(Not Goldsmith's Auburn)-nut-brown hair That made her loveliest of the fair; Not "loveliest of the plain!" Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue, A young Pygmalion, I adored The maids I made but time was stored Perspective dawned and soon I saw My houses stand against its law And "keeping" all unkept! ; My beauties were no longer things But horrors to be wept! Ah! why did knowledge ope my eyes? It only serves to hint What grave defects and wants are mine; That I'm no Hilton in design In nature no Dewint! Thrice happy time! - Art's early days! When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise, Narcissus-like I hung! When great Rembrandt but little seemed, And such Old Masters all were deemed As nothing to the young! A FAIRY TALE. ON Hounslow heath — and close beside the road, As western travellers may oft have seen, And built like Mr. Birkbeck's, all of wood; On which it used to wander to and fro, Because its master ne'er maintained a rider, And then retired—if one may call it so, Perchance, the very race and constant riot Perchance, he loved the ground because 'twas common, That furnished, by his toil, Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman ;- Howbeit, the thoroughfare did no ways spoil His peace, unless, in some unlucky hour, A stray horse came and gobbled up his bower! But, tired of always looking at the coaches, The same to come, when they had seen them one day! And, used to brisker life, both man and wife Began to suffer N U E's approaches, And feel retirement like a long wet Sunday, So, having had some quarters of school-breeding, And being ripened in the seventh stage, Began, as other children have begun, Or Paley ethical, or learned Porson, — Or Valentine and Orson But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con, Reading, and wept Over the White Cat, in their wooden cottage. Thus reading on the longer They read, of course, their childish faith grew stronger In Gnomes, and Hags, and Elves, and Giants grim, — If talking trees and birds revealed to him, She saw the flight of Fairyland's fly-wagons, And magic fishes swim In puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons, As the old man sat a feeding On the old babe-reading, Beside his open street-and-parlor door, A hideous roar Proclaimed a drove of beasts was coming by the way. Long-horned, and short, of many a different breed, With some of those unquiet black dwarf devils, Or Firth of Forth; Looking half wild with joy to leave the North, - When, However, one brown monster, in a frisk, Giving his tail a perpendicular whisk, Kicked out a passage through the beastly rabble; Hornpipe before the basket-maker's villa, Leapt o'er the tiny pale, Backed his beef-steaks against the wooden gable Wherein the sage Just then was spelling some romantic fable. The old man, half a scholar, half a dunce, Could not peruse who could?. two tales at once; At what he knew was none of Riquet's Tuft, But most unluckly enclosed a morsel Of the intruding tail, and all the tassel: The monster gave a roar, And bolting off with speed, increased by pain, The little house became a coach once more, And, like Macheath, "took to the road" again! Just then, by fortune's whimsical decree, supper: The ancient woman stooping with her crupper At last, conceive her, rising from the ground, And looking round Where rest was to be found, There was no house- no villa there—no nothing! No house! The change was quite amazing; It made her senses stagger for a minute, Explained the horrid mystery; - and raising On which she meant to sup, · 33 |