Or,-to wean you from the vapours ;— You are worth the love they give you, Or a younger grace shall please; Till your frothed-out life's commotion Or a dainty sham devotion, "Belle Marquise!" V. No: we neither like nor love you, "Belle Marquise!” Lesser lights we place above you,— We have passed from Philosophe-dom Without malice whatsoever,— To be rather good than clever ; For we find it hard to smother Just one little thought, Marquise! Wittier perhaps than any other,You were neither Wife nor Mother, "Belle Marquise!” THE STORY OF ROSINA. AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF FRANÇOIS BOUCHER. THE "On ne badine pas avec l'amour." HE scene, a wood. A shepherd tip-toe creeping, To lay beside a silk-clad Oread sleeping Under an urn; yet not so sound she sleeps But that she plainly sees his graceful act; "He thinks she thinks he thinks she sleeps," in fact. One hardly needs the “Peint par François Boucher." The little great, the infinite small thing For these were yet the days of halcyon weather,- Down the full tide of jest and epigram ;— Plain Roland still was placidly "inspecting," And far afield were sun-baked savage creatures, But Boucher was a Grasshopper, and painted,— Rose-water Raphael, -en couleur de rose, The crowned Caprice, whose sceptre, nowise sainted, A laughing Dame, who sailed a laughing cargo Her Boucher served, till Nature's self betraying, As Wordsworth sings, the heart that loved her not, Made of his work a land of languid Maying, Filled with false gods and muses misbegot ;A Versailles Eden of cosmetic youth, Wherein most things went naked, save the Truth. Once, only once,—perhaps the last night's revels And sauntered slowly through the Rue Sainte-Anne. Wherefore, we know not; but, at times, far nearer Perhaps, as he walked, the grass he called "too green" Rose and rebuked him, or the earth "ill-lighted" Silently smote him with the charms he slighted. But, as he walked, he tired of god and goddess, Folds that confess, and flutters that reveal; |