Cruel, cruel were the words I said! Cruelly came they back to-day: 'You're too slight and fickle,' I said, To trouble the heart of Edward Gray.' "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! WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. MADE AT THE COCK. O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock, 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, But may she still be kind, And whisper lovely words, and use Her influence on the mind. To make me write my random rhymes, Ere they be half-forgotten; Nor add and alter, many times, Till all be ripe and rotten. 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 I pledge her silent at the board; 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. Through many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days: I kiss the lips I once have kissed; I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men, Who hold their hands to all, and cry For that which all deny them— Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry, And all the world go by them. Ah yet, though all the world forsake, 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 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 I pledge her silent at the board; 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. Through many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days: I kiss the lips I once have kissed; |