Come shower or sunshine-hope or fear, The palace or the plough, My heart and lute are broken here I'm not a lover now! Lady, the mist is on my sight, My day is night, my bloom is blight, SCHOOL AND SCHOOL-FELLOWS. TWELVE years ago I made a mock Of filthy trades and traffics: I wondered what they meant by stock; I knew the streets of Rome and Troy, Twelve years ago I was a boy, Twelve years ago!-how many a thought The fields, the forms, the beasts, the books, The voices of dear friends, the looks. Of old familiar faces. Where are my friends?-I am alone, No playmate shares my beaker Some lie beneath the church-yard stone, And some before the Speaker; And some compose a tragedy, And some compose a rondo; Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes, And Medler's feet repose unscann'd, Beneath the wide Atlantic. Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din, Does Dr. Martext's duty; And Mullion, with that monstrous chin, And Darrel studies, week by week, And Ball, who was but poor at Greek, And I am eight-and-twenty now— The world's cold chain has bound me; And darker shades are on my brow And sadder scenes around me: In Parliament I fill my seat, With many other noodles; And lay my head in Jermyn-street, But often, when the cares of life When Captain Hazard wins a bet, For hours and hours, I think and talk I wish that I could run away From house, and court, and levee, Where bearded men appear to-day, Just Eton boys, grown heavy; That I could bask in childhood's sun, And call the milk-maids houris; That I could be a boy again— A happy boy at Drury's! TO A LADY. WHAT are you, lady?—naught is here To dub you whig, or daub you tory. It is beyond a poet's skill, To form the slightest notion, whether We e'er shall walk through one quadrille, Or look upon one moon together. You're very pretty!—all the world Are talking of your bright brow's splendor, And of your locks, so softly curled, And of your hands, so white and slender: Some think you're blooming in Bengal ; Some say you're blowing in the city; Some know you're nobody at all; I only feel, you're very pretty. But bless my heart! it's very wrong: You're making all our belles ferocious; Anne " never saw a chin so long;" And Laura thinks your dress" atrocious;" |