מאלהים A proper speech were this

"Equals we are, Job, labour for thyself,

Nor bid me help thee; bear, as best flesh may,
Pains I inflict not nor avail to cure ;

Beg of me nothing thou mayst win thyself
By work, or waive with magnanimity,

Since we are peers acknowledged-scarcely peers
Had I implanted any want of thine

Only my power could meet and gratify."
No: rather hear, at man's indifference,
"Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear
Hungry for music, and direct thine eye
To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,
Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?""

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IO

YOUTH AND ART.

I.

IT once might have been, once only:
We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

II.

Your trade was with sticks and clay,

You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished, Then laughed, 'They will see, some day, Smith made, and Gibson demolished.'

III.

My business was song, song, song;

I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, 'Kate Brown's on the boards ere long, And Grisi's existence imbittered!'

IV.

I earned no more by a warble
Than you by a sketch in plaster;

You wanted a piece of marble,

I needed a music-master.

V.

We studied hard in our styles,

Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos, For air, looked out on the tiles,

For fun, watched each other's windows.

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VI.

You lounged, like a boy of the South,
Cap and blouse-nay, a bit of beard too;
Or you got it, rubbing your mouth

With fingers the clay adhered to.

VII.

And I soon managed to find

Weak points in the flower-fence facing,

Was forced to put up a blind

And be safe in my corset-lacing.

VIII.

No harm! It was not my fault

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I did look, sharp as a lynx

(And yet the memory rankles) When models arrived, some minx

Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles.

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YOUTH AND ART.

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XII.

But I think I gave you as good!

'That foreign fellow-who can know

How she pays, in a playful mood,
For his tuning her that piano?'

XIII.

Could you say so, and never say

Suppose we join hands and fortunes,

And I fetch her from over the way,

Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?'

XIV.

No, no; you would not be rash,

Nor I rasher and something over :

You've to settle yet Gibson's hash,
And Grisi yet lives in clover.

XV.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I'm queen myself at bals-parés,

I've married a rich old lord,

And you're dubbed knight and an R.A.

XVI.

Each life's unfulfilled, you see ;

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:

We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy.

XVII.

And nobody calls you a dunce,

And people suppose me clever;

This could but have happened once,

And we missed it, lost it forever.

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SONG.

From 'A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON.'

THERE'S a woman like a dewdrop, she 's so purer than the

purest ;

And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith 's the surest;

And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth

of lustre

Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild

grape cluster,

Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted

marble:

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Then her voice 's music-call it the well's bubbling, the bird's warble!

And this woman says, ' My days were sunless and my nights were moonless,

Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless,

If you loved me not!' And I who-(ah, for words of flame!) adore her!

Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her

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may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me, And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me !