And gave my brush a drink; Dipping" as when a painter dips. In gloom of earthquake and eclipse," That is -in Indian ink. O then, what black Mont Blancs arose, Crested with soot, and not with snows! What clouds of dingy hue! In spite of what the bard has penned, I fear the distance did not "lend Enchantment to the view." Not Radclyffe's brush did e'er design The Chinese cake dispersed a ray Yet urchin pride sustained me still; Had any finger in't!” But colors came! -like morning light, With gorgeous hues displacing night, Or Spring's enlivened scene : At once the sable shades withdrew; My skies got very, very blue; And, washed by my cosmetic brush, (Not Goldsmith's Auburn) — nut-brown hair That made her loveliest of the fair; Not "loveliest of the plain!" Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue, A young Pygmalion, I adored The maids I made With evil but time was stored and it came! Perspective dawned · and soon I saw My houses stand against its law; But horrors to be wept! Ah! why did knowledge ope my eyes? It only serves to hint What grave defects and wants are mine; That I'm no Hilton in design In nature no Dewint! Thrice happy time! — Art's early days! When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise, Narcissus-like I hung! When great Rembrandt but little seemed, As nothing to the young! A FAIRY TALE. ON Hounslow heath and close beside the road, And built like Mr. Birkbeck's, all of wood; On which it used to wander to and fro, And then retired if one may call it so, Perchance, the very race and constant riot Perchance, he loved the ground because 'twas common, That furnished, by his toil, Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman; 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, And being ripened in the seventh stage, The childhood of old age, Began, as other children have begun, Or Paley ethical, or learned Porson, - But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con, Reading, - and wept Over the White Cat, in their wooden cottage. Thus reading on the longer They read, of course, their childish faith grew stronger In puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons, As the old man sat a feeding Beside his open street-and-parlor door, A hideous roar Proclaimed a drove of beasts was coming by the way. Long-horned, and short, of many a different breed, With some of those unquiet black dwarf devils, Or Firth of Forth; Looking half wild with joy to leave the North, Only in some enthusiastic moment, Kicked out a passage through the beastly rabble; Backed his beef-steaks against the wooden gable Wherein the sage Just then was spelling some romantic fable. The old man, half a scholar, half a dunce, Could not peruse who could ? two tales at once; And being huffed At what he knew was none of Riquet's Tuft, But most unluckly enclosed a morsel Of the intruding tail, and all the tassel: The monster gave a roar, And bolting off with speed, increased by pain, |