Full soon the sad effects of this
  His frame began to show,
For that old enemy the gout
  Had taken him in toe! 
And join’d with this an evil came
  Of quite another sort—­
For while he drank, himself, his purse
  Was getting “something short.”

For want of cash he soon had pawn’d
  One half that he possessed,
And drinking showed him duplicates
  Beforehand of the rest! 
So now his creditors resolved
  To seize on his assets;
For why,—­they found that his half-pay
  Did not half pay his debts.

But Luff contrived a novel mode
  His creditors to chouse;
For his own execution he
  Put into his own house! 
A pistol to the muzzle charged
  He took devoid of fear;
Said he, “This barrel is my last,
  So now for my last bier!”

Against his lungs he aimed the slugs,
  And not against his brain,
So he blew out his lights—­and none
  Could blow them in again! 
A Jury for a Verdict met,
  And gave in it these terms:—­
“We find as how as certain slugs
  Has sent him to the worms!”

MORNING MEDITATIONS.

Let Taylor preach upon a morning breezy
How well to rise while nights and larks are flying—­
For my part getting up seems not so easy
        By half as lying.

What if the lark does carol in the sky,
Soaring beyond the sight to find him out—­
Wherefore am I to rise at such a fly? 
        I’m not a trout.

Talk not to me of bees and such like hums,
The smell of sweet herbs at the morning prime—­
Only lee long enough, and bed becomes
        A bed of time.

To me Dan Phoebus and his car are nought,
His steeds that paw impatiently about,—­
Let them enjoy, say I, as horses ought,
        The first turn-out!

Right beautiful the dewy meads appear
Besprinkled by the rosy-finger’d girl;
What then,—­if I prefer my pillow-beer
        To early pearl?

My stomach is not ruled by other men’s,
And grumbling for a reason, quaintly begs
“Wherefore should master rise before the hens
        Have laid their eggs?”

Why from a comfortable pillow start
To see faint flushes in the east awaken? 
A fig, say I, for any streaky part,
        Excepting bacon.

An early riser Mr. Gray has drawn,
Who used to haste the dewy grass among,
“To meet the sun upon the upland lawn”—­
        Well—­he died young.

With charwomen such early hours agree,
And sweeps, that earn betimes their bit and sup;
But I’m no climbing boy, and need not be
        “All up—­all up!”

So here I’ll lie, my morning calls deferring,
Till something nearer to the stroke of noon;—­
A man that’s fond precociously of stirring,
        Must be a spoon.

A PLAIN DIRECTION.