Besides, I heard enough to show
Their love is proof against the snow :-
•Why wait,' he said, 'why wait for May,
When love can warm a winter's day?'”
PLUNGE
my
hand
among
the leaves : (An alien touch but dust perceives,
Nought else supposes ;)
For me those fragrant ruins raise
Clear memory of the vanished days
When they were roses.
“ If youth but knew !” Ah, “if,” in truthI can recall with what gay youth,
To what light chorus,
Unsobered yet by time or change,
We roamed the many-gabled Grange,
All life before us ;
Braved the old clock-tower's dust and damp
To catch the dim Arthurian camp
In misty distance ;
Peered at the still-room's sacred stores,
Or rapped at walls for sliding doors
Of feigned existence.
What need had we for thoughts or cares ! The hot sun parched the old parterres
And “ flowerful closes”; We roused the rooks with rounds and glees, Played hide-and-seek behind the trees, —
Then plucked these roses.
Louise was one-light, glib Louise,
So freshly freed from school decrees
You scarce could stop her ;
And Bell, the Beauty, unsurprised
At fallen locks that scandalized
Our dear“ Miss Proper :".
Shy Ruth, all heart and tenderness,
Who wept—like Chaucer's Prioress,
When Dash was smitten ;
Who blushed before the mildest men,
Yet waxed a very Corday when
You teased her kitten.
I loved them all. Bell first and best ;
Louise the next-for days of jest
Or madcap masking ;
And Ruth, I thought,-why, failing these,
When my High-Mightiness should please,
She'd come for asking.
Louise was grave when last we met ;
Bell's beauty, like a sun, has set ;
And Ruth, Heaven bless her,
Ruth that I wooed,-and wooed in vain,
Has gone where neither grief nor pain
Can now distress her.
A RÊVERIE SUGGESTED BY THE NAME UPON A PANE.
HE then must once have looked, as I
Look now, across the level rye,-
Past Church and Manor-house, and seen,
As now I see, the village green,
The bridge, and Walton's river-she
Whose old-world name was “Dorothy."
The swallows must have twittered, too,
Above her head; the roses blew
Below, no doubt,—and, sure, the South
Crept up the wall and kissed her mouth,-
That wistful mouth, which comes to me
Linked with her name of Dorothy.
What was she like? I picture her
Unmeet for uncouth worshipper ;-
Soft,-pensive,-far too subtly graced
To suit the blunt bucolic taste,
Whose crude perception could but see
“Ma'am Fine-airs ” in “ Miss Dorothy.”
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