Beneath these Hyde Park elms, this chestnut’s shade, Where heaves the turf in many a flower-clad heap (Haply the _brightest_ effort Lennox made), I muse, or smoke, or read, or softly sleep. Though uncouth squares, with shapeless sculpture deck’d, I pass and give the tribute of a sigh―― Don’t care a pin what R. A.’s they elect, Nor head the feud of Mapleson and Gye. No more doth Beauty curl her lip in scorn When the waltz-measure daintily we tread; The four-horse Ascot drag with echoing horn No more awakes me early from my bed. I trust to dumb forgetfulness a prey This smoky city soon will be resigned, That for a season I may pass away, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind. _Funny Folks._ August 12, 1876. ――――:o:―――― ELEGY. _Written in a Country Rink._ The church clock strikes the knell of parting day, And all the world is going home to tea, The skater homewards takes his weary way, And leaves the rink to solitude and me. Now darkness o’er the scene a mantle flings, And peace and silence through the air do float Save where the band are packing up their things, And the French horn emits a farewell note. Save too, from yonder corner grumbling steals, The fitter-on does to his mate complain, Of such as coming there to mount their wheels From liberal favours zealously abstain. ’Tis here beneath the bright and azure sky, The rough-laid asphalte seems to rise and sink, Where, under many a sharp maternal eye, The youths and maidens of the village rink. For them no more will croquet have delight, The simple shuttlecock they will despise, No more they’ll watch the winged arrow’s flight, Nor draw the bow in quest of archer’s prize. Let not ambition mock their simple style, Nor from their thoughtless recreation shrink. Nor Grandeur turn with half contemptuous smile From these short simple annals of the Rink. P’r’aps in this quiet spot we may descry Some rinker pregnant with emotions grand; This one, may be, will fill some office high, This the applause of list’ning crowds command. That youth we saw with hands upheld on high, With form erect, pursue his eager way, Though now in rinking lets his time go by, May be the Gladstone of a future day. That youth who “loathed melancholy” dreads, Some mute inglorious Milton doubtless he; While this who binds his fallen comrades’ heads, In him a guiltless Cromwell we may see. Full many a gem of purest ray serene Beneath the ocean’s depth is known to shrink, So many a damsel’s born to skate unseen, And waste her grace upon a village rink. There was a youth to whom I once did give Attention, though from notice he would shrink, Some people told me that he rink’d to live, Though others said he merely lived to rink.