O how my heart is beating as her name I keep

repeating,

In a music soft and fine;

O how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,

For the girl I love is mine.

She owns no lands, has no white hands,

Her lot is poor, her life obscure;

Yet how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,

For the girl I love is mine.

DINAH MULOCK CRAIK.

MY

DITTY.

Y true love hath my heart and I have his, By just exchange one to the other given : I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a better bargain driven !

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,

I cherish his because in me it bides:

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

THE DIFFERENCE.

Tis the season now to go

IT

About the country high and low,
Among the lilacs hand in hand,
And two by two in fairy land.

The brooding boy, the sighing maid,
Wholly fain and half afraid,

Now meet along the hazel'd brook
To pass and linger, pause and look.

A year ago, and blithely paired,

Their rough-and-tumble play they shared ; They kissed and quarrelled, laughed and cried, A year ago at Eastertide.

With bursting heart, with fiery face,

She strove against him in the race;

He unabashed her garter saw,

That now would touch her skirts with awe.

Now by the stile ablaze she stops,
And his demurer eyes he drops;
Now they exchange averted sighs,
Or stand and marry silent eyes.

And he to her a hero is,
And sweeter she than primroses;
Their common silence dearer far
Than nightingale and mavis are.

A RING POSY.

Now when they sever wedded hands,
Joy trembles in their bosom-strands,
And lovely laughter leaps and falls
Upon their lips in madrigals.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

A PLEASANT SONG.

'HE nightingale has a lyre of gold,

THE

The lark's is a clarion call,

And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
But I love him best of all.

For his song is all of the joy of life,
And we, in the mad spring weather,

We two have listened till he sang

Our hearts and lips together.

Loves me more than curls or pearls.

I'm not pretty, not a bit;

Thin and sallow-pale;

When I trudge along the street

I don't need a veil;

Yet I have one fancy hit.

55

Jess and Jill can trill and sing
With a flute-like voice,
Dance as light as bird on wing,
Laugh for careless joys:
Yet 't is I who wear the ring.

Jess and Jill will mate some day,

Surely, surely;

Ripen on to June through May,

While the sun shines make their hay,
Slacken steps demurely:

Yet even there I lead the way.

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

"MY LOVE FOR THEE DOTH MARCH LIKE

ARMED MEN."

Y love for thee doth march like armèd men

MY

Against a queenly city they would take.
Along the army's front its banners shake;
Across the mountain and the sun-smit plain
It stedfast sweeps as sweeps the stedfast rain;
And now the trumpet makes the still air quake,
And now the thundering cannon doth awake
Echo on echo, echoing loud again.

But, lo! the conquest higher than bard had sung;
Instead of answering cannon comes a small
White flag; the iron gates are open flung,
And flowers along the invaders' pathway fall.
The city's conquerors feast their foes among,
And their brave flags are trophies on her wall.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

THE YEAR THAT'S COMe and gone. 57

THE WAYS OF LOVE.

How do I love thee? Let and breadth and he

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;

I love thee with the passion put to use

In

my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

IN THE YEAR THAT'S COME AND GONE.

IN the year that's come and gone, love, his flying

feather

Stooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk together.

In the year that's coming on, though many a troth be broken,

We at least will not forget aught that love hath spoken.