And oh! if e'er I should forget, I swearBut that's impossible, and cannot be— Sooner shall this blue ocean melt to air,

Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea, Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair!

Or think of anything excepting thee; A mind diseased no remedy can physic."

(Here the ship gave a lurch and he grew sea-sick.) "Sooner shall heaven kiss earth!" (Here he fell sicker.)

66

"Oh, Julia! what is every other woe?

(For God's sake let me have a glass of liquor;
Pedro, Battista, help me down below.)
Julia, my love! (you rascal, Pedro, quicker)
Oh, Julia! (this curst vessel pitches so)
Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!"
(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)

He felt that chilling heaviness of heart,

Or rather stomach, which, alas! attends, Beyond the best apothecary's art,

The loss of love, the treachery of friends, Or death of those we dote on, when a part

Of us dies with them as each fond hope ends. No doubt he would have been much more pathetic, But the sea acted as a strong emetic.

Love's a capricious power: I've known it hold

Out through a fever caused by its own heat,
But be much puzzled by a cough and cold,
And find a quinsy very hard to treat;

Against all noble maladies he's bold,

But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet, Nor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh, Nor inflammations redden his blind eye.

But worst of all is nausea, or a pain
About the lower region of the bowels;
Love, who heroically breathes a vein,

Shrinks from the application of hot towels,
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign,

Sea-sickness death. His love was perfect, how else Could Juan's passion, while the billows roar, Resist his stomach, ne'er at sea before?

-"Don Juan."

After Swimming the Hellespont

IF, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont;

If, when the wint'ry tempest roar'd,
He sped to Hero nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!

For me, degenerate, modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day,

But since he crossed the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo-and-Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;

'Twere hard to say who fared the best:

Sad mortals, thus the gods still plague you!

He lost his labour, I my jest;

For he was drowned, and I've the ague.

STRANGER! behold, interred together,
The souls of learning and of leather.
Poor Joe is gone, but left his all:
You'll find his relics in a stall.

His works were neat, and often found
Well stitched, and with morocco bound.
Tread lightly-where the bard is laid
He cannot mend the shoe he made;
Yet is he happy in his hole,
With verse immortal as his sole.
But still to business he held fast,
And stuck to Phoebus to the last.
Then who shall say so good a fellow
Was only "leather and prunella"?
For character-he did not lack it;
And if he did, 'twere shame to Black-it."

66

Michael's Call for Witnesses

Now Satan turned and waved his swarthy hand,
Which stirred with its electric qualities
Clouds farther off than we can understand,

Although we find them sometimes in our skies; Infernal thunder shook both sea and land

In all the planets, and hell's batteries.
Let off the artillery, which Milton mentions
As one of Satan's most sublime inventions.

This was a signal unto such damned souls

As have the privilege of their damnation Extended far beyond the mere controls

Of worlds past, present, or to come; no station Is theirs particularly in the rolls

Of hell assigned; but where their inclination Or business carries them in search of game, They may range freely-being damned the same.

They're proud of this-as very well they may,
It being a sort of knighthood, or gilt key
Stuck in their loins; or like to an entrée

Up the back stairs, or such freemasonry.
I borrow my comparisons from clay,

Being clay myself. Let not those spirits be Offended with such base low likenesses; We know their posts are nobler far than these.

When the great signal ran from heaven to hell-
About ten million times the distance reckoned
From our sun to its earth, as we can tell

How much time it takes up, even to a second,
For every ray that travels to dispel

The fogs of London, through which, dimly beaconed, The weather-cocks are gilt some thrice a year,

If that the summer is not too severe

I

say that I can tell-'twas half a minute:
I know the solar beams take up more time

Ere, packed up for their journey, they begin it;
But then their telegraph is less sublime,

And if they ran a race, they would not win it

'Gainst Satan's couriers bound for their own clime.

The sun takes up some years for every ray
To reach its goal-the devil not half a day.

Upon the
verge of space, about the size
Of half-a-crown, a little speck appeared
(I've seen a something like it in the skies
In the Ægean, ere a squall); it neared
And growing bigger, took another guise;

Like an aerial ship it tacked, and steered,
Or was steered (I am doubtful of the grammar

Of the last phrase, which makes the stanza stammer—

But take your choice); and then it grew a cloud;
And so it was-a cloud of witnesses.

But such a cloud! No land e'er saw a crowd
Of locusts numerous as the heavens saw these;