EDWARD GRAY. SWEET Emma Moreland of yonder town "And have you lost your heart?" she said; Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me: "Ellen Adair she loved me well, Against her father's and mother's will: To-day I sat for an hour and wept, By Ellen's grave, on the windy hill. "Shy she was, and I thought her cold; Thought her proud, and fled over the sea; Filled I was with folly and spite, When Ellen Adair was dying for me. 66 Cruel, cruel were the words I said! "There I put my face in the grass Whispered, 'Listen to my despair: I repent me of all I did : Speak a little, Ellen Adair!' "Then I took a pencil, and wrote On a mossy stone, as I lay, 'Here lies the body of Ellen Adair; And here the heart of Edward Gray!' "Love may come, and love may go, And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree : But I will love no more, no more, Till Ellen Adair come back to me. Bitterly wept I over the stone: Bitterly weeping I turned away: There lies the body of Ellen Adair! And there the heart of Edward Gray!" WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. MADE AT THE COCK. O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock, VOL. II. To which I most resort, How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock. Go fetch a pint of port: But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers. No vain libation to the Muse, And whisper lovely words, and use To make me write my random rhymes, Ere they be half-forgotten; Nor add and alter, many times, Till all be ripe and rotten. 8 16 I pledge her, and she comes and dips And lays it thrice upon my lips, These favored lips of mine; Until the charm have power to make And barren commonplaces break To full and kindly blossom. I pledge her silent at the board; 24 And touch upon the master-chord Of all I felt and feel. Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble; And that child's heart within the man's Begins to move and tremble. 3 Through many an hour of summer suns, The shadow of my days: I kiss the lips I once have kissed; The gas-light wavers dimmer; And softly, through a vinous mist, My college friendships glimmer. 40 48 I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Or that eternal want of pence, Who hold their hands to all, and cry Ah yet, though all the world forsake, There must be stormy weather; All parties work together. Let there be thistles, there are grapes ; If old things, there are new; Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, Yet glimpses of the true. Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme, We lack not rhymes and reasons, As on this whirligig of Time We circle with the seasons. 64 |