Swam over like a feather,

The two first waves were past and gone,

And sinking in her wake;

The hugest still came leaping on,

And hissing like a snake.

Now helm a-lee! for through the midst

The monster he must take!

Ah, me! it was a dreary mount!

Its base as black as night,

Its top of pale and livid green,

Its crest of awful white,