No woman ever gave their lucks
  A better chance than Mrs. Bond did;
At last quite out of heart and ducks,
  She gave her pond up, and desponded;
For Death among the water-lilies,
Cried “Duc ad me” to all her dillies!

But though resolved to breed no more,
  She brooded often on this riddle—­
Alas! ’twas darker than before! 
  At last about the summer’s middle,
What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did,
To clear the matter up the Sun did!

The thirsty Sirius dog-like drank
   So deep, his furious tongue to cool,
The shallow waters sank and sank,
  And lo, from out the wasted pool,
Too hot to hold them any longer,
There crawled some eels as big as conger!

I wish all folks would look a bit,
  In such a case below the surface;
And when the eels were caught and split
  By Mrs. Bond, just think of her face,
In each inside at once to spy
A duckling turned to giblet-pie!

The sight at once explained the case,
  Making the Dame look rather silly: 
The tenants of that Eely Place
  Had found the way to Pick a dilly,
And so, by under-water suction,
Had wrought the little ducks’ abduction.

A STORM AT HASTINGS,

AND THE LITTLE UNKNOWN.

’Twas August—­Hastings every day was filling—­
Hastings, that “greenest spot on memory’s waste”! 
With crowds of idlers willing and unwilling
To be bedipped—­be noticed—­or be braced,
And all things rose a penny in a shilling. 
Meanwhile, from window, and from door, in haste
“Accommodation bills” kept coming down,
Gladding “the world of-letters” in that town.

Each day poured in new coachfuls of new cits,
Flying from London smoke and dust annoying,
Unmarried Misses hoping to make hits,
And new-wed couples fresh from Tunbridge toying,
Lacemen and placemen, ministers and wits,
And Quakers of both sexes, much enjoying
A morning’s reading by the ocean’s rim,
That sect delighting in the sea’s broad brim.

And lo! amongst all these appeared a creature,
So small, he almost might a twin have been
With Miss Crachami—­dwarfish quite in stature,
Yet well proportioned—­neither fat nor lean,
His face of marvellously pleasant feature,
So short and sweet a man was never seen—­
All thought him charming at the first beginning—­
Alas, ere long they found him far too winning!

He seemed in love with chance—­and chance repaid
His ardent passion with her fondest smile,
The sunshine of good luck, without a shade,
He staked and won—­and won and staked—­the bile
It stirred of many a man and many a maid,
To see at every venture how that vile
Small gambler snatched—­and how he won them too—­
A living Pam, omnipotent at loo!

Miss Wiggins set her heart upon a box,
’Twas handsome rosewood, and inlaid with brass,
And dreamt three times she garnished it with stocks
Of needles, silks, and cottons—­but, alas! 
She lost it wide awake.  We thought Miss Cox
Was lucky—­but she saw three caddies pass
To that small imp;—­no living luck could loo him! 
Sir Stamford would have lost his Raffles to him!