ON THE TROUBADOURS OF PROVENCE.
True hearts, that beat so fast, but now are still,
The gracious days will never come again
Ye loved and sang; your tender accents will
Linger no more on the warm lips of men!
Alas! your speech lies with ye in the grave!
Yet where Montpellier’s skies their balm impart,
And Barcelona wooes the southern wave,
The student cons your pages when his heart
Hungers for solace. Take it in kind part,
Count it not loss, dear hearts, but loyalty,
If I like him, though with a ruder hand,
Am fain to cull your flowers too sweet to die,
To waft their fragrance to a distant land,
And bid them blossom ’neath a colder sky.
THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER XXX.
EDITH’S YES.
In the opinion of their old friends in Boston, the Yorke family had lost something during their sojourn in the wilderness. It was not that they were less charming, less kind, less well-bred, but they were not so orthodox in religion. Mrs. Yorke, it is true, resumed her regular attendance at Dr. Stewart’s church; but her husband seldom accompanied her now, and, it was ascertained, absented himself with her permission.
“I would not have him go for my sake, when he does not wish to go for his own,” she remarked tranquilly.
The time had been when Mrs. Yorke would have been horrified at such a defection, and would have called in the doctors of the church to exhort the backslider. She was evidently growing lax in her religious principles.