Stray leaves from the portfolios of Alisander the seer, Andrew Whaup, and Humphrey Henkeckle

94
STRAY LEAVES.
Off strutted the Baron in baronly pride.
To the sweets of his office to cling.
The beggar sunk down by the lonely wayside;
He utter’d a prayer, gave a shudder, and died.
While his spirit to heaven took wing^
The Baron died likewise—not all his red gold
Could avert the last enemy’s sting;
He lies now as lowly, as lonely, and cold.
As the poor abject beggar, so helpless and old.
While his pamper’d-up carcase now fattens the mould
Where the rank grass and nettle upspring.
How odd, that a being so charm’d with the dyes
And the specks of a butterfly’s wing,
Should thus over man, fellow-man, tyrannize—
Thus spurn his own flesh,—yea, God’s image despise—•
God’s image, too, formed to inherit the skies,—
What a strange unaccountable thing 1
SONG,
by W. H. BELLAMY, ESQ. OF BREINTON LODGE, HEREFORD.
1 True in the sunshine, and tried in the storm.*
A wreath, twine a wreath for our country's defender.
The last to destroy, yet the first to reform.
Who proudly can stand, and disdain to surrender,—
True in the sunshine, and tried in the storm.