would presume.

Meseems, a circling void I fill,
And I, unchanged where all is changed;
It seems unreal; I own it strange,
Yet nurse the thoughts I cannot kill.

I hear the ocean's surging tide,
Raise quiring on its carol-tune;
I watch the golden-sickled moon,
And clearer voices call beside.

O Sea! whose ancient ripples lie
On red-ribbed sands where seaweeds shone;
O Moon! whose golden sickle's gone;
O Voices all! like ye I die!

_Cuthbert Bede._

LUCY LAKE

Poor Lucy Lake was overgrown,
But somewhat underbrained.
She did not know enough, I own,
To go in when it rained.
Yet Lucy was constrained to go;
Green bedding,--you infer.
Few people knew she died, but oh,
The difference to her!

_Newton Mackintosh._

THE COCK AND THE BULL

You see this pebble-stone? It's a thing I bought
Of a bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid o' the day--
I like to dock the smaller parts-o'-speech,
As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur
(You catch the paronomasia, play 'po' words?)
Did, rather, i' the pre-Landseerian days.
Well, to my muttons. I purchased the concern,
And clapt it i' my poke, having given for same
By way o' chop, swop, barter or exchange--
"Chop" was my snickering dandiprat's own term--
One shilling and fourpence, current coin o' the realm.
O-n-e one and f-o-u-r four
Pence, one and fourpence--you are with me, sir?--
What hour it skills not: ten or eleven o' the clock,
One day (and what a roaring day it was
Go shop or sight-see--bar a spit o' rain!)
In February, eighteen sixty nine,
Alexandrina Victoria, Fidei,
Hm--hm--how runs the jargon? being on the throne.

Such, sir, are all the facts, succinctly put,
The basis or substratum--what you will--
Of the impending eighty thousand lines.
"Not much in 'em either," quoth perhaps simple Hodge.
But there's a superstructure. Wait a bit.

Mark first the rationale of the thing:
Hear logic rivel and levigate the deed.
That shilling--and for matter o' that, the pence--
I had o' course upo' me--wi' me say--
(_Mecum's_ the Latin, make a note o' that)
When I popp'd pen i' stand, scratched ear, wiped snout,

(Let everybody wipe his own himself)
Sniff'd--tch!--at snuffbox; tumbled up, he-heed,
Haw-haw'd (not he-haw'd, that's another guess thing):
Then fumbled at, and stumbled out of, door,
I shoved the timber ope wi' my omoplat;
And _in vestibulo_, i' the lobby to-wit,
(Iacobi Facciola