We roused the rooks with rounds and glees,
Played hide-and-seek behind the trees,-
Then plucked these roses.

Louise was one-light, glib Louise,
So freshly freed from school decrees
You scarce could stop her;
And Bell, the Beauty, unsurprised
At fallen locks that scandalised
Our dear "Miss Proper ";-

Shy Ruth, all heart and tenderness,
Who wept-like Chaucer's Prioress,
When Dash was smitten;

Who blushed before the mildest men,
Yet waxed a very Corday when
You teased her kitten.

I loved them all. Bell first and best;
Louise the next-for days of jest

Or madcap masking;

And Ruth, I thought,-why, failing these, When my High-Mightiness should please, She'd come for asking.

Louise was grave when last we met;
Bell's beauty, like a sun, has set;

And Ruth, Heaven bless her,

Ruth that I wooed,-and wooed in vain,Has gone where neither grief nor pain

Can now distress her.

DOROTHY

A REVERIE SUGGESTED BY THE NAME

UPON A PANE

HE then must once have looked, as I

SHE

Look now, across the level rye,—

Past Church and Manor-house, and seen,
As now I see, the village green,

The bridge, and Walton's river-she
Whose old-world name was

Dorothy."

The swallows must have twittered, too,
Above her head; the roses blew
Below, no doubt,-and, sure, the South
Crept up the wall and kissed her mouth,—
That wistful mouth, which comes to me
Linked with her name of Dorothy.

What was she like? I picture her
Unmeet for uncouth worshipper ;-
Soft,pensive,-far too subtly graced
To suit the blunt bucolic taste,

Whose crude perception could but see
"Ma'am Fine-airs" in "Miss Dorothy."

How not? She loved, maybe, perfume,
Soft textures, lace, a half-lit room ;—
Perchance too candidly preferred
"Clarissa" to a gossip's word;—
And, for the rest, would seem to be
Or proud, or dull-this Dorothy.

Poor child!—with heart the down-lined nest
Of warmest instincts unconfest,
Soft, callow things that vaguely felt
The breeze caress, the sunlight melt,
But yet, by some obscure decree,
Unwinged from birth;-poor Dorothy!

Not less I dream her mute desire
To acred churl and booby squire,
Now pale, with timorous eyes that filled
At "twice-told tales" of foxes killed;—
Now trembling when slow tongues grew free
"Twixt sport, and Port-and Dorothy!

'Twas then she'd seek this nook, and find Its evening landscape balmy-kind; And here, where still her gentle name Lives on the old green glass, would frame Fond dreams of unfound harmony "Twixt heart and heart. Poor Dorothy!

L'ENVOI.

These last I spoke. Then Florence said,

Below me," Dreams?

Delusions, Fred!'

Next, with a pause,-she bent the while
Over a rose, with roguish smile-
"But how disgusted, Sir, you'll be
To hear I scrawled that Dorothy.'"

་

✔AVICE

"“On serait tenté de lui dire, Bonjour, Mademoiselle la Bergeronnette."-VICTOR HUGO.

HOUGH the voice of modern schools

THOUGH

Has demurred,

'Tis averred,

By the dreamy Asian creed

That the souls of men, released
From their bodies when deceased,
Sometimes enter in a beast,—

Or a bird.

I have watched you long, Avice,

Watched you so,

I have found your secret out;

And I know

That the restless ribboned things,

Where your slope of shoulder springs,

Are but undeveloped wings

That will grow.

When you enter in a room,

It is stirred

With the wayward, flashing flight

Of a bird;