SPRING. A NEW VERSION. Ham. The air bites shrewdly-it is very cold. HAMLET. "COME, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness come!" Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason, How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum? There's no such season. The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name! Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing, And be her tuneful laureates and upholders, Who do not feel as if they had a Spring Pour'd down their shoulders! Let others eulogise her floral shows, From me they cannot win a single stanza, I know her blooms are in full blow-and so 's Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale, Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale, Are things I sneeze at ! Fair is the vernal quarter of the year! And fair its early buddings and its blowings But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear For me, I find, when eastern winds are high, Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy An inflammation. Smitten by breezes from the land of plague, Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg, I limp in agony,-I wheeze and cough; And quake with Ague, that great Agitator; Nor dream, before July, of leaving off My Respirator. What wonder if in May itself I lack A peg for laudatory verse to hang on ?— Spring mild and gentle !-yes, a Spring-heeled Jack In short, whatever panegyrics lie In fulsome odes too many to be cited, The tenderness of Spring is all my eye, And that is blighted! FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY. A PATHETIC BALLAD. BEN BATTLE was a soldier bold, But a cannon-ball took off his legs, Now as they bore him off the field, And the Forty-second Foot!" The army-surgeons made him limbs : Said he, "They 're only pegs : But there's as wooden members quite, As represent my legs!" Now Ben he loved a pretty maid, So he went to pay her his devours, But when he called on Nelly Gray, She made him quite a scoff; And when she saw his wooden legs, Began to take them off! 66 Oh, Nelly Gray! Oh, Nelly Gray! Is this your love so warm? The love that loves a scarlet coat Should be more uniform!" Said she, "I loved a soldier once, But I will never have a man With both legs in the grave! |