VII. Said she, "I loved a soldier once, For he was blythe and brave; But I will never have a man With both legs in the grave! VIII. "Before you had those timber toes, But then, you know, you stand upon IX. "O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray! For all your jeering speeches, At duty's call, I left my legs In Badajos's breaches!" X. "Why, then," said she, “you've lost the feet Of legs in war's alarms, And now you cannot wear your shoes Upon your feats of arms!" XI. "O, false and fickle Nelly Gray! I know why you refuse: Though I've no feet-some other man Is standing in my shoes! XII. "I wish I ne'er had seen your face; But, now, a long farewell! For you will be my death;-alas! You will not be my Nell!" XIII. Now when he went from Nelly Gray, His heart so heavy got And life was such a burthen grown, It made him take a knot! XIV. So round his melancholy neck, And, for his second time in life, Enlisted in the Line ! XV. One end he tied around a beam, XVI. And there he hung, till he was dead For though distress had cut him up, XVII. A dozen men sat on his corpse, To find out why he died— And they buried Ben in four cross-roads, With a stake in his inside! THE SEA-SPELL "Cauld, cauld, he lies beneath the deep." I. Old Scotch Ballad. T was a jolly mariner! The tallest man of three, He loosed his sail against the wind. The ink-black sky told every eye, II. But still that jolly mariner For, in his pouch, confidingly, A thing, as gossip-nurses know, III. His hat was new, or, newly glazed, His jacket, like a mariner's, True blue as e'er was spun ; His ample trowsers, like Saint Paul, Bore forty stripes save one. IV. And now the fretting foaming tide The bounding pinnace play'd a game A game that, on the good dry land, V. Good Heaven befriend that little boat, And guide her on her way! A boat, they say, has canvas wings, But cannot fly away! Though, like a merry singing-bird, She sits upon the spray! VI. Still east by south the little boat, The waves her mast seem'd cating! VII. The sullen sky grew black above, VIII. The boatman looked against the wind, The mast began to creak, The wave, per saltum, came and dried, In salt, upon his cheek! The pointed wave against him rear'd, As if it own'd a pique! IX. Nor rushing wind, nor gushing wave, That boatman could alarm, But still he stood away to sea, And trusted in his charm; He thought by purchase he was safe, And arm'd against all harm! X. Now thick and fast and far aslant, XI. The sea-fowl shriek'd around the mast, Ahead the grampus tumbled, And far off, from a copper cloud, The hollow thunder rumbled; It would have quail'd another heart, But his was never humbled. XII. For why? he had that infant's caul; And wherefore should he dread? Alas! alas! he little thought, That like that infant, he should die, For as he left his helm, to heave The ballast-bags a-weather, Three monstrous seas came roaring on, Like lions leagued together. The two first waves the little boat Swam over like a feather. XV. The two first waves were past and gone, And sinking in her wake; The hugest still came leaping on, And hissing like a snake; Now helm a-lee! for through the midst, The monster he must take! XVI. Ah, me! it was a dreary mount! Its base as black as night, Its top of pale and livid green, Its crest of awful white, Like Neptune with a leprosy,— And so it rear'd upright! XVII. With quaking sails, the little boat |