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He met a dustman ringing a bell,

And he gave him a mortal thrust; For himself, by law, since Adam's flaw, Is contractor for all our dust.

He saw a sailor mixing his grog,

And he marked him out for slaughter;
For on water he scarcely had cared for death,
And never on rum-and-water.

Death saw two players playing at cards,
But the game was n't worth a dump,
For he quickly laid them flat with a spade,
To wait for the final trump!

THE PROGRESS OF ART.

-

O HAPPY time! Art's early days!
When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!

When great Rembrandt but little seemed,
And such Old Masters all were deemed
As nothing to the young!

Some scratchy strokes — abrupt and few,
So easily and swift I drew,

Sufficed for my design;

My sketchy, superficial hand,

Drew solids at a dash-and spanned

A surface with a line.

Not long my eye was thus content,

But grew more critical

my bent

Essayed a higher walk;

I copied leaden eyes in lead-
Rheumatic hands in white and red,
And gouty feet in chalk.

Anon my studious art for days
Kept making faces - happy phrase,
For faces such as mine!

Accomplished in the details then,
I left the minor parts of men,
And drew the form divine.

Old gods and heroes-Trojan-Greek,
Figures-long after the antique,
Great Ajax justly feared;
Hectors, of whom at night I dreamt,
And Nestor, fringed enough to tempt
Bird-nesters to his beard.

A Bacchus, leering on a bowl,
A Pallas, that out-stared her owl,
A Vulcan very lame;

A Dian stuck about with stars,

With my right hand I murdered Mars
(One Williams did the same.)

But tired of this dry work at last,
Crayon and chalk aside I cast,

And gave my brush a drink.
Dipping" as when a painter dips
In gloom of earthquake and eclipse,".
That is - in Indian ink.

O then, what black Mont Blancs arose,
Crested with soot, and not with snows:
What clouds of dingy hue!

In spite of what the bard has penned,
I fear the distance did not "lend

Enchantment to the view."

Not Radclyffe's brush did e'er design
Black forests half so black as mine,

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Or lakes so like a pall;
The Chinese cake dispersed a ray
Of darkness, like the light of Day
And Martin, over all.

Yet urchin pride sustained me still;
I gazed on all with right good will,
And spread the dingy tint;

"No holy Luke helped me to paint;
The Devil, surely not a Saint,
Had any finger in 't!"

But colors came! —like morning light,
With gorgeous hues displacing night,
Or Spring's enlivened scene:
At once the sable shades withdrew;
My skies got very, very blue;
My trees, extremely green.

And, washed by my cosmetic brush,
How Beauty's cheek began to blush!
With lock of auburn stain-

(Not Goldsmith's Auburn)—nut-brown hair,
That made her loveliest of the fair;
Not "loveliest of the plain!"

Her lips were of vermilion hue;
Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue,
Set all my heart in flame!

A

young Pygmalion, I adored

The maids I made - but time was stored

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Perspective dawned and soon I saw

My houses stand against its law;

And "keeping" all unkept!

My beauties were no longer things
For love and fond imaginings;

But horrors to be wept!

Ah! why did knowledge ope my eyes?
Why did I get more artist-wise?

It only serves to hint

What grave

defects and wants are mine;

That I'm no Hilton in design

In nature no Dewint!

Thrice happy time! - Art's early days!
When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!

When great Rembrandt but little seemed,
And such Old Masters all were deemed
As nothing to the young!

A FAIRY TALE.

ON Hounslow heath- and close beside the road,
As western travellers may oft have seen,-
A little house some years ago there stood,
A minikin abode;

And built like Mr. Birkbeck's, all of wood;
The walls of white, the window-shutters green;
Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and West,
(Though now at rest,)

On which it used to wander to and fro,

Because its master ne'er maintained a rider,
Like those who trade in Paternoster Row;

But made his business travel for itself,
Till he had made his pelf,

And then retired if one may call it so.
Of a roadsider.

Perchance, the very race and constant riot
Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran,
Made him more relish the repose and quiet

Of his now sedentary caravan;

Perchance, he loved the ground because 't was common, And so he might impale a strip of soil,

That furnished, by his toil,

Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman;
And five tall hollyhocks, in dingy flower.
Howbeit, the thoroughfare did no ways spoil
His peace, unless, in some unlucky hour,

A stray horse came and gobbled up his bower!
But, tired of always looking at the coaches,

The same to come,-- when they had seen them one day! And, used to brisker life, both man and wife

Began to suffer N U E's approaches,

And feel retirement like a long wet Sunday,-
So, having had some quarters of school-breeding,
They turned themselves, like other folks, to reading;
But setting out where others nigh have done,

And being ripened in the seventh stage,
The childhood of old age,

Began, as other children have begun,-
Not with the pastorals of Mr. Pope,
Or Bard of Hope,

Or Paley ethical, or learned Porson,-
But spelt, on Sabbaths, in St. Mark, or John,
And then relaxed themselves with Whittington,
Or Valentine and Orson

But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con,
And being easily melted in their dotage,

Slobbered, and kept

Reading, and wept

Over the White Cat, in their wooden cottage.

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