II. IF you’ve seen a short man swagger tow’rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out “Heave aho! my hearties,” and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his pleased companion’s face; If he preluded with hornpipes each successive thing he did, From a sun-browned cheek extracting still an ostentatious quid; And expectorated freely, and occasionally cursed:— Then have you beheld, depicted by a master’s hand, _my first_. O my countryman! if ever from thy arm the bolster sped, In thy school-days, with precision at a young companion’s head; If ’twas thine to lodge the marble in the centre of the ring, Or with well-directed pebble make the sitting hen take wing: Then do thou—each fair May morning, when the blue lake is as glass, And the gossamers are twinkling star-like in the beaded grass; When the mountain-bee is sipping fragrance from the bluebell’s lip, And the bathing-woman tells you, Now’s your time to take a dip: When along the misty valleys fieldward winds the lowing herd, And the early worm is being dropped on by the early bird; And Aurora hangs her jewels from the bending rose’s cup, And the myriad voice of Nature calls thee to _my second_ up:— Hie thee to the breezy common, where the melancholy goose Stalks, and the astonished donkey finds that he is really loose; There amid green fern and furze-bush shalt thou soon _my whole_ behold, Rising ‘bull-eyed and majestic’—as Olympus queen of old: Kneel,—at a respectful distance,—as they kneeled to her, and try With judicious hand to put a ball into that ball-less eye: Till a stiffness seize thy elbows, and the general public wake— Then return, and, clear of conscience, walk into thy well-earned steak. III. ERE yet “knowledge for the million” Came out “neatly bound in boards;” When like Care upon a pillion Matrons rode behind their lords: Rarely, save to hear the Rector, Forth did younger ladies roam; Making pies, and brewing nectar From the gooseberry-trees at home. They’d not dreamed of Pan or Vevay; Ne’er should into blossom burst At the ball or at the levée; Never come, in fact, _my first_: Nor illumine cards by dozens With some labyrinthine text, Nor work smoking-caps for cousins Who were pounding at _my next_. Now have skirts, and minds, grown ampler; Now not all they seek to do Is create upon a sampler Beasts which Buffon never knew: But their venturous muslins rustle O’er the cragstone and the snow, Or at home their biceps muscle Grows by practising the bow.