But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of many far wiser than we, Who declared the first dividend meeting would prove The last from the L. C. D. But when through the hills and valleys of Kent Our railway reached the sea, We hoped at length our capital spent Would return us some L. S. D. But neither the increase of traffic and fares, Nor the strangers from over the sea, Did ever dissever a coin from our shares In the profitless L. C. D. Yet the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of a dividend yet to be, After centuries past, to gladden at last Our descendants with L. S. D. JOSEPH VEREY. _Hornet_, February 5, 1873. ―――――――― ST. ROSE OF LIMA, PERU (A.D. 1617.) It was many and many a year ago, In a World they call the New, That a maiden there lived whom you may know As the blessed St. Rose of Peru; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than the penances she could do. She was a child, yet never a child Did holiness so pursue, By morning and night, and by candle-light In wisdom and grace she grew, And ever would strive to all earthly faults And pleasures to say adieu. An angel in beauty, she thought it was right To spoil it to mortals’ view, She scratch’d it with briars, and burnt it in fires, Until she was known by few; (O maidens whose charms you but live to adorn This never would do for _you_!) But her fear of the world was more than her fear Of loveliness losing its due―― Of tortures that thrill’d her through: And neither the sackcloth she wore to her skin, Nor her spiky belt thereto, Could ever elicit the faintest complaint From the blessed St. Rose of Peru. When Love drew near with its honey’d words, And tenderly tried to woo, The name of wife and the joys of life She rigidly would eschew. She prick’d, for her sins, her head with pins, And the blood in streamlets drew, And tears they were spilt for her fancied guilt, By the blessed St. Rose of Peru. And oft she would fast, but to eat at last The bitterest herbs she knew, And all that was pleasant and good to the taste In horror away she threw; She stripp’d her garden of all sweet flowers, And sow’d it with thorns and rue. And angels would come and make her one (In dreams) of their seraph crew, And often the Fiend, in his beauty screen’d, Her spirit would fain subdue, But evil could only fail to prevail With the blessed St. Rose of Peru. And these are the reasons her fame would grow In the World they call the New, But youth wasn’t past ere the wintry blast The flame of her life out-blew; There issued a breath from the mouth of Death Chilling and killing the Rose of Peru.