FRANK. Mine is a Woman, kindly beyond measure, now you know her name. LAWRENCE. "Jack's sister Florence!" Never, Francis, never. Jack, do you hear? Why, it was she I meant. She like the country! Ah, she's far too clever FRANK. There you are wrong. I know her down in Kent. LAWRENCE. You'll get a sunstroke, standing with your head bare. Sorry to differ. Jack, the word 's with you. How is it, Umpire? bare, FRANK. Though the motto 's thread "Souvent femme varie," as a rule, is truer ; Flattered, I'm sure, but both of you romance. Happy to further suit of either wooer, LAWRENCE. Yes. But the Pipe FRANK. The Pipe is what we care for, JACK. Well, in this case, I scarcely need explain, Judgment of mine were indiscreet, and therefore, Peace to you both. The Pipe I shall retain. A GARDEN IDYLL. A LADY. A POET. THE LADY. IR POET, ere you crossed the lawn SIR (If it was wrong to watch you, pardon,) Behind this weeping birch withdrawn, I watched you saunter round the garden. I saw you bend beside the phlox, Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle, Review my well-ranged hollyhocks, Smile at the fountain's slender spurtle; You paused beneath the cherry-tree, Where my marauder thrush was singing, Peered at the bee-hives curiously, And narrowly escaped a stinging; And then you see I watched-you passed Down the espalier walk that reaches Out to the western wall, and last Dropped on the seat before the peaches. A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song? So long as speech renown disperses, The gifted Blank composed his verses. THE POET. Madam, — whose uncensorious eye Grows gracious over certain pages, Wherein the Jester's maxims lie, It may be, thicker than the Sage's I hear but to obey, and could Mere wish of mine the pleasure do you, Some verse as whimsical as Hood, As gay as Praed, — should answer to you. But, though the common voice proclaims Our only serious vocation Confined to giving nothings names, And dreams a "local habitation"; Believe me there are tuneless days, When neither marble, brass, nor vellum, Would profit much by any lays That haunt the poet's cerebellum. More empty things, I fear, than rhymes, More idle things than songs, absorb it; finely-frenzied" eye, at times, The 66 Reposes mildly in its orbit; And painful truth at times, to him, Whose jog-trot thought is nowise restive, "A primrose by a river's brim " Is absolutely unsuggestive. The fickle Muse! As ladies will, A goddess, yet a woman still, She flies the more that we pursue her; But cannot comfortably show it. You thought, no doubt, the garden-scent Of love that came and love that went, |