And, crack! the ball-room all exploded.
Sylphs, gnomes, and fiddlers mixt together,
With all their aunts, sons, cousins, nieces,
Like butterflies in stormy weather,
Were blown--legs, wings, and tails--to pieces!
While, mid these victims of the torch,
The Sylph, alas, too, bore her part--
Found lying with a livid scorch
As if from lightning o'er her heart!
* * * * *
"Well done"--a laughing Goblin said--
Escaping from this gaseous strife--
"'Tis not the _first_ time Love has made
"A _blow-up_ in connubial life!"
REMONSTRANCE.
_After a Conversation with Lord John Russell, in which he had intimated
some Idea of giving up all political Pursuits. _
What! _thou_, with thy genius, thy youth, and thy name--
Thou, born of a Russell--whose instinct to run
The accustomed career of thy sires, is the same
As the eaglet's, to soar with his eyes on the sun!
Whose nobility comes to thee, stampt with a seal,
Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er set;
With the blood of thy race, offered up for the weal
Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom yet!
Shalt _thou_ be faint-hearted and turn from the strife,
From the mighty arena, where all that is grand
And devoted and pure and adorning in life,
'Tis for high-thoughted spirits like thine to command?
Oh no, never dream it--while good men despair
Between tyrants and traitors, and timid men bow,
Never think for an instant thy country can spare
Such a light from her darkening horizon as thou.
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