The whizzing planets shrink before

The spectre of the skies;

Ah! well may regal orbs burn blue,

And satellites turn pale,

Ten million cubic miles of head,
Ten billion leagues of tail!

On, on by whistling spheres of light, He flashes and he flames;

He turns not to the left nor right, He asks them not their names; One spurn from his demoniac heel, Away, away they fly,

83

THE COMET.

Where darkness might be bottled up
And sold for "Tyrian dye.”

And what would happen to the land,
And how would look the sea,

If in the bearded devil's path

Our earth should chance to be?
Full hot and high the sea would boil,
Full red the forests gleam;
Methought I saw and heard it all
In a dyspeptic dream!

I saw a tutor take his tube.

The Comet's course to spy;

I heard a scream, the gathered rays

Had stewed the tutor's eye;

I saw a fort, the soldiers all

Were armed with goggles green;
Pop cracked the guns! whiz flew the balls!
Bang went the magazine!

I saw a poet dip a scroll

Each moment in a tub,

I read upon the warping back,

"The Dream of Beelzebub"; He could not see his verses burn, Although his brain was fried,

And ever and anon he bent

To wet them as they dried.

I saw the scalding pitch roll down
The crackling, sweating pines,

And streams of smoke, like water-spouts,

Burst through the rumbling mines;

I asked the firemen why they made
Such noise about the town;
They answered not, - but all the while
The brakes went up and down.

I saw a roasting pullet sit
Upon a baking egg ;

I saw a cripple scorch his hand
Extinguishing his leg;

I saw nine geese upon the wing
Towards the frozen pole,

And every mother's gosling fell
Crisped to a crackling coal.

I saw the ox that browsed the grass
Writhe in the blistering rays,
The herbage in his shrinking jaws
Was all a fiery blaze;

I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags,

Bob through the bubbling brine;

And thoughts of supper crossed my soul;
I had been rash at mine.

Strange sights! strange sounds! O fearful dream! Its memory haunts me still,

The steaming sea, the crimson glare,

That wreathed each wooded hill;
Stranger! if through thy reeling brain
Such midnight visions sweep,

Spare, spare, O spare thine evening meal,
And sweet shall be thy sleep!

THE LAST BLOSSOM.

85

THOU

THE LAST BLOSSOM.

HOUGH young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;

The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.

Who knows a woman's wild caprice?
It played with Goethe's silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's "niece"

Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

When sixty bids us sigh in vain

To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain

Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her lord's Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies, —

The musky daughter of the Nile,
With plaited hair and almond eyes.

Might we but share one wild caress

Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall,

And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress

The long cold kiss that waits us all!

My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day,
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.

Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain,
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain.

Thou com'st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long!
Dove that would seek the poet's cage
Lured by the magic breath of song!

She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid,
Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told!
O'er girlhood's yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold!

Come to my arms!

love heeds not years;

No frost the bud of passion knows. Ha! what is this my frenzy hears?

A voice behind me uttered, -Rose!

Sweet was her smile, but not for me;

Alas! when woman looks too kind, Just turn your foolish head and see,

Some youth is walking close behind!