TO GEORGE H. BOUGHTON, R.A.

(WITH A VOLUME OF VERSES)

SPRING stirs and wakes by holt and hill :

In barren copse and bloomless close
Revives the memory of the rose,
And breaks the yellow daffodil.

Look how the spears of crocus fill
The ancient hollows of the snows,-
Spring stirs and wakes!

Yet what to you are months?

At will

For you the season comes or goes;
We watch the flower that fades and blows,

But on your happy canvas still

Spring stirs and wakes!

ROSE, IN THE HEDGEROW GROWN

ROSE, in the hedgerow grown,

Where the scent of the fresh sweet hay Comes up from the fields new-mown, You know it-you know it-alone, So I gather you here to-day.

For here was it not here, say?—
That she came by the woodland way,
And my heart with a hope unknown
Rose?

Ah yes!—with her bright hair blown,
And her eyes like the skies of May,
And her steps like the rose-leaves strown
When the winds in the rose-trees play—
It was here- O my love!-my own
ROSE!

THESE

R. L. S.

HESE to his Memory.
arriving

As ours recall

IN MEMORIAM

May the Age

That bravest heart, that gay and gallant striving, That laurelled pall!

Blithe and rare spirit! We who later linger
By bleaker seas,

Sigh for the touch of the Magician's finger,-
His golden keys!

SURGE ET AMBULA

"ARISE, and walk"-the One Voice said;

And lo! the sinews shrunk and dry Loosed, and the cripple leaped on high, Wondering, and bare aloft his bed.

The Age of Miracle is fled.
Who to the halt to-day shall cry—
'Arise, and walk!"

66

Yet though the Power to raise the dead Treads earth no more, we still may try To smooth the couch where sick men lie, Whispering to hopeless heart and head— "Arise, and walk!"

THE SIMPLE LIFE

"And 'a babbled of green fields."-SHAKESPEARE-CUM

WH

HEN the starlings dot the lawn,
Cheerily we rise at dawn;

THEOBALD.

Cheerily, with blameless cup,
Greet the wise world waking up ;-
Ah, they little know of this,-
They of Megalopolis!

Comes the long, still morning when
Work we ply with book and pen;
Then, the pure air in our lungs,—
Then "persuasion tips our tongues ";
Then we write as would, I wis,
Men in Megalopolis!

Next (and not a stroke too soon!)
PHYLLIS spreads the meal of noon,
Simple, frugal, choicely clean,
Gastronomically mean ;-
Appetite our entrée is,
Far from Megalopolis!