RIDDLE.

FROM rosy bowers we issue forth,

From east to west, from south to north,
Unseen, unfelt, by night, by day,

Abroad we take our airy way:

We foster love and kindle strife,

The bitter and the sweet of life:

Piercing and sharp, we wound like steel;

Now, smooth as oil, those wounds we heal:

Not strings of pearl are valuel more,

Or gems enchased in golden ore;

Yet thousands of us every day,

Worthless and vile, are thrown away.

Ye wise, secure with bars of brass

The double doors through which we pass;

For, once escaped, back to our cell

No human art can us compel.

ENIGMA.

TO THE LADIES.

HARD is my stem and dry, no root is found

To draw nutritious juices from the ground;
Yet of your ivory fingers' magic touch

The quickening power and strange effect is such,
My shrivelled trunk a sudden shade extends,
And from rude storms your tender frame defends :
A hundred times a day my head is seen

Crowned with a floating canopy of green;
A hundred times, as struck with sudden blight,

The spreading verdure withers to the sight.

Not Jonah's gourd by power unseen was made

So soon to flourish, and so soon to fade.

Unlike the Spring's gay race, I flourish most

When groves and gardens all their bloom have lost;
Lift my green head against the rattling hail,

And brave the driving snows and freezing gale;
And faithful lovers oft, when storms impend,

Beneath my friendly shade together bend,
There join their heads within the green recess,

And in the close-wove covert nearer press.

·But lately am I known to Britain's isle,

Enough-You've guessed-I see it by your smile.

Has many heads, on which ne'er grew

One single lock of hair.

Yet several of their tribe there are,
Whose case you must bewail,

Of whom in truth it may be said

They've neither head nor tail.

In purer times, ere vice prevailed,
They met with due regard,

The wholesome counsels that they gave,

With reverence were heard.

To marriages and funerals

Their presence added grace,

And though the king himself were by, They took the highest place.

Their business is to stir up men
A constant watch to keep;

Instead of which,-O sad reverse,―
They make them fall asleep.

Not so in former times it was,

Howe'er it came to pass;

Though they their company ne'er left
Till empty was the glass.

The moderns can't be charged with this,

But may their foes defy,

To prove such practices on them,

Though they're extremely dry.