Friend Colin reared his country seat
Close to a group of noble trees,
He blessed their shadows in the heat,
He blessed their music in the breeze.
Grown old and sere, he dreads their fall,
'Tis safety waging war with taste;
He cries, "Down with them one and all,
Were never wych elms so misplaced."
So they who neither thought nor planned
Hold for secure some transient good,
And having built upon the sand,
Declaim against the wind and flood.

THE WRONG TIME.

Some indiscreet Abderite boys
Within a limpet's hollow,
Offer'd in laurel-juice blue flies
As victims to Apollo.
The god appeased will bless, they thought,
Our tasks of prose and rhyme;
So they the flitting insects caught,
But lost the flitting time.
When Pedagogue their progress tries,
Nor finds the lesson done,
In vain they plead the sacrifice,
He whips them every one.

TRAVELLING FOR EXCITEMENT.

I heard the great gorilla roar,
My icy blood did curdling creep,
Astride the Erymanthian boar,
The brute came crashing through my sleep.
I woke, and there all fleecy white,
My dainty dog in sunshine played,
His feathery paw, which caused the fright,
Upon my bosom gently laid.
"Thank heaven," I gasped, and quivering cried,
For still the roaring shook my ear,
"Why seek Gaboona's deadly tide,
When I can thrill in safety here?"