Or muse upon thy country's laws,
Or strike thy country's lute;

And patriot hands shall sound applause,
And lovely lips be mute.

Go, dig the diamond from the wave,
The treasure from the mine;

Enjoy the wreath, the gold, the grave,―
No woman's heart is thine !

"I charm thee from the agony
Which others feel or feign;
From anger, and from jealousy,
From doubt, and from disdain ;
I bid thee wear the scorn of years
Upon the cheek of youth,
And curl the lip at passion's tears,
And shake the head at truth;
While there is bliss in revelry,
Forgetfulness in wine,

Be thou from woman's love as free
As woman is from thine !"

THE MODERN NECTAR.

ONE day, as Bacchus wandered out

From his own gay and glorious heaven,

To see what mortals were about

Below, 'twixt six o'clock and seven, And laugh at all the toils and tears, The sudden hopes, the causeless fears, The midnight songs, the morning smarts, The aching heads, the breaking hearts,

Which he and his fair crony Venus
Within the month had sown between us,
He lighted by chance on a fiddling fellow
Who never was known to be less than mellow,
A wandering poet, who thought it his duty
To feed upon nothing but bowls and beauty,
Who worshipped a rhyme, and detested a quarrel,
And cared not a single straw for laurel,
Holding that grief was sobriety's daughter,
And loathing critics, and cold water.

Ere day on the Gog-Magog hills had fainted,
The god and the minstrel were quite acquainted;
Beneath a tree, in the sunny weather,

They sate them down, and drank together:
They drank of all fluids that ever were poured
By an English lout, or a German lord,

Rum and shrub, and brandy and gin,

One after another, they stowed them in,

Claret of Carbonell, porter of Meux,

Champagne which would waken a wit in dukes, Humble Port, and proud Tokay,

Persico, and Crême de Thé,

The blundering Irishman's Usquebaugh,
The fiery Welshman's Cwrw da;
And after toasting various names
Of mortal and immortal flames,

And whispering more than I or you know
Of Mistress Poll, and Mistress Juno,
The god departed, scarcely knowing
A Zephyr's from a nose's blowing,
A frigate from a pewter flagon,

Or Thespis from his own stage waggon;
And rolling about like a barrel of grog,
He went up to heaven as drunk as a hog!

"Now may I," he lisped, "for ever sit
In Lethe's darkest and deepest pit,
Where dulness everlasting reigns

O'er the quiet pulse and the drowsy brains,
Where ladies jest, and lovers laugh,

And noble lords are bound in calf,

And Zoilus for his sins rehearses

Old Bentham's prose, old Wordsworth s verses, If I have not found a richer draught

Than ever yet Olympus quaffed

Better and brighter and dearer far

Than the golden sands of Pactolus are!"

And then he filled in triumph up,

To the highest top sparkle, Jove's beaming cup, And pulling up his silver hose,

And turning in his tottering toes

(While Hebe, as usual, the mischievous gipsy,
Was laughing to see her brother tipsy),
He said" May it please your high Divinity,
This nectar is-Milk Punch at Trinity!"

AN EPITAPH

On the late King of the Sandwich Islands.
1825.

BENEATH the marble, mud, or moss,
Which e'er his subjects shall determine,

Entombed in eulogies and dross,

The Island King is food for vermin.

Preserved by scribblers and by salt
From Lethe and sepulchral vapours,
His body fills his father's vault,

His character, the daily papers.

Well was he framed for royal seat;
Kind, to the meanest of his creatures,
With tender heart and tender feet,
And open purse and open features;
The ladies say who laid him out,

And earned thereby the usual pensions,
They never wreathed a shroud about
A corpse of more genteel dimensions.

He warred with half-a-score of foes,
And shone, by proxy, in the quarrel;
Enjoyed hard fights and soft repose,
And deathless debt and deathless laurel
His enemies were scalped and flayed
Whene'er his soldiers were victorious,
And widows wept and paupers paid

To make their sovereign ruler glorious;

And days were set apart for thanks,

And prayers were said by pious readers, And laud was lavished on the ranks,

And laurel lavished on their leaders; Events are writ by History's pen,

Though causes are too much to care for ; Fame talks about the where and when, While Folly asks the why and wherefore.

In peace he was intensely gay
And indefatigably busy,

Preparing gewgaws every day,
And shows to make his subjects dizzy,
And hearing the report of guns,
And signing the report of gaolers,
And making up receipts for buns,
And patterns for the army tailors,

And building carriages and boats,
And streets, and chapels, and pavilions,

And regulating all the coats,

And all the principles of millions, And drinking homilies and gin,

And chewing pork and adulation, And looking backwards upon sin, And looking forward to salvation.

The people, in his happy reign,
Were blest beyond all other nations;
Unharmed by foreign axe or chain,
Unhealed by civil innovations;
They served the usual logs and stones
With all the usual rites and terrors,
And swallowed all their father's bones,
And swallowed all their father's errors.

When the fierce mob, with clubs and knives, All vowed that nothing should content them, But that their representatives

Should actually represent them,

He interposed the proper checks,

By sending troops with drums and banners

To cut their speeches short, and necks,

And break their heads to mend their manners,