Alike on low and lofty tomb,—

You came upon it—suddenly.

How strange! The very grasses' growth

Around it seemed forlorn and loath;

The very ivy seemed to turn

Askance that wreathed the neighbour urn.

The slab had sunk; the head declined,

And left the rails a wreck behind.

66

No name; you traced a " 6,”—a “ 7,” Part of "affliction " and of "Heaven";

And then, in letters sharp and clear,

You read-O Irony austere !—

"Tho' lost to Sight, to Memory dear."

THE MISOGYNIST.

"Il était un jeune homme d'un bien l'eau passé."

WHEN first he sought our haunts, he wore

His locks in Hamlet-style ;

His brow with thought was "sicklied o'er,”—

We rarely saw him smile

;

And, e'en when none were looking on,

His air was always woe-begone.

G

He kept, I think, his bosom bare

To imitate Jean Paul;

His solitary topics were

Esthetics, Fate, and Soul ;

Although at times, but not for long,
He bowed his Intellect to song.

He served, he said, a Muse of Tears:

I know his verses breathed

A fine funereal air of biers,

And objects cypress-wreathed ;

Indeed, his tried acquaintance fled

An ode he named "The Sheeted Dead."

In these light moods, I call to mind,

He darkly would allude

To some dread sorrow undefined,—

Some passion unsubdued;

Then break into a ghastly laugh,

And talk of Keats his epitaph.

He railed at women's faith as Cant;

We thought him grandest when

He named them Siren-shapes that "chant On blanching bones of Men; "

Alas, not e'en the great go free

From that insidious minstrelsy!

His lot, he oft would gravely urge,

Lay on a lone Rock where

Around Time-beaten bases surge

The Billows of Despair.

We dreamed it true. We never knew

What gentler ears he told it to.

We, bound with him in common care,

One-minded, celibate,

Resolved to Thought and Diet spare

Our lives to dedicate ;

We, truly, in no common sense

Deserved his closest confidence!

But soon, and yet, though soon, too late,

We, sorrowing, sighed to find

A gradual softness enervate

That all superior mind,

Until,—in full assembly met,

He dared to speak of Etiquette.

The verse that we severe had known,

Assumed a wanton air,—

A fond effeminate monotone

Of eyebrows, lips, and hair;

Not ἦθος stirred him now or voῦς,

He read "The Angel in the House!"

Nay worse. He, once sublime to chaff,

Grew whimsically sore

If we but named a photograph

We found him simpering o'er;

Or told how in his chambers lurked

A watch-guard intricately worked.