H

EPILOGUE.

EIGHO! how chill the evenings get!

Good-night, NINON!-good-night, NINETTE!

Your little Play is played and finished ;—

Go back, then, to your Cabinet!

LOYAL, L'ÉTOILE ! no more to-day!

Alas! they heed not what we say:
They smile with ardour undiminished;
But we, we are not always gay!

VIGNETTES IN RHYME.

THE DRAMA OF THE DOCTOR'S WINDOW.

IN THREE ACTS, WITH A PROLOGUE.

"A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus,
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth."

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

PROLOGUE.

"WELL, I must wait!" The Doctor's room,

Where I used this expression,

Wore the severe official gloom

Attached to that profession;

Rendered severer by a bald

And skinless Gladiator,
Whose raw robustness first appalled

The entering spectator.

No one would call "The Lancet" gay,—

Few could avoid confessing

That Jones, "On Muscular Decay,"

Is, as a rule, depressing:

And here, the Doctor's sill beside,
Do I not now discover

A Thisbe, whom the walls divide
From Pyramus, her lover?

ACT THE FIRST.

Act I. began.

Some noise had scared

The cat, that like an arrow

Shot up the wall and disappeared;

And then, across the narrow, Unweeded path, a small dark thing, Hid by a garden-bonnet,

Passed wearily towards the swing, Paused, turned, and climbed upon it.

A child of five, with eyes that were
At least a decade older,

A mournful mouth, and tangled hair
Flung careless round her shoulder,
Dressed in a stiff ill-fitting frock,
Whose black, uncomely rigour
Seemed to sardonically mock
The plaintive, slender figure.

What was it? Something in the dress That told the girl unmothered;