More empty things, I fear, than rhymes,
More idle things than songs, absorb it;
The "finely-frenzied" eye, at times,

Reposes mildly in its orbit;
And-painful truth-at times, to him,
Whose jog-trot thought is nowise restive,
"A primrose by a river's brim"
Is absolutely unsuggestive.

The fickle Muse! As ladies will,
She sometimes wearies of her wooer ;
A goddess, yet a woman still,

She flies the more that we pursue her;
In short, with worst as well as best,
Five months in six, your hapless poet
Is just as prosy as the rest,

But cannot comfortably show it.

You thought, no doubt, the garden-scent

Brings back some brief-winged bright sensation

Of love that came and love that went,

Some fragrance of a lost flirtation, Born when the cuckoo changes song,

Dead ere the apple's red is on it, That should have been an epic long, Yet scarcely served to fill a sonnet.

H

Or else you thought,—the murmuring noon,
He turns it to a lyric sweeter,
With birds that gossip in the tune,

And windy bough-swing in the metre ;
Or else the zigzag fruit-tree arms

Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, And medieval orchard blossoms,

Quite à la mode. Alas for prose !—
My vagrant fancies only rambled
Back to the red-walled Rectory close,
When first my graceless boyhood gamboled,
Climbed on the dial, teased the fish,

And chased the kitten round the beeches, Till widening instincts made me wish

For certain slowly-ripening peaches.

Three peaches. Not the Graces three
Had more equality of beauty:
I would not look, yet went to see;
I wrestled with Desire and Duty;

I felt the pangs of those who feel
The Laws of Property beset them;
The conflict made my reason reel,
And, half-abstractedly, I ate them;--

Or Two of them. Forthwith Despair-
More keen that one of these was rotten-
Moved me to seek some forest lair

Where I might hide and dwell forgotten,
Attired in skins, by berries stained,

Absolved from brushes and ablution;But, ere my sylvan haunt was gained, Fate gave me up to execution.

I saw it all but now. The grin

That gnarled old Gardener Sandy's features; My father, scholar-like and thin,

Unroused, the tenderest of creatures; I saw-ah me--I saw again

My dear and deprecating mother; And then, remembering the cane, Regretted that I'd left the Other.

TU QUOQUE.

AN IDYLL IN THE CONSERVATORY.

66
" —romprons-nous,

Ou ne romprons-nous pas ?”

LE DÉPIT AMOUREUX.

NELLIE.

F I were you, when ladies at the play, sir,

nod, a melodrama

I would not turn abstractedly away, sir,
If I were you!

FRANK.

If I were you, when persons I affected,

Wait for three hours to take me down to Kew,

I would, at least, pretend I recollected,
If I were you!

NELLIE.

If I were you, when ladies are so lavish,
Sir, as to keep me every waltz but two,

I would not dance with odious Miss M'Tavish
If I were you!

FRANK.

If I were you, who vow you cannot suffer
Whiff of the best,-the mildest "honey-dew,"
I would not dance with smoke-consuming Puffer,

If I were you!

NELLIE.

If I were you, I would not, sir, be bitter,
Even to write the "Cynical Review" ;-

FRANK.

No, I should doubtless find flirtation fitter,
If I were you!

NELLIE.

Really! You would? Why, Frank, you're quite delightful,

Hot as Othello, and as black of hue;

Borrow my fan. I would not look so frightful,

If I were you!

FRANK.

"It is the cause.

I mean your chaperon is

Bringing some well-curled juvenile. Adieu !
I shall retire. I'd spare that poor Adonis,
If I were you!