How often has she valued there A father's aid--a mother's care:-- She now has neither: And yet--such work in dreams is done, She still may sit and smile with one More dear than either. The poor can love through woe and pain, Although their homely speech is fain To halt in fetters: They feel as much, and do far more Than those, at times of meaner ore, Miscalled _their Betters_. Sometimes, on summer afternoons Of sundry sunny Mays and Junes-- Meet Sunday weather, I pass her window by design, And wish her _Sunday out_ and mine Might fall together. For sweet it were my lot to dower With one brief joy, one white-robed flower; And prude, or preacher, Could hardly deem it much amiss To lay one on the path of this Forlorn young creature. Yet if her thought on wooing runs-- And if her swain and she are ones Who fancy strolling, She'd like my nonsense less than his, And so it's better as it is-- And that's consoling. Her dwelling is unknown to fame-- Perchance she's fair--perchance her name Is _Car_, or _Kitty_; She may be _Jane_--she might be plain-- For need the object of one's strain Be always pretty? THE OLD GOVERNMENT CLERK. We knew an old Scribe, it was "once on a time,"-- An era to set sober datists despairing;-- Then let them despair! Darby sat in a chair Near the Cross that gave name to the village of Charing. Though silent and lean, Darby was not malign,-- What hair he had left was more silver than sable;-- He had also contracted a curve in his spine From bending too constantly over a table. His pay and expenditure, quite in accord, Were both on the strictest economy founded; His masters were known as the Sealing-wax Board, Who ruled where red tape and snug places abounded. In his heart he looked down on this dignified knot,-- For why, the forefather of one of these senators, A rascal concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, Had been barber-surgeon to Darby's progenitors. Poor fool! Life is all a vagary of Luck,-- Still, for thirty long years of genteel destitution He'd been writing State Papers, which means he had stuck Some heads and some tails to much circumlocution. This sounds rather weary and dreary; but, no! Though strictly inglorious, his days were quiescent, His red-tape was tied in a true-lover's bow Each night when returning to Rosemary Crescent. There Joan meets him smiling, the young ones are there, His coming is bliss to the half-dozen wee things; Of his advent the dog and the cat are aware, And Phyllis, neat-handed, is laying the tea-things.