There Stands A City.

INGOLDSBY.     Year by year do Beauty's daughters,      In the sweetest gloves and shawls,     Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,      And adorn the Chattenham balls.     'Nulla non donanda lauru'      Is that city: you could not,     Placing England's map before you,      Light on a more favoured spot.     If no clear translucent river      Winds 'neath willow-shaded paths,     "Children and adults" may shiver      All day in "Chalybeate baths:"     If "the inimitable Fechter"      Never brings the gallery down,     Constantly "the Great Protector"      There "rejects the British crown:"     And on every side the painter      Looks on wooded vale and plain     And on fair hills, faint and fainter      Outlined as they near the main.     There I met with him, my chosen      Friend - the 'long' but not 'stern swell,' {15a}     Faultless in his hats and hosen,      Whom the Johnian lawns know well:-     Oh my comrade, ever valued!      Still I see your festive face;     Hear you humming of "the gal you'd      Left behind" in massive bass:     See you sit with that composure      On the eeliest of hacks,     That the novice would suppose your      Manly limbs encased in wax:     Or anon, - when evening lent her      Tranquil light to hill and vale, -     Urge, towards the table's centre,      With unerring hand, the squail.     Ah delectablest of summers!      How my heart - that "muffled drum"     Which ignores the aid of drummers -      Beats, as back thy memories come!     Oh, among the dancers peerless,      Fleet of foot, and soft of eye!     Need I say to you that cheerless      Must my days be till I die?     At my side she mashed the fragrant      Strawberry; lashes soft as silk     Drooped o'er saddened eyes, when vagrant      Gnats sought watery graves in milk:     Then we danced, we walked together;      Talked - no doubt on trivial topics;     Such as Blondin, or the weather,      Which "recalled us to the tropics."     But - oh! in the deuxtemps peerless,      Fleet of foot, and soft of eye! -     Once more I repeat, that cheerless      Shall my days be till I die.     And the lean and hungry raven,      As he picks my bones, will start     To observe 'M. N.' engraven      Neatly on my blighted heart.