Our ripest fruit we never reach;
The flowering moments of the mind,
Lose half their petals in our speech."
The late Lord Lytton (Owen Meredith) was very unequal in all he produced. Perhaps the following ballad from his volume of "Selected Poems," published in 1894 by Longmans, is one of the best and most characteristic he has written:—
THE WOOD DEVIL.
1.
"In the wood, where I wander'd astray,
Came the Devil a-talking to me,
O mother! mother!
But why did ye tell me, and why did they say,