She was the daughter of a Dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother, just thirteen,
Whose colour was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,
And Lord Lieutenant of the county.
But titles, and the three per cents,
And mortgages, and great relations,
And India bonds, and tithes, and rents,
Oh what are they to love’s sensations?
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks—
Such wealth, such honours, Cupid chooses;
He cares as little for the stocks
As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.
She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach,
Grew lovelier from her pencil’s shading:
She botanised; I envied each
Young blossom in her boudoir fading:
She warbled Handel; it was grand;
She made the Catalani jealous:
She touched the organ; I could stand
For hours and hours to blow the bellows.
She kept an album, too, at home,
Well filled with all an album’s glories;
Paintings of butterflies, and Rome,
Patterns for trimmings, Persian stories;
Soft songs to Julia’s cockatoo,
Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter,
And autographs of Prince Leboo,
And recipes for elder water.
And she was flattered, worshipped, bored;
Her steps were watched, her dress was noted;
Her poodle dog was quite adored,
Her sayings were extremely quoted;
She laughed, and every heart was glad,
As if the taxes were abolished;
She frowned, and every look was sad,
As if the opera were demolished.
She smiled on many, just for fun—
I knew that there was nothing in it;
I was the first—the only one,
Her heart had thought of for a minute.
I knew it, for she told me so,
In phrase which was divinely moulded;
She wrote a charming hand—and oh!
How sweetly all her notes were folded!
Our love was like most other loves;—
A little glow, a little shiver,
A rose-bud, and a pair of gloves,
And “Fly not yet”—upon the river;
Some jealousy of some one’s heir,
Some hope of dying broken-hearted,
A miniature, a lock of hair,
The usual vows,—and then we parted.
We parted; months and years rolled by;
We met again four summers after:
Our parting was all sob and sigh;
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter:
For in my heart’s most secret cell
There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ball-room’s Belle,
But only—Mrs. Something Rogers!
IV.
MY PARTNER.
“There is, perhaps, no subject of more universal interest in the whole range of natural knowledge, than that of the increasing fluctuations which take place in the atmosphere in which we are immersed.”—British Almanac.