With hair cropp'd like a man, I've felt
The heads of all the beaux;

But Spurzheim could not touch their hearts,
And, oh! they won't propose!

I threw aside the books, and thought
That ignorance was bliss;

I felt convinced that men preferred
A simple sort of Miss ;

And so I lisp'd out naught beyond
Plain "yeses" or plain "noes,"
And wore a sweet unmeaning smile;
Yet, oh! they won't propose!

Last night, at Lady Ramble's rout,
I heard Sir Harry Gale
Exclaim, "Now I propose again;"
I started, turning pale;

I really thought my time was come,
I blush'd like any rose;
But, oh! I found 'twas only at
Ecarté he'd propose!

And what is to be done, mamma?
Oh! what is to be done?

I really have no time to lose,
For I am thirty-one:

At balls I am too often left

Where spinsters sit in rows;

Why won't the men propose, mamma?

Why won't the men propose?

T. H. BAILEY.

THE NAUTILUS.

LIKE an ocean breeze afloat
In a little pearly boat-
Pearl within, and round about,
And a silken streamer out,
Over the sea, over the sea,
Merrily, merrily, saileth he!

Not for battle, not for pelf,
But to pleasure his own self,
Sails he on for many a league,
Nor knoweth hunger nor fatigue:
Past many a rock, past many a shore,
Nor shifts a sail, nor lifts an oar:
Oh! the joy of sailing thus-
Like a brave old Nautilus!

Thou didst laugh at sun and breeze
On the new-created seas:

Thou wast with the dragon broods
In the old sea-solitudes,
Sailing in the new-made light
With the curled-up Ammonite!
Thou survived the awful shock
That turn'd the ocean bed to rock,
And changed its myriad living swarms
To the marble's veined forms-

Thou wast there!-thy little boat,
Airy voyager, kept afloat

O'er the waters wild and dismal,
O'er the yawning gulfs abysmal;
Amid wreck and overturning-
Rock-imbedding-heaving, burning!
'Mid the tumult and the stir,
Thou, most ancient mariner,
In that pearly boat of thine,
Sat'st upon the troubled brine!

MARY HOWITT

THE ORPHAN BALLAD-SINGERS.

Он, weary, weary are our feet,

And weary, weary is our way;

Through many a long and crowded street

We've wander❜d mournfully to-day.

My little sister she is pale;

She is too tender and too young
To bear the autumn's sullen gale,
And all day long the child has sung.
She was our mother's favourite child,
Who loved her for her eyes of blue;
And she is delicate and mild-

She cannot do what I can do.
She never met her father's eyes,
Although they were so like her own;
In some far distant sea he lies,

A father to his child unknown.

The first time that she lisp'd his name,
A little playful thing was she;
How proud we were, yet that night came
The tale how he had sunk at sea.
My mother never raised her head-

How strange, how white, how cold she grew! It was a broken heart, they said

I wish our hearts were broken too.

We have no home-we have no friends;
They said our home no more was ours-
Our cottage where the ash-tree bends,

The garden we had fill'd with flowers;
The sounding shells our father brought,
That we might hear the sea at home;
Our bees, that in the summer wrought
The winter's golden honeycomb.

We wander'd forth 'mid wind and rain,
No shelter from the open sky;

I only wish to see again

My mother's grave, and rest, and die. Alas, it is a weary thing

To sing our ballads o'er and o'erThe songs we used at home to singAlas, we have a home no more!

MISS LANDON.

TO A DESERTED COUNTRY-SEAT.

Hail to thy silent woods,

Thy solemn climate, and thy deep repose,
Where the west wind as he goes
Moans to the falling floods,

That through the forest glide,

And journey with a melancholy tide!

Hail to thy happy ground,

Where all is steep'd in stillest solitude;
And no unhallow'd sound

Wakes nature from her holy mood;
Here let me waste away
The little leisure of life's busy day!

Thy lone and ancient towers

Shall be my only haunt from youth to age;
The wild grown garden bowers

Shall shelter me in life's long pilgrimage;
And I will think me blest,

For ever in thy peaceful bounds to rest.

On thee the sunbeam falls

In silence all the solitary year;

And mouldering are thy walls,

That echoed once with hospitable cheer;

And all is past away

That stood around thee in thy prosperous day.

But I may seek thy shades,

And wander in thy long forgotten bowers,

And haunt thy sunny glades,

Where the mild summer leads the rosy hours,

And mingled flowers perfume

The noontide air,-a wilderness of bloom.

For nature here again

With silent steps repairs her woodland throne, Usurps the fair domain,

And claims the lovely desert for her own,

And o'er yon threshold throws

With lavish hand the woodbine and the rose.

Deep silence reigns around,

Save when the blackbird strains his tuneful throat,
Then the old woods resound,

And the sweet thrush begins his merry note;
And from some scathed bough

The murmuring ring-dove pours her plaintive vow.

Here at the break of morn,

No hunter wakes the halloo of the chase,

Nor hounds and echoing horn

Fright from their quiet haunts the sylvan race.
Rest, happy foresters, for ye shall be

In these green walks for ever safe and free!

Wave, laurel, wave thy boughs,

And soothe with friendly shade my wearied head;

Come, sleep, and o'er my brows

With gentle hand thy dewy poppies shed.

Here shall be well forgot

The many sorrows of this earthly lot.

Haunts of my early years,

Amid your sighing woods O give me rest;

Unnoticed be the tears,

Unknown the grief that fills this aching breast,

While, shelter'd in your bowers,

With patient heart I wait the suffering hours.

How soon the morn of life,

The beam, the beauty of our days, is o'er,

Amid a world of strife

The heart's young joys, shall bud, shall bloom no more!

Yet tranquil be the day

That lights the wanderer on his homeward way.