le!

Spiders their busy death watch tick'd;
A certain sign that fate will frown;
The clumsy kitchen clock, too, click'd;
A certain sign it was not down.

More strong and strong her terrors rose;--
Her shadow did the maid appal;--
She trembled at her lovely nose--
It look'd so long against the wall.

Up to her chamber, damp and cold,
She clim'd lord Hoppergallop's stair;--
Three stories high, long, dull and old--
As great lords' stories often are.

All Nature now appear'd to pause;
And "o'er the one half world seem'd dead;"
No "curtain'd sleep" had she;--because
She had no curtains to her bed.

Listening she lay;--with iron din,
The clock struck twelve; the door flew wide;
When Thomas grimly glided in,
With little Bobtail by his side.

Tall, like the poplar, was his size;
Green, green his waistcoat was, as leeks,
Red, red as beet root, were his eyes;
And, pale, as turnips, were his cheeks!

Soon as the spectre she espied,
The fear struck damsel faintly said,
"What would my Thomas?"--he replied,
"O! Molly Dumpling! I am dead."

"All in the flower of youth I fell,
Cut off with health's full blossom crown'd;
I was not ill--but in the well
I tumbled backwards, and was drown'd.

"Four fathom deep thy love doth lie;
His faithful dog his fate doth share;
We're friends;--this is not he and I;
We are not here--for we are there.

"Yes;--two foul water fiends are we;
Maid of the moor! attend us now!
Thy hour's at hand;--we come for thee!
The little fiend cur said "bow wow!"

"To wind her in her cold grave,
A Holland sheet a maiden likes;
A sheet of water thou shalt have;
Such sheets there are in Holland dykes."

The fiends approach; the maid did shrink;
Swift through the night's foul air they spin;
They took her to the green well's brink,
And, with a souse, they plump'd her in.

_Dessert to the True American_, I-No. 27, Jan. 12, 1799, Phila.

[The author evidently had Buerger's _Lenore_ in mind when writing the
above.]

[Burlesque on the Style, in which most of the German romantic Ballads
are written.]

_Phil. Repos._, I-328, Aug. 22, 1801, Phila.

[Also in _Dessert to the True American_, I-No. 27, Jan. 12, 1799,
Phila.]