FOR CHILDREN. 297

And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
Or sang to the leaning grass,

Shall bow again to the winter’s chain
And in mournful silence pass.

He comes—he comes—the frost spirit comes !
Let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlour fire
His evil power away ,
And gather closer the circle round,
When that fire-light dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled fiend
As his sounding wing goes by! Mellen.

 

THE DISPUTED CASE.

‘BeTWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose;
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong :

The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of wit, and a wig full of learning,
While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

“In behalf of the Nose it will quickly appear,
And yourlordship,” he said, “will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had spectacles always in wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind.”

Then holding the spectacles up to the court—
“Your lordship observes they are made with a
straddle,