SPRING.

A NEW VERSION.

Ham. "The air bites shrewdly-it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air."

HAMLET.

"COME, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness come!" Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason, How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum? There's no such season.

The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name!
For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the Fighter.

Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing,
And be her tuneful laureates and upholders,
Who do not feel as if they had a Spring
Pour'd down their shoulders!

Let others eulogize her floral shows,

From me they cannot win a single stanza, I know her blooms are in full blow-and so's The Influenza.

Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale,
Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at,
Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale,
Are things I sneeze at!

Fair is the vernal quarter of the year!

And fair its early buddings and its blowings— But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear With other sowings!

For me, I find, when eastern winds are high,
A frigid, not a genial inspiration:

Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy
An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,
To me all vernal luxuries are fables,

Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg,
Stiff as a table's?

I limp in agony,-I wheeze and cough;
And quake with Ague, that great Agitator;
Nor dream, before July, of leaving off
My Respirator.

What wonder if in May itself I lack

A peg for laudatory verse to hang on? Spring mild and gentle !-yes, a Spring-heeled

Jack

To those he sprang on.

In short, whatever panegyrics lie

In fulsome odes too many to be cited, The tenderness of Spring is all my eye, And that is blighted!

THE FLOWER.

ALONE, across a foreign plain,
The Exile slowly wanders,
And on his Isle beyond the main
With sadden'd spirit ponders:

This lovely Isle beyond the sea,
With all its household treasures;
Its cottage homes, its merry birds,
And all its rural pleasures:

Its leafy woods, its shady vales,
Its moors, and purple heather;
Its verdant fields bedeck'd with stars
His childhood loved to gather:

When lo! he starts, with glad surprise,
Home-joys come rushing o'er him,
For "modest, wee, and crimson-tipp'd,"
He spies the flower before him!

With eager haste he stoops him down,
His eyes with moisture hazy,
And as he plucks the simple bloom,
He murmurs, "Lawk-a-daisy!"

THE SEA-SPELL.

"Cauld, cauld, he lies beneath the deep."

It was a jolly mariner!

Old Scotch Ballad.

The tallest man of three,

He loosed his sail against the wind,

And turn'd his boat to sea:

The ink-black sky told every eye,

A storm was soon to be!

But still that jolly mariner
Took in no reef at all,
For, in his pouch, confidingly,
He wore a baby's caul;

A thing, as gossip-nurses know,
That always brings a squall!

His hat was new, or, newly glazed,

Shone brightly in the sun;
His jacket, like a mariner's,

True blue as e'er was spun;
His ample trousers, like Saint Paul,
Bore forty stripes save one.

And now the fretting foaming tide
He steer'd away to cross;

The bounding pinnace play'd a game
Of dreary pitch and toss;

A game that, on the good dry land,
Is apt to bring a loss

Good Heaven befriend that little boat,
And guide her on her way!

A boat they say, has canvas wings,
But cannot fly away!

Though, like a merry singing-bird,
She sits upon the spray!

Still south by east the little boat,
With tawny sail, kept beating:
Now out of sight, between two waves,
Now o'er th' horizon fleeting;

Like greedy swine that feed on mast,-
The waves her mast seem'd eating!

The sulken sky grew black above,
The wave as black beneath;
Each roaring billow show'd full soon
A white and foamy wreath;
Like angry dogs that snarl at first,
And then display their teeth.

The boatman look'd against the wind, The mast began to creak,

The wave, per saltum, came and dried, In salt upon his cheek!

The pointed wave against him rear'd, As if it own'd a pique!

Nor rushing wind, nor gushing wave,
The boatman could alarm,

But still he stood away to sea,
And trusted in his charm;

He thought by purchase he was safe,
And arm'd against all harm!

Now thick and fast and far aslant,
The stormy rain came pouring,
He heard, upon the sandy bank,
The distant breakers roaring,-
A groaning intermitting sound,
Like Gog and Magog snoring!

The sea-fowl shriek'd around the mast,
A-head the grampus tumbled,
And far off, from a copper cloud,
The hollow thunder rumbled;

It would have quail'd another heart,
But his was never humbled.

For why? he had that infant's caul;
And wherefore should he dread?
Alas! alas! he little thought,
Before the ebb-tide sped,—
That, like that infant, he should die,
And with a watery head!

The rushing brine flowed in apace;
His boat had ne'er a deck:
Fate seem'd to call him on, and he
Attended to her beck;

And so he went, still trusting on,
Though reckless-to his wreck!

For as he left his helm, to heave
The ballast bags a-weather,

Three monstrous seas came roaring on,