O Love! what art thou, Love? a wicked thing, Making green misses spoil their work at school; A melancholy man, cross-gartering?

Grave ripe-faced wisdom made an April fool?
A youngster, tilting at a wedding-ring?
A sinner, sitting on a cuttie-stool?
A Ferdinand de Something in a hovel,
Helping Matilda Rose to make a novel?

O Love! what art thou, Love? one that is bad
With palpitations of the heart-like mine-

A poor bewilder'd maid making so sad
A necklace of her garters-fell design!
A poet, gone unreasonably mad,

Ending his sonnets with a hempen line?
O Love-but whither, now? forgive me, pray;
I'm not the first that Love hath led astray.
THOMAS HOOD.
Poetical Works. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)

Ask not of me, love, what is love!
Ask what is good of God above-
Ask of the great sun what is light-
Ask what is darkness of the night-
Ask sin of what may be forgiven-
Ask what is happiness of Heaven-
Ask what is folly of the crowd-
Ask what is fashion of the shroud-
Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss-
Ask of thyself what beauty is;

And, if they each should answer, I!
Let me, too, join them with a sigh.
Oh! let me pray my life may prove,
When thus, with thee, that I am love.

P. J. BAILEY.
Festus. (Longmans.)

SONG.

THE stars are with the voyager
Wherever he may sail;

The moon is constant to her time;
The sun will never fail ;

But follow, follow round the world,
The green earth and the sea;
So love is with the lover's heart,
Wherever he may be.

Wherever he may be, the stars

Must daily lose their light;

The moon will veil her in the shade;
The sun will set at night.

The sun may set, but constant love
Will shine when he's away;
So that dull night is never night,
And day is brighter day.

I LOVE the sex, and sometimes would reverse
The tyrant's wish that "mankind only had
One neck, which he with one fell stroke might
pierce :"

My wish is quite as wide, but not so bad,
And much more tender on the whole than fierce;
It being (not now, but only while a lad)
That womankind had but one rosy mouth,
To kiss them all at once from North to South.

LORD BYRON.

THERE is dew for the flow'ret,

And honey for the bee, And bowers for the wild bird, And love for you and me.

There are tears for the many,

And pleasures for the few; But let the world pass on, dear, There's love for me and you. THOMAS HOOD.

Poetical Works. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)

SWEET to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady,

Lalage, Neæra, Haidee, or Elaine, or Mary Ann : Love, you dear delusive dream, you! Very sweet. your victims deem you,

When, heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can.

Sweet to haste, a licensed lover, to Miss Pinkerton the glover,

Having managed to discover what is dear Neæra's "size :"

P'raps to touch that wrist so slender, as your tiny gift you tender,

And to read you're no offender, in those laughing hazel eyes.

Then to hear her call you "Harry," when she makes you fetch and carry—

O young men about to marry, what a blessed thing it is!

To be photograph'd-together-cased in pretty

Russia leather

Hear her gravely doubting whether they have spoilt your honest phiz!

Then to bring your plighted fair one first a ring—a rich and rare one

Next a bracelet, if she'll wear one, and a heap of things beside;

And serenely bending o'er her, to inquire if it would bore her

To say when her own adorer may aspire to call

her bride!

C. S. CALVERLEY. Fly Leaves. (Bell.)

ALAS! for the love that's linked with gold!
Better-better a thousand times told-

More honest, happy, and laudable,

The downright loving of pretty Cis,

Who wipes her lips, though there's nothing amiss, And takes a kiss, and gives a kiss,

In which her heart is audible!

Pretty Cis, so smiling and bright,

Who loves as she labours-with all her might,
And without any sordid leaven!

Who blushes as red as haws and hips,
Down to her very finger-tips,

For Roger's blue ribbons-to her, like strips
Cut out of the azure of Heaven!

THOMAS HOOD.
Poetical Works. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)

You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more ;
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain ;
Deceive, deceive me once again!

WALTER S. LANDOR.

[My extracts from Landor's Poems are given by kind permission of the Publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall.]

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me. Raise me a daïs of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves, and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
Poems. (Macmillan.)

NEEDS not these lovers' joys to tell :
One day, fair maids, you'll know them well.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

LOVE'S FOLLOWERS.

THERE was an evil in Pandora's box
Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth
In guise so lovely, that men crowded round
And sought it as the dearest of all treasure.
Then were they stung with madness and despair;
High minds were bowed in abject misery.
The hero trampled on his laurell'd crown,
While genius broke the lute it waked no more.
Young maidens, with pale cheeks, and faded eyes,
Wept till they died. Then there were broken
hearts-

Insanity and Jealousy that feeds
Unto satiety, yet loathes its food;
Suicide digging its own grave; and Hate,
Unquenchable and deadly; and Remorse-
The vulture feeding on its own life-blood.
The evil's name was Love-these curses seem
His followers for ever.

L. E. LANDON.
Poetical Works. (Routledge.)

THE ELEVATING INFLUENCE OF LOVE.
OH, wondrous bond that binds

In one sweet concord separate minds,
And from their union gives

To the rapt gazer's eye

A finer essence and more high,

A young and wingèd god, who lives

In purer air and seeks a loftier sky!

If growing cares and lower aims should banish
All thought of heavenly hopes and higher things,
While we can mount upon thy soaring wings
They shall not wholly vanish.

Thou art the immortal part of man, the soul,
Which, scorning earth's control,

Lifts us from selfish thought and grovelling gains.
Thou always, whilst thy power remains,
Canst pierce the dull dead weight of cloud,

By which our thought is bowed,

And raise our clear and cleansed eyes

To the eternal skies.