How they who use fusees
All grow by slow degrees
Brainless as chimpanzees,
Meagre as lizards;
Go mad, and beat their wives;
Plunge (after shocking lives)
Razors and carving knives
Into their gizzards.

Confound such knavish tricks!
Yet know I five or six
Smokers who freely mix
Still with their neighbors;
Jones--(who, I'm glad to say,
Asked leave of Mrs. J.)--
Daily absorbs a clay
After his labors.

Cats may have had their goose
Cooked by tobacco-juice;
Still why deny its use
Thoughtfully taken?
We're not as tabbies are:
Smith, take a fresh cigar!
Jones, the tobacco-jar!
Here's to thee, Bacon!

_Charles Stuart Calverley._

SONNET TO A CLAM

DUM TACENT CLAIMANT

Inglorious friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being "happy as a clam!"
What though thy shell protects thy fragile head
From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea?
Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee,
While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed,
And bear thee off--as foemen take their spoil--
Far from thy friends and family to roam;
Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home,
To meet destruction in a foreign broil!
Though thou art tender yet thy humble bard
Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard!

_John G. Saxe._

TO A FLY

TAKEN OUT OF A BOWL Of PUNCH

Ah! poor intoxicated little knave,
Now senseless, floating on the fragrant wave;
Why not content the cakes alone to munch?
Dearly thou pay'st for buzzing round the bowl;
Lost to the world, thou busy sweet-lipped soul--
Thus Death, as well as Pleasure, dwells with Punch.

Now let me take thee out, and moralize--
Thus 'tis with mortals, as it is with flies,
Forever hankering after Pleasure's cup:
Though Fate, with all his legions, be at hand,
The beasts, the draught of Circe can't withstand,
But in goes every nose--they must, will sup.

Mad are the passions, as a colt untamed!
When Prudence mounts their backs to ride them mild.
They fling, they snort, they foam, they rise inflamed,
Insisting on their own sole will so wild.

Gadsbud! my buzzing friend, thou art not dead;
The Fates, so kind, have not yet snapped thy thread;
By heavens, thou mov'st a leg, and now its brother.
And kicking, lo, again, thou mov'st another!

And now thy little drunken eyes unclos