Besides, I heard enough to show Their love is proof against the snow :'Why wait,' he said, 'why wait for May, When love can warm a winter's day?'" POT-POURRI. "Si jeunesse savait ?—" I PLUNGE hand among the leaves: (An alien touch but dust perceives, For me those fragrant ruins raise Clear memory of the vanished days When they were roses. "If youth but knew !" Ah, "if," in truthI can recall with what gay youth, To what light chorus, Unsobered yet by time or change, We roamed the many-gabled Grange, All life before us; Braved the old clock-tower's dust and damp To catch the dim Arthurian camp In misty distance; Peered at the still-room's sacred stores, Or rapped at walls for sliding doors Of feigned existence. What need had we for thoughts or cares! The hot sun parched the old parterres And "flowerful closes"; We roused the rooks with rounds and glees, Played hide-and-seek behind the trees,Then plucked these roses. Louise was one-light, glib Louise, Shy Ruth, all heart and tenderness, Who blushed before the mildest men, I loved them all. Bell first and best ; Or madcap masking; And Ruth, I thought,-why, failing these, When my High-Mightiness should please, She'd come for asking. Louise was grave when last we met; And Ruth, Heaven bless her, Ruth that I wooed,—and wooed in vain, Has gone where neither grief nor pain Can now distress her. DOROTHY. A REVERIE SUGGESTED BY THE NAME UPON A PANE. HE then must once have looked, as I SHE Look now, across the level rye, Past Church and Manor-house, and seen, The bridge, and Walton's river-she The swallows must have twittered, too, What was she like? I picture her Whose crude perception could but see I |