The Humors of Versification. THE LOVERS. IN DIFFERENT MOODS AND TENSES. Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught, And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher, who praught! His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking, and sunk; He hastened to woo her, and sweetly he wooed, In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke, To seek with his lips what his heart long had soke; He asked her to ride to the church, and they rode, Then homeward he said let us drive, and they drove, The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole; At the feet where he wanted to kneel, then he knole; So they to each other kept clinging, and clung, The man Sally wanted to catch, and had caught- And Charley's warm love began freezing and froze, While he took to teasing, and cruelly toze The girl he had wished to be squeezing, and squoze. "Wretch!" he cried, when she threatened to leave him, and left, "How could you deceive, as you have deceft?" And she answered, "I promised to cleave, and I've cleft." A STAMMERING WIFE. When deeply in love with Miss Emily Pryne, I vowed if the lady would only be mine, I would always be ready to please her; She blushed her consent, though the stuttering lass An ass-an ass-iduous teazer!" But when we were married, I found to my ruth She'd say if I ventured to give her a jog In the way of reproof-"You're a dog-dog-dog- And once, when I said, "We can hardly afford She looked, I assure you, exceedingly blue, Again, when it happened that, wishing to shirk I begged her to go to a neighbor, Out of temper at last with the insolent dame, I mimicked her speech, like a churl as I am, A SONG WITH VARIATIONS. [SCENE.-Wife at the piano; brute of a husband, who has no more soul for music than his boot, in an adjoining apartment, making his toilet.] Oh! do not chide me if I weep! Come, wife, and sew this button on. For unrequited love brings grief, A needle, wife, and bring your scissors. And Pity's voice gives no relief The child! good Lord! he's at my razors! Who starched this bosom? I declare How plaguey shiftless are some women! I'll have to get my other linen. Smith says he's coming in to-night, Oh! could I stifle in my breast And Jones will bring some prime old sherry. This aching heart, and give it rest, We'll want some eggs for Tom-and-Jerry Could Lethe's waters o'er me roll, These stockings would look better mended! When-will-you-have-that-ditty-ended? Then haply I, in other skies, We'd better have the oysters fried. THOUGHTS WHILE SHE ROCKS THE CRADLE. What is the little one thinking about? Unwritten history! Unfathomable mystery! But he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks, As if his head were as full of kinks, Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears, Where the summers go: He need not laugh, for he'll find it so! Who can tell what the baby thinks? By which the manikin feels his way Into the light of day? Out from the shores of the unknown sea, Tossing in pitiful agony! Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, What of the cradle roof that flies What does he think of his mother's breast- Cup of his joy and couch of his rest? Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell Of all the birds Words she has learned to murmur well? I can see the shadow creep Out to his little finger tips, Softly sinking, down he goes! Down he goes! down he goes! [Rising and carefully retreating to her seat.] See! he is hushed in sweet repose! A SERIO-COMIC ELEGY. WHATELY ON BUCKLAND. In his "Common-Place Book," the late Archbishop Whately records the following Elegy on the late geologist, Dr. Buckland: Where shall we our great professor inter, That in peace may rest his bones? If we hew him a rocky sepulchre He'll rise and break the stones, And examine each stratum which lies around, If with mattock and spade his body we lay He'll start up and snatch these tools away In a stratum so young the professor disdains That embedded should lie his organic remains. Then exposed to the drip of some case-hardening spring, His carcase let stalactite cover, And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring, When he is encrusted all over; There, 'mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on a shelf, Let him stand as a monument raised to himself. A REMINISCENCE OF TROY. FROM THE SCHOLIAST. It was the ninth year of the Trojan war A tedious pull at best: A lot of us were sitting by the shore Tydides, Phocas, Castor, and the rest Some whittling shingles and some stringing bows, Down from the tents above there came a man, "Look at the men of Thebes," he said, "and then Look at those cowards in the plains below: You see how ox-like are the ox-fed men; You see how sheepish mutton-eaters grow. Stick to this vegetable food of mine: Men who eat pork grunt, root and sleep like swine." Some laughed, and some grew mad, and some grew red: The pork was hissing; but his point was clear. Still no one answered him, till Nestor said, "One inference that I would draw is here: You vegetarians, who thus educate us, Thus far have turned out very small potatoes." |