“Let me endorse again my horse,
  Delivered safe and sound;
And, gladly, I will give the man
  A bottle and a pound!”

The wine was drunk,—­the money paid,
  Tho’ not without remorse,
To pay another man so much,
  For riding on his horse.

And let the chase again take place,
  For many a long, long year,
John Huggins will not ride again
  To hunt the Epping Deer!

MORAL.

Thus pleasure oft eludes our grasp,
  Just when we think to grip her;
And hunting after happiness,
  We only hunt a slipper.

THE DROWNING DUCKS.

Amongst the sights that Mrs. Bond
  Enjoyed yet grieved at more than others,
Were little ducklings in a pond,
  Swimming about beside their mothers—­
Small things like living water-lilies,
But yellow as the daffo-dillies.

“It’s very hard,” she used to moan,
  “That other people have their ducklings
To grace their waters—­mine alone
  Have never any pretty chucklings.” 
For why!—­each little yellow navy
Went down—­all downy—­to old Davy!

She had a lake—­a pond, I mean—­
  Its wave was rather thick than pearly—­
She had two ducks, their napes were green—­
  She had a drake, his tail was curly,—­
Yet ’spite of drake, and ducks, and pond,
No little ducks had Mrs. Bond!

The birds were both the best of mothers—­
  The nests had eggs—­the eggs had luck—­
The infant D’s came forth like others—­
  But there, alas! the matter stuck! 
They might as well have all died addle
As die when they began to paddle!

For when, as native instinct taught her,
  The mother set her brood afloat,
They sank ere long right under water,
  Like any overloaded boat;
They were web-footed too to see,
As ducks and spiders ought to be!

No peccant humor in a gander
  Brought havoc on her little folks,—­
No poaching cook—­a frying pander
  To appetite,—­destroyed their yolks,—­
Beneath her very eyes, Od rot ’em! 
They went, like plummets, to the bottom.

The thing was strange—­a contradiction
  It seemed of nature and her works! 
For little ducks, beyond conviction,
  Should float without the help of corks: 
Great Johnson, it bewildered him! 
To hear of ducks that could not swim.

Poor Mrs. Bond! what could she do
  But change the breed—­and she tried divers
Which dived as all seemed born to do;
  No little ones were e’er survivors—­
Like those that copy gems, I’m thinking,
They all were given to die-sinking!

In vain their downy coats were shorn;
  They floundered still!—­Batch after batch went! 
The little fools seemed only born
  And hatched for nothing but a hatchment! 
Whene’er they launched—­oh, sight of wonder! 
Like fires the water “got them under.”