The brazen vessel for a while, Had lectured in an easy song, Like Abernethy--on the bile-- The scalded herb was getting strong; All seem’d as smooth as smooth could be, To have a cosey cup of tea; Alas! how often human sippers With unexpected bitters meet, And buds, the sweetest of the sweet, Like sugar, only meet the nippers! The Widow Cross, I should have told, Had seen three husbands to the mould; She never sought an Indian pyre, Like Hindoo wives that lose their loves, But with a proper sense of fire, Put up, instead, with “three removes:” Thus, when with any tender words Or tears she spoke about her loss, The dear departed, Mr. Cross, Came in for nothing but his thirds; For, as all widows love too well, She liked upon the list to dwell, And oft ripp’d up the old disasters-- She might, indeed, have been supposed A great _ship_ owner, for she prosed Eternally of her Three Masters! Thus, foolish woman! while she nursed Her mild souchong, she talk’d and reckon’d What had been left her by her first, And by her last, and by her second. Alas! not all her annual rents Could then entice the little German,-- Not Mr. Cross’s Three Per Cents, Or Consols, ever make him _her_ man; He liked her cash, he liked her houses, But not that dismal bit of land She always settled on her spouses. So taking up his hat and band, Said he “You’ll think my conduct odd-- But here my hopes no more may linger; I thought you had a wedding-finger, But oh!--it is a curtain-rod!” “DON’T YOU SMELL FIRE?” I. Run!--run for St. Clement’s engine! For the Pawnbroker’s all in a blaze, And the pledges are frying and singing-- Oh! how the poor pawners will craze! Now where can the turncock be drinking? Was there ever so thirsty an elf?-- But he still may tope on, for I’m thinking That the plugs are as dry as himself. II. The engines!--I hear them come rumbling; There’s the Phœnix! the Globe! and the Sun! What a row there will be, and a grumbling When the water don’t start for a run! See! there they come racing and tearing, All the street with loud voices is fill’d; Oh! its only the firemen a-swearing At a man they’ve run over and kill’d! III. How sweetly the sparks fly away now, And twinkle like stars in the sky; It’s a wonder the engines don’t play now, But I never saw water so shy! Why there isn’t enough for a snipe, And the fire is fiercer, alas! Oh! instead of the New River pipe, They have gone--that they have--to the gas! IV.