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. A POET. THE LADY. IR POET, ere you crossed the lawn SIR (If it was wrong to watch you, pardon), Behind this weeping birch withdrawn, I watched you saunter round the garden.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 It may be, thicker than the Sage's— 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, "A primrose by a river's brim" Is absolutely unsuggestive. The fickle Muse! As ladies will, She flies the more that we pursue her ; But cannot comfortably show it. You thought, no doubt, the garden scent Brings back some brief-winged bright sensation Of love that came and love that went,Some fragrance of a lost flirtation, Born when the cuckoo changes song, Dead ere the apple's red is on it, That should have been an epic long, Yet scarcely served to fill a sonnet. Or else you thought,-the murmuring noon And windy bough-swing in the metre ; Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, And mediæval orchard blossoms, Quite à la mode. Alas for prose!— Back to the red-walled Rectory close, Where first my graceless boyhood gamboled, |