"Very soft and white his cheeks,
His hair is red, and gray his breeks;
His tooth is like the daisy fair,
His only fault is in his hair."
This is a higher flight:--
DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M.F.
"Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world forever leaved;
Their father, and their mother too,
They sigh and weep as well as you;
Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
Into eternity theire laanched.
A direful death indeed they had,
As wad put any parent mad;
But she was more than usual calm:
She did not give a single dam."
This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of the want of the n. We fear "she" is the abandoned mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears.
"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel over a prayer--for that we are kneeling at the foot-stool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from unquestionable fire and brimston."
She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--
"Queen Mary was much loved by all,
Both by the great and by the small,
But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise?
And I suppose she has gained a prize;
For I do think she would not go
Into the awful place below.
There is a thing that I must tell--
Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
He who would teach her to be civil,
It must be her great friend, the divil!"
She hits off Darnley well:--
"A noble's son,--a handsome lad,--
By some queer way or other, had
Got quite the better of her heart;
With him she always talked apart:
Silly he was, but very fair;
A greater buck was not found there."
"By some queer way or other": is not this the general case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie!