V.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved for ever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not,

Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while thus it pouts, her fingers wrestle,

Twinkling the audacious leaves between, Till round they turn and down they nestleIs not the dear mark still to be seen?

VI.

Where I find her not, beauties vanish ;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

June 's twice June since she breathed it with me?

Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest foot-fall

—Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces— ! Roses, you are not so fair after all!

II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS.

I.

Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,

Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,

Printed on paper and bound in leather, Last month in the white of a matin-prime

Just when the birds sang all together.

II.

Into the garden I brought it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,

As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;

Added up the mortal amount;

And then proceeded to my revenge.

III.

Yonder 's a plum-tree, with a crevice

An owl would build in, were he but sage; For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis

In a castle of the middle age,

Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;

When he'd be private, there might he spend

Hours alone in his lady's chamber :

Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

IV.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked,

-I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate; Next a handful of blossoms I plucked

To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate; Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf, Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis ;

Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf

Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

V.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss

And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,

And sate in the midst with arms a-kimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, de profundis, accentibus lætis,
Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake,

And up I fished his delectable treatise.

VI.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,

With all the binding all of a blister,

And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow—

Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks! Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow? Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

VII.

How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,

And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover;
When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,

And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet.

VIII.

All that life, and fun, and romping,

All that frisking, and twisting, and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping, And clasps were cracking, and covers suppling! As if

you had carried sour John Knox

To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich, Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the Ballet with trousers and tunic.

IX.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self!
Good bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit !
See the snug niche I have made on my shelf:
A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
Here 's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

THE LABORATORY.

[ANCIEN RÉGIME.]

I.

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,

May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy—
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

II

He is with her; and they know that I know

Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears

flow

While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

III.

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder,-I am not in haste!
Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,
Than go

where men wait me and dance at the King's.

IV.

That in the mortar-you call it a gum ?

Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!

And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,

Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?

V.

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filagree-basket!

VI.

Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head,

And her breast, and her arms, and her hands, should drop dead!