I know she thought; I know she felt;
Perchance could sum, I doubt she spelt,
She knew as little of the Celt

As of the Saxon;

I know she played and sang, for yet
We keep the tumble-down spinet
To which she quavered ballads set
By Arne or Jackson.

Her tastes were not refined as ours,
She liked plain food and homely flowers,
Refused to paint, kept early hours,
Went clad demurely;

Her art was sampler-work design,
Fireworks for her were "vastly fine,"
Her luxury was elder-wine,-

She loved that "purely."

She was renowned, traditions say,
For June conserves, for curds and whey,
For finest tea (she called it "tay"),

And ratafia;

She knew, for sprains, what bands to choose,
Could tell the sovereign wash to use
For freckles, and was learned in brews
As erst Medea.

Yet studied little. She would read,
On Sundays, "Pearson on the Creed,"
Though, as I think, she could not heed
His text profoundly;

Seeing she chose for her retreat

The warm west-looking window-seat,
Where, if you chanced to raise your feet,
You slumbered soundly.

This 'twixt ourselves. The dear old dame.
In truth, was not so much to blame;
The excellent divine I name

Is scarcely stirring;

Her plain-song piety preferred

Pure life to precept. If she erred,

She knew her faults. Her softest word
Was for the erring.

At sixty-five she'd still her beau,
A lean French exile, lame and slow,
With monstrous snuff-box.

Younger than she, well-born and bred.
She'd found him in St. Giles', half dead
Of teaching French for nightly bed
And daily dinners;

Starving, in fact, 'twixt want and pride;
And so, henceforth, you always spied
His rusty "pigeon-wings" beside
Her Mechlin pinners.

He worshipped her, you may suppose.
She gained him pupils, gave him clothes,
Delighted in his dry bon-mots

And cackling laughter;

And when, at last, the long duet

Of conversation and picquet

Ceased with her death, of sheer regret
He died soon after.

"WELL, I must wait!" The Doctor's room,

Where I used this expression,

Wore the severe official gloom
Attached to that profession;

For lo! the same old myths that made

The early "stage successes

Still "hold the boards," and still are played, "With new effects and dresses."

Small, lonely, "three-pair-backs" behold, To-day, Alcestis dying;

To-day, in farthest Polar cold,

Ulysses' bones are lying;

Still in one's morning "Times 99

one reads

How fell an Indian Hector;
Still clubs discuss Achilles' steeds,
Briseis' next protector;-

Still Menelaus brings, we see,
His oft remanded case on;
Still somewhere sad Hypsipyle
Bewails a faithless Jason;
And here, the Doctor's sill beside,
Do I not now discover

A Thisbe, whom the walls divide
From Pyramus, her lover?

ACT THE FIRST.

Act I. began. Some noise had scared
The cat, that like an arrow
Shot up the wall and disappeared;
And then across the narrow,
Unweeded path, a small dark thing,
Hid by a garden-bonnet,

Passed wearily towards the swing,
Paused, turned, and climbed upon it

A child of five, with eyes that were
At least a decade older,

A mournful mouth, and tangled hair
Flung careless round her shoulder,
Dressed in a stiff ill-fitting frock,
Whose black uncomely rigor
Seemed to sardonically mock

The plaintive, slender figure.

What was it? Something in the dress
That told the girl unmothered;

Or was it that the merciless

Black garb of mourning smothered