She listened with a heightened grace, She blushed a blush like ruby wine, Then bent her stately head, and clinked Her spectacles on mine. A mighty impulse rattled through Her well articulated frame; And into one delighted ear She breathed my Christian name. And whispered that my song had given Her secret thought substantial shape, For she had long considered me The offshoot of an ape. She raised me from the enchanted floor, And, as my lips her shoulder met, Between two asthmas of embrace She called me marmosette. I strove to calm her down; she grew Serener and serener; And so I won my Gwendoline, My vertebrate congener. J. BRUNTON STEPHENS. ――――:o:―――― PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. “Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris; neque si male cesserat, usquam Decurrens alio, neque si bene.” HOR. My pensive Public, wherefore look you sad? I had a grandmother, she kept a donkey To carry to the mart her crockery-ware, And when that donkey look’d me in the face, His face was sad! and you are sad, my Public! Joy should be yours: this tenth day of October Again assembles us in Drury Lane. Long wept my eye to see the timber planks That hid our ruins; many a day I cried, Ah me! I fear they never will rebuild it! Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, As along Charles Street I prepared to walk, Just at the corner, by the pastrycook’s, I heard a trowel tick against a brick. I look’d me up, and straight a parapet Uprose at least seven inches o’er the planks. Joy to thee, Drury! to myself I said: [86]He of Blackfriars Road, who hymned thy downfall In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied That Flames, like those from prostrate Solyma, Would scorch the hand that ventured to rebuild thee, Has proved a lying prophet. From that hour, As leisure offer’d, close to Mr. Spring’s Box-office door, I’ve stood and eyed the builders. They had a plan to render less their labours; Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder With hodded heads, but these stretch’d forth a pole From the wall’s pinnacle, they placed a pulley Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley; To this a basket dangled; mortar and bricks Thus freighted, swung securely to the top, And in the empty basket workmen twain Precipitate, unhurt, accosted earth. Oh! ’twas a goodly sound, to hear the people Who watch’d the work express their various thoughts While some believed it never would be finish’d Some, on the contrary believed it would.