Her fish-like mouth was open’d wide, Her eyes were blue and pale, Her dress was of the ocean green, When ruffled by a gale; Thought he “beneath that petticoat She hides a salmon-tail!” She look’d as siren ought to look, A sharp and bitter shrew, To sing deceiving lullabies For mariners to rue,-- But when he saw her lips apart, It chill’d him through and through! With either hand he stopp’d his ears Against her evil cry; Alas, alas, for all his care, His doom it seem’d to die, Her voice went ringing through his head It was so sharp and high! He thrust his fingers farther in At each unwilling ear, But still in very spite of all, The words were plain and clear; “I can’t stand here the whole day long, To hold your glass of beer!” With open’d mouth and open’d eyes, Up rose the Sub-marine, And gave a stare to find the sands And deeps where he had been: There was no siren with her glass No waters ocean-green! The wet deception from his eyes Kept fading more and more, He only saw the bar-maid stand With pouting lip before-- The small green parlour of the Ship, And little sanded floor. THE LAMENT OF TOBY, THE LEARNED PIG. “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”--POPE. O heavy day! O day of woe! To misery a poster, Why was I ever farrow’d--why Not spitted for a roaster? In this world, pigs, as well as men, Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings, But must I give the classics up, For barley-meal and middlings? Of what avail that I could spell And read, just like my betters, If I must come to this at last, To litters, not to letters? O, why are pigs made scholars of? It baffles my discerning, What griskens, fry, and chitterlings Can have to do with learning. Alas! my learning once drew cash, But public fame’s unstable, So I must turn a pig again, And fatten for the table. To leave my literary line My eyes get red and leaky; But Giblett doesn’t want me _blue_, But red and white, and streaky. Old Mullins used to cultivate My learning like a gard’ner; But Giblett only thinks of lard, And not of Doctor Lardner! He does not care about my brain The value of two coppers, All that he thinks about my head Is, how I’m off for choppers. Of all my literary kin A farewell must be taken, Good-bye to the poetic Hogg! The philosophic Bacon! Day after day my lessons fade, My intellect gets muddy; A trough I have, and not a desk, A sty--and not a study! Another little month, and then My progress ends like Bunyan’s; The seven sages that I loved Will be chopp’d up with onions!