"Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write
Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;
Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,
And turn like tiger hunted to its den-
How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!
And stands abash'd, discover'd and forlorn !

Had it been only cusp'd-but gibbous-then
It had gone down-but Faith drew back in scorn,
And would not swallow it-without a horn!

"I am in occultation,-that is plain :

My culmination's past,-that's quite as clear,
But think not I will suffer your disdain
To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.
Whate'er my pangs, they shall be buried here;
No murmur, not a sigh,-shall thence exhale :
Smile on,—and for your own peculiar sphere
Choose some eccentric path,-you cannot fail,
And pray stick on a most portentous tail!

"Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay;
For me, I never felt so well and merry—
As for the bran-new idol of the day,

Monkey or man, I am indifferent-very!
Nor e'en will ask who is the Happy Jerry;
My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,

But let me hint that you will want a wherry, Three weeks' spring-tide, and not a chance of neap, Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!

"Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend, Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night

No more of that-the lover's at an end. Yet if I may advise you, as a friend, Before you next pen sentiments so fond,

Study your cycles-I would recommend Our Airy-and let South be duly conn'd, And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.*

幣

* Airy, South, and Pond, English Astronomers.

"Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!
Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,
I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,
Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,

Or Boothia Felix-happy clime of ice!
For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,
Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,

Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon,
Or roaming o'er-The Mountains of the Moon!

"What matters where? my world no longer owns
That dear meridian spot from which I dated
Degrees of distance, hemispheres and zones,
A globe all blank and barren and belated.
What matters where my future life be fated?
With Lapland hordes, or Koords, or Afric peasant,
A squatter in the western woods located,
What matters where? My bias, at the present,
Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!

"Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!
As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:
I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,

I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,
However I may die, transfix'd by Tartars,
By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled,
By shark or cayman snapt above the garters,
By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled,

Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,

"Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake,

Or smother'd in the sandy hot simoom, Or crush'd in Chili by earth's awful quake, Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb,

Or dirged by syrens and the billows' boom,
Or stiffen'd to a stock 'mid Alpine snows,

Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom,
Or suck'd by Vampyres to a last repose,
Or self destroy'd, impatient of my woes;

"Still fare you well, however I may fare,

A fare perchance to the Lethean shore, Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air,

Or dash'd down cataracts with dreadful roar : Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core, This hand you should have claim'd in church or minster, Some cannibal may gnaw"-she read no moreProne on the carpet fell the senseless spinster, Losing herself, as 'twere, in Kidderminster!

Of course of such a fall the shock was great;
In rush'd the father, panting from the shop,
In rush'd the mother, without cap on tête,

Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop;
The cook to change her apron did not stop,
The charwoman next scrambled up the stair,-
All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop,
And then they stand and smother round the chair,
Exclaiming in a chorus, "Give her air!"

One sears her nostrils with a burning feather,
Another rams a phial up her nose

A third crooks all her finger-joints together,
A fourth rips up her laces and her bows,
While all by turns keep trampling on her toes,
And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump
A sudden drench that down her thorax goes,

As if in fetching her-some wits so jump-
She must be fetch'd with water like a pump!

No wonder that thus drench'd, and wrench'd, and gall'd, As soon as possible, from syncope's fetter

Her senses had the sense to be recall'd,

"I'm better that will do-indeed I'm better," She cried to each importunate besetter; Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother, The prudent parent seized the lover's letter, (Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother) And read it thro' from one end to the other.

From first to last, she never skipp'd a word-
For young Lorenzo of all youths was one
So wise, so good, so moral she averr'd,

So clever, quite above the common run—
She made him sit by her, and call'd him son,
No matrimonial suit, e'en Duke's or Earl's,

So flatter'd her maternal feelings-none!
For mothers always think young men are pearls
Who come and throw themselves before their girls.

And now, at warning signal from her finger,
The servants most reluctantly withdrew,
But list'ning on the stairs contrived to linger;
For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue,
At last the features of her parent knew,
And summoning her breath and vocal pow'rs,

"Oh, mother!" she exclaimed-"Oh, is it trueOur dear Lorenzo "-the dear name drew show'rs— "Ours,” cried the mother, "pray don't call him ours,

"I never liked him, never, in my days!"

["Oh yes-you did "said Ellen with a sob,] "There always was a something in his ways-'

["So sweet-so kind,” said Ellen, with a throb,] "His very face was what I call a snob, And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons, He had a sort of air of the swell mob;

I'm sure when he has come of afternoons
To tea, I've often thought-I'll watch my spoons!"

“The spoons!” cried Ellen, almost with a scream, "Oh cruel-false as cruel-and unjust!

He that once stood so high in your esteem!"
"He!" cried the dame, grimacing her disgust,
I like him!-yes-as any body must
An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil :

Didn't he bring you Bonaparty's bust?
Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil—
My favourite was always Mr. Neville.

"Lorenzo ?—I should like, of earthly things,

To see him hanging forty cubits high;

Doesn't he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?
Nay, in this very letter bid you try
To make yourself particular, and tie
A tail on a prodigious tail!-Oh, daughter!
And don't he ask you down his area-fie!

And recommend to cut your being shorter,

With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?"

Alas! to think how readers thus may vary

A writer's sense!-What mortal would have thought Lorenzo's hint about Professors Airy

And Pond to such a likeness could be brought! Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught To make a comet of poor Ellen's moon,

Could furnish forth an image so distraught, As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon, Tail'd-like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!

And yet, whate'er absurdity the brains

May hatch, it ne'er wants wet-nurses to suckle it: Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains

To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;

No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it

To jingle bell-like on his empty head,

No mental mud-but some will knead and knuckle it, And fancy they are making fancy-bread ;

No ass has written, but some ass has read.

No dolts could lead if others did not follow em,
No Hahnemann could give decillionth drops,

If any man could not be got to swallow 'em;

But folly never comes to such full stops.
As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps
Of all Lorenzo's meanings, heads and tails,

The father seized upon her malaprops

"My girl down areas-of a night! 'Ods nails! I'll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!