gowned, did droop
Fast as a church, to judge from nasal snore,
That broke the silence with a hoarse hor-hoop:
When all at once with fitful start she woke;
For that same tinkling Dutchman on the stair
Had told the hour of four with clattering stroke,
And waked the sleeper ere she was aware.
"Odd drat the clock!" she sighed; but, knowing well
The cackling thing struck two at least a-head,
She turned; and back to such deep slumber fell,
But for her snore you might have thought her dead.
And so she slept till four o'clock was due,
When t'other time-piece truly told the tale;
Straightway the drowsy dame to labour flew,
And soon the suds went flirting round the pail.

MORAL.

Whoe'er breaks faith in petty ways
Will never hold a friend;
While he who ne'er a trust betrays
Gets trusted to the end.

SACRIFICIAL.

WRITTEN AFTER WITNESSING THE EXECUTION OF TWO
GREEK SAILORS AT SWANSEA, MARCH, 1859.

The morning broke fair, with a florid light,
And the lark fluttered upward in musical flight,
As the sun stept over the distant height
In mantle purple and golden.
The blue bounding billows in waltzing play
Lookt up in the face of the coming day,
And sang, as they danced o'er the sandy bay,
Their sea-songs mystic and olden.

High up, on the gable of yonder jail,
The workmen are plying with hammer and nail,
And the slow-rising framework hinteth a tale
Of mournful and sombre seeming.
'Tis the gibbet that rears its brow on high,
And the morn-breezes pass it with many a sigh,
As it stands gazing up to the fair blue sky
Like a spectre dumbly dreaming.

Through lane and alley: through alley and street
The echoes are startled by hurrying feet;
And thousands, in action fitful and fleet,
Press on to the execution.
The squalid-faced mother her baby bears;
And the father his boy on his shoulder rears:
The frail and the sinning emerge in pairs
From darkness and destitution.

Aloft on the gibbet two beings stand,
Whose foreheads are smirched with the murder-brand,
Whose lives, by the lawgivers bungling and bland,
Declared are to justice forfeit.
Below, like a statue stark and still,
A legion of faces, in brutish will,
Gaze up to the gallows with many a thrill,
And thirst for the coming surfeit.

But one more look at the silvery sea:
One t