MIGNONNE.
Whate’er thou dost thou’rt dear.
Uncertain troubles sanctify
That magic well-spring of the willing tear,
Thine eye.
Thy jealous fear,
With not the rustle of a rival near;
Thy careless disregard of all
My tenderest care;
Thy dumb despair
When thy keen wit my worship may construe
Into contempt of thy divinity;
They please me too!
But should it once befall
These accidental charms to disappear,
Leaving withal
Thy sometime self the same throughout the year,
So glowing, grave and shy,
Kind, talkative and dear
As now thou sitt’st to ply
The fireside tune
Of that neat engine deft at which thou sew’st
With fingers mild and foot like the new moon,
O, then what cross of any further fate
Could my content abate?
Forget, then, (but I know
Thou canst not so,)
Thy customs of some praediluvian state.
I am no Bullfinch, fair my Butterfly,
That thou should’st try
Those zigzag courses, in the welkin clear;
Nor cruel Boy that, fledd’st thou straight
Or paused, mayhap
Might catch thee, for thy colours, with his cap.
ALEXANDER AND LYCON.
‘What, no crown won,
These two whole years,
By man of fortitude beyond his peers,
In Thrace or Macedon?’
‘No, none.
But what deep trouble does my Lycon feel,
And hide ’neath chat about the commonweal?’
‘Glaucé but now the third time did again
The thing which I forbade. I had to box her ears.
’Twas ill to see her both blue eyes
Settled in tears
Despairing on the skies,
And the poor lip all pucker’d into pain;
Yet, for her sake, from kisses to refrain!’
‘Ho, Timocles, take down
That crown.
No, not that common one for blood with extreme valour spilt,
But yonder, with the berries gilt.
’Tis, Lycon, thy just meed.
To inflict unmoved
And firm to bear the woes of the Beloved
Is fortitude indeed.’
SEMELE.
No praise to me!
My joy ’twas to be nothing but the glass
Thro’ which the general boon of Heaven should pass,
To focus upon thee.
Nor is’t thy blame
Thou first should’st glow, and, after, fade i’ the flame.
It takes more might
Than God has given thee, Dear, so long to feel delight.
Shall I, alas,
Reproach thee with thy change and my regret?
Blind fumblers that we be
About the portals of felicity!
The wind of words would scatter, tears would wash
Quite out the little heat
Beneath the silent and chill-seeming ash,
Perchance, still slumbering sweet.
NOTES.
[{29}] In this year the middle and upper classes were disfranchised by Mr. Disraeli’s Government, and the final
destruction of the liberties of England by the Act of 1884 rendered inevitable.
[{35}] The Alabama Treaty.
[{62}] This Piece was written in the year 1874, soon after the publication of an incendiary pamphlet by Mr. Gladstone against the English Catholics, occasioned by the Vatican Council.