“Ah, now, though I sit on a rock,

I have shared one seat with the great;

I have sat—knowing naught of the clock—

On love’s high throne of state;

But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed,

To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed,

And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed,

Had they only not come too late—too late!”

Fitz-Hugh Ludlow.

LIFE IN LACONICS