A LIKENESS.

[Extract.]

ROBERT BROWNING.

OME people hang portraits up

In a room where they dine or sup,
And the wife clinks tea-things under;

And her cousin, he stirs his cup,
Asks, "Who was the lady, I wonder?"

"'Tis a daub John bought at a sale,"

Quoth the wife,-looks black as thunder:

"What a shade beneath her nose!

Snuff-taking I suppose,"

Adds the cousin, while John's corns ail.

A LIKENESS.

61

Or else, there's no wife in the case,
But the portrait's queen of the place,
Alone 'mid the spoils

Of youth,-masks, gloves, and foils,

And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine,
And the long whip, the tandem-lasher,

And the cast from a fist-("Not, alas! mine,

But my master's, the Tipton Slasher,”)
And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace,

And a satin shoe used for cigar-case,

And the chamois-horns—(“Shot in the Chablais,”) And prints,—Rarey drumming on Cruiser,

And Sayers, our champion, the bruiser,

And the little edition of Rabelais :

Where a friend, with both hands in his pockets,

May saunter up close to examine it,

And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb in it,

But the eyes are half out of their sockets;
That hair's not so bad where the gloss is,
But they've made the girl's nose a proboscis :
Jane Lamb that we danced with at Vichy.
What! is she not Jane? then, who is she?

62

A LIKENESS.

All that I own is a print,

An etching, a mezzotint;

'Tis a study, a fancy, a fiction,

Yet a fact (take my conviction,
Because it has more than a hint
Of a certain face I never

Saw elsewhere touch or trace of,
In women I've seen the face of)—
Just an etching, and, so far, clever.

SONG.

ROBERT BROWNING.

AY, but

I.

you, who do not love her,

Is she not pure gold, my mistress?

Holds earth aught-speak truth-above her?

Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,

And this last fairest tress of all,

So fair, see, ere I let it fall!

II.

Because, you spend your lives in praising;

To praise, you search the wide world over;

So, why not witness, calmly gazing,

If earth holds aught-speak truth-above her? Above this tress, and this I touch

But cannot praise, I love so much!

YOUTH AND ART.

[Extract.]

ROBERT BROWNING.

T once might have been, once only:
We lodged in a street together,

You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,

I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

Your trade was with sticks and clay;

You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished,

Then laughed, "They will see some day

Smith made, and Gibson demolished!"

My business was song, song, song;

I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, "Kate Brown's on the boards ere long,

And Grisi's existence embittered!"