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HYPHEN AND HYMEN.

HYPHEN and HYMEN! wizards skilled to couple
Two blessed singles into one curst double.
Hymened one wizard's own self, HY and PHEN,
Hyphened the other wizard, Hy and MEN.
[STRUVESTRASSE, DRESDEN, April 30, 1866.]

tea with her on her eighty-fifth birthday, Jan. 5, 1844.

Ir it please God I am alive

Next Friday, I'll be eighty-five;

Come then, I pray, dear James, and spend

That evening with your poor old friend,
Who, with more joy, another year
Will enter on, if you are here.

Tea and hot cake we 'll have at seven;
You'll sing or dance until eleven;
And I will sit and hear your song,

Or see you trip the floor along
To the piano's liveliest measure,

Till eye and ear drink-in such pleasure
That I forget my age's pain,

And my old heart grows young again.

Then, when you 've sung and danced your fill,

To the pie we 'll fall, with right good will,

The Christmas pie of well spiced meat,
For bishop or lord mayor, a treat.
The pie discussed, we 'll wash it down
With glass on glass of Stanley's brown
Sherry, or port or calcavella,

Till youth grows warm and age grows mellow,
And then we 'll part, ere peep of light

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So don't forget next Friday night. [FITZWILLIAM-SQUARE, DUBLIN, Jan. 2, 1844.]

TO THEIR EXCELLENCIES,

THE LORDS JUSTICES.

My Lords Justices of Ireland, listen to me, rich James Lennox William Naper;

Though you seem to know your business well, there's no harm in giving you a flapper;

It's neither to amuse myself nor you, I write this present letter,*

But just by way of practice, and the next, it will be better.

I sat, as you know, on a Commission with his Grace, the Archbishop of Dublin,

Hatching out the reason why the Irish tenantry keep the country such a trouble in,

* For Mr. Naper's letter to the Lords Justices of Ireland, recommending the building of the Irish workhouses, see Saunders' News - letter, Nov. 7. 1840.

And instead of paying their rents quietly, when the half-year day's come round,

Enroll themselves in Ribbon-clubs and hold possession of the ground:

And if any one the courage has to ask for what 's his own, Pop! through his back a bullet goes, or at his head a stone; Or it's maybe when the family 's just sitting down to tea, slugs patter

In through the parlour window-sash, and cups and saucers shatter.

We were hard put to it, I freely own, both myself and the

Archbishop,

But the true cause of all this trouble in the lóng run we did fish up:

THE TENANTS SHOOT THEIR LANDLORDS, AND REFUSE TO PAY THEIR RENT, JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO WORKHOUSES TO GO INTO WHEN ALL THEIR MONEY'S SPENT.

Now if by chance there is any one so dull as not to understand That this, and this alone, 's the true cause of all the troubles of the land,

Let him only read the Answer your Excellencies lately wrote To the magistrates of the county where Lord Norbury was shot, And Mr. Biddulph wounded, in the broad, high noon of day, Men, women, and children looking on, just as if it were a play.

But though your Answer, my Lords Justices, makes it seem to me as clear

As moonshine, the moonshiniest night in Ireland round the year, That want of workhouses is the cause of all the sad ills we endure,

And the building of workhouses the only sure and certain cure, Yet I'm bold to tell your Lordships in as plain words as I can, When our workhouses are finished, we 'll be just where we began.

It isn't that the landlords won't have to pay the rates, Which will swallow up the quarter or the half of their estates, On the average, I mean, for, when the Union 's poor, The Guardians must the whole take, and the Act allows them, to be sure

But then the tenant to pay his rent won't have one penny more, And tenant-ejecting and landlord-shooting will go on just as heretofore,

And one of your Excellencies may the first be, to be shot, Which, as a friend and fellow land-holder, I pray God he may not.

But God is good, I need not tell you, my most excellent Lords Justices,

And if you but make haste enough with the building of the workhouses,

And to put the Act in force, which to the Guardians of the poor Assigns over our estates, you will at once secure

Not our precious lives alone, but whatever residue of our estates May be remaining over for us landlords, after payment of the rates;

And in cases where there 's nothing left, there will still be refuge sure

For the landlords, in the workhouses, as for any other poor. And now until the next time, my Lords Justices, adieu!

Your most obedient servant,

JAMES LENNOX WILLIAM NAPER

[FITZWILLIAM-SQuare, Dublin, Nov. 1840.]

OF LOUGHCREW.

TO THE RIVER GRIESE.

SWEETLY unconscious flows thy gentle stream,
Nor know'st thou aught of joy or misery;
But I, a weary traveller through life's dream,
Must taste of joy and woe each strange extremity.

How dear to me those banks in silence clipt
And gently pressed by thy unheeding tide!
How dear those trees in thy soft splendors dipt,
Bending in fondness from thy parent side!

But thou, -no lover's rapture speeds thy pace,
This sacred spot approaching from afar;

No lover's anguish bids thee stay to trace
The last faint lines, ere fate's eternal bar

For ever close upon thee

I must go,

But not, like thee, indifferent. Turn, my feet;

Joyous ye came unwilling now, and slow:

Farewell, ye hallowed haunts, Elizabeth's* retreat.

[Written in BALLITORE (Co. KILDARE), June 1818, in Mary Leadbeater's garden on the Griese, being the author's first rencontre with one of the Nine. See page 181.]

*Formerly the residence of Miss Elizabeth Smith, and still known by the name of The Retreat. See Fragments of the late Elizabeth Smith.