Sometimes too slow, sometimes too fast,
Undone alike by rest or haste.
Its creditors, alarmed at last,
To see it go to wreck so fast,
Agreed together, on a day,

To come and take their shares away.
The heart, from bottom to the top,
Was nicely scor'd, and so cut up.
Then might you see whole troops of vices
Come boldly forth, and carve their slices;
Wild hopes, vain joys, vows, loves, and graces,
In various garbs, from various places.
Among the rest, even virtues came,
But smote their heads, and made no claim.
At length a single bit remain'd,

By none desired, by most disdain'd;
When friendship, smiling, said, 'we'll take it,
Perhaps with care we'll something make it;
Could we but get wherewith to patch it,
A lucky bit of head to match it.'
Scarce was it sooner said than done,
Forthwith the head was named anon.
Peter, perhaps, might it remember,

Tho' time has pass'd 'twixt May 'nd November;
Tho' singed, as if 'twas worn by Shadrack,
Or faded, as it had come from Tabrak.
It was the same that many a day
Made Bally Patrick's folks so gay;
When the group cluster'd round the fire,
The men, the maids, the dogs, the squire,
Told the arch tale, or sprung the joke,
Or drew the laugh, ere yet it spoke;
That made fat Nancy's sides to shake,
And blind Jack's fatter head to ache;
And Jemmy's, too, with needle nose,
And lusty Peg's, with sky-blue hose.
From that same head a bit she cut,
Not sinciput, nor occiput,
Nor eye, nor ear, nor nose, nor hair,
For these are all just as they were.

Doctors that know these names may tell 'em,
They think it was the cerebellum.

I hope she was not such an elf

To chose the worst, to help herself.
These fragments then she skilful join'd,
In mystic union close combined.

6

'Welcome,' she said, thy name shall be,
To honour sacred, and to me :

Ne'er be thou squandered on the knave,
The fool, the flatterer, or the slave;
To worth alone still be thy door

Prompt on the hinge, and prompt thy store;
To worth, that ever in its prime
Feels no decrepitude of time,

No shade of wealth, no shade of power,
That changes with the changing hour,
Round fortune's gnomon loves to play,
And lengthens with the sinking ray.'

Come then, dear Dick, and you shall find
This welcome mellow, just, and kind :
Tell Jane, a blockhead here refuses

T' admit four graces or ten muses;
So bid her bring her smile and song,
And soon we'll prove the blockhead wrong.
Tell Peter too, that if he come,

He'll find his value and his room.

We'll laugh as when in happier day
Fortune was kind and hope was gay.
Death shall mistake, and pass us by,
Thinking us yet too young to die.

Nor fear to meet bad fare or scanty;
Of roots and milk, and fowls, we've plenty-
A croppy heifer, spared by Holt *,

No doubt a favourer of revolt.

Spared by the traitor for that reason,

Upon her horn clear marks of treason †.

A rebel chief of the Wicklow mountains.

This alludes to a custom among the rebels of marking the horns of their cattle in a particular manner, which saved them from the depredations of their own party.

The beast a rebel would not steal,
A loyal subject well may kill.

Wine, too, of France, the price unpaid,
We'll drink it, to annoy their trade;
We'll fleece the rascals, if we can,
And damn their pagan rights of man.

Haste, then, dear Dick, the madam bring;
God send you safe, and bless the king.

J. P. CURRAN.

THE PLATE WARMER.

Extract from a private letter of Mr. Curran on the subject of this poem.

