Chapter I: MET a little maid one day,

All in the bright May weather;
She danced, and brushed the dew away
As lightly as a feather.
She had a ballad in her hand
That she had just been reading,
But was too young to understand:—
That ditty of a distant land,
“The flower of love lies bleeding.”

She tripped across the meadow grass,
To where a brook was flowing,
Across the brook like wind did pass,—
Wherever flowers were growing
Like some bewildered child she flew,
Whom fairies were misleading:
“Whose butterfly,” I said, “are you?
And what sweet thing do you pursue?”—
“The flower of love lies bleeding!”

“I’ve found the wild rose in the hedge,
I’ve found the tiger-lily,—
The blue flag by the water’s edge,—
The dancing daffodilly,—
King-cups and pansies,—every flower
Except the one I’m needing;—
Perhaps it grows in some dark bower,
And opens at a later hour,—
This flower of love lies bleeding.”

“I wouldn’t look for it,” I said,
“For you can do without it:
There’s no such flower.” She shook her head;
“But I have read about it!”
I talked to her of bee and bird,
But she was all unheeding:
Her tender heart was strangely stirred,
She harped on that unhappy word,—
“The flower of love lies bleeding!”

“My child,” I sighed, and dropped a tear,
“I would no longer mind it;
You’ll find it some day, never fear,
For all of us must find it!
I found it many a year ago,
With one of gentle breeding;
You and the little lad you know,—
I see why you are weeping so,—
Your flower of love lies bleeding!”
_Richard Henry Stoddard._

THE GOLD ROOM

AN IDYL

THEY come from mansions far up-town,
And from their country villas,
And some, Charybdis’ gulf whirls down,
And some fall into Scylla’s.
Lo! here young Paris climbs the stairs
As if their slope were Ida’s,
And here his golden touch declares
The ass’s ears of Midas.

It seems a Bacchic, brawling rout
To every business-scorner,
But such, methinks, must be an “out,”
Or has not made a “corner.”
In me the rhythmic gush revives;
I feel a classic passion:
We, also, lead Arcadian lives,
Though in a Broad-Street fashion.

Old Battos, here, ’s a leading bull,
And Diomed a bear is,
And near them, shearing bankers’ wool,
Strides the Tiltonian Charis;
And Atys, there, has gone to smash,
His every bill protested,
While Cleon’s eyes with comfort flash,—
I have his funds invested!

Mehercle! ’tis the same thing yet
As in the days of Pindar:
The Isthmian race, the dust and sweat,
The prize—why, what’s to hinder?
And if I twang my lyre at times,
They did so then, I reckon;
That man’s the best at modern rhymes
Whom you can draw a check on!
_Bayard Taylor._

COMFORT

WHO would care to pass his life away
Of the Lotos-land a dreamful denizen,—
Lotos-islands in a waveless bay,
Sung by Alfred Tennyson?

Who would care to be a dull new-comer
Far across the wild sea’s wide abysses,
Where, about the earth’s three thousandth summer,
Passed divine Ulysses?

Rather give me coffee, art, a book,
From my windows a delicious sea-view,
Southdown mutton, somebody to cook,—
“Music?”—I believe you.

Strawberry icebergs in the summer time,—
But of elm-wood many a massive splinter,
Good ghost stories, and a classic rhyme,
For the nights of winter.

Now and then a friend and some Sauterne,
Now and then a haunch of Highland venison,
And for Lotos-land I’ll never yearn,
_Malgré_ Alfred Tennyson.
_Mortimer Collins._

A SUMMER SONG

SUMMER is sweet, ay! summer is sweet,—
Minna mine with the brown, brown eyes:
Red are the roses under his feet,
Clear the blue of his windless skies.
Pleasant it is in a boat to glide
On a river whose ripples to ocean haste,
With indolent fingers fretting the tide,
And an indolent arm round a darling waist—
And to see as the Western purple dies,
Hesper mirrored in brown, brown eyes.

Summer is fleet, ah! summer is fleet,—
Minna mine with the brown, brown eyes:
Onward travel his flying feet,
And the mystical colours of autumn rise.
Clouds will gather round evening star—
Sorrow may silence our first gay rhyme,—
The river’s swift ripples flow tardier far
Than the golden minutes of love’s sweet time:
But to me, whom omnipotent love makes wise,
There’s endless summer in brown, brown eyes.
_Mortimer Collins._

MY AUNT’S SPECTRE

THEY tell me (but I really can’t
Imagine such a rum thing),
It is the phantom of my Aunt,
Who ran away—or something.

