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THE DANISH WARRIOR'S DEATH

SONG.

BY MISS LANDON.

,,Away, away! your care is vain;

No leech could aid me now;

The chill of death is at my heart,
Its damp upon my brow.

Weep not I shame to see such tears
Within a warrior's eyes;

Away! how can ye weep for him

Who in the battle dies?

If I had died with idle head

Upon my lady's knee,

Had Fate stood by my silken bed,

Then might ye weep for me.

But I lie on my own proud deck

Before the sea and sky;

The wind that sweeps my gallant sails

Will have my latest sigh.

My banner floats among the clouds,

Another droops below;

Well with my heart's best blood is paid

Such purchase of a foe.

Go ye and seek my halls, there dwells
A fair-hair'd boy of mine;

Give him my sword, while yet the blood
Darkens that falchion's shine.

Tell him that only other blood
Should wash such stains away;
And if he be his father's child,
There needs no more to say.

Farewell, my bark! farewell, my friends!
Now fling me on the wave;

One cup of wine, and one of blood,
Pour on my bounding grave.“

NAT PHIN.

In In a small villa, surrounded by a little garden and sadly jostled by the spreading streets of Liverpool, dwelt a worthy old bachelor whom all the world knew by the familiar and handy name of Nat Phin. Mr. Phin enjoyed a lucrative government office in the city, and spent six hours every day in business: all the rest of his time was devoted to study and recreation. He had from his earliest years, manifested a taste for odd and out-of-the-way antiquities, to which was rather strangely joined a fondness for natural history. The first of these predilections he indulged in a small room connected with his office in town, where he had amassed an immense quantity of old historical jack-boots, and pistols, and china, and Indian gods, and other such trash, which he would sometimes be found surveying with one eye, while the other was watching the proceedings of a long vista of clerks in the neighbouring apartment. His other fancy found employment at home, where he had there stocked every room and corner,

with books and objects connected with the various branches of his favourite science, or with creatures on which he had fixed those affections which other men devote to wife and children. A venerable terrier which had been his companion at an early period of life, lay mentally engaged in the business of rat-catching, in an old shawl of his aunt's upon the parlour hearth. Two cats, only in a degree less ancient, having been Mr. Phin's second love in the animal world lay amicably beside the dog, with whom they had many years since come to a perfect understanding. A parroquet occupied his pole and cross beam in the corner. Three canaries and a siskin swung in cages from the ceiling. The windows were full of frames, whereon were arranged multitudes of flower pots, the products of which formed so thick a screen as almost to darken the room. The chimneypiece bore a weighty range of the more magnificent order of shells; and a large glass case was completely filled with geological specimens. In the room more properly called his own, besides book-cases, there was a great variety of stuffed birds and beasts, and a dried alligator too long for any other room in the house. In short every bit of wall, most of the ceilings, and a great portion of the floors, were occupied with things living and things dead: there was a perpetual buzz, and mew, and chatter, and scream, and whistle, going on throughout the domicile. Beast called to beast, and bird to bird. A tame hawk contended with the favourite kitten for the crumbs of the breakfast table; monkeys shook their fists and made faces at each other from opposite dens; and the parrot carried on a political controversy with the blackbird, the one having been taught to croak out,, God save the king" while the

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Out of doors, every thing was on a similar footing. A little patch of garden, had in the course of time been filled in every corner with flowers indigenous and exotic, till it had become a perfect bower of beauty. Fruit trees spread their arms along every inch of wall which the sun had any chance of touching; and hundreds or rather perhaps thousands of flower pots were piled on a frame in the middle like a central book-case in an overfilled library. Crowded as the place was, a small piece had been reserved for a pond, in which were kept, a few zoophytes and aquatic plants, and where an old tame gull, whose usual employment was to keep down the breed of grubs, might occasionally wet his feathers. A long range of coops in a back court was devoted to a number of birds of what Mr. Phin delighted to call the galinaceous tribes, not one specimen of which belonged to Britain, or ever laid, as his aunt and housekeeper Miss Phin querulously remarked, a Christian - like egg; by which, we presume, she meant an egg that any Christian could eat.

The lord of this odd little domain was one of those individuals who advance to something like age, without having ever been young. At all times of his life, he had worn a staid and studious look, as if he knew not what love, or quadrilles, or sentimental poetry consisted of. He had taken to double flannels before thirty, and a wig at thirty five, and had scarcely turned forty when he found it necessary to fence himself against the winter's cold by a brown duffle spencer. His parents, who preceded him in the possession of the small villa, had seen him attain middle age, without con

ceiving it to be in the least likely that Nat could form an attachment beyond the range of the family, or take it in his head to set up house for himself. Neither had

any other body, young or old, male or female; ever thought of Nat as a person likely to become a lover. He seemed to have entirely missed several of the seven ages of man, and become,, the lean and slippered Pantaloon" at seventeen. If the idea of matrimony and the idea of Nat Phin could have been entertained at the same moment, it would have appeared a most incongruous association. No young lady in her most meditative moments, whether in letting down her hair for a party, or twisting it up after, could have ever taken a thought of him; not even the most considerate mother of a large family of marriageable daughters could have allowed herself to imagine Nat making up to a child of hers. He had not the this-world look which is required in the marrying man. More likely that he should gradually stiffen away into a curiosity, and in proper time, take his place amongst those dried specimens upon which he at present bestowed so much of his affection.

There is no end however to the paradoxes of human character. Nat with all his dryness and hardness of exterior, and engrossed as he seemed by his studies, possessed a soft and kind heart, and delighted in human intercourse. He was particularly fond of receiving visits from ladies, whom, with an antique formality, he would squire about his garden; and when his aunt gathered a few of those ornaments of creation around her tea-table, Nat shone out wonderfully, conversed on albums and theatricals; and albeit long past the kettle - handing time of life, generally performed the offices of a beau with considerable alacrity. On occasions

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