But this thought came ere yet I spake,
And froze the sentence on my lips :
"They err who marry wives that make
Those little slips."

It came like some familiar rhyme, Some copy to my boyhood set; And that's perhaps the reason I'm Unmarried yet.

Would she have own'd how pleas'd she was,
And told her love with widow's pride?
I never found out that, because
I never tried.

Be kind to babes and beasts and birds,
Hearts may be hard though lips are coral;
And angry words are angry words:
And that's the moral.

A MARLOW MADRIGAL

Он, Bisham Banks are fresh and fair,
And Quarry Woods are green,
And pure and sparkling is the air,
Enchanting is the scene!

I love the music of the weir,

As swift the stream runs down,
For oh, the water 's deep and clear
That flows by Marlow town!

When London's getting hot and dry,
And half the season 's done,
To Marlow you should quickly fly,
And bask there in the sun.
There pleasant quarters you may find,
The "Angler" or the "Crown"
Will suit you well, if you're inclin'd
To stay in Marlow town.

I paddle up to Harleyford,

And sometimes I incline

To cushions take with lunch aboard,
And play with rod and line;
For in a punt I love to laze,

And let my face get brown;
And dream away the sunny days
By dear old Marlow town.

I go to luncheon at the Lawn,
I muse, I sketch, I rhyme;
I headers take at early dawn,
I list to All Saints' chime.
And in the river, flashing bright,
Dull care I strive to drown, -
And get a famous appetite
At pleasant Marlow town.

So when no longer London life
You feel you can endure,

Of beakless things, who have no wings,
Exact no heavy toll.

If this my song its theme should wrong,
The theme itself is sweet;
Let others rhyme the unborn time,
I sing the Obsolete.

And first, I praise the nobler traits
Of birds preceding Noah,
The giant clan, whose meat was Man,
Dinornis, Apteryx, Moa.

These, by the hints we get from prints
Of feathers and of feet,
Excell'd in wits the later tits,
And so are obsolete.

I sing each race whom we displace
In their primeval woods,
While Gospel Aid inspires Free-Trade
To traffic with their goods.
With Norman Dukes the still Sioux
In breeding might compete ;
But where men talk the tomahawk
Will soon grow obsolete.

I celebrate each perish'd State;

Great cities plough'd to loam; Chaldæan kings; the Bulls with wings; Dead Greece, and dying Rome. The Druids' shrine may shelter swine, Or stack the farmer's peat;

'Tis thus mean moths treat finest cloths, Mean men the obsolete.

Shall nought be said of theories dead?
The Ptolemaic system?
Figure and phrase, that bent all ways
Duns Scotus lik'd to twist 'em?
Averrhoes' thought? and what was taught
In Salamanca's seat?

Sihons and Ogs? and showers of frogs?
Sea-serpents obsolete?

Pillion and pack have left their track;
Dead is "the Tally-ho ;"

Steam rails cut down each festive crown
Of the old world and slow;
Jack-in-the-Green no more is seen,
Nor Maypole in the street;
No mummers play on Christmas-day;
St. George is obsolete.

O fancy, why hast thou let die
So many a frolic fashion?

Books he shall read in hill and tree;
The flowers his weather shall portend,
The birds his moralists shall be,
And everything his friend.

Such man in England I have seen;
He mov'd my heart with fresh delight;
And had I not the swallow been,

I had been Gilbert White.

THE SIX CARPENTERS' CASE

(1 Smith, L. C. 133, 7th Ed.)

THIS case befell at four of the clock

(now listeneth what I shall say),

and the year was the seventh of James the First,

on a fine September day.

The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low,

what trespass shall be ab initio.

It was Thomas Newman and five his feres (three more would have made them nine), and they entered into John Vaux's house, that had the Queen's Head to sign.

The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low,

what trespass shall be ab initio.

They called anon for a quart of wine

(they were carpenters all by trade), and they drank about till they drank it out,

and when they had drunk they paid.

The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low,

what trespass shall be ab initio.

One spake this word in John Ridding's

ear

(white manchets are sweet and fine):

THE JUMBLIES

THEY went to sea in a sieve, they did;
In a sieve they went to sea ;
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, ou a stormy day,

In a sieve they went to sea.

And when the sieve turn'd round and round,

And every one cried, "You 'll be drown'd!" They call'd aloud, "Our sieve ain't big : But we don't care a button; we don't care a fig:

In a sieve we 'll go to sea!"

Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live:

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;

And they went to sea in a sieve.

Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,

While round in our sieve we spin."

And all night long they sail'd away;

And, when the sun went down, They whistled and warbled a moony song To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,

In the shade of the mountains brown, "O Timballoo! how happy we are When we live in a sieve and a crockeryjar!

And all night long, in the moonlight pale, We sail away with a pea-green sail

In the shade of the mountains brown.”

They sail'd to the Western Sea, they did, -
To a land all cover'd with trees:
And they bought an owl, and a useful cart,
And a pound of rice, and a cranberry-tart,
And a hive of silvery bees;

And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws,

And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree,

And no end of Stilton cheese :