"O just and faithful knight of God! So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 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: "Shy she was, and I thought her cold; Thought her proud, and fled over the sea Fill'd I was with folly and spite, When Ellen Adair was dying for me. "Cruel, cruel 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 Whisper'd'Listen to my despair: I repent me of all I did: Speak a little, Ellen Adair!' "Then I took a pencil, and wrote On the 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 turn'd 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, 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 No vain libation to the Muse, Nor add and alter, many times, I pledge her, and she comes and dips And lays it thrice upon my lips, Until the charm have power to make I pledge her silent at the board; Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble; Thro' many an hour of summer suns Against its fountain upward runs The current of my days I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd; My college friendships glimmer. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, 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, tho' all the world forsake, Let there be thistles, there are grapes; Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, 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. This earth is rich in man and maid; This whole wide earth of light and shade And, set in Heaven's third story, I look at all things as they are, Head-waiter, honor'd by the guest The pint you brought me was the best But tho' the port surpasses praise, For since I came to live and learn, Had ever half the power to turn Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out, For I am of a numerous house, Or sometimes two would meet in one, Whether the vintage, yet unkept, Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept, Or stow'd (when classic Canning died) In musty bins and chambers, Had cast upon its crusty side The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is! She changes with that mood or this, She lit the spark within my throat, And hence this halo lives about The waiter's hands, that reach To each his perfect pint of stout, His proper chop to each. |