She opens her lids, but no longer her eyes
Behold the fair youth she would woo;
Now appears the PAINT-KING in his natural guise;
His face, like a palette of villanous dyes,

Black and white, red and yellow, and blue.

On the skull of a Titan, that Heaven defied,
Sat the fiend, like the grim Giant Gog,
While aloft to his mouth a huge pipe he applied,
Twice as big as the Eddystone Lighthouse, descried
As it looms through an easterly fog.

And anon, as he puffed the vast volumes, were seen, In horrid festoons on the wall,

Legs and arms, heads and bodies, emerging between, Like the drawing-room grim of the Scotch Sawney Beane,

By the Devil dressed out for a ball.

"Ah me!" cried the damsel, and fell at his feet. "Must I hang on these walls to be dried?"

"O, no!" said the fiend, while he sprung from his seat; "A far nobler fortune thy person shall meet; Into paint will I grind thee, my bride!"

Then, seizing the maid by her dark auburn hair,
An oil-jug he plunged her within.

Seven days, seven nights, with the shrieks of despair,
Did Ellen in torment convulse the dun air,

All covered with oil to the chin.

On the morn of the eighth on a huge, sable stone Then Ellen, all reeking, he laid;

With a rock for his muller he crushed every bone, But, though ground to jelly, still, still did she groan; For life had forsook not the maid.

Now, reaching his palette, with masterly care
Each tint on its surface he spread;

The blue of her eyes, and the brown of her hair,
And the pearl and the white of her forehead so fair,
And her lips' and her cheeks' rosy-red.

Then, stamping his foot, did the monster exclaim,
"Now I brave, cruel Fairy, thy scorn!"
When lo! from a chasm wide-yawning there came
A light, tiny chariot of rose-colored flame,
By a team of ten glowworms upborne.

Enthroned in the midst on an emerald bright,
Fair Geraldine sat without peer;

Her robe was a gleam of the first blush of light,
And her mantle the fleece of a noon-cloud white,
And a beam of the moon was her spear.

In an accent that stole on the still, charmed air
Like the first gentle language of Eve,

Thus spake from her chariot the Fairy so fair:
:-
"I come at thy call, but, O Paint-King, beware,

Beware if again you deceive!"

"'T is true," said the monster, "thou queen of my heart,

Thy portrait I oft have essayed;

Yet ne'er to the canvas could I with my art
The least of thy wonderful beauties impart;
And my failure with scorn you repaid.

"Now I swear by the light of the Comet-King's tail," And he towered with pride as he spoke,

"If again with these magical colors I fail, The crater of Etna shall hence be my jail, And my food shall be sulphur and smoke.

"But if I succeed, then, O fair Geraldine!
Thy promise with justice I claim,
And thou, queen of Fairies, shalt ever be mine,
The bride of my bed; and thy portrait divine
Shall fill all the earth with my fame."

He spake; when, behold, the fair Geraldine's form
On the canvas enchantingly glowed;

His touches, they flew like the leaves in a storm;

And the pure, pearly white and the carnation warm
Contending in harmony flowed.

And now did the portrait a twin-sister seem
To the figure of Geraldine fair:

With the same sweet expression did faithfully teem
Each muscle, each feature; in short, not a gleam
Was lost of her beautiful hair.

'T was the Fairy herself! but, alas, her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack;

And who shall describe the terrific surprise

That seized the Paint-King when, behold, he descries Not a speck on his palette of black!

"I am lost!" said the fiend, and he shook like a leaf; When, casting his eyes to the ground,

He saw the lost pupils of Ellen, with grief,
In the jaws of a mouse, and the sly little thief
Whisk away from his sight with a bound.

"I am lost!" said the Fiend, and he fell like a stone; Then rising the Fairy in ire

With a touch of her finger she loosened her zone, (While the limbs on the wall gave a terrible groan,) And she swelled to a column of fire.

Her spear now a thunderbolt flashed in the air,
And sulphur the vault filled around:

She smote the grim monster; and now by the hair
High-lifting, she hurled him in speechless despair
Down the depths of the chasm profound.

Then over the picture thrice waving her spear,
"Come forth!" said the good Geraldine;
When, behold, from the canvas descending, appear
Fair Ellen, in person more lovely than e'er,
With grace more than ever divine!

MYRTILLA.

ADDRESSED TO A LADY, WHO LAMENTED THAT SHE HAD NEVER BEEN IN LOVE.

"Al nuovo giorno

Pietosa man mi sollevò."- METASTASIO.

"Ан me! how sad," Myrtilla cried,
"To waste alone my years!"
While o'er a streamlet's flowery side
She pensive hung, and watched the tide
That dimpled with her tears.

"The world, though oft to merit blind,
Alas! I cannot blame;

For they have oft the knee inclined,

And poured the sigh, but, like the wind
Of winter, cold it came.

"Ah no! neglect I cannot rue."

Then o'er the limpid stream

She cast her eyes of ether blue;
Her watery eyes looked up to view
Their lovelier parents' beam.