Only tell me what reply
Is the best reply for Kitty?
She's but seventeen-and I—

I am forty-more's the pity.
Twice at least my Kitty's age
(Just a trifle over maybe)-
I am sober, I am sage;

Kitty nothing but a baby. She is merriment and mirth,

I am wise and gravely witty; She's the dearest thing on earth, I am forty-more's the pity. She adores my pretty rhymes,

Calls me "poet" when I write them; And she listens oftentimes

Half an hour when I recite them.

Let me scribble by the page

Sonnet, ode, or lover's ditty;

Seventeen is Kitty's age

I am forty-more's the pity.

HENRY S. Leigh. (Gillott and Goosequill.)

LOVE that asketh love again,
Finds the barter nought but pain;
Love that giveth in full store,
Aye receives as much, and more.

Love, exacting nothing back,
Never knoweth any lack;
Love, compelling love to pay,
Sees him bankrupt every day.

AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX,
GENTLEMAN."

Thirty Years. (Macmillan.)

TEMPORA MUTANTUR, NOS ET
MUTAMUR IN ILLIS.

I ONCE believed those simple folk
Who hold love a reality;
And marriage not a social yoke

Of mere conventionality.

I thought the light of maidens' eyes, Their smiles and all the rest,

Were not mere baits to catch rich flies And landed interest.

I once believed (which only shows
My most refreshing greenness)
That breaking faith and breaking vows
Came little short of meanness.

I once believed that matrimony
Was linking hearts and fates;
And not transferring sums of money
And joining large estates.

I once imagined (in my youth)
That not to keep a carriage
Was no impediment forsooth
To any happy marriage.

I also fancied (but I own

My verdure was delicious)
That trampling young affections down
Was positively vicious.

I did not think the Greeks were right-
Before I worshipped Mammon-
Who in declining marriage, write

The accusative case γάμον.

The past ideas agree but ill

With our enlightened present;
The lesson must be learnt, but still
The learning was not pleasant.
Good qualities girls don't expect,
Or bodily or mental;
You seldom find much intellect
Go with a princely rental.
True love is an exploded thing,
Fit only for romances;
Who ever heard of marrying

A man without finances?
In short I disbelieve them all,
Those doctrines fundamental
I learnt when I was very small,
And very sentimental.

J. H. GIBBS.

The Quadrilateral. (A volume of poems by three Oxford friends.)

LOVE seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

THERE is travel deep in woods,

And travel high in air,

And travel over wide green seas,

And amid the cities fair.

You may follow the wandering swallow,
Or the passionate nightingale,
Dip for pearls with the diver,

Into the sunset sail.

But more than yield the wide seas,
More than the air above,

A man may find in his own heart
And the heart of his own true love.
MORTIMER COLLINS.
Frances.

Topaz-hued cider-cup cool and delectable

Stands by my head (a right excellent brew), While 'twixt my lips rests a very respectable Weed, that I'm sure in Havana once grew. Opposite me in diaphanous drapery,

Some one is seated pretending to steer, Daintily toying with spoils from the grapery, Paying small heed to our shallop's career. Thus at our ease we float onward deliciously, Thinking of nothing and hardly awake, Save when a wasp all unasked and officiously Strives in his way our acquaintance to make. When we embarked I had views matrimonial, Meaning to ask my companion to wed, Soon all is changed, for the heat-Torrid-zonialDrives such intentions right out of my head. SOMERVILLE Gibney.

SONG.

GIVE me back my heart, fair child;
To you as yet 'tis worth but little:
Half beguiler, half beguiled,

Be you warned: your own is brittle!
I know it by your redd'ning cheeks-
I know it by those two black streaks
Arching up your pearly brows

In a momentary laughter,
Stretched in long and dark repose
With a sigh the moment after.
"Hid it! dropt it on the moors!

Lost it, and you cannot find it."
My own heart I want, not yours:

You have bound and must unbind it.

Set it free then from your net,
We will love, sweet--but not yet!
Fling it from you :-we are strong:

Love is trouble, love is folly :

Love, that makes an old heart young,

Makes a young heart melancholy.

AUBREY DE Vere.

THE LOVER'S DAY.

GORSE-PLAINS that flower their gold into the streams
Beneath the open blossom of the sky;

Sea-floods that weave their blue and purple seams;
White sails that lift the billows as they fly:
Not these in their abounding rapture vie
With love's diviner dreams.

Those lovers tire not when the sun is pale;
No statelier awning than a bristled tree
With branches cedared by the salten gale,

Stretched back, as if with wings that cannot flee:
They linger, and the sun departs by sea;
He spreads his crimson sail.

