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I know as well as I know to pray,
I know as well as a tongue can say,
That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman
Has gone to the city Ispahan.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907]

THE SHADOW DANCE

SHE sees her image in the glass,--
How fair a thing to gaze upon!
She lingers while the moments run,
With happy thoughts that come and pass,

Like winds across the meadow grass
When the young June is just begun:

She sees her image in the glass,-
How fair a thing to gaze upon!

What wealth of gold the skies amass!
How glad are all things 'neath the sun!
How true the love her love has won!
She recks not that this hour will pass,-
She sees her image in the glass.

Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908

"ALONG THE FIELD AS WE CAME BY"

ALONG the field as we came by

A year ago, my love and I,

The aspen over stile and stone

Was talking to itself alone.

"Oh, who are these that kiss and pass?

A country lover and his lass;

Two lovers looking to be wed;

And time shall put them both to bed,

But she shall lie with earth above,

And he beside another love."

"Grieve Not, Ladies "

And sure enough beneath the tree
There walks another love with me,
And overhead the aspen heaves
Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;
And I spell nothing in their stir,
But now perhaps they speak to her,
And plain for her to understand
They talk about a time at hand
When I shall sleep with clover clad,
And she beside another lad.

Alfred Edward Housman [1859

857

"WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY"

WHEN I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."

And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

Alfred Edward Housman [1859–

"GRIEVE NOT, LADIES"

Он, grieve not, Ladies, if at night
Ye wake to feel your beauty going;

It was a web of frail delight,
Inconstant as an April snowing.

In other eyes, in other lands,

In deep fair pools new beauty lingers; But like spent water in your hands

It runs from your reluctant fingers.

You shall not keep the singing lark

That owes to earlier skies its duty. Weep not to hear along the dark

The sound of your departing beauty.

The fine and anguished ear of night
Is tuned to hear the smallest sorrow:
Oh, wait until the morning light!

It may not seem so gone to-morrow.

But honey-pale and rosy-red!

Brief lights that make a little shining! Beautiful looks about us shed

They leave us to the old repining.

Think not the watchful, dim despair

Has come to you the first, sweet-hearted!

For oh, the gold in Helen's hair!

And how she cried when that departed!

Perhaps that one that took the most,

The swiftest borrower, wildest spender, May count, as we would not, the costAnd grow more true to us and tender.

Happy are we if in his eyes

We see no shadow of forgetting. Nay if our star sinks in those skies

We shall not wholly see its setting.

Then let us laugh as do the brooks,

That such immortal youth is ours, If memory keeps for them our looks

As fresh as are the springtime flowers.

Suburb

So grieve not, Ladies, if at night

Ye wake to feel the cold December!:
Rather recall the early light,

And in your loved one's arms, remember.
Anna Hempstead Branch [18

859

T

SUBURB

DULL and hard the low wind creaks

Among the rustling pampas plumes.
Drearily the year consumes

Its fifty-two insipid weeks.

Most of the gray-green meadow land
Was sold in parsimonious lots;

The dingy houses stand

Pressed by some stout contractor's hand

Tightly together in their plots.

Through builded banks the sullen river

Gropes, where its houses crouch and shiver.
Over the bridge the tyrant train

Shrieks, and emerges on the plain.

In all the better gardens you may pass,
(Product of many careful Saturdays),
Large red geraniums and tall pampas grass
Adorn the plots and mark the gravelled ways.

Sometimes in the background may be seen

A private summer-house in white or green.

Here on warm nights the daughter brings.

Her vacillating clerk,

To talk of small exciting things

And touch his fingers through the dark.

He, in the uncomfortable breach

Between her trilling laughters,

Promises, in halting speech,

Hopeless immense Hereafters.

She trembles like the pampas plumes.
Her strained lips haggle. He assumes
The serious quest. . .

Now as the train is whistling past
He takes her in his arms at last.

It's done. She blushes at his side
Across the lawn-a bride, a bride.

The stout contractor will design,
The lazy laborers will prepare,
Another villa on the line;
In the little garden-square

Pampas grass will rustle there.

Harold Monro [1879

THE BETROTHED

"You must choose between me and your cigar

OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,

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For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarreled about Havanas-we fought o'er a good cheroot

And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box-let me consider a space,

In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at-Maggie's a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay, But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away—

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I never could throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o'

the town!

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