Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prythee, why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do 't?
Prythee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move,
This cannot take her :

If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her :

The devil take her!

SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

THE DISAPPOINTED LOVER.

I WILL go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.

I will go down to her, I and none other,
Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me ;
Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast.
O fair white mother, in days long past
Born without sister, born without brother,
Set free my soul as thy soul is free.

O fair green-girdled mother of mine,

Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, Thy large embraces are keen like pain! Save me and hide me with all thy waves, Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, Those pure cold populous graves of thine,

Wrought without hand in a world without stain.

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide ; My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,

I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were, Filled full with life to the eyes and hair, As a rose is fulfilled to the rose-leaf tips

With splendid summer and perfume and pride,

This woven raiment of nights and days,
Were it once cast off and unwound from me,
Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways,
Alive and aware of thy waves and thee
Clear of the whole world, hidden at home,
Clothed with the green, and crowned with the foam,
A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,

A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE,

WHY SO PALE AND WAN?

WHY so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prythee, why so pale?

Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail ?

Prythee, why so pale?

OUTGROWN.

NAY, you wrong her, my friend, she's not fickle ; her love she has simply outgrown : One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own.

And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture to tell you the truth,

As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our earlier youth.

Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the selfsame plane,

Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your souls could be parted again.

She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom of her life's early May;

And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day.

Nature never stands still, nor souls either they ever go up or go down ;

And hers has been steadily soaring, — but how has it been with your own?

She has struggled and yearned and aspired, grown purer and wiser each year :

The stars are not farther above you in yon luminous atmosphere !

For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, down yonder, five summers ago,

Has learned that the first of our duties to God and ourselves is to grow.

Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer; but their vision is clearer as well:

Her voice has a tenderer cadence, but is pure as a silver bell.

Her face has the look worn by those who with God and his angels have talked :

The white robes she wears are less white than the spirits with whom she has walked.

And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have you, too, aspired and prayed?

Have you looked upon evil unsullied? Have you conquered it undismayed?

Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months and the years have rolled on? Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the triumph of victory won?

Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day in her presence you stood, Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that of her womanhood?

love of her girlhood is dead!

She cannot look down to her lover: her love like her soul, aspires ;

He must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its holy fires.

Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship I have ventured to tell you the truth, As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our earlier youth.

JULIA C. R. DORR.

a look,

A something light as air,
A word unkind or wrongly taken,
O, love that tempests never shook,

A breath, a touch like this has shaken!
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin ;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds, or like the stream,
That smiling left the mountain's brow,

As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part forever.

O you, that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound,
As in the Fields of Bliss above

He sits, with flowerets fettered round;
Loose not a tie that round him clings,
Nor ever let him use his wings ;
For even an hour, a minute's flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light.
Like that celestial bird, whose nest
Is found beneath far Eastern skies,
Whose wings, though radiant when at rest,
Lose all their glory when he flies!

THOMAS MOORE,

She laughed, and every heart was glad,
As if the taxes were abolished;
She frowned, and every look was sad,
As if the opera were demolished.

She smiled on many just for fun,

I knew that there was nothing in it ;

I was the first, the only one

Her heart had thought of for a minute. I knew it, for she told me so,

In phrase which was divinely molded; She wrote a charming hand, - and O,

How sweetly all her notes were folded!

Our love was like most other loves,
A little glow, a little shiver,

A rosebud and a pair of gloves,

And "Fly Not Yet," upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir,

Some hopes of dying broken-hearted; A miniature, a lock of hair,

The usual vows, and then we parted.

We parted months and years rolled by;
We met again four summers after.
Our parting was all sob and sigh,

Our meeting was all mirth and laughter!
For in my heart's most secret cell

There had been many other lodgers ;
And she was not the ball-room's belle,
But only Mrs. Something Rogers!

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

CHANGES.

WHOM first we love, you know, we seldom wed.
Time rules us all. And life, indeed, is not
The thing we planned it out ere hope was dead.
And then, we women cannot choose our lot.

Much must be borne which it is hard to bear;
Much given away which it were sweet to keep.
God help us all! who need, indeed, his care :
And yet, I know the Shepherd loves his sheep.

My little boy begins to babble now
Upon my knee his earliest infant prayer.
He has his father's eager eyes, I know ;
And, they say, too, his mother's sunny hair.

But when he sleeps and smiles upon my knee,

And I can feel his light breath come and go,

I think of one (Heaven help and pity me !) Who loved me, and whom I loved, long ago;

Who might have been-ah, what I dare not think!
We are all changed. God judges for us best.
God help us do our duty, and not shrink,
And trust in Heaven humbly for the rest.

As, rising on its purple wing, The insect-queen of Eastern spring, O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer, Invites the young pursuer near, And leads him on from flower to flower, A weary chase and wasted hour, Then leaves him, as it soars on high, With panting heart and tearful eye ; So Beauty lures the full-grown child, With hue as bright, and wing as wild; A chase of idle hopes and fears, Begun in folly, closed in tears. If won, to equal ills betrayed, Woe waits the insect and the maid : A life of pain, the loss of peace, From infant's play and man's caprice; The lovely toy, so fiercely sought, Hath lost its charm by being caught; For every touch that wooed its stay Hath brushed its brighest hues away, Till, charm and hue and beauty gone, 'T is left to fly or fall alone. With wounded wing or bleeding breast, Ah! where shall either victim rest?