I don't encourage idle dreams
Of poison, or of ropes;
I cannot dine on airy schemes,
I cannot sup on hopes!
Now milk I own is very fine,

Just foaming from the cow;
But yet, I want my pint of wine—

I'm not a lover now!

When Laura sings young hearts away,

I'm deafer than the deep; When Leonora goes to play, I sometimes go to sleep;

When Mary draws her white gloves out, I never dance, I vow

Too hot to kick one's heels about!—

I'm not a lover now!

I'm busy with the State affairs,
I prate of Pitt and Fox!

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'm not a lover now!

I may be yet what others are,
A boudoir's babbling fool;

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!

8

SCHOOL AND SCHOOL-FELLOWS.

TWELVE years ago I made a mock
Of filthy trades and traffics:

I wondered what they meant by stock;
I wrote delightful sapphics:

I knew the streets of Rome and Troy,
I supp'd with fates and furies;

Twelve years ago I was a boy,
A happy boy, at Drury's.

Twelve years ago!-how many a thought
Of faded paints and pleasures
Those whispered syllables have brought
From memory's hoarded treasures!

The fields, the forms, the beasts, the books,
The glories and disgraces,

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,
And sip my hock at Doodle's.

But often when the cares of life

Have set my temples aching,
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,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry:

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, Just Eton boys, grown heavy;

That I could bask in childhood's sun,
And dance o'er childhood's roses;
And find huge wealth in one pound one,
Vast wit and broken noses;
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!