Or,-to wean you from the vapours ;

As for these,
You are worth the love they give you,
Till a fairer face outlive you,

Or a younger grace shall please ;
Till the coming of the crows' feet,
And the backward turn of beaux' feet,

“ Belle Marquise ! ” Till your frothed-out life's commotion Settles down to Ennui's ocean, Or a dainty sham devotion,

“ Belle Marquise !”

v.

No: we neither like nor love you,

“ Belle Marquise ! ” Lesser lights we place above you,

Milder merits better please.
We have passed from Philosophe-dom

Into plainer modern days,-
Grown contented in our oafdom,

Giving grace not all the praise ; And, en partant, Arsinoé,–

Without malice whatsoever,We shall counsel to our Chloë

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.

“On ne badine pas avec l'amour."

THE

'HE scene, a wood. A shepherd tip-toe creeping,

Carries a basket, whence a billet peeps, 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 sees

One hardly needs the “Peint par François Boucher.”

All the sham life comes back again,-
Alcôves, Ruelles, the Lever, and the Coucher,

Patches and Ruffles, Roués and Marquises ;
The little great, the infinite small thing
That ruled the hour when Louis Quinze was king.

For these were yet the days of halcyon weather,

A “Martin's summer”, when the nation swam, Aimless and easy as a wayward feather,

Down the full tide of jest and epigram ;A careless time, when France's bluest blood Beat to the tune of “After us the flood.”

Plain Roland still was placidly “inspecting,”

Not now Camille had stirred the Café Foy;
Marat was young, and Guillotin dissecting,

Corday unborn, and Lamballe in Savoie ;
No faubourg yet had heard the Tocsin ring :-
This was the summer—when Grasshoppers sing.

And far afield were sun-baked savage creatures,

Female and male, that tilled the earth, and wrung Want from the soil ;-lean things with livid features,

Shape of bent man, and voice that never sung: These were the Ants, for yet to Jacques Bonhomme Tumbrils were not, nor any sound of drum.

But Boucher was a Grasshopper, and painted,

Rose-water Raphael,- -en couleur de rose, The crowned Caprice, whose sceptre, nowise sainted,

Swayed the light realm of ballets and bon-mots;Ruled the dim boudoir's demi-jour, or drove Pink-ribboned flocks through some pink-flowered grove.

A laughing Dame, who sailed a laughing cargo

Of Alippant loves along the Fleuve du Tendre; Whose greatest grace was jupes à la Camargo,

Whose gentlest merit gentiment se rendre;Queen of the rouge-cheeked Hours, whose footsteps fell To Rameau's notes, in dances by Gardel;

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 len of cosmetic youth,
Wherein most things went naked, save the Truth.

Once, only once,-perhaps the last night's revels

Palled in the after-taste,-our Boucher sighed
For that first beauty, falsely named the Devil's,

Young-lipped, unlessoned, joyous, and clear-eyed;
Flung down his palette like a weary man,
And sauntered slowly through the Rue Sainte-Anne.

Wherefore, we know not; but, at times, far nearer

Things common come, and lineaments half-seen
Grow in a moment magically clearer ;-

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,

Nymphs that deny, and shepherds that appeal; Stale seemed the trick of kerchief and of bodice,

Folds that confess, and flutters that reveal; Then as he grew more sad and disenchanted, Forthwith he spied the very thing he wanted.