But held, as law for high and low, And smiled away inquiry so, Without replying. The jumbled strifes of creed and creed With endless controversies feed Our groaning tables; His books and they sufficed him were Cotton's "Montaigne," "The Grave" of Blair, A "Walton " much the worse for wear, And "Esop's Fables." One more, "The Bible." Not that he Had searched its page as deep as we; It Its slender credit; may be that he could not count The sires and sons to Jesse's fount, He liked the "Sermon on the Mount," Once he had loved, but failed to wed, ways were far too slow, he said, To quite forget her; And still when time had turned him gray, The earliest hawthorn buds in May Would find his lingering feet astray, Where first he met her. "In Calo Quies" heads the stone On Leisure's grave, now little known, A tangle of wild-rose has grown The "Benefactions" still declare Lie softly, Leisure! Doubtless you, But we, to whom our age allows Scarce space to wipe our weary brows, Look down upon your narrow house, Old friend, and miss you! A GENTLEWOMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL. SHE lived in Georgian era too. Most women then, if bards be true, Succumbed to Routs and Cards, or grew Devout and acid. But hers was neither fate. She came Of good west-country folk, whose fame Patience or Prudence, what you will, Some prefix faintly fragrant still As those old musky scents that fill And for her youthful portrait take Some long-waist child of Hudson's make, Stiffly at ease beside a lake With swans and willows. I keep her later semblance placed In shadowy sanguine stipple traced By Bartolozzi; A placid face, in which surprise For her e'en Time grew debonair. Had spared to touch the fair old face, The soft white hand that stroked her lace, So left her beautiful. Her age Was comely as her youth was sage, And yet she once had been the rage; Indeed, affirmed by one or two, Some spark at Bath (as sparks will do) 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 Her tastes were not refined as ours; Her art was sampler-work design, Her luxury was elder-wine, She loved that "purely." She was renowned, traditions say, And ratafia; She knew, for sprains, what bands to choose, Yet studied little. She would read, |