turns:--but she must lose
The watery wages of her labors,--
Except a little in her shoes!

Without a voice to tell her tale,
And ugly transport in her face;
All like a jugless nightingale,
She thinks of her bereaved case.

At last she sobs--she cries--she screams!
And pours her flood of sorrows out,
From eyes and mouth, in mingled streams,
Just like the lion on the spout.

For well poor Bessy knows her mother
Must lose her tea, for water's lack,
That Sukey burns--and baby-brother
Must be dryrubb'd with huck-a-back!

THE STAG-EYED LADY.

A MOORISH TALE.

Scheherazade immediately began the following story.

I.

Ali Ben Ali (did you never read
His wond'rous acts that chronicles relate,--
How there was one in pity might exceed
The Sack of Troy?) Magnificent he sate
Upon the throne of greatness--great indeed!
For those that he had under him were great--
The horse he rode on, shod with silver nails,
Was a Bashaw--Bashaws have horses' tails.

II.

Ali was cruel--a most cruel one!
'Tis rumored he had strangled his own mother--
Howbeit such deeds of darkness he had done,
'Tis thought he would have slain his elder brother
And sister too--but happily that none
Did live within harm's length of one another,
Else he had sent the Sun in all its blaze
To endless night, and shorten'd the Moon's days.

III.

Despotic power, that mars a weak man's wit,
And makes a bad man--absolutely bad,
Made Ali wicked--to a fault:--'tis fit
Monarchs should have some check-strings; but he had
No curb upon his will--no, not a _bit_--
Wherefore he did not reign well--and full glad
His slaves had been to hang him--but they falter'd
And let him live unhang'd--and still unalter'd,

IV.

Until he got a sage-bush of a beard,
Wherein an Attic owl might roost--a trail
Of bristly hair--that, honor'd and unshear'd,
Grew downward like old women and cow's tail;
Being a sign of age--some gray appear'd,
Mingling with duskier brown its warnings pale;
But yet, not so poetic as when Time
Comes like Jack Frost, and whitens it in rime.

V.

Ben Ali took the hint, and much did vex
His royal bosom that he had no son,
No living child of the more noble sex,
To stand in his Morocco shoes--not one
To make a negro-pollard--or tread necks
When he was gone--doom'd, when his days were done,
To leave the very city of his fame
Without an Ali to keep up his name.

VI.

Theref