מאלהים A proper speech were this "Equals we are, Job, labour for thyself, Nor bid me help thee; bear, as best flesh may, Beg of me nothing thou mayst win thyself Since we are peers acknowledged-scarcely peers Only my power could meet and gratify." 95 100 105 5 IO YOUTH AND ART. I. IT once might have been, once only: 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 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. 15 20 VI. You lounged, like a boy of the South, 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 25 I did look, sharp as a lynx (And yet the memory rankles) When models arrived, some minx Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles. 35 40 YOUTH AND ART. 87 45 XII. But I think I gave you as good! 'That foreign fellow-who can know How she pays, in a playful mood, 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, XV. But you meet the Prince at the Board, 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, 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. 50 55 60 65 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: 5 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 10 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 ! |