At last she sobs--she cries--she screams!-- And pours her flood of sorrows out, From eyes and mouth, in mingled streams, Just like the lion on the spout. For well poor Bessy knows her mother Must lose her tea, for water’s lack, That Sukey burns--and baby-brother Must be dry-rubb’d with huck-a-back! A FAIRY TALE. On Hounslow heath--and close beside the road, As western travellers may oft have seen,-- A little house some years ago there stood, A minikin abode; And built like Mr. Birkbeck’s, all of wood: The walls of white, the window shutters green;-- Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and West. (Tho’ now at rest) On which it used to wander to and fro’, Because its master ne’er maintain’d a rider, Like those who trade in Paternoster Row; But made his business travel for itself, Till he had made his pelf, And then retired--if one may call it so, Of a roadsider. Perchance, the very race and constant riot Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran, Made him more relish the repose and quiet Of his now sedentary caravan; Perchance, he lov’d the ground because ’twas common, And so he might impale a strip of soil, That furnish’d, by his toil, Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman;-- And five tall hollyhocks, in dingy flower: Howbeit, the thoroughfare did no ways spoil His peace, unless, in some unlucky hour, A stray horse came and gobbled up his bow’r! But tired of always looking at the coaches, The same to come,--when they had seen them one day! And, used to brisker life, both man and wife Began to suffer N U E’s approaches, And feel retirement like a long wet Sunday:-- So, having had some quarters of school breeding, They turn’d themselves, like other folks, to reading; But setting out where others nigh have done, And being ripen’d in the seventh stage, The childhood of old age, Began, as other children have begun,-- Not with the pastorals of Mr. Pope, Or Bard of Hope, Or Paley ethical, or learned Porson,-- But spelt, on Sabbaths, in St. Mark, or John, And then relax’d themselves with Whittington, Or Valentine and Orson-- But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con, And being easily melted in their dotage, Slobber’d,--and kept Reading,--and wept Over the white Cat, in their wooden cottage.