So round his melancholy neck
  A rope he did entwine,
And, for his second time in life,
  Enlisted in the Line!

One end he tied around a beam,
  And then removed his pegs,
And, as his legs were off,—­of course,
  He soon was off his legs!

And there he hung, till he was dead
  As any nail in town,—­
For though distress had cut him up,
  It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
  To find out why he died—­
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,
  With a stake in his inside!

BIANCA’S DREAM.

A VENETIAN STORY.

I.

Bianca!—­fair Bianca!—­who could dwell
  With safety on her dark and hazel gaze,
Nor find there lurk’d in it a witching spell,
  Fatal to balmy nights and blessed days? 
The peaceful breath that made the bosom swell,
  She turn’d to gas, and set it in a blaze;
Each eye of hers had Love’s Eupyrion in it,
That he could light his link at in a minute.

II.

So that, wherever in her charms she shone,
  A thousand breasts were kindled into flame;
Maidens who cursed her looks forgot their own,
  And beaux were turn’d to flambeaux where she came;
All hearts indeed were conquer’d but her own,
  Which none could ever temper down or tame: 
In short, to take our haberdasher’s hints,
She might have written over it,—­“from Flints.”

III.

She was, in truth, the wonder of her sex,
  At least in Venice—­where with eyes of brown
Tenderly languid, ladies seldom vex
  An amorous gentle with a needless frown;
Where gondolas convey guitars by pecks,
  And Love at casements climbeth up and down,
Whom for his tricks and custom in that kind,
Some have considered a Venetian blind.

IV.

Howbeit, this difference was quickly taught,
  Amongst more youths who had this cruel jailer,
To hapless Julio—­all in vain he sought
  With each new moon his hatter and his tailor;
In vain the richest padusoy he bought,
  And went in bran new beaver to assail her—­
As if to show that Love had made him smart
All over—­and not merely round his heart.

V.

In vain he labor’d thro’ the sylvan park
  Bianca haunted in—­that where she came,
Her learned eyes in wandering might mark
  The twisted cypher of her maiden name,
Wholesomely going thro’ a course of bark: 
  No one was touched or troubled by his flame,
Except the Dryads, those old maids that grow
In trees,—­like wooden dolls in embryo.

VI.