Where am I? in what dreadful ship? upon what dread

ful lake?

What shape is that, so very grim, and black as any coal? It is Mahound, the Evil One, and he has gain'd my soul!

Oh, mother dear! my tender nurse! dear meadows that

beguil'd

་

My happy days, when I was yet a little sinless child,— My mother dear-my native fields, I never more shall

see:

I'm sailing in the Devil's Ship, upon the Devil's Sea!"

Loud laugh'd that SABLE MARINER, and loudly in return His sooty crew sent forth a laugh that rang from stem to stern

A dozen pair of grimly cheeks were crumpled on the

nonce

As many sets of grinning teeth came shining out at once : A dozen gloomy shapes at once enjoy'd the merry fit, With shriek and yell, and oaths as well, like Demons of the Pit.

K

They crow'd their fill, and then the Chief made answer for the whole ;

"Our skins," said he, "are black ye see, because we

carry coal;

You'll find your mother sure enough, and see your native

fields

For this here ship has pick'd you up-the Mary Ann of Shields!"

SPRING.

A NEW VERSION.

Ham. The air bites shrewdly-it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.

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!
For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the Fighter.

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 The Influenza.

Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale,
Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at,
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
With other sowings!

For me, I find, when eastern winds are high,
A frigid, not a genial inspiration;

Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy

An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,

To me all vernal luxuries are fables,

Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg,
Stiff as a table's?

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

To those he sprang on

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!