(After Lyonnet De Coismes.)

Who have loved and ceased to love, forget That ever they loved in their lives, they say; Only remember the fever and fret, And the pain of Love, that was all his pay; All the delight of him passes away From hearts that hoped, and from lips that met— Too late did I love you, my love, and yet I shall never forget till my dying day.

Too late were we ‘ware of the secret net That meshes the feet in the flowers that stray; There were we taken and snared, Lisette, In the dungeon of La Fausse Amistié; Help was there none in the wide world’s fray, Joy was there none in the gift and the debt; Too late we knew it, too long regret— I shall never forget till my dying day!

We must live our lives, though the sun be set, Must meet in the masque where parts we play, Must cross in the maze of Life’s minuet; Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay: But while snows of winter or flowers of May Are the sad year’s shroud or coronet, In the season of rose or of violet, I shall never forget till my dying day!

ENVOY.

Queen, when the clay is my coverlet, When I am dead, and when you are grey, Vow, where the grass of the grave is wet, “I shall never forget till my dying day!”

BALLADE OF HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE.

Here I’d come when weariest! Here the breast Of the Windburg’s tufted over Deep with bracken; here his crest Takes the west, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

Silent here are lark and plover; In the cover Deep below the cushat best Loves his mate, and croons above her O’er their nest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

Bring me here, Life’s tired-out guest, To the blest Bed that waits the weary rover, Here should failure be confessed; Ends my quest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!

ENVOY.

Friend, or stranger kind, or lover, Ah, fulfil a last behest, Let me rest Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!

DIZAIN.

As, to the pipe, with rhythmic feet In windings of some old-world dance, The smiling couples cross and meet, Join hands, and then in line advance, So, to these fair old tunes of France, Through all their maze of to-and-fro, The light-heeled numbers laughing go, Retreat, return, and ere they flee, One moment pause in panting row, And seem to say—Vos plaudite!

A. D.

VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS.

ORONTE—Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux, Mais de petits vers!

“Le Misanthrope,” Acte i., Sc. 2.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.

Your hair and chin are like the hair And chin Burne-Jones’s ladies wear; You were unfashionably fair In ’83; And sad you were when girls are gay, You read a book about Le vrai Mérite de l’homme, alone in May. What can it be, Le vrai mérite de l’homme? Not gold, Not titles that are bought and sold, Not wit that flashes and is cold, But Virtue merely! Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know), You bade the crowd of foplings go, You glanced severely, Dreaming beneath the spreading shade Of ‘that vast hat the Graces made;’ So Rouget sang—while yet he played With courtly rhyme, And hymned great Doisi’s red perruque, And Nice’s eyes, and Zulmé’s look, And dead canaries, ere he shook The sultry time With strains like thunder. Loud and low Methinks I hear the murmur grow, The tramp of men that come and go With fire and sword. They war against the quick and dead, Their flying feet are dashed with red, As theirs the vintaging that tread Before the Lord. O head unfashionably fair, What end was thine, for all thy care? We only see thee dreaming there: We cannot see The breaking of thy vision, when The Rights of Man were lords of men, When virtue won her own again In ’93.

THE MOON’S MINION.