the Queen who melted pearls
Marc Antony to wheedle.
Her bark, her banquets, all are fled;
And Time, who cut her vital thread,
Has only spared her Needle.

Stern Neptune, with his triple prong,
Childe Harold, peer of peerless song,
So frolic Fortune wills it,
Stand next the Son of crazy Paul,
Who hugg'd the intrusive King of Gaul
Upon a raft at Tilsit.

"Poor vagrant child of want and toll!
The sun that warms thy native soil
Has ripen'd not thy knowledge;
'Tis obvious, from that vacant air,
Though Padua gave thee birth, thou ne'er
Didst graduate in her College.

"'Tis true thou nam'st thy motley freight;
But from what source their birth they date,
Mythology or history.
Old records, or the dreams of youth,
Dark fable, or transparent truth,
Is all to thee a mystery.

"Come tell me, Vagrant, in a breath,
Alcides' birth, his life, his death,
Recount his dozen labours:
Homer thou know'st--but of the woes
Of Troy, thou'rt ignorant as those
Dark Orange-boys, thy neighbours."

'Twas thus, erect, I deign'd to pour
My shower of lordly pity o'er
The poor Italian wittol,
As men are apt to do, to show
Their 'vantage-ground o'er those who know
Just less than their own little.

When lo, methought Prometheus' flame
Waved o'er a bust of deathless fame,
And woke to life Childe Harold:
The Bard aroused me from my dream
Of pity, alias self-esteem,
And thus indignant caroll'd:--

"O thou, who thus in numbers pert
And petulant, presum'st to flirt
With Memory's Nine Daughters:
Whose verse the next trade-winds that blow
Down narrow Paternoster-row
Shall 'whelm in Lethe's waters:

"Slight is the difference I see
Between yon Paduan youth and thee:
He moulds, of Pans plaster,
An urn by classic Chantrey's laws,--
And thou a literary vase
Of would-be alabaster.

"Were I to arbitrate betwixt
His terra cotta, plain or mix'd,
And thy earth-gender'd sonnet;
Small cause has he th' award to dread:--
Thy Images are in the head,
And his, poor boy, are on it!"

_New Monthly Magazine._

* * * * *

PUNCH.

Punch was first made by the English at Nemle, near Goa, where they have
the _Nepa die Goa_, commonly called arrack. This fascinating liquor got
the name of _punch_, from its being composed of _five_ articles--th