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IV.

As I ride, as I ride,

Ne'er has spur my swift horse plied,
Yet his hide, streaked and pied,
As I ride, as I ride,

Shows where sweat has sprung and dried,
-Zebra-footed, ostrich-thighed

How has vied stride with stride
As I ride, as I ride!

As I ride, as I ride,

V.

Could I loose what Fate has tied,
Ere I pried, she should hide
(As I ride, as I ride)

All that's meant me satisfied
When the Prophet and the Bride
Stop veins I'd have subside
As I ride, as I ride!

NATIONALITY IN DRINKS.

I.

My heart sank with our Claret-flask,
Just now, beneath the heavy sedges
That serve this pond's black face for mask;
And still at yonder broken edges
O' the hole, where up the bubbles glisten,
After my heart I look and listen.

II.

Our laughing little flask, compelled

Through depth to depth more bleak and shady; As when, both arms beside her held,

Feet straightened out, some gay French lady

Is caught up from life's light and motion,

And dropped into death's silent ocean!

-UP jumped Tokay on our table,
Like a pygmy castle-warder,

Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,

Arms and accoutrements all in order;

And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South,

Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,

Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather,
Twisted his thumb in his red moustache,
Jingled his huge brass spurs together,
Tightened his waist with its Buda sash,

And then, with an impudence nought could abash,
Shrugged his hump-shoulder, to tell the beholder,
For twenty such knaves he should laugh but the bolder:
And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting,

And dexter-hand on his haunch abutting,
Went the little man, Sir Ausbruch, strutting!

-HERE'S to Nelson's memory!

"Tis the second time that I, at sea,
Right off Cape Trafalgar here,
Have drunk it deep in British Beer.
Nelson forever - any time

Am I his to command in prose or rhyme!
Give me of Nelson only a touch,

And I save it, be it little or much :

Here's one our Captain gives, and so

Down at the word, by George, shall it go!

He says that at Greenwich they point the beholder
To Nelson's coat, "still with tar on the shoulder:
For he used to lean with one shoulder digging,
Jigging, as it were, and zig-zag-zigging
Up against the mizzen-rigging!"

GARDEN FANCIES.

I. THE FLOWER'S NAME.

I.

Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since :
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss

Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

II.

Down this side of the gravel-walk

She went while her robe's edge brushed the box:

And here she paused in her gracious talk

To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox. Roses, ranged in valiant row,

I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know;

But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

III.

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

IV.

Roses, if I live and do well,

I may bring her, one of these days, To fix you fast with as fine a spell,

Fit you each with his Spanish phrase; But do not detain me now; for she lingers There, like sunshine over the ground, And ever I see her soft white fingers Searching after the bud she found.

V.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved forever!
Bud, if I kiss you 't is that you blow not,
Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,

Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

VI.

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

June's twice June since she breathed it with me? Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!

- Ah, you may flout and turn up your facesRoses, you are not so fair after all!

II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS.

I.

Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,

Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,

Printed on paper and bound in leather, Last month in the white of a matin-prime, Just when the birds sang all together.

II.

Into the garden I brought it to read,

And under the arbute and laurustine Read it, so help me grace in my need, From title-page to closing line. Chapter on chapter did I count,

As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge; Added up the mortal amount;

And then proceeded to my revenge.

Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice

An owl would build in, were he but sage;

For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis

In a castle of the Middle Age,

Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;

When he'd be private, there might he spend

Hours alone in his lady's chamber:

Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

IV.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked,

-At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate;

Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked

To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;

Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,

Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis ;

Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf
Över a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

V.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss

And gum that locked our friend in limbo,

A spider had spun his web across,

And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, de profundis, accentibus lætis,
Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake;
And up I fished his delectable treatise.

VI.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,

With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow :

Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks! Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow? Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

VII.

How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,

Came in, each one, for his right of trover?

- When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face Made of her eggs the stately deposit,

And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

VIII.

All that life and fun and romping,

All that frisking and twisting and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!

As if you had carried sour John Knox

To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich, Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

IX.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit!
See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A's book shall prop you up, B's shall cover you,
Here's C to be grave with, or D to be gay,
And with E on each side, and F right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

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