Here follows a fugitive verse, written with ease without e’s:

“A jovial swain may rack his brain,
And tax his fancy’s might,
To quiz in vain, for ’tis most plain,
That what I say is right.”

CENTONES OR MOSAICS.

f this formerly favourite amusement of the learned we give several examples, only noting here that the word “Cento” primarily signified a cloak made of patches.

1.I only knew she came and went,
2.Like troutlets in a pool;
3.She was a phantom of delight,
4.And I was like a fool.
5.One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed,
6.Out of those lips unshorn,
7.She shook her ringlets round her head
8.And laughed in merry scorn.
9.Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
10.You heard them, O my heart;
11.’Tis twelve at night by the castle clock,
12.Beloved, we must part.
13.“Come back, come back!” she cried in grief,
14.My eyes are dim with tears—
15.How shall I live through all the days?
16.All through a hundred years?
17.’Twas in the prime of summer time,
18.She blessed me with her hand;
19.We strayed together, deeply blest,
20.Into the dreaming land.
21.The laughing bridal roses blow,
22.To dress her dark-brown hair;
23.My heart is breaking with my woe,
24.Most beautiful! most rare!
25.I clasped it on her sweet, cold hand,
26.The precious golden link!
27.I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
28.“Drink, pretty creature, drink!”
29.And so I won my Genevieve,
30.And walked in Paradise;
31.The fairest thing that ever grew
32.Atween me and the skies!

1. Powell; 2. Hood; 3. Wordsworth; 4. Eastman; 5. Coleridge; 6. Longfellow; 7. Stoddard; 8. Tennyson; 9. Tennyson; 10. Alice Cary; 11. Coleridge; 12. Alice Cary; 13. Campbell; 14. Bayard Taylor; 15. Osgood; 16. T. S. Perry; 17. Hood; 18. Hoyt; 19. Edwards; 20. Cornwall; 21. Patmore; 22. Bayard Taylor; 23. Tennyson; 24. Read; 25. Browning; 26. Smith; 27. Coleridge; 28. Wordsworth; 29. Coleridge; 30. Hervey; 31. Wordsworth; 32. Osgood.

The next appeared a short time ago in one of the Edinburgh newspapers, signed R. Fleming, and is a mosaic compilation from poems written to the memory of Robert Burns: