"Pretty Patty Honeywood,
You can little know
How my sea of passion
Unto you doth flow;
How it ever hastens.
With a swelling tide,
To its strand of happiness
At thy darling side.
"Pretty Patty Honeywood,
Would that you and I
Could ask the surpliced parson
Our wedding knot to tie!
Oh! my life of sunshine
Then would he begun,
Pretty Patty Honeywood,
When you and I were one."
But by far his greatest poetical achievement was his "Legend of the Fair Margaret," written in Spenserian metre, and commenced at this period of his career, though never completed. The plot was of the most dismal and intricate kind. The Fair Margaret was beloved by two young men, one of whom (Sir Frederico) was dark, and (necessarily, therefore) as badly disposed a young man as you would desire to keep out of your family circle, and the other (Sir Verdour) was light, and (consequently) as mild and amiable as any given number of maiden aunts could wish. As a matter of course, therefore, the Fair Margaret perversely preferred the dark Sir Frederico, who had poisoned her ears, and told her the most abominable falsehoods about the good and innocent Sir Verdour; when just as Sir Frederico was about to forcibly carry away the Fair Margaret—
Why, just then, circumstances over which Mr. Verdant Green had no control, prevented the dénouement, and the completion of "the Legend."
