pressive purple eyes;

So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,

The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.

"Oh, holy father," Alice said, "'t would grieve you, would it not?

To discover that I was a most disreputable lot!

Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!

The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone and done?"

"I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,

I've assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad.

I've planned a little burglary and forged a little check,

And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!"

The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear

And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear

It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;

But sins like these one expiates at half-acrown apiece.

"Girls will be girls-you're very young, and flighty in your mind;

Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:

We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks

Let's see five crimes at half-a-crown exactly twelve-and-six."

"Oh, father," little Alice cried, "your kindness makes me weep,

You do these little things for me so singularly cheap

Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;

But, O, there is another crime I haven't mentioned yet!"

"A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,

I've noticed at my window, as I've sat acatching flies;

He passes by it every day as certain as can be

I blush to say I've winked at him and he has winked at me!"

"For shame," said Father Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word

This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.

Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand

To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!"

"This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!

They are the most remunerative customers I know;

For many many years they've kept starvation from my doors,

I never knew so criminal a family as yours!"

"The common country folk in this insipid neighborhood

Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good;

And if you marry any one respectable at all,

Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of Father Paul?"

The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,

And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown;

To tell him how his daughter, who now was for marriage fit,

Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.

Good Robber Brown he muffled up his anger pretty well,

He said "I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;

I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,

And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.

"I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two,

Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do —

Wast thou born to the sound of sea trumpets,

Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess Of the sponges - thy muffins and crumpets,

Of the seaweed-thy mustard and cress?

Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral,
Remote from reproof or restraint?
Art thou innocent, art thou immoral,
Sinburnian or Saint?

Lithe limbs, curling free, as a creeper
That creeps in a desolate place,
To enroll and envelop the sleeper

In a silent and stealthy embrace,
Cruel beak craning forward to bite us,
Our juices to drain and to drink,
Or to whelm us in waves of Cocytus,
Indelible ink!

O breast, that 'twere rapture to writhe on!
O arms 'twere delicious to feel
Clinging close with the crush of the Py-
thon,

When she maketh her murderous meal!
In thy eight-fold embraces en folden,
Let our empty existence escape;
Give us death that is glorious and golden,
Crushed all out of shape!

Ah! thy red lips, lascivious and luscious,
With death in their amorous kiss,
Cling round us, and clasp us, and crush us,
With bitings of agonised bliss;

We are sick with the poison of pleasure,
Dispense us the potion of pain;
Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure
And bite us again!

I ask'd him if he'd take a whiff
Of 'bacco; he acceded;
He grew communicative too,

(A pipe was all he needed,) Till of the tinker's life, I think, I knew as much as he did.

"I loiter down by thorp and town;
For any job I'm willing;
Take here and there a dusty brown,
And here and there a shilling.

“I deal in every ware in turn,

I've rings for buddin' Sally
That sparkle like those eyes of her'n,
I've liquor for the valet.

"I steal from th' parson's strawberry-plots, I hide by th' squire's covers;

I teach the sweet young housemaids what's The art of trapping lovers.

"The things I've done 'neath moon and

stars

Have got me into messes;

I've seen the sky through prison bars,
I've torn up prison dresses:

"I've sat, I've sigh'd, I've gloom'd, I've glanced

With envy at the swallows

That through the window slid, and danced (Quite happy) round the gallows;

"But out again I come, and show
My face nor care a stiver,
For trades are brisk and trades are slow,
But mine goes on for ever."

Thus on he prattled like a babbling brook.
Then I, "The sun had slipt behind the hill,
And my aunt Vivian dines at half-past
six."

So in all love we parted; I to the Hall, They to the village. It was noised next

Why, whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover:

Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.

Two and two may be four, but four and four are not eight:

Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.

Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels:

God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which:

The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

More is the whole than a part: but half is more than the whole:

Clearly, the soul is the body: but is not the body the soul?

One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two:

Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.

Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were as common as cocks:

Then the mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox.

Parallels all things are: yet many of these

are askew:

Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation, Fainter with fear of the fires of the future that pale with the promise of pride in the past;

Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,

Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?

Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,

Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:

Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error, Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitudes' breath. Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our

Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be,

While the hope in the heart of a hero

is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod; Made meek as a mother whose bosombeats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby, As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God. Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer:

Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;

Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,

WILL there never come a season
Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose which knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse:
When the world shall cease to wonder
At the genius of an ass,

And a boy's eccentric blunder
Shall not bring success to pass:

When mankind shall be delivered
From the clash of magazines,
And the inkstands shall be shivered
Into countless smithereens:
When there stands a muzzled stripling,
Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
When the Rudyards cease from kipling
And the Haggards ride no more.
1891.

J. K. STEPHEN.

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

[1862.] I

ENTER these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.

Only at a dread of dark

Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

II

Here the snake across your path
Stretches in his golden bath:
Mossy-footed squirrels leap
Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:
Yaffles on a chuckle skim

Low to laugh from branches dim:
Up the pine, where sits the star,
Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.
Each has business of his own;
But should you distrust a tone,
Then beware.

Shudder all the haunted roods,
All the eyeballs under hoods
Shroud you in their glare.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

III

Open hither, open hence,

Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,
Where the strawberry runs red,
With white star-flower overhead;
Cumbered by dry twig and cone,
Shredded husks of seedlings flown,
Mine of mole and spotted flint:
Of dire wizardry no hint,
Save mayhap the print that shows
Hasty outward-tripping toes,
Heels to terror, on the mould.
These, the woods of Westermain,
Are as others to behold,

Rich of wreathing sun and rain;

Foliage lustreful around

Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,

Shelter eager minikins,

Myriads, free to peck and pipe:
Would you better? would you worse?
You with them may gather ripe
Pleasures flowing not from purse.
Quick and far as Colour flies
Taking the delighted eyes,
You of any well that springs
May unfold the heaven of things;
Have it homely and within,
And thereof its likeness win,
Will you so in soul's desire:
This do sages grant t' the lyre.
This is being bird and more,
More than glad musician this;
Granaries you will have a store
Past the world of woe and bliss;
Sharing still its bliss and woe;
Harnessed to its hungers, no.
On the throne Success usurps,
You shall seat the joy you feel
Where a race of water chirps,
Twisting hues of flourished steel:
Or where light is caught in hoop
Up a clearing's leafy rise,
Where the crossing deerherds troop
Classic splendours, knightly dyes.
Or, where old-eyed oxen chew
Speculation with the cud,

Read their pool of vision through,
Back to hours when mind was mud;
Nigh the knot, which did untwine
Timelessly to drowsy suns;
Seeing Earth a slimy spine,
Heaven a space for winging tons.
Farther, deeper, may you read,
Have you sight for things afield,
Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,
Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;
Showing a kind face and sweet:
Look you with the soul you see 't.
Glory narrowing to grace,
Grace to glory magnified,
Following that will you embrace
Close in arms or aëry wide.
Banished is the white Foam-born
Not from here, nor under ban
Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn,
Pipings of the reedy Pan.

Loved of Earth of old they were,
Loving did interpret her;

And the sterner worship bars

None whom Song has made her stars.

You have seen the huntress moon
Radiantly facing dawn,

Dusky meads between them strewn