Pray, did you ever hear, my love, Who, for a very trifling sum, Will snip one's picture out? I'm not averse to red and white, But all things have their place, I think a profile cut in black Would suit your style of face! I love sweet features; I will own To see my portrait on a wall, But nature sometimes makes one up It really might be quite as well Hushed up among one's friends! THE COMET. THE Comet! He is on his way, And singing as he flies; The whizzing planets shrink before The spectre of the skies; Ten million cubic miles of head, On, on by whistling spheres of light, He asks them not their names; One spurn from his demoniac heel, Away, away they fly, Where darkness might be bottled up And sold for "Tyrian dye." And what would happen to the land, And how would look the sea, If in the bearded devil's path Our earth should chance to be? I saw a tutor take his tube The Comet's course to spy; Had stewed the tutor's eye; I saw a fort, the soldiers all Were armed with goggles green ; Pop cracked the guns! whiz flew the balls! Bang went the magazine! saw a poet dip a scroll Each moment in a tub, I read upon the warping back, "The Dream of Beelzebub"; He could not see his verses burn, Although his brain was fried, And ever and anon he bent To wet them as they dried. I saw the scalding pitch roll down Burst through the rumbling mines; I asked the firemen why they made Such noise about the town; They answered not,-but all the while I saw a roasting pullet sit Upon a baking egg; I saw a cripple scorch his hand Extinguishing his leg; I saw nine geese upon the wing And every mother's gosling fell I saw the ox that browsed the grass I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags, Bob through the bubbling brine; And thoughts of supper crossed my soul; I had been rash at mine. |