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There clung three roses to a stem,
Did all their hues of summer don,
But came a wind and troubled them,
And all were gone.

I heard three bells in unison
Clap out some transient heart's delight,...

Oh, to be able to capture and bring
And bind in the bonds of control,
Some of the carols that warble and sing
Down in the depths of my soul.

Just as of old! The world rolls on and on;
The day dies into night - night into dawn -
Dawn into dusk - through centuries untold. -
Just as of old.

Time loiters not. The river ever flows,...

Clear was the night: the moon was young:
The larkspurs in the plots
Mingled their orange with the gold
Of the forget-me-nots.

The poppies seemed a silver mist:
So darkly fell the gloom....

Here are the doleful rains,
And one would say the sky is weeping
The death of the tolerable weather.

Tedium cloaks the wit like a veil of clouds
And we sit down indoors.
...

Do you remember
That afternoon - that Sunday afternoon! -
When, as the kirks were ringing in,
And the grey city teemed
With Sabbath feelings and aspects,
LEWIS - our LEWIS then,...

When Satan sends - to vex the mind of man
And urge him on to meanness and to wrong -
His satellites, there is not one that can
Acquit itself like envy. Not so strong...

("L'Avarice et l'Envie.")

[LE CONSERVATEUR LIIT'RAIRE, 1820.]


Envy and Avarice, one summer day,
Sauntering abroad
In quest of the abode
Of some poor wretch or fool who lived that way -...

I

Past the hills that peep
Where the leaze is smiling,
On and on beguiling
Crisply-cropping sheep;
Under boughs of brushwood
Linking tree and tree
In a shade of lushwood,...

"Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."
And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand...

"The accuser of the brethren!"
How fitting is the name!
Since the creation of the world
His business is the same;

Bringing false accusations,
Sowing the seeds of strife,...

My God, till I received thy stroke,
How like a beast was I!
So unaccustom'd to the yoke,
So backward to comply.


With grief my just reproach I bear,
Shame fills me at the thought;...

As a vesture shalt thou change them, said the prophet,
And the raiment that was flesh is turned to dust;
Dust and flesh and dust again the likeness of it,
And the fine gold woven and worn of youth is rust....

Friend Rundle fell, with grievous bump,
Upon his reverential rump.
Poor rump! thou hadst been better sped,
Hadst thou been join'd to Boulter's head;
A head, so weighty and profound,...

Because I am idolatrous and have besought,
With grievous supplication and consuming prayer,
The admirable image that my dreams have wrought
Out of her swan's neck and her dark, abundant hair:...

What news to-day?--"Oh! worse and worse--
"Mac[1] is the Prince's Privy Purse!"--
The Prince's Purse! no, no, you fool,
You mean the Prince's Ridicule.

A Bishop, by his neighbours hated,
Has cause to wish himself translated:
But why should Hough desire translation,
Loved and esteem'd by all the nation?
Yet, if it be the old man's case,...

As Thomas was cudgell'd one day by his wife,
He took to the street, and fled for his life:
Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble,
And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble;...

FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.

Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled; -
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.

FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.

Kissing Helena, together
With my kiss, my soul beside it
Came to my lips, and there I kept it, -
For the poor thing had wandered thither,...