POETRY.
OLD NOVELS AND NEW.
IN all the novels of the past, This or that classic friend, Heroes and heroines find at last Their Eden at the end ;
Their luck may fail at first, yet r.o, You never feel dejected,
But certain that the sorriest throw By Art will be corrected.
You felt a confidence assured, Despite her mild alarms, That Orville soon would be allured By Evelina's charms ; You knew Miss Austen's fertile brain A method would discover, By which Anne Elliot might regain Her banished sailor lover.
But now, egad ! the hero wins The heroine half way through, And on the following page begins His triumph to undo; By quick degrees their fortunes fall To some malign conclusion, And so eventuate after all In positive confusion.
For either Angelina, tired Of Edwin's faithful heart, And by some newer passion fired, Upsets the apple-cart; Or Edwin, who had seemed a saint, To swell the general sadness Develops an ancestral taint Of drunkenness or madness.
Or worse, in this outspoken age My modern novel comes, Exhaling from each gruesome page The savour of the slums ; Where Bills and 'Arriets nag and shout, Or deal in matters fistic, And furious oaths are strewn about To make it realistic.
Then, since I know that life itself Has grimness and to spare, I take Pendennis from the shelf And find my solace there; Or in the lists with Ivanhoe
I feel my blood a-tingle,
Or else from stage to stage I go With Pickwick and with Tingle.
Oh, ye who sell such dismal wares, Let be, good Sirs, let be, Are there not sunlit sweet parterres Whereof you hold the key, Where one may for a space perchance Forget this world's disorder, And pluck bright blossoms of romance From each enchanted border ?
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