BECKY SHARP'S SONG.

H! bleak and barren was the moor,

Ah! loud and piercing was the storm,

The cottage roof was sheltered sure,

The cottage hearth was bright and warm

An orphan boy the lattice pass'd,

And, as he mark'd its cheerful glow,
Felt doubly keen the midnight blast,

And doubly cold the fallen snow.

They mark'd him as he onward prest,

With fainting heart and weary limb,
Kind voices bade him turn and rest,

And gentle faces welcomed him.
The dawn is up-the guest is gone,
The cottage hearth is blazing still;
Heaven pity all poor wanderers lone !

Hark to the wind upon the hill!

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

[From Vanity Fair, chap. iv. :-"As she came to the last words, Miss Sharp's 'deep-toned voice faltered.' Everybody felt the allusion to her departure, and to her hapless orphan state."]

LOVE AT TWO SCORE.

VO! pretty page, with dimpled chin,

That never has known the barber's shear,
All your aim is woman to win.
This is the way that boys begin,

Wait till you've come to forty year!

Curly locks cover foolish brains,

Billing and cooing is all your cheer,
Sighing and singing of midnight strains
Under Bonnybell's window-panes.

Wait till you've come to forty year!
Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear;
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,

Once you have come to forty year.

Pledge me round, I bid ye declare,

All good fellows whose beards are gray:
Did not the fairest of all the fair
Common grow and wearisome, ere

Ever a month was past away?

The reddest lips that ever have kissed,

The brightest eyes that ever have shone,
May pray and whisper and we not list,
Or look away and never be missed,
Ere yet ever a month was gone.

Gillian's dead, Heaven rest her bier,

How I loved her twenty years syne!

Marian's married, but I sit here,
Alive and merry at forty year,

Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

[From Rebecca and Rowena, chap. iv., where it is sung by Wamba :-"Who taught thee that merry lay, Wamba, thou son of Witless?' roared Athelstane. It was a good and holy hermit, sir, the pious clerk of Copmanhurst, that you wot of, who played many a prank with us in the days that we knew King Richard.""]

MR. CHROMATIC'S SONG.

N his last binn SIR PETER lies,

Who knew not what it was to frown;
Death took him mellow, by surprise,

And in his cellar stopped him down.
Through all our land we could not boast

A knight more gay, more prompt than he,
To rise and fill a bumper toast,

And pass it round with THREE TIMES THREE.

None better knew the feast to sway,

Or keep Mirth's boat in better trim;
For Nature had but little clay

Like that of which she moulded him.
The meanest guest that graced his board
Was there the freest of the free,

His bumper toast when PETER poured

And passed it round with THREE TIMES THREE.

He kept at true good humour's mark

The social flow of pleasure's tide;

He never made a brow look dark,

Nor caused a tear, but when he died.

No sorrow round his tomb should dwell:
More pleased his gay old ghost would be,

For funeral song, and passing bell,

To hear no sound but THREE TIMES THREE.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

[From Headlong Hall, chap. v. :-"Mr. Cornelius Chromatic, the most profound and scientific of all amateurs of the fiddle."]

THE FLOWER OF LOVE.

IS said the rose is Love's own flower,
Its blush so bright, its thorns so many;
And winter on its bloom has power,
But has not on its sweetness any.
For though young Love's ethereal rose
Will droop on Age's wintry bosom,
Yet still its faded leaves disclose
The fragrance of their earliest blossom.

But ah! the fragrance lingering there
Is like the sweets that mournful duty
Bestows with sadly-soothing care,
To deck the grave of bloom and beauty.
For when its leaves are shrunk and dry,
Its blush extinct, to kindle never,
That fragrance is but Memory's sigh,
That breathes of pleasures past for ever.

Why did not Love the amaranth choose,
That bears no thorns, and cannot perish?
Alas! no sweets its flowers diffuse,
And only sweets Love's life can cherish.
But be the rose and amaranth twined,
And Love, their mingled powers assuming,
Shall round his brows a chaplet bind,
For ever sweet, for ever blooming.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

[From Melincourt, chap. xvii., where it is sung by Anthelia :-"I am afraid,' said Mr. Derrydown, 'the flower of modern love is neither the rose nor the amaranth, but the chrysanthemum or gold-flower.""]