Or,-to wean you from the vapours ;- You are worth the love they give you, Or a younger grace shall please; Till your frothed-out life's commotion Or a dainty sham devotion, "Belle Marquise !" V.. No: we neither like nor love you, "Belle Marquise!" Lesser lights we place above you,— We have passed from Philosophe-dom Giving grace not all the praise; Without malice whatsoever,— We shall counsel to our Chloë To be rather good than clever ; For we find it hard to smother Just one little thought, Marquise ! Wittier perhaps than any other,You were neither Wife nor Mother, “ Belle Marquise !” THE STORY OF ROSINA. AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF FRANÇOIS BOUcher. "On ne badine pas avec l'amour." THE HE scene, a wood. A shepherd tip-toe creeping, To lay beside a silk-clad Oread sleeping Under an urn; yet not so sound she sleeps But that she plainly sees his graceful act; "He thinks she thinks he thinks she sleeps," in fact. One hardly needs the "Peint par François Boucher." The little great, the infinite small thing For these were yet the days of halcyon weather,— Down the full tide of jest and epigram ;- Plain Roland still was placidly "inspecting," Corday unborn, and Lamballe in Savoie ; And far afield were sun-baked savage creatures, Female and male, that tilled the earth, and wrung Want from the soil;-lean things with livid features, Shape of bent man, and voice that never sung: These were the Ants, for yet to Jacques Bonhomme Tumbrils were not, nor any sound of drum. But Boucher was a Grasshopper, and painted,- The crowned Caprice, whose sceptre, nowise sainted, A laughing Dame, who sailed a laughing cargo Whose gentlest merit gentiment se rendre;— Her Boucher served, till Nature's self betraying, Filled with false gods and muses misbegot ;- Wherein most things went naked, save the Truth. Once, only once,-perhaps the last night's revels Young-lipped, unlessoned, joyous, and clear-eyed; And sauntered slowly through the Rue Sainte-Anne. Wherefore, we know not; but, at times, far nearer Perhaps, as he walked, the grass he called "too green" But, as he walked, he tired of god and goddess, Folds that confess, and flutters that reveal; |