Or ogling thro' his glass
Some heavenly lass

Tripping with pails along the Milky Way; Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Mar

tyr's :

Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky, When lo! a something with a tail of flame Made him exclaim,

"My stars!"— he always puts that stress on

"A comet, sure as I'm alive!

A noble one as I should wish to view ;
It can't be Halley's though, that is not due
Till eighteen thirty-five.

Magnificent! how fine his fiery trail!
Zounds! 'tis a pity, though he comes unsought

Unasked

unreckoned,—in no human thought

He ought he ought he ought

To have been caught

With scientific salt upon his tail!

"I looked no more for it, I do declare,
Than the Great Bear!

As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead,
It really entered in my head,

No more than Berenice's Hair!"

Thus musing, Heaven's Grand Inquisitor
Sat gazing on the uninvited visiter

upper

Till John, the serving-man, came to the Regions, with "Please your Honour, come to supper."

"Supper! good John, to-night I shall not sup Except on that phenomenon - look up!" "Not sup!" cried John, thinking with consterna

tion

That supping on a star must be starvation,
Or ev❜n to batten

On Ignes Fatui would never fatten.

His visage seemed to say,— that very odd is,—
But still his master the same tune ran on,
"I can't come down,- go to the parlour, John,
And say I'm supping with the heavenly bodies."

"The heavenly bodies!" echoed John, “Ahem! His mind still full of famishing alarms, ""Zooks, if your Honour sups with them, In helping, somebody must make long arms!" He thought his master's stomach was in danger, But still in the same tone replied the Knight,

"Go down, John, go, I have no appetite, Say I'm engaged with a celestial stranger."Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs, “Wouldn't the stranger take a bit down stairs?

"No," said the master, smiling, and no wonder, At such a blunder,

"The stranger is not quite the thing you think, He wants no meat or drink,

"

And one may doubt quite reasonably whether He has a mouth,

Seeing his head and tail are joined together, Behold him, there he is, John, in the South.”

John looked up with his portentous eyes,
Each rolling like a marble in its socket.
At last the fiery tadpole spies,

And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries,
"A rare good rocket!"

"A what! A rocket, John! Far from it! What you behold, John, is a comet;

One of those most eccentric things

That in all ages

Have puzzled sages

And frightened kings;

With fear of change that flaming meteor, John, Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range ""Do he?" cried John;

“Well, let him flare on,

I haven't got no sovereigns to change ! ”

POMPEY'S GHOST.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.

"Skins may differ, but affection

Dwells in white and black the same."

COWPER.

"T WAS twelve o'clock, not twelve at night,

But twelve o'clock at noon ; Because the sun was shining bright

And not the silver moon.

A proper time for friends to call,
Or Pots, or Penny Post;
When, lo! as Phoebe sat at work,
She saw her Pompey's Ghost!

Now, when a female has a call
From people that are dead;
Like Paris ladies, she receives
Her visitors in bed.

But Pompey's spirit would not come
Like spirits that are white,
Because he was a Blackamoor,
And would n't show at night!

But of all unexpected things

That happen to us here,
The most unpleasant is a rise
In what is very dear.

So Phoebe screamed an awful scream
To prove the seaman's text;
That after black appearances,
White squalls will follow next.

"Oh, Phoebe, dear! oh, Phoebe, dear!
Don't go to scream or faint;
You think because I'm black I am
The Devil, but I ain't!

Behind the heels of Lady Lambe

I walked while I had breath;

'

But that is past, and I am now
A-walking after Death!

"No murder, though, I come to tell,
By base and bloody crime;
So Phoebe, dear, put off your fits
To some more fitting time.

No Coroner, like a boatswain's mate,

My body need attack,

With his round dozen to find out

Why I have died so black.

"One Sunday, shortly after tea, My skin began to burn

As if I had in my inside