The once beautiful ruins carpeted with grass and wild flowers have been doubly desecrated by persons, academic persons, having authority and a plentiful lack of taste. The slim mountain-ashes, fair as the young palm-tree that Odysseus saw beside the shrine of Apollo in Delos, have been cut down by the academic persons to whom power is given. The grass and flowers have been rooted up. Hideous little wooden fences enclose the grave slabs: a roof of a massive kind has been dumped down on the old walls, and the windows, once so graceful in their airy lines, have been glazed in a horrible manner, while the ugly iron gate precludes entrance to a shrine which is now a black and dismal dungeon. “Oh, be that roof as lead to lead Above the dull Restorer’s head, A Minstrel’s malison is said!” Notes explanatory are added to the Rhymes, and their information, however valuable, need not here be repeated. BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA _Tout_ [Picture: Decorative graphic] _Soullas_ _par_ _A BALLADE OF XXXII BALLADES_. _Friend_, _when you bear a care-dulled eye_, _And brow perplexed with things of weight_, _And fain would bid some charm untie_ _The bonds that hold you all too strait_, _Behold a solace to your fate_, _Wrapped in this cover’s china blue_; _These ballades fresh and delicate_, _This dainty troop of Thirty-two_! _The mind_, _unwearied_, _longs to fly_ _And commune with the wise and great_; _But that same ether_, _rare and high_, _Which glorifies its worthy mate_, _To breath forspent is disparate_: _Laughing and light and airy-new_ _These come to tickle the dull pate_, _This dainty troop of Thirty-two_. _Most welcome then_, _when you and I_, _Forestalling days for mirth too late_, _To quips and cranks and fantasy_ _Some choice half-hour dedicate_, _They weave their dance with measured rate_ _Of rhymes enlinked in order due_, _Till frowns relax and cares abate_, _This dainty troop of Thirty-two_. ENVOY. Princes, of toys that please your state Quainter are surely none to view Than these which pass with tripping gait, This dainty troop of Thirty-two. F. P. TO AUSTIN DOBSON. _Un Livre est un ami qui change_—_quelquefois_. 1880. 1888 BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER. ἐσορῶν τὰν Σικελὰν ἐς ἅλα. Id. viii. 56.