MARTIAL IN LONDON

XQUISITE wines and comestibles,

From Slater, and Fortnum and Mason; Billiard, écarté, and chess tables; Water in vast marble basin; Luminous books (not voluminous) To read under beech-trees cacuminous; One friend, who is fond of a distich, And doesn't get too syllogistic; A valet, who knows the complete art Of service-a maiden, his sweetheart: Give me these, in some rural pavilion, And I'll envy no Rothschild his million.

Mortimer Collins.

THE BEST OF THE BALL

T last! O, sensation delicious!

AT

At last, it is here, it is here!
That moment supremely auspicious

In the jolliest ball of the year.

It is all as I dreamt it would happen-
The rooms grown oppressive with heat,
And my darling, alarm'd with the crowding,
Suggesting a timely retreat.

"Not there; not among the exotics;

I faint with that fragrance of theirs. Let us go-it will be so refreshing— And find out a seat on the stairs."

How dear are the lips that could utter
Such exquisite music as this!

How I listen'd, my heart all a-flutter,
Assenting, transported with bliss!

All the house with the dancers is throbbing, The music seems born of the air:

O, joy of all joy the extremest,

To sit, as I sit, on a stair!

To sit, and to gaze on my darling,
Enraptured in thrilling delight,

As I think, "Never face could be fairer,
Nor eyes half so tenderly bright."

It is all as I knew it would happen,
Yet, no; there is something I miss-
The eloquent words I intended
To speak in a moment like this.

They were tender, and soft, and poetic,
And I thought, "As I timidly speak,
She will smile, and a blush sympathetic
Will crimson the rose in her cheek."

And now that we sit here together,
I only do all that I can—
Converse on the ball and the weather,
While she opens and closes her fan.

What I thought to have said seems audacious,
Her ear it would surely offend;

She would turn from me, no longer gracious,
And frown my delight to an end.

Far better to talk of the weather,
Or ponder in rapture supreme:
'Tis so joyous to sit here together,
So pleasant to wake and to dream!

Contented, long hours we could measure,
Forgetting, forgotten by all;

Nor envy the dancers their pleasure
For ours is the best of the ball.

William Sawyer.

THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES

(Translation from François Villon, 1450)

TELL

ELL me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman? Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, Neither of them the fairer woman ?

Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere,

She whose beauty was more than human? ... But where are the snows of yester-year?

Where's Heloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on ?
(From love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you is the Queen
Who will'd that Buridan should steer

Sew'd in a sack's mouth down the Seine? .
But where are the snows of yester-year?

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
With a voice like any mermaiden,-
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,

And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At Rouen doom'd and burn'd her there,-
Mother of God, Where are they then?
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Nay, never ask this weak, fair lord,

Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Save with thus much for an overword,But where are the snows of yester-year?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Ο

FEMININE ARITHMETIC

Laura

N me he shall ne'er put a ring,

So, mamma, 'tis in vain to take trouble— For I was but eighteen in spring, While his age exactly is double.

Mamma

He's but in his thirty-sixth year,

Tall, handsome, good-natured and witty,
And should you refuse him, my dear,
May you die an old maid without pity!

His figure, I grant you,

Laura

will

pass,

And at present he's young enough plenty;

But when I am sixty, alas!

Will not he be a hundred and twenty?

Charles Graham Halpine.