fatuity. I can't say if my spirit retains--for the subject appears to me misty--any tie To such associations as Poesy weaves round the records of Christianity. There are bards--I may be one myself--who delight in their skill to unlock a lip's Rosy secrets by kisses and whispers of texts from the charming Apocalypse. It was thus that I won, by such biblical pills of poetical manna, From two elders--Sir Seth and Lord Isaac--the liking of Lady Susanna. But I left her--a woman to me is no more than a match, sir, at tennis is-- When I heard she'd gone off with my valet, and burnt my rhymed version of Genesis. You may see by my shortness of speech that my time's almost up: I perceive That my new-fangled brevity strikes you: but don't--though the public will--grieve. As it's sometimes my whim to be vulgar, it's sometimes my whim to be brief; As when once I observed, after Heine, that "she was a harlot, and I" (which is true) "was a thief." (Though you hardly should cite this particular line, by the way, as an instance of absolute brevity: I'm aware, man, of that; so you needn't disgrace yourself, sir, by such grossly mistimed and impertinent levity.) I don't like to break off, any more than you wish me to stop: but my fate is Not to vent half a million such rhymes without blockheads exclaiming-- JAM SATIS. _Specimen from the speaker's original poems._ Come into the orchard, Anne, For the dark owl, Night, has fled, And Phosphor slumbers, as well as he can With a daffodil sky for a bed: And the musk of the roses perplexes a man, And the pimpernel muddles his head. * * * * * SONNET FOR A PICTURE That nose is out of drawing. With a gasp, She pants upon the passionate lips that ache With the red drain of her own mouth, and make A monochord of colour. Like an asp, One lithe lock wriggles in his rutilant grasp. Her bosom is an oven of myrrh, to bake Love's white warm shewbread to a browner cake. The lock his fingers clench has burst its hasp. The legs are absolutely abominable. Ah! what keen overgust of wild-eyed woes Flags in that bosom, flushes in that nose? Nay! Death sets riddles for desire to spell, Responsive. What red hem earth's passion sews, But may be ravenously unripped in hell? * * * * * NEPHELIDIA