How well to rise while nights and larks are flying

For my part getting up seems not so easy

By half as lying.

What if the lark does carol in the sky,

Soaring beyond the sight to find him out—

Wherefore am I to rise at such a fly?

I'm not a trout.

Talk not to me of bees and such like hums,

The smell of sweet herbs at the morning prime-
Only lie long enough, and bed becomes

A bed of time.

To me Dan Phoebus and his car are nought,
His steeds that paw impatiently about-
Let them enjoy, say I, as horses ought,
The first turn-out!

Right beautiful the dewy meads appear
Besprinkled by the rosy-fingered girl;
What then,-if I prefer my pillow-beer
To early pearl?

My stomach is not ruled by other men's,
And grumbling for a reason, quaintly begs
Wherefore should master rise before the hens
Have laid their eggs?

Why from a comfortable pillow start
To see faint flushes in the east awaken?
A fig, say I, for any streaky part,
Excepting bacon.

An early riser Mr. Gray has drawn,
Who used to haste the dewy grass among,
"To meet the sun upon the upland lawn"-
Well--he died young.

With charwomen such early hours agree,
And sweeps that earn betimes their bit and sup;
But I'm no climbing boy, and need not be
All up-all up!

So here I'll lie, my morning calls deferring,
Till something nearer to the stroke of noon;—
A man that's fond precociously of stirring,

Must be a spoon.

THE SEASON.

THOMAS HOOD.

SUMMER'S gone and over!

Fogs are falling down;

And with russet tinges

Autumn's doing brown.

Boughs are daily rifled
By the gusty thieves,
And the Book of Nature
Getteth short of leaves.

Round the tops of houses,
Swallows, as they flit,
Give, like yearly tenants,
Notices to quit.

Skies, of fickle temper,

Weep by turns, and laugh

Night and Day together
Taking half-and-half.

So September endeth

Cold, and most perverse—
But the Month that follows,
Sure will pinch us worse!

SPRING.

(A New Version.)

"COME, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness come!"
Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,
How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum?
There's no such season.

The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name!
For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the Fighter.

Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing,

And be her tuneful laureates and upholders, Who do not feel as if they had a Spring Poured down their shoulders!

Let others eulogize her floral shows,

From me they cannot win a single stanza,

THOMAS HOOD.

I know her blooms are in full blow-and so's
The Influenza.

Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale,
Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at,
Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale,
Are things I sneeze at!

Fair is the vernal quarter of the year!

And fair its early buddings and its blowingsBut just suppose Consumption's seeds appear With other sowings!

For me, I find, when eastern winds are high,
A frigid, not a genial inspiration;
Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy
An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,
To me all vernal luxuries are fables,
Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg,
Stiff as a table's?

I limp in agony,-I wheeze and cough;
And quake with Ague, that great Agitator;
Nor dream, before July, of leaving off
My Respirator.

What wonder if in May itself I lack

A peg for laudatory verse to hang on?—
Spring mild and gentle !-yes, a Spring-heeled Jack
To those he sprang on.

In short, whatever panegyrics lie

In fulsome odes too many to be cited, The tenderness of Spring is all my eye, And that is blighted!