A SONNET OF VAIN DESIRE.

As when th' industrious windmill vainly yearns

To pause, and scratch its swallow-haunted head,

Yet at the wind's relentless urging turns

Its flying arms in wild appeal outspread;

So am I vex'd by vain desire, that burns

These barren places whence the hair hath fled,

To wander far amid the woodland ferns,

Where dewdrops shine along the gossamer thread;

Where its own sunlight on the reddening leaf

Sleeps, when soft mists have swathed the sunless tree,

Or where the innumerous billows merrily dance;

Yet must I busily dissemble grief

Whirl'd in the pitiless round of circumstance,

Rigid with trained respectability.

DESMOND, Theosophist Colonel, now thinks better

Of his rash vow his gift to "demonstrate,"

Receiving a "precipitated letter"

Warning him not to be—precipitate.

Many a Betting Man who'd hedge or tack

Must wish he had Mahatmas at his back.

(New Version.)

Life must not be lost, Sir, with lightness,

To labour for life gives me pain;

My exchequer's affected with tightness,

But begging's the pink of politeness,

Like Scribes, Sir, "I beg—to remain!" *

* And didn't CHARLES LAMB, in his most delightful essay On the Decay of Beggars, deplore their gradual disappearance?