"From what I have said, you will see That I couldn't wed either--in fine, By nature's unchanging decree _Your_ daughters could never be _mine_. "Go home to your pigs and your ricks, My hands of the matter I've rinsed." So they take up their hats and their sticks, And _exeunt ambo_, convinced. [Illustration] ONLY A DANCING GIRL. Only a dancing girl, With an unromantic style, With borrowed color and curl, With fixed mechanical smile, With many a hackneyed wile, With ungrammatical lips, And corns that mar her trips! Hung from the "flies" in air, She acts a palpable lie, She's as little a fairy there As unpoetical I! I hear you asking, Why-- Why in the world I sing This tawdry, tinselled thing? No airy fairy she, As she hangs in arsenic green, From a highly impossible tree, In a highly impossible scene (Herself not over clean). For fays don't suffer, I'm told, From bunions, coughs, or cold. And stately dames that bring Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the "dancing thing" No better than she should be. With her skirt at her shameful knee, And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, which of us is? (And, in sooth, it oft occurs That while these matrons sigh, Their dresses are lower than hers, And sometimes half as high; And their hair is hair they buy, And they use their glasses, too, In a way she'd blush to do.) But change her gold and green For a coarse merino gown, And see her upon the scene Of her home, when coaxing down Her drunken father's frown, In his squalid, cheerless den: She's a fairy truly, then! THE SENSATION CAPTAIN. No nobler captain ever trod Than Captain Parklebury Todd, So good--so wise--so brave, he! But still, as all his friends would own, He had one folly--one alone-- This Captain in the Navy. I do not think I ever knew A man so wholly given to Creating a sensation; Or p'r'aps I should in justice say-- To what in an Adelphi play Is known as "Situation." He passed his time designing traps To flurry unsuspicious chaps-- The taste was his innately-- He couldn't walk into a room Without ejaculating "Boom!" Which startled ladies greatly. He'd wear a mask and muffling cloak, Not, you will understand, in joke, As some assume disguises. He did it, actuated by A simple love of mystery And fondness for surprises. I need not say he loved a maid-- His eloquence threw into shade All others who adored her: The maid, though pleased at first, I know, Found, after several years or so, Her startling lover bored her. So, when his orders came to sail, She did not faint or scream or wail, Or with her tears anoint him. She shook his hand, and said "Good-bye;" With laughter dancing in her eye-- Which seemed to disappoint him.