INCOGNITA UST for a space that I met her It began when she feared it would wet her, So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, Then it grew when she begged me to reach her A dressing-case under the seat; She was "really so tiny a creature, That she needed a stool for her feet!" Then it drooped, and revived at some hovels"Were they houses for men or for pigs?" Then it shifted to muscular novels, With a little digression on prigs : She thought "Wives and Daughters" "so jolly". "Had I read it?" She knew when I had, Like the rest, I should dote upon "Molly"; And "poor Mrs. Gaskell-how sad!" "Like Browning?" "But so-so." His proof lay Yet at times he was good-" as a tonic": And clever, and naughty, or how? Then we trifled with concerts and croquêt, And oh the odd things that she quoted, Flashed on with the hours that flew; Till at last in her corner, peeping She seemed like a snow-drop breaking, But with one blind impulse making To the sounds of the spring overhead; And I watched in the lamplight's swerving But she suddenly woke in a fidget, With fears she was "nearly at home," And talk of a certain Aunt Bridget, Whom I mentally wished-well, at Rome; Got out at the very next station, Looking back with a merry Bon Soir; So left me to muse on her graces, To doze and to muse, till I dreamed That we sailed through the sunniest places In a glorified galley, it seemed; But the cabin was made of a carriage, And the ocean was Eau-de-Cologne, And we split on a rock labelled MARRIAGE, And I woke,-as cold as a stone. And that's how I lost her-a jewel, Not worldly enough to be proud. It was just a shut lid and its lashes, Just a few hours in a train, And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing to see her again. DORA VERSUS ROSE The Case is proceeding.” FROM the tragic-est novels at Mudie's— At least, on a practical plan- And Dora, a blonde. Each rivals the other in powers— Each waltzes, each warbles, each paintsMiss Rose, chiefly tumble-down towers; Miss Do., perpendicular saints. In short, to distinguish is folly; 'Twixt the pair I am come to the pass Of Macheath, between Lucy and Polly,Or Buridan's ass. If it happens that Rosa I've singled Somehow with the tune and the time; |