With corns and bunions,—not the glorious John To "Pilgrim's Progress" unrelenting foes! A health, unmingled with the reveller's wine, Truth's sleepless watchman on her midnight tower, O who can tell with what a leaden flight While at his feet the hoarse and blinding gale Behold the light, O wanderer, look or die! A health, fair Themis! Would the enchanted vine Its glorious sunshine streams through Blackstone's port! 17 Lawyers are thirsty, and their clients too, Where men sought justice ere they brushed their boots;- The warmth within that comes from "cold without"? Health to the art whose glory is to give The crowning boon that makes it life to live. Her soft hand waves before his closing eye; VIRTUE,― the guide that men and nations own; And Law, the bulwark that protects her throne ; And HEALTH,- to all its happiest charm that lends ; These and their servants, man's untiring friends; Pour the bright lymph that Heaven itself lets fall,In one fair bumper let us toast them all! NUX POSTCŒNATICA. I was sitting with my microscope, upon my parlour rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two anten næ, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many. And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the emptiness of art, How we take a fragment for the whole, and call the whole a part, When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud enough for two, And a man of forty entered, exclaiming,-"How d'ye do?" He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh and bone; He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty stone; (It's odd how hats expand their brims as riper years invade, As if when life had reached its noon, it wanted them for shade!) I lost my focus, -dropped my book,—the bug, who was a flea, At once exploded, and commenced experiments on me. They have a certain heartiness that frequently appals,— Those medieval gentlemen in semilunar smalls! "My boy," he said-(colloquial ways, the vast, broad-hatted man,) "Come dine with us on Thursday next,-you must, you know you can; We're going to have a roaring time, with lots of fun. and noise, Distinguished guests, et cetera, the JUDGE, and all the boys." |