I

SAW her at the County Ball:

There, when the sounds of flute and

fiddle

Gave signal sweet in that old hall

Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far

Of all that set young hearts romancing; She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced-O Heaven, her

dancing!

D

ARK was her hair, her hand was white;

Her voice was exquisitely tender;

Her eyes were full of liquid light; I never saw a waist so slender!

Her every look, her every smile,

Shot right and left a score of arrows;

I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,

And wondered where she'd left her sparrows.

HE talked,-of politics or prayers,

SHE

Of Southey's prose or Words

worth's sonnets,

Of danglers-or of dancing bears,

Of battles-or the last new bonnets,

By candlelight, at twelve o'clock,

To me it mattered not a tittle;

If those bright lips had quoted Locke,

I might have thought they murmured Little.

T

HROUGH sunny May, through sultry

June,

I loved her with a love eternal;

I spoke her praises to the moon,

I wrote them to the Sunday Journal:

My mother laughed; I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling:
My father frowned; but how should gout
See any happiness in kneeling?

HE was the daughter of a Dean,

SHE

Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;

She had one brother, just thirteen, Whose colour was extremely hectic;

96

Her grandmother for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;

Her second cousin was a peer,

And Lord Lieutenant of the County.