Too hot to kick one's heels about! I'm not a lover now! I'm busy with the State affairs, I ask the price of railroad shares, I watch the turn of stocks. And this is life-no verdure blooms. Upon the withered bough; I save a fortune in perfumes- I may be yet what others are, The flattered star of bench and bar, A party's chief or tool. Come shower or sunshine-hope or fear, The palace or the plough, My heart and lute are broken here I'm not a lover now! Lady, the mist is on my sight, The chill is on my brow, My day is night, my bloom is blight, I'm not a lover now! SCHOOL AND SCHOOL-FELLOWS. TWELVE years ago I made a mock I wondered what they meant by stock; I knew the streets of Rome and Troy, Twelve years ago I was a boy, Twelve years ago!-how many a thought The fields, the forms, the beasts, the books, The voices of dear friends, the looks Of old familiar faces. Where are my friends ?-I am alone, No playmate shares my beaker Some lie beneath the church-yard stone, And some before the Speaker; And some compose a tragedy, And some compose a rondo; And some draw sword for liberty, And some draw pleas for John Doe. Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes, Without the fear of sessions; Charles Medler loath'd false quantities, As much as false professions; Now Mill keeps order in the land, A magistrate pedantic ; And Medler's feet repose unscann'd, Beneath the wide Atlantic. Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din, Does Dr. Martext's duty; And Mullion, with that monstrous chin, Is married to a beauty; And Darrel studies, week by week, His Mant and not his Manton; And Ball, who was but poor at Greek, And I am eight-and-twenty now The world's cold chain has bound me ; And darker shades are on my brow, And sadder scenes around me: In Parliament I fill my seat, With many other noodles; And lay my head in Germyn-street, But often when the cares of life When visions haunt me of a wife, When duns await my waking, When lady Jane is in a pet, Or Hobby in a hurry, When Captain Hazard wins a bet, For hours and hours, I think and talk Of each remember'd hobby; I long to lounge in Poet's Walk— To shiver in the lobby; I wish that I could run away From house and court, and levee, Where bearded men appear to-day, That I could bask in childhood's sun, And find huge wealth in one pound one, And pray Sir Giles at Datchet Lane, And call the milk-maids Houris; That I could be a boy again— A happy boy at Drury's! |