They watch him as he piles his busy deck.

With golden treasure; as his sail expands; They see him sink; they gaze upon the wreck Through the still twilight of the silvery sands. One cloud is left to the deserted lands: The blue-set moon's cold-fleck.

TOO HOT.

CLAD in white flannel, and lolling most lazily Down in the bows of our slow-drifting boat, Watching the gnats as they skim about mazily Over our heads, as in silence we float

The opal cloud is lit o'er sea and plain; The moon is full of one day's memory, And tells the tale of Nature o'er again, Its glory mingled in the soul's refrain Under that lover's sky.

THOMAS GORDON HAKE. Legends of the Morrow. (Chatto and Windus.)

Your feet in the full-grown grasses
Moved soft as a weak wind blows;
You passed me as April passes,
With face made out of a rose.

A. C. SWINBURNE. Poems and Ballads; First Series. (Chatto and Windus.)

LOVE'S STRESS.

ABOUT my love, oh Love, why do I sing?

Can'st thou by my weak words my great love know,

Or can I hope that any words should show The exquisite interchange of June with Spring, That makes thy sweet soul the divine, strange thing Of which no man the memory lets go

Once having known? What breath have I to blow

The clarion with thy praises echoing?

I sing not for thy sake, nor for men's sake-
I do but sing to ease my soul from stress
Of love, and thy deep, passionate loveliness:
So in some great despair our hearts must break,
But for our bitter sobs and frantic cries,
Sent out against the inaccessible skies.

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

[From Time, by kind permission of Messrs. Kelly and Co.]

As taking in mind as in feature,
How many will sigh for her sake!
I wonder, the sweet little creature,
What sort of a wife she would make.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

AN INTERLUDE.
[EXTRACT.]

IN the greenest growth of the Maytime,
I rode where the woods were wet,
Between the dawn and the daytime;
The spring was glad that we met.

WHITE ROSES.

SHE sat by her open piano,

Under lavish gold of her hair, And loosed the tide of her playing On the stillness of evening air: Like a spring-tide surging and spreading, In celestial strength and grace, From her magical floating fingers,

And the peace of her white-rose face.

Ah! what words for that saintly music,
With divine unconsciousness played?
In a trance the starlight listened,

And the lawns, and the laurel shade.
It was now like the roar of billows,
With a diamond spray breaking through,
Now tenderly soft, and wondrous

As the birth of the summer dew.

Too brief was that glimpse of heaven,
Like an angel's visit it passed;
Pure notes dropped, slowly and starlike,
And she blushed-blue-eyed-at the last.
But I could remember her ever

By that rapturous, melodied space,
By the sunset cloud of her tresses,

And the dream on her white-rose face.

WILLIAM WILKINS. Songs of Study. (K. Paul)

DEPRECIATING HER BEAUTY.

I LOVE not thy perfections. When I hear
Thy beauty blazoned, and the common tongue
Cheapening with vulgar praise a lip, an ear,
A cheek that I have prayed to;-when among
The loud world's gods my god is noised and sung,
Her wit applauded, even her taste, her dress,
Her each dear hidden marvel lightly flung
At the world's feet and stripped to nakedness—
Then I despise thy beauty utterly,

Crying, "Be these your gods, O Israel!"
And I remember that on such a day

I found thee with eyes bleared and cheeks all pale,
And lips that trembled to a voiceless cry,
And that thy bosom in my bosom lay.

Love Sonnets of Proteus. (K. Paul.)

WHILE roses are so red,

While lilies are so white, Shall a woman exalt her face, Because it gives delight? She's not so sweet as a rose,

A lily's straighter than she, And if she were as red or white, She'd be but one of three.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. Poems. (Macmillan and Co.)

FALSE OR TRUE?

TRUTH frequently lies, I've oft heard tell,
In deepest depths of a deep, deep well :
Can you imagine it always lies
In fathomless depths of sweet brown eyes?
J. ASHBY-STERRY.
Boudoir Ballads. (Chatto and Windus.)

CROCUS-GATHERING.

COME, gather the crocus-cups with me, And dream of the summer coming: Saffron and purple and snowy white,

All awake to the first bee's humming.

The white is there for the maiden-heart,

And the purple is there for sorrow : The saffron is there for the true true love, And they'll all be dead to-morrow. SEBASTIAN EVANS. Brother Fabian's Manuscript. (Macmillan and Co.)

VIOLETS AT HOME.

O HAPPY buds of violet !

I give them to my sweet, and she Puts them where something sweeter yet Must always be.

