IN PRAISE OF WOMEN

Sei tanta graziosa e tanta bella,
Che chi ti mira e non ti don' il cuore
O non è vivo o non conosce amore.

I saw the Sibyl at Cumae,

(One said) with mine own eye.

She hung in a cage and read her rune

To all the passers by.

Said the boys, 'What wouldst thou Sibyl?'

She answered, 'I would die !'

The melodious character of the earth,

The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and

does not wish to go,

The justified mother of men.

A Budget of Paradoxes

'HILD in thy beauty: empress in thy pride!

CH

Sweet and unyielding as the summer's tide;
Starlike to tremble, starlike to abide.

Guiltless of wounding, yet more true than steel;
Gem-like thy light to flash and to conceal ;
Tortoise to bear; insect to see and feel.

Blushing and shy, yet dread we thy disdain ;
Smiling, a sunbeam fraught with hints of rain;
Trilling love-notes to freedom's fierce refrain.

The days are fresh, the hours are wild and sweet,
When spring and winter, dawn and darkness meet;
Nymph, with one welcome, thee and these we greet.
JOHN MARTLEY.

I

On a Certain Lady at Court

KNOW the thing that's most uncommon

(Envy, be silent and attend);

I know a reasonable woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a friend.

Not warped by passion, awed by rumour;

Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly;

An equal mixture of good humour

And sensible soft melancholy.

'Has she no faults then,' Envy says, 'Sir?'
Yes, she has one, I must aver;

When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman's deaf, and does not hear!

ALEXANDER POPE.

O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet

AS I was walking up the street,

A barefit maid I chanced to meet; But O the road was very hard

For that fair maiden's tender feet.

It were mair meet that those fine feet
Were weel laced up in silken shoon,
And 'twere more fit that she should sit
Within yon chariot gilt aboon.

Her yellow hair, beyond compare,

Comes trinkling down her swan-like neck,
And her two eyes, like stars in skies,
Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck.

O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet,
Mally's modest and discreet,

Mally's rare, Mally's fair,

Mally's every way complete.

ROBERT BURNS.

The Solitary Reaper

BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

THE SOLITARY REAPER

No nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again!

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending ;-
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

WILLIAM WORdsworth.