And all the valleys and all the plains

Where all the nymphs and their love-sick swains

Made merry to pipe and tabor?

Where are they gone? They are gone to sleep
Where Fancy alone can find them:

But Arcady's times are like the sheep
That quitted the care of Little Bo-Peep,

For they've left their tales behind them!

A FIT OF THE BLUES.

Y deep cerulean eyes are full of tears,
And bluely burns my melancholy

taper:

How dimly every azure line appears To be imprinted on my bluish paper.

My casement opens on the blue, blue sky,
The cobalt of the dawn already lightens
The outer east-and yet small joy have I
That Luna fades and that Aurora brightens.

Oh that the morning light could bring for me

One hour amidst the blue-bells and the heather!

One hour of sojourn on the wide blue sea,

In crystal calmness or in stormy weather!

Oh that the "freshness of the heart" could fall

Once more upon my spirit, and could kindly Bring back again the days when first of all

I read my Blue Beard and believed it blindly!

:

One cure there is for all the ills that make
Existence duller than a blue book's pages :-
A strong blue-pill is just the thing to take

For indigestion in the early stages.

ROTTEN ROW.

HERE'S a tempting bit of greenery-of rus in urbe

THERE

scenery

That's haunted by the London "

upper ten ;"

Where, by exercise on horseback, an equestrian may force back Little fits of tedium vitæ now and then.

Oh! the times that I have been there, and the types that I have seen there

Of that gorgeous Cockney animal, the "swell;"

And the scores of pretty riders (both patricians and outsiders) Are considerably more than I can tell.

When first the warmer weather brought these people all together,
And the crowds began to thicken through the Row,
I reclined against the railing on a sunny day, inhaling
All the spirits that the breezes could bestow.

And the riders and the walkers and the thinkers and the talkers

Left me lonely in the thickest of the throng,

Not a touch upon my shoulder-not a nod from one beholderAs the stream of Art and Nature went along.

But I brought away one image, from that fashionable scrimmage, Of a figure and a face—ah, such a face!

Love has photograph'd the features of that loveliest of creatures On my memory, as Love alone can trace.

Did I hate the little dandy in the whiskers, (they were sandy,) Whose absurd salute was honour'd by a smile?

Did I marvel at his rudeness in presuming on her goodness, When she evidently loathed him all the while?

Oh the hours that I have wasted, the regrets that I have tasted,
Since the day (it seems a century ago)

When my heart was won instanter by a lady in a canter,
On a certain sunny day in Rotten Row !