Our ages differ--but who would count
One's natural sinful life's amount,
Or look in the Register's vulgar page
For a regular twice-born Christian's age,
Who, blessed privilege! only then
Begins to live when he's born again?
And, counting in _this_ way--let me see--
I myself but five years old shall be.
And dear Magan, when the event takes place,
An actual new-born child of grace--
Should Heaven in mercy so dispose--
A six-foot baby, in _swaddling_ clothes.
_Wednesday_.
Finding myself, by some good fate,
With Mr. Magan left _tete-a-tete_,
Had just begun--having stirred the fire,
And drawn my chair near his--to inquire,
What his notions were of Original Sin,
When that naughty Fanny again bounced in;
And all the sweet things I had got to say
Of the Flesh and the Devil were whiskt away!
Much grieved to observe that Mr. Magan
Is actually pleased and, amused with Fan!
What charms any sensible man can see
In a child so foolishly young as she--
But just eighteen, come next Mayday,
With eyes, like herself, full of naught but play--
Is, I own, an exceeding puzzle to me.
[1] "Morning Manna, or British Verse-book, neatly done up for the pocket,"
and chiefly intended to assist the members of the British Verse
Association, whose design is, we are told, "to induce the inhabitants of
Great Britain and Ireland to commit one and the same verse of Scripture to
memory every morning.
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