But mermen didn't seem to care
Much time (as far as I'm aware)
With Cleggs's legs to spend;
Though mermaids swam around all day
And gazed, exclaiming, "That's the way
A gentleman should end!

"A pair of legs with well-cut knees,
And calves and ankles such as these
Which we in rapture hail,

Are far more eloquent, it's clear
(When clothed in silk and kerseymere),
Than any nasty tail."

And Cleggs -a worthy, kind old boy-
Rejoiced to add to others' joy,

And when the day was dry,

Because it pleased the lookers-on,

He sat from morn till night-though con-
Stitutionally shy.

At first the mermen laughed, "Pooh! pooh!"
But finally they jealous grew,

And sounded loud recalls;

But vainly. So these fishy males
Declared they too would clothe their tails
In silken hose and smalls.

"Our Monarch sends to Captain Cleggs
His humble compliments, and begs
He'll join him down below;

"We've pleasant homes below the sea
Besides, if Captain Cleggs should be
(As our advices say)

A judge of mermaids, he will find
Our lady fish of every kind
Inspection will repay."

Good Capel sent a kind reply,
For Capel thought he could descry
An admirable plan

To study all their ways and laws —
(But not their lady fish, because
He was a married man).

The merman sank

the captain too

Jumped overboard, and dropped from view Like stone from catapult;

And when he reached the merman's lair, He certainly was welcomed there,

But ah! with what result!

(Spoken by SELENE, a Fairy Queen.) WITH all their misery, with all their sin, With all the elements of wretchedness That teem on that unholy world of theirs, They have one great and ever-glorious gift, That compensation for all they have to bearThe gift of Love! Not as we use the word; To signify more tranquil brotherhood; But in some sense that is unknown to us, Their love bears like relation to our own That the fierce beauty of the noonday sun, Bears to the calm of a soft summer's eve. It nerves the wearied mortal with hot life, And bathes his soul in hazy happiness. The richest man is poor who hath it not, And he who hath it laughs at poverty. It hath no conqueror. Has worked his very worst, this love of theirs Lives still upon the loved one's memory. It is a strange enchantment, which invests The most unlovely things with loveliness. The maiden, fascinated by this spell, Sees everything as she would have it be; Her squalid cot becomes a princely home; Its stunted shrubs are groves of stately elms; The weedy brook that trickles past her door Is a broad river, fringed with drooping trees;

When Death himself

I hear you asking, Why-
Why in the world I sing
This tawdry, tinseled thing?

No airy fairy she,

As she hangs in arsenic green,
From a highly impossible tree

In a highly impossible scene
(herself not over clean).
For fays don't suffer, I'm told,
From bunions, coughs, or cold.

And stately dames that bring

Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the "dancing thing"

No better than she should be

With her skirt at her shameful knee

And her painted, tainted phiz:

Ah, matron, which of us is?

(And, in sooth, it oft occurs

That while these matrons sigh,
Their dresses are lower than hers,
And sometimes half as high;
And their hair is hair they buy,

And they use their glasses too,
In a way she'd blush to do.)

But change her gold and green

For a coarse merino gown,

And see her upon the scene

Of her home, when coaxing down

Her drunken father's frown,

In his squalid cheerless den;

She's a fairy truly, then!