“THERE STANDS A CITY.”

Year by year do Beauty's daughters,

In the sweetest gloves and shawls,

Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,

And adorn the Chattenham balls.

‘ Nulla non donanda lauru’

Is that city: you could not,

Placing England's map before you,

Light on a more favoured spot.

If no clear translucent river

Winds‘ neath willow-shaded paths,

“Children and adults” may shiver

All day in “Chalybeate baths:”

If “the inimitable Fechter”

Never brings the gallery down,

Constantly “the Great Protector”

There “rejects the British crown:”

And on every side the painter

Looks on wooded vale and plain

And on fair hills, faint and fainter

Outlined as they near the main.

There I met with him, my chosen

Friend — the‘ long’ but not‘ stern swell,’

Faultless in his hats and hosen,

Whom the Johnian lawns know well: -

Oh my comrade, ever valued!

Still I see your festive face;

Hear you humming of “the gal you'd

Left behind” in massive bass:

See you sit with that composure

On the eeliest of hacks,

That the novice would suppose your

Manly limbs encased in wax:

Or anon,— when evening lent her

Tranquil light to hill and vale, -

Urge, towards the table's centre,

With unerring hand, the squail.

Ah delectablest of summers!

How my heart — that “muffled drum”

Which ignores the aid of drummers -

Beats, as back thy memories come!

Oh, among the dancers peerless,

Fleet of foot, and soft of eye!

Need I say to you that cheerless

Must my days be till I die?

At my side she mashed the fragrant

Strawberry; lashes soft as silk

Drooped o'er saddened eyes, when vagrant

Gnats sought watery graves in milk:

Then we danced, we walked together;

Talked — no doubt on trivial topics;

Such as Blondin, or the weather,

Which “recalled us to the tropics.”

But — oh! in the deuxtemps peerless,

Fleet of foot, and soft of eye! -

Once more I repeat, that cheerless

Shall my days be till I die.

And the lean and hungry raven,

As he picks my bones, will start

To observe‘ M. N.’ engraven

Neatly on my blighted heart.