As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse
Which (all nature, no art)

The Dominican brother, these three weeks,

Was getting by heart.

Not a post nor a pillar but's dizened

With red and blue papers;

All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar

A-blaze with long tapers;

But the great masterpiece is the scaffold

Rigged glorious to hold

All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers,

And trumpeters bold,

Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,

Who, when the priest's hoarse,

Will strike us up something that's brisk
For the feast's second course.

And then will the flaxen-wigged Image

Be carried in pomp

Thro' the plain, while in gallant procession

The priests mean to stomp.

And all round the glad church lie old bottles

With gunpowder stopped,

Which will be, when the Image re-enters,

Religiously popped.

And at night from the crest of Calvano

Great bonfires will hang,

On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, And more poppers bang!

At all events, come to the garden,

As far as the wall

See me tap with a hoe on the plaster

Till out there shall fall

A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

66

Such trifles"-you say?

Fortù, in my England at home,

Men meet gravely to-day

And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws

Is righteous and wise

If 'tis proper, Scirocco should vanish

In black from the skies!

HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD.

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

I.

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England - now!

II.

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edgeThat's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice

over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower,

- Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

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THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL:

A Picture at Fano.

I.

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave

That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!

Let me sit all the day here, that when eve

Shall find performed thy special ministry
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head be covered o'er

With those wings, white above the child who prays Now on that tomb and I shall feel thee guarding Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding

Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door!