XXIV.

I'd build a little gaol for all these men

Who flood us with such deluges of rhyme; For the more hardened ones I'd have a den

Dug deep and filled with critics' filthy slime. There should they live like hedgehogs in a fen; For now their verse becomes a serious crime, And wants judicious discipline and physic, I give them up to Doctor Bell of Chiswick !

XXV.

His plan of treatment I think rather cruel,—
He first debars them all from pen and ink,
Then doses them with Rogers' water-gruel;
After this discipline they cease to think

Of verse, but take to Brougham and Locke and
Whewell,

Until the "rolling eye" can scarcely wink;

He then considers the tamed maniacs fit

To be the lords of their recovered (?) wit!

XXVI.

Last year I called upon the Duke, at Walmer,—

Who, as he always does, received me well;

"I mean no pun,".

-no welcome could be warmer,

Not even in a Calvinistic hell:

He made me dine with him, and to my dormi-
Tory (tired Nature's sweetest citadel)

Was led with smiling looks and bed-room candle,
By a fair girl-Stop, cries the Muse, no scandal.

XXVII.

Unhand me, Muse-I'll tell the truth, I swear;
Unhand me, or I'll make a ghost of you :-

Well-I was led by chambermaid as fair

As ever owned two eyes of starry blue,

A full-fleshed figure, with luxuriant hair,

Which o'er her neck in careless grace she threw ;

She led the way—I followed as she led,

And then she turned down with much grace the bed!

XXVIII.

I, lost in calm abstraction's loftiest mood,
And being of a nervous, gentle nature,
Locked the room door,-when lo! before me stood,
In beauty's winning light, that handsome creature ;
I saw her face and thoughts were pure and good!—
And blest the innocence of every feature!
Letting her out a vestal as she came—

My female readers cry out, "What a shame!"

XXIX.

The wife and Bennet (so the monk was called)
Would often in the Abbey's garden stray :

This pleasant garden was full lofty walled,
And spreading trees were growing every way;
While jessamines and honeysuckles crawled
O'er buttresses fast creeping to decay :-
And here and there, above one's drowsy head,
A mighty vine its leafy shadow spread.

XXX.

By Heavens! it must be a pleasant thing

To live and die within a garden land,— To see the bursting herbage in the spring, And watch as day by day the buds expand! To hear the sweet birds in the morning sing, Those which the pure heart can understand!

songs

To sit at noon beneath the leafy tree,

Whose rustling makes a music like the sea.

XXXI.

And then to watch the twilight shadows creep
Over the mighty heavens, like a thought
Glooming the mind; to know the world asleep
And nature to the breast of midnight caught!
To feel the silence passionately deep,

'Till every sense is to its climax wrought!—
For one sweet year of life like this, I'd give
In glad exchange the years I have to live.

XXXII.

Here often in the Abbey garden sat

The Abbot, Gertrude, and her jealous spouse, Spending the hours in theologic chat,

Beneath the cooling shadow of the boughs; Such furious love her charms at last begat

In Bennet, that it quite disturbed his vows, And vexed him so, he took no pleasure in His meals and masses, but was growing thin!

XXXIII.

One day she mourned at the Confessional

Her husband's jealousy, which grew absurd, And said, that were her life transgression all, She could not more suspicion have incurred; The holy man, with twang professional,

Replied, when he this woeful case had heard,

'That, of a truth, it was a great omission

On her part, not to justify suspicion."