With bonnet blue and capuchin,

And aprons long, they hid their armor, And veiled their weapons bright and keen In pity to the country farmer.

Fame in the shape of Mr. P―t

(By this time all the parish know it) Had told that thereabouts there lurked A wicked imp they called a poet,

Who prowled the country far and near,
Bewitched the children of the peasants,
Dried up the cows and lamed the deer,
And sucked the eggs and killed the pheasants.

My lady heard their joint petition;

Swore by her coronet and ermine, She'd issue out her high commission To rid the manor of such vermin.

The heroines undertook the task;

Through lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured, Rapped at the door, nor stayed to ask, But bounce into the parlor entered.

The trembling family they daunt,

They flirt, they sing, they laugh, they tattle. Rummage his mother, pinch his aunt, And upstairs in a whirlwind rattle.

Each hole and cupboard they explore,

Each creek and cranny of his chamber,

Run hurry-scurry round the floor,
And o'er the bed and tester clamber;

Into the drawers and china pry,

Papers and books, a huge imbroglio! Under a teacup he might lie,

Or creased like dog's ears in a folio.

On the first marching of the troops,

The muses, hopeless of his pardon,
Conveyed him underneath their hoops
To a small closet in the garden.

So rumor says, (who will believe?)
But that they left the door ajar,
Where, safe, and laughing in his sleeve,
He heard the distant din of war.

Short was his joy; he little knew

The power of magic was no fable; Out of the window whisk they flew, But left a spell upon the table.

The words too eager to unriddle,
The poet felt a strange disorder;
Transparent birdlime formed the middle,
And chains invisible the border.

So cunning was the apparatus,

The powerful pothooks did so move him, That will he nill he to the great house He went as if the devil drove him.

Yet on his way (no sign of grace,
For folks in fear are apt to pray)
To Phœbus he preferred his case,

And begged his aid that dreadful day.

The godhead would have backed his quarrel, But with a blush, on recollection,

Owned that his quiver and his laurel

'Gainst four such eyes were no protection.

The court was sat, the culprit there:

Forth from their gloomy mansions creeping, The Lady Janes and Jones repair, And from the gallery stand peeping;

Such as in silence of the night

Come (sweep) along some winding entry, (Styack has often seen the sight),

Or at the chapel door stand sentry;

In peaked hoods and mantle tarnished,
Sour visages enough to scare ye,
High dames of honor once that garnished
The drawing-room of fierce Queen Mary!

The peeress comes: the audience stare,
And doff their hats with due submission;
She courtesies, as she takes her chair,
To all the people of condition.

The bard with many an artful fib
Had in imagination fenced him,

1 The housekeeper.

Disproved the arguments of Squib,'

And all that Groom could urge against him.

But soon his rhetoric forsook him

When he the solemn hall had seen; A sudden fit of ague shook him;

He stood as mute as poor Macleane.*

Yet something he was heard to mutter,
'How in the park, beneath an old tree,
(Without design to hurt the butter,

Or any malice to the poultry,)

He once or twice had penned a sonnet,
Yet hoped that he might save his bacon;
Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
He ne'er was for a conjuror taken.”

The ghostly prudes, with hagged face,
Already had condemned the sinner:
My lady rose, and with a grace

She smiled, and bid him come to dinner.

"Jesu Maria! Madam Bridget,

Why, what can the Viscountess mean!" Cried the square hoods, in woful fidget; "The times are altered quite and clean!

"Decorum's turned to mere civility!

Her air and all her manners show it:
Commend me to her affability!

Speak to a commoner and poet!"
[Here 500 stanzas are lost.]

1 The steward.

2 Groom of the chamber. A famous highwayman, hanged the week before.

And so God save our noble king,

And guard us from long-winded lubbers,
That to eternity would sing,

And keep my lady from her rubbers.

Thomas Gray.

A

Stonehenge.

DESCRIPTION OF STONEHENGE.

ND whereto serves that wondrous trophy now That on the goodly plain near Walton stands? That huge dumb heap, that cannot tell us how, Nor what, nor whence it is, nor with whose hands Nor for whose glory it was set to show

How much our pride mocks that of other lands.
Whereon, when as the gazing passenger

Had greedy looked with admiration,

And fain would know his birth, and what we were, How there erected, and how long agon,

Inquires and asks his fellow-traveller

What he had heard, and his opinion.

And he knows nothing. Then he turns again,
And looks and sighs; and then admires afresh,
And in himself with sorrow doth complain
The misery of dark forgetfulness,

Angry with time that nothing should remain,
Our greatest wonders' wonder to express.

Then Ignorance, with fabulous discourse,
Robbing fair art and cunning of their right,
Tells how those stones were, by the devil's force,