You lie down to your shady slumber, And wake with a fly in your ear,

And your damsel that walks in the morning Is shod like a mountaineer.

True love is at home on a carpet,

And mightily likes his ease

And true love has an eye for a dinner,
And starves beneath shady trees.
His wing is the fan of a lady,

His foot's an invisible thing,
And his arrow is tipp'd with a jewel,
And shot from a silver string.

N. P. WILLIS. Poetical Works. (G. Routledge and Sons.)

FRIENDSHIP is constant in all other things,
Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch, Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. Much Ado about Nothing.

LEARN, that if to thee the meaning
Of all other eyes be shown,

Fewer eyes can ever front thee

That are skilled to read thine own;

And that if thy love's deep current
Many another's far outflows,
Then thy heart must take for ever

LESS THAN IT BESTOWS.
JEAN INGELOW.

Poems; First Series. (Longmans.)

DANGEROUS PLAYTHINGS. MAIDENS are fickle and hard to please, Butterflies dainty in plumage gay, Staying a moment to flirt and teaze,

Waking a longing, and then away. Dangerous playthings for idle hours, Seeming so harmless, but oh! so deep, Armed with a legion of hidden pow'rs, Innocent only when fast asleep.

Young men are selfish, and cold, and hard,
Looking for more than they give again,
Jealous lest ought should their hopes retard,
Making the most of a lover's pain.
Dangerous playthings for idle hours,
Seeming so constant, so firm, so true,
Hiding life's thorns 'neath its gayest flowers,
Painting their passion in rosy hue.

Yet there are hearts which are all they seem,
Loyal and true to the inmost core,
Looking on Love as a sacred theme,
Not to be played with and trifled o'er.
Dangerous playthings such hearts as these,
Worthy indeed to be proudly won,
Not to be sought for to fret and teaze,
Dangerous playthings to break in fun.
SOMERVILLE GIBNEY.

wwwwwwm

LOVE'S LANGUAGE.

THEIR little language the children

Have, on the knee as they sit; And only those who love them Can find the key to it.

The words thereof and the grammar

Perplex the logician's art;

But the heart goes straight with the meaning,
And the meaning is clear to the heart.

So thou, my Love, hast a language
That, in little, says all to me :—
But the world cannot guess the sweetness
Which is hidden with Love and thee.
FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE.
Lyrical Poems. (Macmillan and Co.)

SPORT not with love, if thou art wise;
Sport not with love !—a spark is pretty ;
But give it breath, and lo! it flies.

Rampant abroad, and flames a city!
If the fair maid may not be thine,

From love's luxurious pasture turn thee,

Or those fair eyes that beam benign

Shall grow a scorching flame to burn thee! JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

Lyrical Poems. (D. Douglas, Edinburgh.)

A GIRL'S LOVE-SONG.

It was an April morning

When my true love went out ;
The wind had never a warning;
The sky had never a doubt.
Leaves and blossoms were lustres
On oak and maple and beech;
Hopes were hanging in clusters
A little out of reach.

He wandered-he and no other-
Down by the little white brook ;
The stones sang one to another,

"A king is coming; look!"

The brook said, laughing and leaping,
"Peep, and you shall see."
Through the leaves he went peeping,
And there he saw-Me.

Saw me, took me, crowned me,
There, as I stood in my shame ;

I knew that he had found me,
Before I knew his name.

I went where I was fated,

Dumb with fear and surprise. A week and a day I waited, Before I saw his eyes.

I gave him never a whisper

For all the words he said;
The brook was a pleasant lisper,
It talked to him instead.
Brook, you told my emotion,
Hearing him plight his vow!
Brook, you have not a notion
What I feel for him now!

M. B. SMEDLEY. Poems. (Strahan.)

SHE was fresh and she was fair,
Glossy was her golden hair;
Like a blue spot in the sky
Was her clear and loving eye.
He was true and he was bold,
Full of mirth as he could hold;
Thro' the world he broke his way
With jest, and laugh, and lightsome lay.

LOVE laid his sleepless head
On a thorny rosy bed;

And his eyes with tears were red,
And pale his lips as the dead.

And fear and sorrow and scorn
Kept watch by his head forlorn.
Till the night was overworn

And the world was merry with morn.

And joy came up with the day
And kissed Love's lips as he lay,
And the watchers ghostly and grey
Sped from his pillow away.

And his eyes as the dawn grew bright,
And his lips waxed ruddy as light:
Sorrow may reign for a night,
But day shall bring back delight.
A. C. SWINBURNE.

Poems and Ballads; Second Series.
(Chatto and Windus.)

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 rightBefore I worshipped MammonWho 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.

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.

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.)