en in four cross-roads,
With a _stake_ in his inside!

BIANCA'S DREAM.

A VENETIAN STORY.

I.

Bianca!--fair Bianca!--who could dwell
With safety on her dark and hazel gaze,
Nor find there lurk'd in it a witching spell,
Fatal to balmy nights and blessed days?
The peaceful breath that made the bosom swell,
She turn'd to gas, and set it in a blaze;
Each eye of hers had Love's Eupyrion in it,
That he could light his link at in a minute.

II.

So that, wherever in her charms she shone,
A thousand breasts were kindled into flame;
Maidens who cursed her looks forgot their own,
And beaux were turn'd to flambeaux where she came;
All hearts indeed were conquer'd but her own,
Which none could ever temper down or tame:
In short, to take our haberdasher's hints,
She might have written over it,--"from Flints."

III.

She was, in truth, the wonder of her sex,
At least in Venice--where with eyes of brown
Tenderly languid, ladies seldom vex
An amorous gentle with a needless frown;
Where gondolas convey guitars by pecks,
And Love at casements climbeth up and down,
Whom for his tricks and custom in that kind,
Some have considered a Venetian blind.

IV.

Howbeit, this difference was quickly taught,
Amongst more youths who had this cruel jailer,
To hapless Julio--all in vain he sought
With each new moon his hatter and his tailor;
In vain the richest padusoy he bought,
And went in bran new beaver to assail her--
As if to show that Love had made him _smart_
All over--and not merely round his heart.

V.

In vain he labor'd thro' the sylvan park
Bianca haunted in--that where she came,
Her learned eyes in wandering might mark
The twisted cypher of her maiden name,
Wholesomely going thro' a course of bark:
No one was touched or troubled by his flame,
Except the Dryads, those old maids that grow
In trees,--like wooden dolls in embryo.

VI.

In vain complaining elegies he writ,
And taught his tuneful instrument to grieve,
And sang in quavers how his heart was split,
Constant beneath her lattice with each eve;
She mock'd his wooing with her wicked wit,
And slash'd his suit so that it matched his sleeve,
Till he grew silent at the vesper star,
And, quite despairing, hamstring'd his guitar.

VII.

Bianca's heart was coldly frosted o'er
With snows unmelting--an eternal sheet,
But his was red within him, like the core
Of old Vesuvius, with perpetual h