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TO MY GRANDMOTHER.

(SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE BY MR. ROMNEY.)

HIS relative of mine

THIS

Was she seventy and nine

When she died?

By the canvas may be seen,

How she look'd at seventeen,

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TO MY GRANDMOTHER.

With her bridal-wreath, bouquet,

Lace, farthingale, and gay

Falbala,

-Were Romney's limning true,

What a lucky dog were you,

Grandpapa!

Her lips are sweet as love;

They are parting! Do they move?

Are they dumb?

Her eyes are blue, and beam

Beseechingly, and seem

[blocks in formation]

What funny fancy slips

From between these cherry lips?

Whisper me,

Sweet deity in paint,

What canon says I mayn't

Marry thee?.

TO MY GRANDMOTHER.

That good-for-nothing Time

Has a confidence sublime !

When I first

Saw this lady, in my youth,

Her winters had, forsooth,

Done their worst.

Her locks, as white as snow,

Once shamed the swarthy crow;

By and by,

That fowl's avenging sprite

Set his cruel foot for spite

Near her eye.

Her rounded form was lean,

And her silk was bombazine :

Well I wot,

With her needles would she sit,

9

And for hours would she knit,—

Would she not?

TO MY GRANDMOTHER.

Ah, perishable clay!

Her charms had dropped away

One by one:

But if she heaved a sigh

With a burthen, it was, "Thy

Will be done."

In travail, as in tears,

With the fardel of her years

Overprest,

In mercy she was borne

Where the weary and the worn

Are at rest.

I fain would meet you there ;-

If witching as you were,

Grandmamma,

This nether world agrees

That the better you must please

Grandpapa.

REPLY TO A LETTER ENCLOSING Α

LOCK OF HAIR.

́ES, you were false, and though I'm free,

YES

I still would be the slave of yore;

Then join'd our years were thirty-three,

And now, yes, now, I'm thirty-four.

And though you were not learned-well,
I was not anxious you should grow so ;-

I trembled once beneath her spell

Whose spelling was extremely so-so!

Bright season! Why will Memory

Still haunt the path our rambles took,

The sparrow's nest that made you cry,

The lilies captured in the brook?

I lifted you from side to side,

You seem'd as light as that poor sparrow ;

I know who wish'd it twice as wide,

I think you thought it rather narrow.

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