"I have been very low for some weeks. I was extremely ill. An un-aired court-house, and some very small inadvertencies, had accumulated a dreadful cold upon me; incessant cough-sleeplessness of course-and utter loss of spirits and appetite. Now, thank God, I am recovered, but yet as tender as so tough a sprig can be, and green as a laurel-fit almost to weave a chaplet for our old friend the Roving Bard that sung the Brilliant brothers bred and born bright.'Apropos-Did they give you my Plate Warmer? I thought of you and Tom * twenty times during its gestation. I fear it shews there may be eccentricity without fancy. A worm may crawl as far from the direct line as a bird can fly, though not so quickly; and yet the reasoning of dulness is not void of principle; for if wit be the combination of ideas having the least possible resemblance, is it not natural to suppose that to be still more witty, when there is no resemblance at all? You'll find also some dragging in parts of the narration, not much to be wondered at in any thing written by snatches, and in which the welding of cold iron is so very difficult, as it must be, where you are obliged to supply the want of heat by hammering. On the whole, I expected little, but I found less. I thought all the poets had gone too far in burlesquing Vulcan, and I thought to furbish him

*The Rev. Thomas Crawford, of Lismore.

up into something better than a mere blacksmith, and more likely to find some grace in the eyes of Venus. Venus, too, has been very much degraded by the licentiousness of modern poets. Homer, and still more Virgil, make her full of taste, a sensibility sometimes an ill counsellor, that loved not ice, and could not walk upon it without sometimes slippinga keen, subrisive, but polished artifice, that could draw for its purposes from the tenderest sources of the heart. To do this, or rather to attempt it, naturally threw the key of the verses into a flat third; but, unfortunate! of the few that saw it, none saw into any design but that of unmixed comicality. I dare say, if it had been visible, it would have been seen. I fancy the union of the sad and the gay is scarcely in nature. They may heighten each the other, if it be juxtaposition without blending; and that few have attempted with success. If they blend, they neutralize each other, and all effect is lost, unless, as in the danguoɛv yeλaσaσa of Homer, where no contrast is intended; but the smile and the tear form not a contrasted, but a co-operating expression of the same sentiment of maternal fondness. Perhaps the sad strain of the accompaniment to Corelli's famous jig may fall within the same idea. However all this fine criticism may be, you'll find little to commend, except the twilight, which I rather think is new. On the whole, I am not sorry that this poetical ticket should come up an honest prose blank. It will turn those intervals in which the mind must seek for refreshment in order to be able to work more usefully, to some better subject."

THE PLATE-WARMER.

IN days of yore, when mighty Jove
With boundless sway ruled all above,
He sometimes chanced abroad to roam
For comforts, often missed at home:
For Juno, though a loving wife,
Yet loved the din of household strife;
Like her own peacocks, proud and shrill,
She forced him oft against his will,
Hen-peck'd and over-matched, to fly,
Leaving her empress of the sky;

And hoping on our earth to find
Some fair, less vocal and more kind.
But soon the sire of men and gods
Grew weary of our low abodes;
Tired with his calendar of saints,

Their squalling loves, their dire complaints:
For queens themselves, when queens are frail,
And forced for justest cause to rail,
To find themselves at last betrayed,
Will scold just like a lady's maid;
And thus poor Jove again is driven,
Oh, sad resource! to go to Heaven.
Downcast and surfeited with freaks,
The crop-sick thunderer upward sneaks,
More like a loser than a winner,
And almost like an earthly sinner;
Half quench'd the lustre of his eyes,
And lank the curl that shakes the skies;
His doublet buttoned to his chin,
Hides the torn tucker folded in.
Scarce well resolved to go or stay,
He onward takes his ling'ring way,
For well he knows the bed of roses
On which great Juno's mate reposes.
At length to Heaven's high portal come,
No smile, no squeeze, no welcome home;
With nose up-toss'd, and bitter sneer,
She scowls upon her patient dear;
From morn till noon, from noon to night,
'Twas still a lecture to the wight;
And yet the morning, sooth to say,
Was far the mildest of the day;
For in those regions of the sky
The goddesses are rather shy,
To beard the nipping early airs,

And therefore come not soon down stairs;
But, snugly wrapp'd, sit up and read,
Or take their chocolate in bed.
So Jove his breakfast took in quiet-
Looks there might be, but yet no riot;