Thanks for that lesson, it will prove

To after old men, this,
That they can never hope for love

From any youthful Miss;
That warning to declining age
Should teach it to walk off the stage,

And never sigh for bliss
With lovely things of rosy lips,
And beauteous busts and glorious hips.

The wooing and the vanity

Of winning charming wife, That species of insanity

To thee, the breath of life !-
The dance-the ball-room-and the whirl
Of waltzing with some giddy girl,

A sort of dizzy strife
All gone!--sad spirit, what must be
Thy feeling of vacuity!

Thy home is now so desolate,

Thy house so gloomy grown, I wonder thou canst stand a fate

So dark as thou hast known;
Is it some yet small glimpse of hope
That with such change can calmly cope,

Or dread of death alone?
To live despised ! or die by cord!
The choice by thee, is one abhorr’d!

He who of old would rend the oak

A sad example stands
Of folly,- for oak turn'd the joke,

And caught him by the hands.
As tough a job you undertook,
And grim as Milo's in

Caught in your silken bands-
Wild beasts ate up that man of fame,

But thou must be devour'd by shame.

your look

Prometheus, who stole heav'nly fire,

As thou wouldst fain have done, Chain'd to a rock by heaven's great sire,

Could not his sentence shun-
Thou in the madness of thy mind
To steal an angel hadst designed,

And justly art undone-
He lived—the horrid vulture's prey,
But thou must pine thy heart away.

He who disclosed what passed above,

The heathen gods among,
Was by that wicked rascal, Jove,

Into some river flung-
Up to his chin the water rose,
The apples bobb’d about his nose,

But could not reach his tongue-
That worst of ills !"non frui re"
Thou'st felt, no doubt, far worse than he.

When she of Lesbos could not urge

Young Phaon to her arms,
She jumped at once into the surge,

And drown'd all love's alarms.
From some Leucate's awful steep
Canst thou not take the lover's leap,

Which love at once disarms ? 'Twould better far despair become, Than sitting thus alone, humdrum.

But thou !—from thy reluctant heart

All hope of her is wrung,
And yet thou canst not hence depart

Nor by grapevine be swung,
Thou hast been such an oaf or calf,
It is enough to make one laugh

To see thee so unstrung--
To think that God's fair world hath been
Encumber'd by a thing so mean.

And earth hath lent her joys to him

Who thus can be cast down,
Her bowls have fill'd up to the brim,

His ev'ry care to drown-
Her beauteous hand hath given him all,
“His lines in pleasant places fall,”

And yet that hideous frown! Oh! sharper than a serpent's tooth Is thine ingratitude-old youth !

Thy silly deeds are writ above,

Writ with a pen of light;
Thy thoughts so late in life of love,

And fall-thou hapless wight!--
If thou hadst died as madman dies,
Some gouty beau might yet arise

To shame us by his sightBut thou hast sunk in such deep gloom That all seem grinning at thy doom.

Weigh'd in the scales, a jester's clay

Is vile as other forms,
And when by death 'tis passed away

It's eaten up by worms;
But yet methought a son of fun
Might some more striking thing have done

His mettle to display-
Nor deem'd I, he could thus sink down
Like any poor clodhopping clown.

And she, thy sweetly blooming flower,

That most transcendent maid !
What is she doing at this hour,

In all her charms array'd ?-
Doth she too smile before her glass
That thou hast been as sheer an ass

As ever yet hath bray'd ?
And dreamed that thou couldst grasp a prize
Made for a king to feast his eyes.

Then sit thou in thy sullen hall,

And gaze upon the floor,
Then turn thine eyes up to the wall,

Or saunter to the door
Or trace, with thine all idle hand,
Thy loved one's name upon the sand

Ảnd o'er the letters pore-
I would that some old son of grog
Could thee with cat-o'-nine-tails flog.

Thou small Napoleon! in thy trance

What thoughts thy bosom rule ?
While dreaming of thy "sunny France,”

But one-"I've been a fool” -
Perchance while shedding tears alone,
Thou'lt turn, like Niobe, to stone.

And thus at last get cool-
Now-Jaffier-like, I know it well,
“Hell's in thyself, and thou in hell."

DARKNE 88,
No light, but rather darkness visible.--Milton.
Away with thee, Light! thou "effluence bright!”

Make room for my ebon car,
When it wheels on its track, with hangings of black,

I curtain the Moon and the Star :
I love to go forth, with the storms of the North,

To follow the hurricane's sweep,
When the ships mounting high, ride up to the sky!

Then down to the fathomless deep.

The lightning, it gleams, but I swallow its beams

My kingdom it cannot control,
The fire-rent cloud I enwrap in my shroud,

And terror I strike to the soul ;

I darken my scowl with the wind's loud howl,

When God to the shipwreck'd speaks, And his thunderings drown, as the ship goes down,

Their wild and unearthly shrieks.

'Tis I who conceal the murderous steel,

The assassin's remorseless blow,
And I come with the slain, when with gory stain

He beck’neth his sleepless foe :
The murderer's path I beset with wrath,

Each sound I invest with dread,
Ee'n the "cloister'd flight” of the bird of night

Can waken the ghastly dead.

When the world I've hush'd with a face deep flush'd,

Some youth to his mistress hies,
Then wrapp'd in my veil, with a cheek deadly pale,

From her home and her friends she flies;
But, oh! when the scheme of her“love's young dream”

Is marr'd by a cold disdain,
In deep solitude, with me must she brood,

While her tears run down like rain.

When the merciless Jew, his Redeemer slew,

And the veil of the Temple was rent,
The earth felt my power "until the ninth hour,"

As I blacken'd the firmament;
Jerusalem shook, and the graves were forsook,

Where the just and the sainted had lain;
With my mantle o'erspread, the disquieted dead,

Walk'd forth ’mongst the living again.

In the sulphurous flake of hell's dim lake,

I am "visible" ?midst the glare;
Those fires burn bright, but they shed no light*

In the regions of dark despair;