TO MISS COCKBURN. BY ARCHDEACON SPENCER. THERE's joy upon thy guileless brow, For thee no melancholy spell The books have yet unseal'd, Which life's vicissitudes foretel, There's joy upon thy guileless brow, The joy that genius gives When the young heart first feels its glow, And in its sunshine lives. When ranging earth, and air, and sea, Led by the witching power, It culls the fruit from every tree, There's joy upon thy guileless brow, Alas! that joy should die! That care should cloud, or anguish bow, Or sorrow dim thine eye! Yet lovely heritor of woe, Thy mortal lot is cast, Where, though the gales of Eden blow, Prevails the Sarzaar's blast. There's joy upon thy guileless brow, That joy shall still thy breast embue FAREWELL. BY THE LADY E. S. WORTLEY. FAREWELL! Oh! black and bitter word, Still there's a beauty that breathes round Farewell! full many a heart hath found Farewell! how oft the anguished heart MY PET AVERSIONS; OR, THE CONFESSIONS OF A DEMI MISANTHROPE. READER! have you any pet aversions? or do you not know the ineffable pleasure of cherishing a favourite disgust, an innocent abhorrence, a delicate detestation, in the secret recesses of your bosom? I do now, and I have done long and often. My first intense emotions of dislike were called into being by a certain fat, unsentimental-looking widow, with a peculiarly starched cap, and particularly long crape weepers, while her jovial face was, to say truth, as smiling and as tearless as might be. Ask me not why I hated her-" curious fool! be still! Is human hate the growth of human will?"-I call this my first; but, I dare say, in fact, my first is now buried in oblivion, and probably was ushered into existence when the heart that contained it beat softly beneath the stately flow of infantine long petticoats; perhaps excited by the apparition (no ghost-dear reader, start not) of some bluff, blowzy nursery maid presenting the fatal boat (to the uninitiated in nursery matters this may be a mystery, a marvel and a secret-be it so"-still!) the fatal boat, sacred to senna, rhubarb, and many other equally unsavoury deposits. Well, to return to my widow, who was the first object of my peculiar antipathy. As far as I can remember, it certainly was a deep, never-to-be-forgotten impression that she made upon me! Even now, when I pace Pall Mall, bask in Bond Street, saunter along St. James's, or ramble through Regent Street, every widow's cap obtruding its fu 66 nereal aspect (funereal, albeit, of snowy white!) from a shop window, instantaneously conjures up to my fancy the face of that identical widow, whose features were certainly not as starched as the plaiting of her cap, nor her complexion as pure, being somewhat rubicund, and in a perpetual blush and broad grin. I think this aversion might be called my Beautiful one, and the next in succession the Sublime!-Its object was no less a personage than a dancing master in the country!—ay, in the wilds of -shire! Hear that, and stand suspended in mid-pirouette, ye Parisian professors and tiptoe votaries of the Dieu de la Danse-a clod-hopping dancing master-a rustic to his coat cuffs-a John Bull to his shoe strings! Oh! how I hated him and his kit! they were rivals for my unutterable abhorrence! Then, to hear him exclaiming (raising his voice to a shrill falsetto, so as to be heard through the screechings and squeakings of his atrocious kit) " Old hup your ed―hextend your harms-hoffer your and, don't it your eel-not so igh that honter-chat!" Yes, I abominated him! Well, I didn't dare to express my feelings, save in a way I invented of my own. I made my dancing, as it were, a lively telegraph of my sentiments. I told him I hated him-that cruel Conspirator against my comfort and peace, with his "infernal machine"-I told him I hated him—now in an agitated honter chat, as he called it -now in an indignant caper-now in a scornful chassénow in an infuriated and tempestuous pas de zephyr—and now, haply, in a retiring courtesy of more stately detestation! After this I had a constant succession of reigning aversions and antipathies (sweet reader, you will think me an amiable character!) but I shall pass over all these to speak of my last-oh! my last!-it is the most violent I ever yet experienced. Talk of the torments of unreturned love!-alas! alas! think of the miseries of a cherished abhorrence unreturned!-of the wretchedness of being crossed in a favourite antipathy!-of the sorrows of an unpartaken and unanswered repugnance!—of the lonely pangs and suffering of an unrequited disgust! when the object of our aversion, chosen and marked out from all mankind, will believe him or herself liked, nay, perhaps loved, and will not participate in our impassioned sentiments of uncontrollable dislike and hatred! Can the cold frown, or the careless glance of a cruel lover, cause a pang like the smirking smile, the self-satisfied, nothing-doubting expression in the countenance of the one for whom we entertain the most high-flown, fullblown, deep-sown, and though, alas! in vain, oft-shown, sentiments and feelings of detestation? Alack the day! my last is so violent, it almost approaches to love! Extremes meet, you know, dear reader!-shall I, shall I, open my heart to you? now bending, sympathizingly I trust, over these pages? shall I tell you who is my Pet Aversion now? may I confide in you?-a -are you secret?— are you safe?-lend me your ear-remember it goes no farther. No, no, I dare not!-for who knows, dear reader-dear, gentle, amiable, excellent, delightful, estimable reader, but-that-it-may-be-you! |