I pray, sir, how like you the ladies,

Since you've quitted the land of your birth?

I have heard the dark donnas of Cadiz

Are the loveliest women on earth.

The Italians are lively and witty,

But I ne'er could their manners endure;

Nor do I think French women pretty,

Though they have a most charming tournure!

I was told

you were flirting at Calais,
And next were intriguing at Rome;
But I smiled at their impotent malice,
Yet I must say I wished you at home!
Though I kept what I fancied in petto,
And felt you would ever be true,

Yet I dreamed of the murderer's stiletto
Each night—and its victim was you!

I'm arrived at the end of my paper,
So, dearest, you'll not think it rude,
If I ring for my seal and a taper,

And think it high time to conclude.

P. S.-You may buy me a dress like Selina's,
Her complexion's so much like my own;

And don't fail to call at Farina's

For a case of his Eau de Cologne.

And whate'er your next letter announces,
Let it also intelligence bring,

If the French have left off the deep flounces,
And what will be worn for the Spring!

TIME'S CHANGES.

I SAW her once--so freshly fair
That, like a blossom just unfolding,

She open'd to Life's cloudless air;

And Nature joy'd to view its moulding :
Her smile it haunts my memory yet—

Her cheeks fine hue divinely glowing-
Her rosebud mouth-her eyes of jet—
Around on all their light bestowing:
Oh! who could look on such a form,
So nobly free, so softly tender,
And darkly dream that earthly storm

Should dim such sweet, delicious splendour!

For in her mein, and in her face,

And in her young step's fairy lightness,

Nought could the raptured gazer trace

But Beauty's glow, and Pleasure's brightness.

I saw her twice-an alter'd charm

But still of magic, richest, rarest,

Than girlhood's talisman less warm,

Though yet of earthly sights the fairest :

Upon her breast she held a child,
The very image of its mother;
Which ever to her smiling smiled,

They seem'd to live but in each other :-
But matron cares, or lurking wo,

Her thoughtless, sinless look had banish'd,

And from her cheek the roseate glow

Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanish'd; Within her eyes, upon her brow,

Lay something softer, fonder, deeper, As if in dreams some vision'd wo

Had broke the Elysium of the sleeper.

I saw her thrice-Fate's dark decree

In widow's garments had array'd her, Yet beautiful she seem'd to be,

As even my reveries portrayed her;

The glow, the glance had pass'd away,
The sunshine, and the sparkling glitter;

Still, though I noted pale decay,

The retrospect was scarcely bitter; For, in their place a calmness dwelt,

Serene, subduing, soothing, holy;

In feeling which, the bosom felt

That every louder mirth is folly A pensiveness, which is not grief,

A stillness-as of sunset streaming

A fairy glow on flower and leaf,

Till earth looks on like a landscape dreaming.

A last time-and unmoved she lay,
Beyond Life's dim, uncertain river,

A glorious mould of fading clay,

From whence the spark had fled for ever! I gazed-my breast was like to burst

And, as I thought of years departed,

The years wherein I saw her first,

When she, a girl, was tender-hearted—

And, when I mused on later days,

As moved she in her matron duty,

A happy mother, in the blaze

Of ripen'd hope, and sunny beauty

I felt the chill-I turn d aside

Bleak Desolation's cloud came o'er me,

And Being seem'd a troubled tide,

Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me!