I used to singe his powdered wig, Alack the change! in vain I look For haunts in which my boyhood trifled,The level lawn, the trickling brook, The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled : The church is larger than before; You reach it by a carriage entry; It holds three hundred people more, And pews are fitted up for gentry. Sit in the Vicar's seat: you'll hear II. QUINCE. "Fallentis semita vitæ."-HOR. NEAR a small village in the West, Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best There stood-alas ! it stands no more!- My good friend Quince was lord and master. Welcome was he in hut and hall To maids and matrons, peers and peasants; He won the sympathies of all By making puns, and making presents. Though all the parish were at strife, He kept his counsel, and his carriage, And laughed, and loved a quiet life, And shrank from Chancery suits—and marriage. Sound was his claret-and his head; Warm was his double ale-and feelings; His partner at the whist club said That he was faultless in his dealings : He went to church but once a week; Yet Dr. Poundtext always found him An upright man, who studied Greek, And liked to see his friends around him. Asylums, hospitals, and schools, He used to swear, were made to cozen; And so the beggar at his door Had first abuse, and then-a shilling. Some public principles he had, But was no flatterer, nor fretter; He rapped his box when things were bad, And much he loathed the patriot's snort, And much he scorned the placeman's snuffle; And cut the fiercest quarrels short With-"Patience, gentlemen-and shuffle!" For full ten years his pointer Speed Had couched beneath her master's table; They were the ugliest beasts in Devon ; Whene'er they heard his ring or knock, Quicker than thought, the village slatterns Flung down the novel, smoothed the frock, And took up Mrs. Glasse, and patterns; Adine was studying baker's bills; Louisa looked the queen of knitters; Jane happened to be hemming frills; And Bell, by chance, was making fritters. But all was vain; and while decay Came, like a tranquil moonlight, o'er him, And found him gouty still, and gay, With no fair nurse to bless or bore him, His rugged smile and easy chair, His dread of matrimonial lectures, His wig, his stick, his powdered hair, Were themes for very strange conjectures. Some sages thought the stars above Had crazed him with excess of knowledge; Some heard he had been crost in love Before he came away from college; Some darkly hinted that his Grace Did nothing, great or small, without him; Some whispered, with a solemn face, That there was "something odd about him!" To take him from a world of trouble: And so he lived,—and so he died !— While life was flickering in the socket; "I've left my house and grounds to Fag,- To feed him for my sake,- "Whether I ought to die or not, My doctor cannot quite determine; It's only clear that I shall rot, And be, like Priam, food for vermin. My debts are paid :-but Nature's debt III. THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM. "Il faut juger des femmes depuis la chaussure jusqu'à la coiffure exclusivement, á peu pres comme on mesure le poisson entre queue et těte."-La BRUYERE. YEARS-years ago,-ere yet my dreams I fell in love with Laura Lily. I saw her at the County Ball: There, when the sound of flute and fiddle Of hands across and down the middle, Her's was the subtlest spell by far Of all that set young hearts romancing; She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced-O Heaven, her dancing! Dark was her hair, her hand was white; Her eyes were full of liquid light; |