White violets find whiter rest:

For fairest flowers how fair a fate! For me remain, O fragrant breast! Inviolate.

MORTIMER COLLINS. The Inn of Strange Meetings. (K. Paul.)

[EXTRACT.]

LOVE, like an odour-bearing dew, distils.

From her heart's flower, and with its innocence Sweetens her soul, and all her senses fills

With the new, heavenly sense.

Soon is her face with the love-witchery lit,

But when another comes its sweets to glean
It strives with bashful veil to cover it
Lest her new thoughts be seen.

She is all love and one her love would claim,
Which 'neath his look she trembles to confess,
As if her heart had sinned and in its shame
Was stricken passionless.

As though the hills were on her eyelids piled
She stood abashed, in all her thoughts reproved
To feel but yesterday she was a child

In sight of him she loved.

Her thoughts are only tendril-like entwined
One with another, clinging as in play,
And dare not yet about a lover's wind,
But, shrinking, drop away.

Even thus perturbed, such love-allurements crowd
Her helpless face, no man, the least of these
Could dwell on, were he to an angel vowed,
And turn away in peace.

THOMAS GORDON HAKE.
Maiden Ecstasy. (Chatto and Windus.)

SAYNTE VALENTYNE: HYS DAYE.

A CROCUS here, a snowdrop there,

A breath of Winter in the air;

In windless hollows hopeful hints

Of later Spring's transmuting tints;

In valley dank, on chilly down,

The green grass climbing through the brown;
These, and the ever busy birds,
Proclaim in signs and chirping words:-
"Tis "Valentyne Hys Daye!" time
To clothe the mating hours
With fragrance as of Maytime,

Or Shakespeare's sweetest flowers.

Shy boy and coyly-conscious maid-
She knows, the elf, he's half afraid
To ask, in borrowed, limping line,
Her smile, "His first, best Valentine!"
The ruthless Saynte their hearts hath ta'en
And filled them with delicious pain,
Hath led them on bound eyes and feet
Into the land of Bitter-Sweet-

Where "Valentyne Hys Daye" wears
A very April face,

And many a blooming spray bears
Of tempest just a trace.

Thy custom, Saynte, it speaks the truth,
When Manhood overtaketh Youth!
When she, in her maturest teens,
Feels freshly what the homage means.
A ritual rich in murmured sounds!
Songs whose sweet music hath no bounds!
Come, precious Saynte, restore in rhyme
The spirit of the knightliest time;

Till "Valentyne Hys Daye" hath
Acquired the gentle glow
That glorifies the grey path
Which tender lovers know!

Shrive the sad soul that doth not stir
If not a present worshipper-
The heart that, young in feelings yet,
One dawning dear cannot forget.
Come, father, own the tender thrill,-
Now, mother, you've his offering still!
"Saynte Valentyne !" Threescore and ten-
Thy name doth make them young again!

"Saynte Valentyne Hys Daye!" time
To clothe the passing hours
With memories of Life's Maytime,
And Love's undying flowers!

BYRON WEbber.

PROPHETIC BIRDS.

ON May-morn two lovers stood
For the first time in the wood;
And lip wooed lip, and heart wooed heart,
Till words must cease, and tears must start ;
And overhead in the rustling green

The birds talked over their fate unseen.

66 Sure," ," said the thrush, "we'll wed them soon ;" "Yea," said the turtle-dove," in June; "They'll make fine sport ere the year is out," Said the magpie between a laugh and a shout. And heedlessly the lovers heard

The senseless babble of bird with bird.

"Sure," croaked the jackdaw, "in July They'll quarrel, or no daw am I

Why, let them, since they are but men;" "They can make it up though," quoth the wren. And heedlessly the lovers heard

A senseless babble of bird with bird.

"Love with them shall be sweet, ere sad,"

Said the goldfinch,-"August shall make them glad." "Yea," said the oriole, " one rich noon

They shall lengthen love in a golden swoon."
And all this while the lovers heard

But a senseless babble of bird with bird.

"My news is from Prince Popinjay,"
Sighed the hoopoe. "Ah! one August day
They shall dream in the sunset, and fall asleep,
And one shall awake from the dream to weep."
And heedlessly the lovers heard

This senseless babble of bird with bird.

But a nightingale in a far-off shade
That moment silenced the chattering glade,
And sang like an angel from above
Some mystic song of eternal love.
And all this singing the lovers heard
As the senseless babble of bird with bird.

ARTHUR W. E. O'SHAUGHNESSY. Music and Moonlight. (Chatto and Windus.)