A DEAD LETTER

That glimmering in the sultry haze,
Faint-flowered, dimly shaded,

Slumbered like Goldsmith's Madam Blaize,
Bedizened and brocaded.

A queer old place! You'd surely say
Some tea-board garden-maker

Had planned it in Dutch William's day
To please some florist Quaker,

So trim it was.

The yew-trees still,

With pious care perverted,

Grew in the same grim shapes; and still

The lipless dolphin spurted;

Still in his wonted state abode
The broken-nosed Apollo ;
And still the cypress-arbour showed
The same umbrageous hollow.

Only, as fresh young Beauty gleams
From coffee-coloured laces,-

So peeped from its old-fashioned dreams
The fresher modern traces;

For idle mallet, hoop, and ball
Upon the lawn were lying;
A magazine, a tumbled shawl,

Round which the swifts were flying;

And, tossed beside the Guelder rose,
A heap of rainbow knitting,
Where, blinking in her pleased repose,
A Persian cat was sitting.

A DEAD LETTER

"A place to love in,-live,-for aye,
If we too, like Tithonus,

Could find some god to stretch the gray,
Scant life the Fates have thrown us;

44

But now by steam we run our race,
With buttoned heart and pocket;
Our Love's a gilded, surplus grace,-
Just like an empty locket!

"The time is out of joint.' Who will

May strive to make it better;
For me, this warm old window-sill,
And this old dusty letter."

II

"Dear John (the letter ran), it can't, can't be,
For Father's gone to Chorley Fair with Sam
And Mother's storing Apples,-Prue and Me
Up to our Elbows making Damson Jam :

But we shall meet before a Week is gone,-
'Tis a long Lane that has no turning,' John!

44

Only till Sunday next, and then you'll wait Behind the White-Thorn, by the broken StileWe can go round and catch them at the Gate, All to Ourselves, for nearly one long Mile; Dear Prue won't look, and Father he'll go on, And Sam's two Eyes are all for Cissy, John!

"John, she's so smart,—with every Ribbon new, Flame-coloured Sack, and Crimson Padesoy : тоб

A DEAD LETTER

As proud as proud; and has the Vapours too,
Just like My Lady;-calls poor Sam a Boy,
And vows no Sweet-heart's worth the Thinking-on
Till he's past Thirty. . . I know better, John!

44

My Dear, I don't think that I thought of much Before we knew each other, I and you ; And now, why, John, your least, least Finger-touch Gives me enough to think a Summer through. See, for I send you Something! There, 'tis gone! Look in this corner,-mind you find it, John!"

III

This was the matter of the note,-
A long-forgot deposit,

Dropped in an Indian dragon's throat,
Deep in a fragrant closet,

Piled with a dapper Dresden world,—
Beaux, beauties, prayers, and poses,-
Bonzes with squat legs undercurled,
And great jars filled with roses.

Ah, heart that wrote! Ah, lips that kissed
You had no thought or presage

Into what keeping you dismissed
Your simple old-world message!

A reverent one. Though we to-day
Distrust beliefs and powers,
The artless, ageless things you say
Are fresh as May's own flowers,

A DEAD LETTER

Starring some pure primeval spring,
Ere Gold had grown despotic,-
Ere Life was yet a selfish thing,
Or Love a mere exotic!

I need not search too much to find
Whose lot it was to send it,
That feel upon me yet the kind,
Soft hand of her who penned it ;

And see, through two score years of smoke,
In by-gone, quaint apparel,
Shine from yon time-black Norway oak
The face of Patience Caryl,—

The pale, smooth forehead, silver-tressed;
The gray gown, primly flowered;
The spotless, stately coif whose crest
Like Hector's horse-plume towered;

And still the sweet half-solemn look
Where some past thought was clinging,
As when one shuts serious book
To hear the thrushes singing.

I kneel to you! Of those you were,
Whose kind old hearts grow mellow,-
Whose fair old faces grow more fair
As Point and Flanders yellow;

Whom some old store of garnered grief,
Their placid temples shading,
Crowns like a wreath of autumn leaf

With tender tints of fading.

BRIGHTER LONDON

Peace to your soul! You died unwed—
Despite this loving letter.

And what of John? The less that's said
Of John, I think, the better.

BRIGHTER LONDON IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

44

THE pleasure-loving 'prentice of the last century when, in Chepe or Fleet, he put up his shutters, and put on his sword, can seldom have been at a loss for amusement. Not only had every inn on the outskirts of the sign-haunted City its skittleground, or bowling-green, or nine-pin alley, where he might doff his tarnished gala-dress, perch his scratch wig upon a post (as he does in Mr. Edwin Abbey's charming pictures), and cultivate to his heart's content the mysteries of managing a bowl with one hand and a long churchwarden with the other, but nearly every village within a mile or two of Paul's boasted its famous summer garden, presenting its peculiar and specific programme of diversions-diversions which included the enviable distinction of rubbing elbows with the quality, and snatching, for a space, the fearful joy of " Bon Ton." At Pentonville there was the White Conduit House, upon whose celebrated cakes and cream Dr. Oliver Goldsmith had once the misfortune of entertaining a party of ladies, and of then finding himself-like Señor Patricio in "Le Sage "-without the wherewithal to pay the reckoning; at Islington there was Sadler's Wells, where you might not only genteelly discuss the "killibeate (as Mr. Weller's friend

44