Yes. But the Pipe LAWRENCE. FRANK. The Pipe is what we care for, ЈАСК. Well, in this case, I scarcely need explain, Judgment of mine were indiscreet, and therefore,— Peace to you both. The Pipe I shall retain. A GARDEN IDYLL. A LADY. А РОЕТ. THE LADY. IR POET, ere you crossed the lawn (If it was wrong to watch you, pardon,) Behind this weeping birch withdrawn, I watched you saunter round the garden. I saw you bend beside the phlox, Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle, Review my well-ranged hollyhocks, Smile at the fountain's slender spurtle; You paused beneath the cherry-tree, Dropped on the seat before the peaches. What was your thought? You waited long. Sublime or graceful,-grave,-satiric? A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song? THE POET. Madam,-whose uncensorious eye It may be, thicker than the Sage's- Mere wish of mine the pleasure do you, Some verse as whimsical as Hood, As gay as Praed,-should answer to you. But, though the common voice proclaims And dreams a "local habitation"; Believe me there are tuneless days, When neither marble, brass, nor vellum, Would profit much by any lays That haunt the poet's cerebellum. More empty things, I fear, than rhymes, Whose jog-trot thought is nowise restive, "A primrose by a river's brim" Is absolutely unsuggestive. The fickle Muse! As ladies will, She flies the more that we pursue her; But cannot comfortably show it. You thought, no doubt, the garden-scent H Or else you thought,—the murmuring noon, And windy bough-swing in the metre ; Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, And medieval orchard blossoms,— Quite à la mode. Alas for prose And chased the kitten round the beeches, Till widening instincts made me wish Three peaches. Not the Graces three The Laws of Property beset them; And, half-abstractedly, I ate them;— |