III.--Association by Time

SIMPLICIUS SNIPKIN loquitur

I touch this scar upon my skull behind, And instantly there rises in my mind Napoleon's mighty hosts from Moscow lost, Driven forth to perish in the fangs of Frost. For in that self-same month, and self-same day, Down Skinner Street I took my hasty way-- Mischief and Frost had set the boys at play; I stept upon a slide--oh! treacherous tread!-- Fell smash with bottom bruised, and brake my head! Thus Time's co-presence links the great and small, Napoleon's overthrow, and Snipkin's fall.

? 1830. First published in Fraser's Magazine, Jan. 1835, Art. 'Coleridgeiana'. First collected 1893.