To Euston, or half over London town, On one of the station trucks." Then forth in a hurry did they twain fare, "A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray : For by two of the clock must I needs away." "That may hardly be," the clerk did say, "For indeed-the clocks have struck." VOICES OF THE NIGHT. "The tender Grace of a day that is past." THE dew is on the roses, The owl hath spread her wing; And vocal are the noses Of peasant and of king: "Nature" (in short) "reposes"; But I do no such thing. Pent in my lonesome study Here I must sit and muse; Sit till the morn grows ruddy, Spots from their masters' shoes. Yet are sweet faces flinging Their witchery o'er me here: I hear sweet voices singing A song as soft, as clear, As (previously to stinging) A gnat sings round one's ear. Does Grace draw young Apollo's In blue mustachios still? Does Emma tell the swallows How she will pipe and trill, When, some fine day, she follows Those birds to the window-sill? And oh has Albert faded From Grace's memory yet? Albert, whose "brow was shaded By locks of glossiest jet," Whom almost any lady'd Have given her eyes to get?" Does not her conscience smite her For one who hourly pines, Thinking her bright eyes brighter Than any star that shines I mean of course the writer Of these pathetic lines? Who knows? As quoth Sir Walter, "Time rolls his ceaseless course : "The Grace of yore" may alter— And then, I've one resource: I'll invest in a bran-new halter, And I'll perish without remorse. LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY. ERE the morn the East has crimsoned, When the stars are twinkling there, (As they did in Watts's Hymns, and When the forest-nymphs are beading Fern and flower with silvery dew— My infallible proceeding Is to wake, and think of you. When the hunter's ringing bugle Sounds farewell to field and copse, And I sit before my frugal Meal of gravy-soup and chops: When (as Gray remarks) "the moping Owl doth to the moon complain," |