IN THE ODDITIES .

What thos I be a country clown,
For all the fuss that you make,
One need not to be born in town
To know what two and two make:

'Squire fop there thinks his empty pate
Worth all ours put together,
But how can that have any weight
That's only made of feather.

Then duont ye be so proud, d'ye see,
It 'ent a thing that's suiting;
Can one than tother better be,
When both are on a footing?

II.

Now here's a man who seas and land
Has dreamt that he can cross over,

True, Lambert Simnel
Was not an habitual criminal,
But it really was hardly historic
To call himself Earl of Warwick.

Cleopatra, when the chilling fear
Of ruin touched her soul at ease,
When turbid sounds, blown over seas,
Would speed on rumor's rapid path
From the hot lips of Roman wrath
Straight to her own Egyptian ear, —
Then, even at some grand feast of hers,
Would seem to feel the joy struck dumb
Of citherns, harps and dulcimers,
With rumbling prelude, harsh to hear,
Of that which must in time become
Disaster, slavery, Actium!

Then she, that mighty and mystic queen,
Round whom her vassals crawled in awe,
Whose lifted finger was a law,

Among the contemporaries of Shakespeare
There were few who regarded him as Drake's peer.
Spoiling paper was so much less strain
Than spoiling the Spanish Main.

IN THE WHIM OF THE MOMENT .

What a plague cried young Colin would Chloe be at?
I ne'er will be caught in a noose:
Odds wounds I'm resolv'd, and who'd wager 'gainst that,
Were it even a guinea, he'd lose.

I told the young baggage, says I, to her face,
Toy as much as you will, but no priest shall say grace.

II.

Cry'd young Thyrsis, pray Colin this blustering hold,

Whereas, it is the fashion ever,
That WE , the carriers , do endeavour,
On New-Year's day to greet our friends,
In lines, which gingle at their ends;
In nice conformity to custom,
We'll try a few, as we can muster 'em.

Astride our Pegasean hack,
We scale Parnassus in a crack!
Well, having featly scrambled up,
The giddy eminence's top,
We are not much below, if any,
The highest ridge of Alleghany;
And in a proper situation
To take a survey of the nation;

Could I portray thy face, illuminate
With the high glory that it had for me,
Or deathless carve, in marble's sainted state,
The record of thy vanished majesty;

Or could I, like the grief-inspired of old,
Drean out some Minster of divinest form,
Arch within arch, to cherish and enfold
Love's passing holiness from waste or worm;

Or coud I rear towards heav'n a life of good,
Whose date were from our meeting, faultless, strong,
With every thought sublimed and prayer-endued,
The animals of my days should praise thee long.

IN THE ODDITIES .

I'm jolly Dick the lamplighter,
They say the sun's my dad,
And truly I believe it, sir,
For I'm a pretty lad.

Father and I the world delight,
And make it look so gay,
The difference is I lights by night,
And father lights by day.

II

But father's not the likes of I
For knowing life and fun,

A Spanish fleet affront our English shores!
It must not be; it shall not! Sink or swim
Our cause, our lamp of hope burn bright or dim,
Long as o'er English cliffs the osprey soars,
Long as on English coasts the breaker roars,
No alien flag shall scale our blue sea-rim,
No smoke from Spanish gun our skies bedim,
No foot from Parma stain our household floors!
Fair sirs, we question not your true intent,

O Royal-hearted peasant-maid of France
Whom that " still voice " which those alone can hear
Who walk in innocence and void of fear,
To war-fields called from rural toils or dance;
Whom God's great saints, revealed to thee in trance,
For knightly onset girt with shield and spear,
Thy task a Christian throne from dust to rear
And work a Christian realm's deliverance;
O thou that charioted by martyr-fires
Rod'st to thy God that task fulfilled, this day
A deeper need a saintlier aid requires;
Invaders worse possess thy France, their prey