For me, I find, when eastern winds are high,
A frigid, not a genial inspiration;
Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy
An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,
To me all vernal luxuries are fables,
O! where's the SPRING in a rheumatic leg,
Stiff as a table's?

I limp in agony--I wheeze and cough;
And quake with Ague, that great Agitator,
Nor dream, before July, of leaving off
My Respirator.

What wonder if in May itself I lack
A peg for laudatory verse to hang on?--
Spring, mild and gentle!--yes, a Spring-heeled Jack
To those he sprang on.

In short, whatever panegyrics lie
In fulsome odes too many to be cited,
The tenderness of Spring is all my eye,
And that is blighted!



ODE.