fellow,--it quite makes me--why,
It really--my dear fellow--do just try Conciliation!"

Stringing his nerves like flint,
The sturdy butcher seized upon the hint,--
At least he seized upon the foremost wether,--
And hugg'd and lugg'd and tugg'd him neck and crop
Just _nolens volens_ thro' the open shop--
If tails come off he didn't care a feather,--
Then walking to the door and smiling grim,
He rubb'd his forehead and his sleeve together--
"There!--I have _con_ciliated him!"

Again--good-humoredly to end our quarrel--
(Good humor should prevail!)
I'll fit you with a tale,
Whereto is tied a moral.

Once on a time a certain English lass
Was seized with symptoms of such deep decline,
Cough, hectic flushes, ev'ry evil sign,
That, as their wont is at such desperate pass,
The Doctors gave her over--to an ass.

Accordingly, the grisly Shade to bilk,
Each morn the patient quaff'd a frothy bowl
Of asinine new milk,
Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal
Which got proportionably spare and skinny--
Meanwhile the neighbors cried "Poor Mary Ann!
She can't get over it! she never can!"
When lo! to prove each prophet was a ninny
The one that died was the poor wet-nurse Jenny.

To aggravate the case,
There were but two grown donkeys in the place;
And most unluckily for Eve's sick daughter,
The other long ear'd creature was a male,
Who never in his life had given a pail
Of milk, or even chalk and water.
No matter: at the usual hour of eight
Down trots a donkey to the wicket-gate,
With Mister Simon Gubbins on his back,--
"Your sarvant, Miss",--a worry spring-like day,--
Bad time for hasses tho'! good lack! good lack!
Jenny be dead, Miss,--but I've brought ye Jack,
He doesn't give no milk--but he can bray.

So runs the story,
And, in vain self-glory,
Some Saints would sneer at Gubbins for his blindness--
But what the better are their pious saws
To ailing souls, than dry hee-haws,
Without the milk of human kindness?

TO MY DAUGHTER[16]

ON HER BIRTHDAY.

[Footnote 16: Written at Ostend in September 1839.]

Dear Fanny! nine long years ago,
While yet the morning sun was low,
And rosy with the Eastern glow
The landscape smiled--
Whilst lowed the newly-waken'd herds--
Sweet as the early song of birds,
I heard those first, delightful words,
"Thou hast a Child!"

Along with that uprising dew
Tears glisten'd in my eyes, though few,
To hail a dawning quite as new
T