The very sea seemed altered, and the shore;
The very voices of the air were dumb;
Time was an emptiness that o'er and o'er
Ticked with the dull pulsation "Will she
come?"

So that he sat "consuming in a dream,"
Much like his old forerunner Polypheme.

Until there came the question, "Is she gone?"
With such sad sick persistence that at last,
Urged by the hungry thought which drove him on
Along the steep declivity he passed,
And by the summit panting stood, and still,
Just as the horn was sounding on the hill.

Then, in a dream, beside the " Dragon" door, The smith saw travellers standing in the sun; Then came the horn again, and three or four

Looked idly at him from the roof, but One,— A Child within,-suffused with sudden shame, Thrust forth a hand, and called to him by name.

Thus the coach vanished from his sight, but he Limped back with bitter pleasure in his pain; He was not all forgotten-could it be?

And yet the knowledge made the memory vain ;

And then

he felt a pressure in his throat, So, for that night, forgot to milk his goat.

What then might come of silent misery,

What new resolvings then might intervene, I know not. Only, with the morning sky, The goat stood tethered on the "Dragon" green,

And those who, wondering, questioned thereupon, Found the hut empty,-for the man was gone.

A STORY FROM A DICTIONARY

"Sic visum Veneri: cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga aënea
Saevo mittere cum joco."-HOR. i. 33.

"LOVE mocks us all"—as Horace said of old:

From sheer perversity, that arch-offender

Still yokes unequally the hot and cold,

The short and tall, the hardened and the tender; He bids a Socrates espouse a scold,

And makes a Hercules forget his gender:

Sic visum Veneri! Lest samples fail,

I add a fresh one from the page of BAYLE.

It was in Athens that the thing occurred,
In the last days of Alexander's rule,
While yet in Grove or Portico was heard

The studious murmur of its learned school;

Nay, 'tis one favoured of Minerva's bird

Who plays therein the hero (or the fool) With a Megarian, who must then have been A maid, and beautiful, and just eighteen.

I shan't describe her.

Beauty is the same
In Anno Domini as erst B.C.;

The type is still that witching One who came,
Between the furrows, from the bitter sea;

'Tis but to shift accessories and frame,

And this our heroine in a trice would be, Save that she wore a peplum and a chiton, Like any modern on the beach at Brighton.

Stay, I forget! Of course the sequel shows
She had some qualities of disposition,
To which, in general, her sex are foes,—
As strange proclivities to erudition,

And lore unfeminine, reserved for those

Who nowadays descant on "Woman's Mission," Or tread instead that "primrose path" to know ledge,

That milder Academe-the Girton College.

The truth is, she admired . . . a learned man.
There were no curates in that sunny Greece,
For whom the mind emotional could plan
Fine-art habiliments in gold and fleece;
(This was ere chasuble or cope began

To shake the centres of domestic peace ;)
So that "admiring," such as maids give way to,
Turned to the ranks of Zeno and of Plato.

The "object" here was mildly prepossessing,
At least, regarded in a woman's sense;
His forte, it seems, lay chiefly in expressing
Disputed fact in Attic eloquence;

His ways were primitive; and as to dressing,
His toilet was a negative pretence ;

He kept, besides, the régime of the Stoic;----
In short, was not, by any means, "heroic."

Sic visum Veneri!-The thing is clear.

Her friends were furious, her lovers nettled; Twas much as though the Lady Vere de Vere On some hedge-schoolmaster her heart had settled.

Unheard! Intolerable !—a lumbering steer

To plod the upland with a mare high-mettled!They would, no doubt, with far more pleasure hand her

To curled Euphorion or Anaximander.

And so they used due discipline, of course,

To lead to reason this most erring daughter, Proceeding even to extremes of force,

Confinement (solitary), and bread and water; Then, having lectured her till they were hoarse, Finding that this to no submission brought her At last, (unwisely 1) to the man they sent, That he might combat her by argument.

Being, they fancied, but a bloodless thing;

Or else too well forewarned of that commotion Which poets feign inseparable from Spring

To suffer danger from a school-girl notion;
Also they hoped that she might find her king,
On close inspection, clumsy and Boeotian:-
This was acute enough, and yet, between us,
I think they thought too little about Venus.

1

Unwisely," surely. But 'tis well to mention
That this particular is not invention.