Holding himself for all devotion paid
By that clear laughter of the little maid.

Dwelling, alas! in that fond Paradise

Where no to-morrow quivers in suspense,-
Where scarce the changes of the sky suffice
To break the soft forgetfulness of sense,-
Where dreams become realities; and where
I willingly would leave him-did I dare.

Yet for a little space it still endured,
Until, upon a day when least of all
The softened Cyclops, by his hopes assured,
Dreamed the inevitable blow could fall,
Came the stern moment that should all destroy,
Bringing a pert young cockerel of a Boy.

Middy, I think-he'd "Acis" on his box:-
A black-eyed, sun-burnt, mischief-making imp,
Pet of the mess,-a Puck with curling locks,
Who straightway travestied the Cyclops' limp,
And marvelled how his cousin so could care
For such a "one-eyed, melancholy Bear."

Thus there was war at once; not overt yet,
For still the Child, unwilling, would not break
The new acquaintanceship, nor quite forget

The pleasant past; while, for his treasure's sake,

The boding smith with clumsy efforts tried

To win the laughing scorner to his side.

A TALE OF POLYPHEME

There are some sights pathetic; none I know
More sad than this: to watch a slow-wrought

mind

Humbling itself, for love, to come and go

Before some petty tyrant of its kind;
Saddest, ah!—saddest far,—when it can do
Naught to advance the end it has in view.

This was at least the Cyclops' case, until,
Whether the boy beguiled the Child away,
Or whether that limp Matron on the Hill

Woke from her novel-reading trance, one day
He waited long and wearily in vain,—
But, from that hour, they never came again.

Yet still he waited, hoping-wondering if

They still might come, or dreaming that he heard

The sound of far-off voices on the cliff,

Or starting strangely when the she-goat stirred; But nothing broke the silence of the shore,

And, from that hour, the Child returned no

more.

Therefore our Cyclops sorrowed,-not as one
Who can command the gamut of despair;
But as a man who feels his days are done,
So dead they seem,-so desolately bare;
For, though he'd lived a hermit, 'twas but only
Now he discovered that his life was lonely.

The very sea seemed altered, and the shore;
The very voices of the air were dumb;
Time was an emptiness that o'er and o'er
Ticked with the dull pulsation "Will she
come?"

So that he sat "consuming in a dream,"
Much like his old forerunner Polypheme.

Until there came the question, "Is she gone?"
With such sad sick persistence that at last,
Urged by the hungry thought which drove him on,
Along the steep declivity he passed,
And by the summit panting stood, and still,
Just as the horn was sounding on the hill.

Then, in a dream, beside the "Dragon" door, The smith saw travellers standing in the sun; Then came the horn again, and three or four

Looked idly at him from the roof, but One,— A Child within,-suffused with sudden shame, Thrust forth a hand, and called to him by name.

Thus the coach vanished from his sight, but he Limped back with bitter pleasure in his pain; He was not all forgotten-could it be?

And yet the knowledge made the memory vain ;

And then he felt a pressure in his throat,
So, for that night, forgot to milk his goat.

A TALE OF POLYPHEME

What then might come of silent misery,

What new resolvings then might intervene, I know not. Only, with the morning sky, The goat stood tethered on the "Dragon"

green,

And those who, wondering, questioned thereupon, Found the hut empty,-for the man was gone.

A STORY FROM A DICTIONARY

"Sic visum Veneri: cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga aënea
Saevo mittere cum joco."-HOR. i. 33.

"LOVE mocks us all "—as Horace said of old: From sheer perversity, that arch-offender

Still yokes unequally the hot and cold,

The short and tall, the hardened and the tender; He bids a Socrates espouse a scold,

And makes a Hercules forget his gender :Sic visum Veneri! Lest samples fail,

I add a fresh one from the page of BAYLE.

It was in Athens that the thing occurred,
In the last days of Alexander's rule,
While yet in Grove or Portico was heard
The studious murmur of its learned school;—
Nay, 'tis one favoured of Minerva's bird
Who plays therein the hero (or the fool)
With a Megarian, who must then have been
A maid, and beautiful, and just eighteen.

I shan't describe her. Beauty is the same
In Anno Domini as erst B.C.;

The type is still that witching One who came,
Between the furrows, from the bitter sea;