Volume 103 — LAYS OF MODERN HOME.

Ah! welcome, through autumnal mist, For each returning ruralist, Waif metropolitan, to list Thy tinkle unto. No sound of seas or bees or trees Can Londoners so truly please— The cheapest epicure with ease Thy dainties run to. They need not, like the fruits on sticks, The fruits Venetian boyhood licks, A voice with operatic tricks Their praise to trumpet. The simple bell shall, fraught with sense Of teapot, urn, and hearth intense. Best herald thee and thy commensurable crumpet. Lives there a cit with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, "This is my crisp, my native-bred, My British muffin!"? Let picturesque Autolyci Their cloying foreign dainties cry; I don't see much to buy, not I, Such messy stuff in! Mysterious vagrant, dost prepare Thyself that inexpensive fare; Thyself, partake of it—and where?— The boon thou sellest? 'Tis Home, where'er it be; thy load Can cheer the pauper's dark abode, And lack of it, with gloom corrode The very swellest. There are who deem it vulgar fun For dressy bachelors to run Themselves to stop thee; I'm not one So nicely silly: I'm not ashamed to track thy way, And test the triumphs of thy tray, And bring them back in paper, say, To Piccadilly. Yes, heedless of a gibing town, To hand them Phyllis, sit me down, And wait, till they come up in brown And glossy sections. Then, brew my cup—the best Ceylon— And, bidding care and chill begone, Concentre heart and mouth upon Thy warm perfections.