I saw her at a country ball,

There where the sound of flute and fiddle, Gave signal sweet, in that old hall,

Of hands across and down the middle; Hers was the subtlest spell by far,

Of all that sets young hearts romancing, She was our queen, our rose, our star,

And when she danced-Oh, heaven! her dancing!

Dark was her hair; her hand was white;

Her voice was exquisitely tender;

Her eyes were full of liquid light;

I never saw a waist so slender.

Her every look, her every smile,

Shot right and left a score of arrows;

I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,

And wondered where she'd left her sparrows!

She talked of politics or prayers,

Of Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's sonnets, Of daggers, or of dancing bears,

Of battles, or the last new bonnets;

By candle-light, at twelve o'clock,
To me it mattered not a tittle,

If those bright lips had quoted Locke,

I might have thought they murmured Little.

Through sunny May, through sultry June,

I loved her with a love eternal;

I spoke her praises to the moon,

I wrote them for the Sunday journal.

My mother laughed; I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling.
My father frowned; but how should gout
Find any happiness in kneeling?

She was the daughter of a dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother just thirteen,
Whose color was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother, for many a year,
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,

And lord-lieutenant of the county.

But titles and the three per cents,
And mortgages and great relations,
And India Bonds, and tithes, and rents,
Oh! what are they to love's sensations?

Black eyes, fair foreheads, clustering locks;
Such wealth, such honors Cupid chooses;
He cares as little for the stocks,

As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.

She sketched: the vale, the wood, the beach
Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading;
She botanized: I envied each

Young blossom in her boudoir fading;
She warbled Handel: it was grand,
She made the Catalani jealous;

She touched the organ: I could stand

For hours and hours and blow the bellows.

She kept an album, too, at home,

Well filled with all an album's glories; Paintings of butterflies and Rome;

Patterns for trimming; Persian stories; Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo ;

Fierce odes to famine and to slaughter, And autographs of Prince Le Boo,

And recipes for elder-water.

And she was flattered, worshiped, bored,

Her steps were watched, her dress was noted,

Her poodle dog was quite adored,

Her sayings were extremely quoted.

She laughed, and every heart was glad
As if the taxes were abolished;
She frowned, and every look was sad,
As if the opera were demolished.

She smiled on many just for fun

I knew that there was nothing in it; I was the first, the only one,

Her heart had thought of for a minute. I knew it, for she told me so,

In phrase that was divinely molded ;She wrote a charming hand, and oh!

How neatly all her notes were folded.

Our love was like most other loves-
A little glow, a little shiver;

A rosebud and a pair of gloves,

And "Fly not yet," upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir;

Some hopes of dying broken-hearted;

A miniature; a lock of hair;

The usual vows;-and then we parted.

We parted:-months and years rolled by,
We met again, some summers after;
Our parting was all sob and sigh!

Our meeting was all mirth and laughter!
For in my heart's most secret cell

There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ball-room belle,

But only Mistress-something-Rogers!

The political satire is equally good-humored, equally charaeteristic, and equally clever, perhaps cleverer-if that can bethan these specimens. Some of the objects of that keen and pungent verse still remain alive, though many are, like the author, removed from this transitory scene. I abstain, therefore, from inserting what might by possibility cause pain. The following cavalier version of the great fight of Marston Moor is transcribed from the author's own manuscript, apparently the first sketch. It is wonderful how little that fertile and fluent pen found to alter or to amend.

To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the clarion's note is high!
To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the big drum makes reply!
Ere this hath Lucas marched, with his gallant cavaliers,
And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter in our ears.
To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas! White Guy is at the door,
And the raven whets his beak o'er the field of Marston Moor.

Up rose the Lady Alice, from her brief and broken prayer,
And she brought a silken banner down the narrow turret-stair;
Oh! many were the tears that those radiant eyes had shed,
As she traced the bright word "Glory" in the gay and glancing thread;
And mournful was the smile which o'er those lovely features ran,

As she said, "It is your lady's gift, unfurl it in the van!"

"It shall flutter, noble wench, where the best and boldest ride,
Midst the steel-clad files of Skippon, the black dragoons of Pride;
The recreant heart of Fairfax shall feel a sicklier qualm,
And the rebel lips of Oliver give out a louder psalm;
When they see my lady's gewgaw flaunt proudly on their wing,
And hear her loyal soldier's shout, "For God and for the King."

'Tis noon. The ranks are broken, along the royal line
They fly, the braggarts of the court! the bullies of the Rhine!
Stout Langdale's cheer is heard no more, and Astley's helm is down,
And Rupert sheathes his rapier, with a curse and with a frown,
And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in their flight,
"The German boar had better far have supped in York to-night."

The knight is left alone, his steel-cap cleft in twain,

His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many a gory stain;

Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid the rout,

"For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on, and fight it out!" And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he hums a stave, And now he quotes a stage-play, and now he fells a knave.

God aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! thou hast no thought of fear;
God aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! for fearful odds are here!

The rebels hem thee in, and at every cut and thrust,

"Down, down," they cry, "with Belial! down with him to the dust."
"I would," quoth grim old Oliver, "that Belial's trusty sword,
This day were doing battle for the Saints and for the Lord!"

The Lady Alice sits with her maidens in her bower,

The gray-haired warder watches from the castle's topmost tower; "What news? what news, old Hubert ?"—" The battle's lost and won; The royal troops are melting, like mists before the sun!

And a wounded man approaches;-I'm blind, and can not see,

Yet sure I am that sturdy step, my master's step must be !"

"I've brought thee back thy banner, wench, from as rude and red a fray,
As e'er was proof of soldier's thew, or theme for minstrel's lay!
Here, Hubert, bring the silver bowl, and liquor quantum suff.
I'll make a shift to drain it yet, ere I part with boots and buff;—
Though Guy through many a gaping wound is breathing forth his life,
And I come to thee a landless man, my fond and faithful wife!

"Sweet! we will fill our money-bags, and freight a ship for France,
And mourn in merry Paris for this poor land's mischance:
For if the worst befall me, why better axe and rope,
Than life with Lenthal for a king, and Peters for a pope!
Alas! alas! my gallant Guy!-curse on the crop-eared boor,
Who sent me with my standard, on foot from Marston Moor!"

I pass some poems that have been greatly praised, "The Red Fishermen," " Lilian," and "The Troubadour," to come to the charades the charming charades—which, in their form of short narrative poems, he may be said to have invented. I insert a few taken almost at random from his brilliant collection :

I.

I graced Don Pedro's revelry,

All dressed in fire and feather;
When loveliness and chivalry,
Were met to feast together.

To ride through mountains, where my First
A banquet would be reckoned;
Through deserts, where to quench their thirst
Men vainly turn my Second.

To leave the gates of fair Madrid,
And dare the gates of Hades ;-
And this that gallant Spaniard did,
For me and for the ladies.

II.

Morning is beaming o'er brake and bower;
Hark! to the chimes from yonder tower!
Call ye my First from her chamber now,
With her snowy vail and her jeweled brow.

Lo! where my Second in gorgeous array,
Leads from his stable her beautiful bay,
Looking for her as he curvets by

With an arching neck and a glancing eye.

Spread is the banquet and studied the song,
Ranged in meet order the menial throng,
Jerome is ready with book and with stole,

And the maidens strew flowers,-but where is my Whole?

Look to the hill!-is he climbing its side?
Look to the stream!-is he crossing its tide?
Out on the false one!-he comes not yet-
Lady, forget him! yea, scorn and forget!

The next is a surname, and one of the most beautiful compliments ever offered to a great poet.