I hear the rustle of her dress,

I smell the lilacs, and — ah, yes,
I hear "Auf Wiedersehen!”

Sweet piece of bashful maiden art!

The English words had seemed too fain,
But these they drew us heart to heart,
Yet held us tenderly apart;

She said, "Auf Wiedersehen!"

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.1

DOROTHY Q.2

A FAMILY PORTRAIT.

GRANDMOTHER's mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;

Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair,

1 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, the son of the Rev. Charles Lowell, and descended from an old and distinguished New England family, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1819. He graduated from Harvard College in 1838, studied law and was admitted to the bar, which he soon deserted for literature. In 1855 he was appointed to succeed Mr. Longfellow as professor of belles-lettres in Harvard College. As critic, essayist, satirist, and poet, he holds a high place in the literature of the century and of his own country. He was appointed United States minister to Spain in 1877, and in 1880 was promoted to the higher position of United States minister at London, a post which he held till 1885. He died in Cambridge in 1891.

2 Dorothy Quincy married Edward Jackson and thus became the ancestress of the poet. The portrait which is the subject of the poem is in the possession of Judge O. W. Holmes.

Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view, -

Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark with a century's fringe of dust,
That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.

Who the painter was none may tell,
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry, it must be confessed,

Flat as a rose that has long been pressed;
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,

Dainty colors of red and white,
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien.

Look not on her with eyes of scorn,
Dorothy Q. was a lady born!
Ay! since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king

Save to daughter or son might bring,
All my tenure of heart and hand;
All my title to house and land;

Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago

Those close-shut lips had answered No,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill?
Should I be I, or would it be

One tenth another, to nine tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES:

Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!

There were tones in the voice that whispered ther You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover, and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,
Edward's and Dorothy's all their own,

A goodly record for Time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!-
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive
For the tender whisper that bade me live?

It shall be a blessing, my little maid!
I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade,

.

And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
And gild with a rhyme your household name;
So
you shall smile on us brave and bright

As first you greeted the morning's light,
And live untroubled by woes and fears
Through a second youth of a hundred years.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.1

GUVENER B. is a sensible man;

He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes ;
But John P.
Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

thet 's flat

My! ain't it terrible? Wut shall we du?
We can't never choose him, o' course,
Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)

An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;

Fer John P.
Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:

He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;

which was

1 This satire was directed against the Mexican war, forced upon the country in 1845, by the South, in conformity with their policy of an extension of slave territory.

But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,
He's ben true to one party, an' thet is himself;

So John P.

Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;

He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P.

Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o' wut 's right an' wut ain't,
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,
An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he

Sez this kind o' thing 's an exploded idee.

The side of our country must ollers be took,
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our country,
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry;
An' John P.

Robinson he

Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies;

Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, faw, fum

An' thet all this big talk of our destinies

Is half on it ign'ance, an' t' other half rum;