to end, one April morn,
'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,--
Drilled like a vellum of old time;
And musing on this final mystery,
The Poet left off scribbling rhyme,
And took to studying Natural History.

This was the turning of the tide;
His five-act play is still unwritten;
The dreams that now his soul divide
Are more of Lubbock than of Lytton;
"_Ballades_" are "verses vain" to him
Whose first ambition is to lecture
(So much is man the sport of whim!)
On "Insects and their Architecture."

THE LOST ELIXIR.

"_One drop of ruddy human blood puts more life into the veins of a poem
than all the delusive 'aurum potabile' that can be distilled out of the
choicest library._"--Lowell.

Ah, yes, that "drop of human blood!"--
We had it once, may be,
When our young song's impetuous flood
First poured its ecstasy;
But now the shrunk poetic vein
Yields not that priceless drop again.

We toil,--as toiled we not of old;
Our patient hands distil
The shining spheres of chemic gold
With hard-won, fruitless skill;
But that red drop still seems to be
Beyond our utmost alchemy.

Perchance, but most in later age,
Time's after-gift, a tear,
Will strike a pathos on the page
Beyond all art sincere;
But that "one drop of human blood"
Has gone with life's first leaf and bud.

MEMORIAL VERSES.

A DIALOGUE

TO THE MEMORY OF MR. ALEXANDER POPE.

"_Non injussa cano._"
Virg.

POET. I sing of POPE--

FRIEND. What, POPE, the _Twitnam_ Bard,
Whom _Dennis_, _Cibber_, _Tibbald_ push'd so hard!
POPE of the _Dunciad_! POPE who dar'd to woo,
And then to libel, _Wortley-Montagu_!
POPE of the _Ham-walks_ story--

P. Scandals all!
Scandals that now I care not to recall.
Surely a little, in two hundred Years,
One may neglect Contemporary Sneers:--
Surely Allowance for the Man may make
That had all _Grub-street_ yelping in his Wake!
And who (I ask you) has been never Mean,
When urged by Envy, Anger or the Spleen?
No: I prefer to look on POPE as one
Not rightly happy till his Life was done;
Whose whole Career, romance it as you please,
Was (what he call'd it) but a "long Disease:"
Think of his Lot,--his Pilgrimage of Pain,