f classic beauty,
Rare in richly-carved design;
Memento of an ancient splendour
Was this peerless vase of mine.
A master-hand of old had graved it:
Hand for many a year inurned:
And out from every line and tracing
Germs of genuine genius yearned.
I took the gem and proudly placed it
On a pillar 'mongst the flowers,
And watcht how radiance round it hovered,
Bathed with sunlight and with showers.
A little weed-like plant grew near it,
And anon crept o'er its face;
Until at length, with stealth insidious,
It quite obscured its classic grace,
And where was once a noble picture
Of the Beauteous and the True,
There hung a mass of straggling herbage
Flecked with blooms of sickly hue.
The Summer passed: the plant had flourished,
As every weed in Summer will;
When Winter came and struck the straggler
To the heart with bitter chill.
It died: the winds of March played round it,
Laughing at its wretched plight.
Then blew it from its slender holding,
Like a feather out of sight.
But still in undimmed freshness standing,
Reared the vase its classic face;
Rare in its old, eternal beauty,
Majestic in its pride of place.

A RIDDLE.

A riddle of riddles: Who'll give it a name?
A portrait of God in a worm-eaten frame.
A mount in his own eye--in others' a mite;
The foot-boy of Wrong, and the headsman of Right;
A vaunter of Virtue--yet dallies with Vice;
From the cope to the basement bought up at a price;
A vane in his friendship--in folly a rock;
In custom a time-piece--in manners a mock;
A fib under fashion--a fool under form;
In charity chilly--in wealth-making warm:
In hatred satanic--a lambkin in love;
A hawk in religion with coo of a dove;
A riddle unravelled--a story untold;
A worm deemed an idol if covered with gold.
A dog in a gutter--a God on a throne:
In slander electric--in justice a drone:
A parrot in promise, and frail as a shade;
A hooded immortal in life's masquerade;
A sham-lacquered bauble, a bubble, a breath:
A boaster in life-time--a coward in death.

TO A FLY:

BURNED BY A GAS-LIGHT.

Poor prostrate speck! Thou round and round
With wildering limp dost come and go;
Thy tale to me, devoid of sound,
Bears the mute majesty of woe.
In bounding pride of revelry,
Seared by the cruel, burning blast,
Thy fall instructive is to me
A