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Close up again their gaping eyes and mouth,
Which they had opened to his eloquence,
As if their hearing were a three-fold sense.
But now the current of his words is done,
And whether any fruits shall spring from thence,
In future time, with any mother's son!

It is a thing, God wot! that can be told by none.

Now by the creeping shadows of the noon,
The hour is come to lay aside their lore;
The cheerful pedagogue perceives it soon,
And cries "Begone!" unto the imps,
Snatch their two hats and struggle for the door,
Like ardent spirits vented from a cask,

and four

All blithe and boisterous, but leave two more,
With Reading made Uneasy for a task,

To weep, whilst all their mates in merry sunshine bask.

Like sportive Elfins, on the verdant sod,
With tender moss so sleekly overgrown,
That doth not hurt, but kiss, the sole unshod,
So soothly kind is Erin to her own!

And one, at Hare and Hound, plays all alone,-
For Phelim's gone to tend his step-dame's cow;
Ah! Phelim's step-dame is a cankered crone !
Whilst other twain play at an Irish row,

And, with shillelah small, break one another's brow;
But careful Dominie, with ceaseless thrift,
Now changeth ferula for rural hoe;
But, first of all, with tender hand doth shift
His college gown, because of solar glow,
And hangs it on a bush, to scare the crow :
Meanwhile, he plants in earth the dappled bean,
Or trains the young potatoes all a-row,

Or plucks the fragrant leek for pottage green, With that crisp curly herb, called Kale in Aberdeen.

And so he wisely spends the fruitful hours,
Linked each to each by labor, like a bee,

Or rules in Learning's hall, or trims her bowers; -
Would there were many more such wights as he,
To sway each capital academie

Of Cam and Isis; for, alack! at each

There dwells I wot some dronish Dominie,

That does no garden work, nor yet doth teach, But wears a floury head, and talks in flowery speech!

EPIGRAMS

ON THE ART-UNIONS.

THAT picture-raffles will conduce to nourish
Design, or cause good Coloring to flourish,
Admits of logic-chopping and wise sawing,
But surely Lotteries encourage Drawing!

THE SUPERIORITY OF MACHINERY.

A MECHANIC his labor will often discard
If the rate of his pay he dislikes:

But a clock and its case is uncommonly hard

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Will continue to work though it strikes.

16*

THE FORGE:

A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE.

"Who's here, beside foul weather?"- KINg Lear.

"Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,

Should have stood that night against my fire."- CORDELIA.

PART I.

LIKE a dead man gone to his shroud,
The sun has sunk in a coppery cloud,

And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token,-
Playing a wild funereal air,

Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there-
In short, if the truth were spoken,

It's an ugly one for anywhere,

But an awful night for the Brocken.

For, O! to stop

On that mountain top,

After the dews of evening drop,

Is always a dreary frolic

Then what must it be when Nature groans,

And the very mountain murmurs and moans
As if it writhed with the colic

With other strange supernatural tones,
From wood, and water, and echoing stones,
Not to forget unburied bones

In a region so diabolic!

A place where he whom we call Old Scratch,
By help of his Witches a precious batch-

Gives midnight concerts and sermons, In a pulpit and orchestra built to match A plot right worthy of him to hatch, And well adapted, he knows, to catch The musical, mystical Germans!

However, it's quite

As wild a night

As ever was known on that sinister height
Since the Demon-Dance was morriced
The earth is dark, and the sky is scowling,

And the blast through the pines is howling and growling, As if a thousand wolves were prowling

About in the old BLACK FOREST!

Madly, sadly, the tempest raves

Through the narrow gulleys and hollow caves.
And bursts on the rocks in windy waves.

Like the billows that roar

On a gusty shore

Mourning over the mariners' graves-
Nay, more like a frantic lamentation
From a howling set

Of demons met

To wake a dead relation.

Badly, madly, the vapors fly
Over the dark distracted sky,

At a pace that no pen can paint!
Black and vague like the shadows of dreams,
Scudding over the moon that seems

Shorn of half her usual beams,

As pale as if she would faint!

The lightning flashes,
The thunder crashes,

The trees encounter with horrible clashes,
While rolling up from marish and bog,
Rank and rich,

As from Stygian ditch,

Rises a foul sulphureous fog,
Hinting that Satan himself is agog,-
But, leaving at once this heroical pitch,
The night is a very bad night, in which
You would n't turn out a dog.

Yet ONE there is abroad in the storm,
And whenever by chance

The moon gets a glance,

She spies the traveller's lonely form,
Walking, leaping, striding along,

As none can do but the super-strong;
And flapping his arms to keep him warm,
For the breeze from the north is a regular starver,
And, to tell the truth,

More keen, in sooth,

And cutting than any German carver !

However, no time it is to lag;

And on he scrambles from crag to crag,

Like one determined never to flag

Now weathers a block

Of jutting rock,

With hardly room for a toe to wag;

But holding on by a timber-snag,

That looks like the arm of a friendly hag;
Then stooping under a drooping bough,
Or leaping over some horrid chasm,
Enough to give any heart a spasm!

And sinking down a precipice now
Keeping his feet the Deuce knows how,

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