It is the very worst of bores:
(My Aunt was most delightful).
It prowls about the corridors,
And utters noises frightful.

At midnight through the rooms It glides,
Behaving very coolly,
Our hearts all throb against our sides—
The lights are burning bluely.

The lady, in her living hours,
Was the most charming vixen
That ever this poor sex of ours
Delighted to play tricks on.

Yes, that’s her portrait on the wall,
In quaint old-fangled bodice:
Her eyes are blue—her waist is small—
A ghost! Pooh, pooh,—a goddess!

A fine patrician shape, to suit
My dear old father’s sister—
Lips softly curved, a dainty foot:
Happy the man that kissed her!

Light hair of crisp irregular curl
Over fair shoulders scattered—
Egad, she was a pretty girl,
Unless Sir Thomas flattered!

And who the deuce, in these bright days,
Could possibly expect her
To take to dissipated ways
And plague us as a spectre?
_Mortimer Collins._

A CONCEIT

OH, touch that rose-bud! it will bloom—
My lady fair!
A passionate red in dim green gloom,
A joy, a splendor, a perfume
That sleeps in air.

You touched my heart; it gave a thrill
Just like a rose
That opens at a lady’s will;
Its bloom is always yours, until
You bid it close.
_Mortimer Collins._

MARTIAL IN LONDON

EXQUISITE wines and comestibles,
From Slater, and Fortnum and Mason;
Billiard, écarté, and chess tables;
Water in vast marble basin;
Luminous books (not voluminous)
To read under beech-trees cacuminous;
One friend, who is fond of a distich,
And doesn’t get too syllogistic;
A valet, who knows the complete art
Of service—a maiden, his sweetheart:
Give me these, in some rural pavilion,
And I’ll envy no Rothschild his million.
_Mortimer Collins._

THE BEST OF THE BALL

AT last! O, sensation delicious!
At last, it is here, it is here!
That moment supremely auspicious
In the jolliest ball of the year.

It is all as I dreamt it would happen—
The rooms grown oppressive with heat,
And my darling, alarm’d with the crowding,
Suggesting a timely retreat.

“Not there; not among the exotics;
I faint with that fragrance of theirs.
Let us go—it will be so refreshing—
And find out a seat on the stairs.”

How dear are the lips that could utter
Such exquisite music as this!
How I listen’d, my heart all a-flutter,
Assenting, transported with bliss!

All the house with the dancers is throbbing,
The music seems born of the air:
O, joy of all joy the extremest,
To sit, as I sit, on a stair!

To sit, and to gaze on my darling,
Enraptured in thrilling delight,
As I think, “Never face could be fairer,
Nor eyes half so tenderly bright.”

It is all as I knew it would happen,
Yet, no; there is something I miss—
The eloquent words I intended
To speak in a moment like this.

They were tender, and soft, and poetic,
And I thought, “As I timidly speak,
She will smile, and a blush sympathetic
Will crimson the rose in her cheek.”

And now that we sit here together,
I only—do all that I can—
Converse on the ball and the weather,
While she opens and closes her fan.

What I thought to have said seems audacious,
Her ear it would surely offend;
She would turn from me, no longer gracious,
And frown my delight to an end.

Far better to talk of the weather,
Or ponder in rapture supreme:
’Tis so joyous to sit here together,
So pleasant to wake and to dream!

Contented, long hours we could measure,
Forgetting, forgotten by all;
Nor envy the dancers their pleasure
For ours is the best of the ball.
_William Sawyer._

THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES

(_Translation from François Villon, 1450_)

TELL me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere,—
She whose beauty was more than human?...
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Where’s Heloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you is the Queen
Who will’d that Buridan should steer
Sew’d in a sack’s mouth down the Seine?...
But where are the snows of yester-year?

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
With a voice like any mermaiden,—
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At Rouen doom’d and burn’d her there,—
Mother of God, Where are they then?...
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Nay, never ask this weak, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Save with thus much for an overword,—
But where are the snows of yester-year?
_Dante Gabriel Rossetti._

FEMININE ARITHMETIC

_Laura_

ON me he shall ne’er put a ring,
So, mamma, ’tis in vain to take trouble—
For I was but eighteen in spring,
While his age exactly is double.

_Mamma_

He’s but in his thirty-sixth year,
Tall, handsome, good-natured and witty,
And should you refuse him, my dear,
May you die an old maid without pity!

_Laura_

His figure, I grant you, will pass,
And at present he’s young enough plenty;
But when I am sixty, alas!
Will not he be a hundred and twenty?
_Charles Graham Halpine._

A TRIFLE