I

POT-POURRI

"Si jeunesse savait ?—"

PLUNGE my hand among the leaves: (An alien touch but dust perceives,

Nought else supposes ;)

For me those fragrant ruins raise

Clear memory of the vanished days

When they were roses.

"If youth but knew!" Ah, "if," in truth?-
I can recall with what gay youth,
To what light chorus,
Unsobered yet by time or change,
We roamed the many-gabled Grange,
All life before us;

Braved the old clock-tower's dust and damp, To catch the dim Arthurian camp

In misty distance;

Peered at the still-room's sacred stores,

Or rapped at walls for sliding doors

Of feigned existence.

What need had we for thoughts or cares ! The hot sun parched the old parterres And "flowerful closes ";

We roused the rooks with rounds and glees, Played hide-and-seek behind the trees,— Then plucked these roses.

Louise was one-light, glib Louise,
So freshly freed from school decree
You scarce could stop her;
And Bell, the Beauty, unsurprised
At fallen locks that scandalised
Our dear "Miss Proper" ;-

Shy Ruth, all heart and tenderness,
Who wept-like Chaucer's Prioress,
When Dash was smitten;

Who blushed before the mildest men
Yet waxed a very Corday when
You teased her kitten.

I loved them all. Bell first and best;
Louise the next for days of jest
Or madcap masking;

And Ruth, I thought,-why, failing these, When my High-Mightiness should please, She'd come for asking.

Louise was grave when last we met;
Bell's beauty, like a sun, has set ;

And Ruth, Heaven bless her,

Ruth that I wooed,—and wooed in vain,—
Has gone where neither grief nor pain
Can now distress her.

1873.

DOROTHY

A REVERIE SUGGESTED BY THE NAME UPON

A PANE

HE then must once have looked, as I

SH

Look now, across the level rye,

Past Church and Manor-house, and seen,
As now I see, the village green,
The bridge, and Walton's river-she
Whose old-world name was “Dorothy."

The swallows must have twittered, too,
Above her head; the roses blew
Below, no doubt,—and, sure, the South
Crept up the wall and kissed her mouth,-
That wistful mouth, which comes to me
Linked with her name of Dorothy.

What was she like? I picture her
Unmeet for uncouth worshipper ;-
Soft,-pensive,-far too subtly graced
To suit the blunt bucolic taste,
Whose crude perception could but see
"Ma'am Fine-airs" in "Miss Dorothy."

How not? She loved, maybe, perfume,
Soft textures, lace, a half-lit room ;—
Perchance too candidly preferred
"Clarissa" to a gossip's word ;—

And, for the rest, would seem to be
Or proud, or dull-this Dorothy.

Poor child!—with heart the down-lined nest

Of warmest instincts unconfest,

Soft, callow things that vaguely felt
The breeze caress, the sunlight melt,
But yet, by some obscure decree,
Unwinged from birth ;-poor Dorothy!

Not less I dream her mute desire
To acred churl and booby squire,

Now pale, with timorous eyes that filled
At "twice-told tales" of foxes killed;—
Now trembling when slow tongues grew free
'Twixt sport, and Port—and Dorothy!

'Twas then she'd seek this nook, and find
Its evening landscape balmy-kind,
And here, where still her gentle name
Lives on the old green glass, would frame