FRANK.

Better the twilight and the cheery chatting,-
Better the dim, forgotten garden-seat,
Where one may lie, and watch the fingers tatting,
Lounging with Bran or Bevis at her feet.

All worship mine.

LAWRENCE.

Her purity doth hedge her

Round with so delicate divinity, that men Stained to the soul with money-bag and ledger, Bend to the goddess, manifest again.

FRANK.

None worship mine. But some, I fancy, love her,-
Cynics to boot. I know the children run,
Seeing her come, for naught that I discover,
Save that she brings the summer and the sun.

LAWRENCE.

Mine is a Lady, beautiful and queenly,
Crowned with a sweet, continual control,
Grandly forbearing, lifting life serenely
E'en to her own nobility of soul.

FRANK.

Mine is a Woman, kindly beyond measure,
Fearless in praising, faltering in blame:
Simply devoted to other people's pleasure,—
Jack's sister Florence,-now you know her name.

LAWRENCE.

"Jack's sister Florence!" Never, Francis, never

You'll get a sunstroke, standing with your head bare.

Sorry to differ. Jack, the word's with you

FRANK.

How is it, Umpire? Though the motto's thread.

bare,

"Cœlum, non animum ”—is, I take it, true.

JACK.

"Souvent femme varie," as a rule, is truer ;

Flattered, I'm sure, but both of you romance.

Happy to further suit of either wooer,

Merely observing-you haven't got a chance.

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.

THE LADY.

A'POET.

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(If it was wrong to watch you, pardon), Behind this weeping birch withdrawn,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.

What was your thought? You waited long. Sublime or graceful,-grave,

A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song?

A tender Tennysonian lyric?

satiric?

Tell me.

That garden-seat shall be,

So long as speech renown disperses, Illustrious as the spot where he

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;
The "finely-frenzied" eye, at times,
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.