No family would take him in,
Because of his discharge;

So he made up his mind to serve
The country all at large.

'Huzza!' the sergeant cried, and put
The money in his hand,

And with a shilling cut him off

From his paternal land.

For when his regiment went to fight

At Saragossa town,

A Frenchman thought he looked too tall
And so he cut him down!

ODE TO THE CAMELOPARD.

WELCOME to Freedom's birthplace—and a den!
Great Anti-climax, hail!
So very lofty in thy front-but then,

So dwindling at the tail!

In truth, thou hast the most unequal legs!
Has one pair galloped, whilst the other trotted,
Along with other brethren, leopard-spotted,
O'er Afric sand, where ostriches lay eggs?
Sure thou wert caught in some hard uphill chase,
Those hinder heels still keeping thee in check!
And yet thou seem'st prepared in any case,
Though they had lost the race,

To win it by a neck!

That lengthy neck-how like a crane's it looks!
Art thou the overseer of all the brutes?

Or dost thou browze on tip-top leaves or fruits-
Or go a bird-nesting amongst the rooks?

How kindly nature caters for all wants;
Thus giving unto thee a neck that stretches,
And high food fetches-

To some a long nose, like the elephant's!

Oh! hadst thou any organ to thy bellows,
To turn thy breath to speech in human style,
What secrets thou mightst tell us,

Where now our scientific guesses fail;
For instance of the Nile,

Whether those Seven Mouths have any tail.
Mayhap thy luck too,

From that high head, as from a lofty hill,
Has let thee see the marvellous Timbuctoo-
Or drink of Niger at its infant rill;
What were the travels of our Major Denham,
Or Clapperton, to thine

In that same line,

If thou couldst only squat thee down and pen 'em!

Strange sights, indeed, thou must have overlooked,
With eyes held ever in such vantage-stations!
Hast seen, perchance, unhappy white folks cooked,
And then made free of negro corporations!
Poor wretches saved from castaway three-deckers-
By sooty wreckers-

From hungry waves to have a loss still drearier,
To far exceed the utmost aim of Park-

And find themselves, alas! beyond the mark,
In the insides of Africa's interior!

Live on, Giraffe! genteelest of raff kind!—
Admired by noble and by royal tongues!—
May no pernicious wind,

Or English fog, blight thy exotic lungs!

Live on in happy peace, although a rarity,

Nor envy thy poor cousin's more outrageous Parisian popularity

Whose very leopard-rash is

grown contagious And worn on gloves and ribbons all about, Alas! they'll wear him out!

So thou shalt take thy sweet diurnal feedsWhen he is stuffed with undigested straw, Sad food that never visited his jaw!

And staring round him with a brace of beads.

THE PLEA

OF

THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES.

IT is my design, in the following poem, to celebrate, by an allegory, that immortality which Shakespeare has conferred on the fairy mythology by his 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' But for him, those pretty children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plum, to the bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to withstand the rude handling of time: but the Poet has made this most perishable part of the mind's creation equal to the most enduring; he has so intertwined the elfins with human sympathies, and linked them by so many delightful associations with the productions of nature, that they are as real to the mind's eye as their green magical circles to the outer sense. It would have been a pity for such a race to go extinct, even though they were but as the butterflies that hover about the leaves and blossoms of the visible world.-Dedication to Charles Lamb.

WAS in that mellow season of the year,

'TWA

When the hot sun singes the yellow leaves
Till they be gold,—and with a broader sphere
The Moon looks down on Ceres and her sheaves;
When more abundantly the spider weaves,
And the cold wind breathes from a chillier clime;
That forth I fared, on one of those still eves,
Touched with the dewy sadness of the time,

To think how the bright months had spent their prime.

So that, wherever I addressed my way,
I seemed to track the melancholy feet
Of him that is the Father of Decay,

And spoils at once the sour weed and the sweet;
Wherefore regretfully I made retreat

To some unwasted regions of my brain, Charmed with the light of summer and the heat, And bade that bounteous season bloom again, And sprout fresh flowers in my own domain.

It was a shady and sequestered scene,
Like those famed gardens of Boccaccio,
Planted with his own laurels evergreen,
And roses that for endless summer blow;
And there were fountain springs to overflow
Their marble basins, -and cool green arcades
Of tall o'erarching sycamores, to throw

Athwart the dappled path their dancing shades,-
With timid conies cropping the
green blades.

And there were crystal pools, peopled with fish,
Argent and gold; and some of Tyrian skin,
Some crimson-barred ;-and ever at a wish
They rose obsequious till the wave grew thin
As glass upon their backs, and then dived in,
Quenching their ardent scales in watery gloom;
Whilst others with fresh hues rowed forth to win
My changeable regard, for so we doom

Things born of thought to vanish or to bloom.

And there were many birds of many dyes,
From tree to tree still faring to and fro,
And stately peacocks with their splendid eyes,
And gorgeous pheasants with their golden glow,