Green Bays | Page 4

to old creeds
and had a nasty temper;
Can we blame Willum that he hardly cared to
Risk a refusal?
Year by year found him busy 'mid the bean-sticks,
Wholly uncertain
how on earth to take steps.
Thus for eighteen years he beheld the
maiden
Wave fro' her window.

But the nineteenth spring, i' the Castle post-bag,
Came by book-post
Bill's catalogue o' seedlings
Mark'd wi' blue ink at 'Paragraphs relatin'
Mainly to Pumpkins.'
'W. A. can,' so the Lady Jane read,
'Strongly commend that very
noble Gourd, the
Lady Jane, first-class medal, ornamental;
Grows to a great height.'
Scarce a year arter, by the scented hedgerows--
Down the mown
hill-side, fro' the castle gateway--
Came a long train and, i' the midst,
a black bier,
Easily shouldered.
'Whose is yon corse that, thus adorned wi' gourd-leaves, Forth ye bear
with slow step?' A mourner answer'd,
''Tis the poor clay-cold body
Lady Jane grew
Tired to abide in.'
'Delve my grave quick, then, for I die to-morrow.
Delve it one
furlong fro' the kidney bean-sticks,
Where I may dream she's goin' on
precisely
As she was used to.'
Hardly died Bill when, fro' the Lady Jane's grave,
Crept to his white
death-bed a lovely pumpkin:
Climb'd the house wall and over-arched
his head wi'
Billowy verdure.
Simple this tale!--but delicately perfumed
As the sweet roadside
honeysuckle. That's why,
Difficult though its metre was to tackle,

I'm glad I wrote it.
A TRIOLET.
To commemorate the virtue of Homoeopathy in restoring one
apparently drowned.
Love, that in a tear was drown'd,
Lives revived by a tear.
Stella
heard them mourn around
Love that in a tear was drown'd,
Came
and coax'd his dripping swound,
Wept 'The fault was mine, my dear!'

Love, that in a tear was drown'd,
Lives, revived by a tear.
AN OATH.
(From 'Troy Town'.)
A month ago Lysander pray'd
To Jove, to Cupid, and to Venus,

That he might die if he betray'd
A single vow that pass'd between us.
Ah, careless gods, to hear so ill
And cheat a maid on you relying!

For false Lysander's thriving still,
And 'tis Corinna lies a-dying.
UPON GRACIOSA, WALKING AND TALKING.
(From 'Troy Town'.)
When as abroad, to greet the morn,
I mark my Graciosa walk,
In
homage bends the whisp'ring corn,
Yet to confess
Its awkwardness
Must hang its head upon the stalk.
And when she talks, her lips do heal
The wounds her lightest glances
give:--
In pity then be harsh, and deal
Such wounds that I
May hourly die,

And, by a word restored, live.
WRITTEN UPON LOVE'S FRONTIER-POST.
(From 'Troy Town'.)
Toiling love, loose your pack,
All your sighs and tears unbind:

Care's a ware will break a back,
Will not bend a maiden's mind.
In this State a man shall need
Neither priest nor law giver:
Those
same lips that are his creed
Shall confess their worshipper.
All the laws he must obey,
Now in force and now repeal'd,
Shift in
eyes that shift as they,
Till alike with kisses seal'd.
TITANIA.
By Lord T-n.
So bluff Sir Leolin gave the bride away:
And when they married her,
the little church
Had seldom seen a costlier ritual.
The coach and
pair alone were two-pound-ten,
And two-pound-ten apiece the
wedding-cakes;--
Three wedding-cakes. A Cupid poised a-top
Of
each hung shivering to the frosted loves
Of two fond cushats on a
field of ice,
As who should say '_I_ see you!'--Such the joy
When
English-hearted Edwin swore his faith
With Mariana of the Moated
Grange.
For Edwin, plump head-waiter at The Cock,
Grown sick of custom,
spoilt of plenitude,
Lacking the finer wit that saith,
'I wait, They
come; and if I make them wait, they go,'
Fell in a jaundiced humour
petulant-green,
Watched the dull clerk slow-rounding to his cheese,

Flicked a full dozen flies that flecked the pane--
All crystal-cheated
of the fuller air,
Blurted a free 'Good-day t'ye,' left and right,
And
shaped his gathering choler to this head:--

'Custom! And yet what profit of it all?
The old order changeth
yielding place to new,
To me small change, and this the
Counter-change
Of custom beating on the self-same bar--
Change
out of chop. Ah me! the talk, the tip,
The would-be-evening
should-be-mourning suit,
The forged solicitude for petty wants

More petty still than they,--all these I loathe,
Learning they lie who
feign that all things come
To him that waiteth. I have waited long,

And now I go, to mate me with a bride
Who is aweary waiting, even
as I!'
But when the amorous moon of honeycomb
Was over, ere the
matron-flower of Love--
Step-sister of To-morrow's marmalade--

Swooned scentless, Mariana found her lord
Did something jar the
nicer feminine sense
With usage, being all too fine and large,

Instinct of warmth and colour, with a trick
Of blunting 'Mariana's'
keener edge
To 'Mary Ann'--the same but not the same:
Whereat
she girded, tore her crisped