E hay-cyaht rumbled down de road,

ᎠᎬ

De oxen wahm en tihed;

En 'way up deh on top de load
Ol' Uncle Pete puspihed.

He thought in sech a quiet place

He'd trust his spotted team,

So he pulled his wide hat 'cross his face,
En dess lay bac' to dream-
Did Uncle Pete det sultry day,
'Way up deh on top de hay.

Den sloweh moved det ol' hay-cyaht,-
De steehs seemed to be noddin';
Dey didn't heah no wohd to staht
Noh feel a green pole proddin'.
De locust in de tall gum-tree
Set up a song foh heat,
Det made dem lazy es cud be--
Dey hahdly moved deh feet.
While Uncle Pete he dreamed away
Clah up deh on top de hay.

Fah down de dusty road deh came
De strangest kind ob racket;
En sumfin wid a big red frame
Cum puffin' lak a packet.
De oxen lifted up deh eahs,

Deh eyes grew big en wide;

Deh wa'n't a mo' skeehed paih ob steels-
Dey shook fum bone to hide.
En Uncle Pete he cahmly lay
'Way up deh on top de hay.

De red thing wid de sof' gray wheels
Swep' lak a spahk ob fiah;

De ol' steehs jumped en stuc' deh heels
Fas' in a pool ob miah.

Deh wah one awful hissin' soun',
De tootin' ob a hohn,

A crash lak houses fallin' down-
En den de thing wah gon'.
En Uncle Pete he sailed away
Fum up deh on det load ob hay.

De noon-hohn blow, de cohn-fiel' crowd
Cum up de road to dinneh;
Dey heah sumbody prayin' loud-
'Oh, Lawd, ah'b bin a sinneh.
Oh, spahe dis po' ol' cotton-head,-
Ah seen ol' Nick dis mawn;
He ride in a chahiot ob red-

En toot a great brown hohn." Said Uncle Pete, who'd slep' det day 'Way up deh on top de hay.

VOL. CVII

TH

HE play of Romeo and Juliet is like a piece of music, and it is the music which all true lovers have heard in the air since they began listening to one another's voice. Here, for once, youth becomes conscious of itself, and of the charm which is passing out of the world with its passing. A young man wrote this wise and passionate eulogy of youth; and it is that contemporaneous heat of blood in it which has kept the names of these two young lovers alive in men's minds as the perfect exemplars of unspoiled love. Love in youth is an emotion that may well seem exaggerated "to animals that do not love"; and if the passion of Romeo and Juliet is at times as clamorous as Italian love in Italian operas, that leaves it perhaps all the more like the thing which it renders so frankly. In Ferdinand and Miranda, in Perdita and Florizel, there is a more subtly human poetry than in Romeo or Juliet; only we remember that for its poetry, while we remember this as if it were love itself.

Compared with one of Shakespeare's later women, with Imogen, for instance, Juliet is but a sketch; she lives, but only in her love: as Romeo, indeed, but for his love, is any hasty and ardent youth out of whom passion strikes un

looked-for sparks of imagination. But it is precisely by this concentration upon the development and consequences of one impulse, irresistible and yet ineffectual, that Shakespeare has given us, not this or that adorable person who, among other things, loves, but two lovers who, besides loving, just remember to live. They have but one desire, and this they attain; so that they must be said to have succeeded in life. But they have no force over circumstances; they bend to their will only the consent of a few hours.

In Antony and Cleopatra, in which we see the other side of love, played out before the world on the stage of the world, the two eager and calculating lovers have the larger part of a lifetime given to them to love and hate in. This play, as Coleridge has noted, "should be perused in mental contrast with Romeo and Juliet." It is indeed in these two plays that Shakespeare expounds the whole art of love. It may be that he has left something over; for there is another garden besides Juliet's in which Sakuntala walked; and Isolde, in Wagner's music, has added at cry to "the desire of the woman for the desire of the man." But the whole art, certainly, is in those two plays. Romeo and Juliet is the breviary of lovers who have loved young and at first sight.