SONGS WITHOUT SENSE.

FOR THE PARLOR AND PIANO.

I. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL.

AFFECTION's charm no longer gilds
The idol of the shrine;

But cold Oblivion seeks to fill
Regret's ambrosial wine.

Though Friendship's offering buried lies
'Neath cold Aversion's snow,
Regard and Faith will ever bloom
Perpetually below.

I see thee whirl in marble halls,
In Pleasure's giddy train;
Remorse is never on that brow,
Nor Sorrow's mark of pain.

Deceit has marked thee for her own;

Inconstancy the same;

And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
Athwart thy path of shame.

II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC.

The dews are heavy on my brow;
My breath comes hard and low;
Yet, mother, dear, graut one request,
Before your boy must go.

Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks,

And ere my senses fail :

Place me once more, O mother dear!
Astride the old fence-rail.

The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail!
How oft these youthful legs,
With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung
Across those wooden pegs.
'Twas there the nauseating smoke

Of my first pipe arose :

O mother, dear! these agonies

Are far less keen than those.

I know where lies the hazel dell,
Where simple Nellie sleeps ;

I know the cot of Nettie Moore,
And where the willow weeps.
I know the brookside and the mill:
But all their pathos fails

Beside the days when once I sat
Astride the old fence-rails.

THAT HEATHEN CHINEE.

TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870.

WHICH I wish to remark

And my language is plainThat for ways that are dark

And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;

And I shall not deny,

In regard to the same

What that name might imply,

But his smile it was pensive and child-like, As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third;

And quite soft was the skies;

Which it might be inferred

That Ah Sin was likewise;

Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:

It was Euchre. The same

He did not understand;

But he smiled as he sat by the table,

With the smile that was child-like and bland.

Yet the cards they were stocked

In a way that I grieve,

And my feelings were shocked

At the state of Nye's sleeve:

Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played

By that heathen Chinee, And the points that he made

Were quite frightful to see

Till at last he put down a right bower,

Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.