ENVOY
Where are the secrets it knew?
Weavings of plot and of plan?
But where is the Pompadour, too?
This was the Pompadour’s fan!
THE BANKS O’ DOON.
BY ROBERT BURNS.
Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair;
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu’ o’ care!
Thou’lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn;
Thou minds me o’ departed joys,
Departed—never to return!
Aft hae I rov’d by bonnie Doon,
To see the rose and woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o’ its luve,
And fondly sae did I o’ mine.
Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose,
Fu’ sweet upon its thorny tree;
And my fause luver stole my rose,
But, ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.
BALLADE OF NICOLETE.
BY GRAHAM R. TOMSON.
This ballad by a poet of our own time finds its way into the hearts of those who have read and loved the song-story of Aucassin and Nicolete. It has about it the fragrance and naïveté of that “good lay,” it contains the “force and freshness of young passion, the troubadour’s sweetness of literary manner,” as Mr. Le Gallienne says of another poem on the same subject written by Edmund Clarence Stedman.
All bathed in pearl and amber light
She rose to fling the lattice wide,
And leaned into the fragrant night,
Where brown birds sang of summertide;
(’Twas Love’s own voice that called and cried).
“Ah Sweet!” she said, “I’ll seek thee yet,
Though thorniest pathways should betide
The fair white feet of Nicolete.”
They slept, who would have staid her flight;
(Full fain were they the maid had died);
She dropped adown her prison’s height
On strands of linen featly tied.
And so she passed the garden side
With loose leaved roses sweetly set,
And dainty daisies, dark beside
The fair white feet of Nicolete!
Her lover lay in evil plight
(So many lovers yet abide!)
I would my tongue could praise aright
Her name, that should be glorified.
Those lovers now, whom foes divide
A little weep—and soon forget.
How far from these faint lovers glide
The fair white feet of Nicolete.