"Now art thou a bachelor, stranger?" quoth "I hastened as soon as the wedding was he; "For an' if thou hast a wife, done, And left my wife in the porch. The happiest draught thou hast drank this But, i' faith, she had been wiser than me, day That ever thou didst in thy life. For she took a bottle to church.” ROBERT SOUTHEY THE UPAS IN MARYBONE LANE. But sooner or later the reckoning arrives, ATREE grew in Java whose pestilent | And ninety-nine perish for one who survives. rind. A venom distilled of the deadliest kind: The Dutch sent their felons its juices to draw, And who returned safe pleaded pardon by law. Face-muffled, the culprits crept into the vale, Advancing from windward to 'scape the death-gale. How few the reward of their victory earned! For ninety-nine perished for one who returned. Britannia this upas tree bought of Mynheer, Removed it through Holland and planted it here; 'Tis now a stock-plant of the genus wolf's bane, They cautious advance with slouched bonnet and hat: They enter at this door, they go out at that; Some bear off their burden with riotous glee, But most sink in sleep at the foot of the tree. Tax, Chancellor Van, the Batavian to thwart, This compound of crime at a sovereign a quart; Let gin fetch per bottle the price of cham pagne, And hew down the upas in Marybone Lane. JAMES SMITH. PERICLES AND ASPASIA. HIS was the ruler of the land And one of them blossoms in Marybone THI Lane. The house that surrounds it stands first in the row; Two doors at right angles swing open below, And the children of misery daily steal in, And the poison they draw they denominate Gin. There enter the prude and the reprobate boy, The mother of grief and the daughter of joy, The serving-maid slim and the serving-man stout; When Athens was the land of fame; This was the light that led the band. When each was like a living flame; Yet not by fetter nor by spear His sovereignty was held or won: Feared, but alone as freemen fear, Loved, but as freemen love alone, He waved the sceptre o'er his kind By Nature's first great title, mind. They quickly steal in, and they slowly reel Resistless words were on his tongue : out. Surcharged with the venom, some walk forth erect, Apparently baffling its deadly effect; Then eloquence first flashed below; Full-armed to life the portent sprung, Minerva from the Thunderer's brow, And his the sole, the sacred hand That shook her ægis o'er the land. Both knights and earls, and knaves and You may hear it ring as oft it rang churls, But she loved the gardener's son. They pledged their faith in life or death, In happiness or woe, And sealed the promise with a ring, A thousand years ago. The grim earl read his magic book, A thousand years ago— THE VISIONARY PORTRAIT. AS by his lonely hearth he sate, As The shadow of a welcome dream His home did seem; Therefore he thought of one who might For ever in his presence stay, Too rainbow-like such mirth appears, "Let youth's fresh rose still gently bloom Upon her smooth and downy cheek, Yet let a shadow-not of gloom, |