Behold! I have done it: my stomach is smitten With sweets of the surfeit her hands have unrolled. Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten: I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered, and sold! No man of thy millions is more macaronied, Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me: The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied, And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee! From _Diversions of the Echo Club_, by Bayard Taylor. ――――:o:―――― BALLAD OF DREAMLAND. I. I hid my heart in a nest of roses, Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart; In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is, Under the roses I hid my heart. Why should it sleep not? why should it start, When never a leaf of the rose tree stirred? What made sleep flutter his wings and part? Only the song of a secret bird. * * * * * III. The green land’s name that a charm encloses, It never was writ in the traveller’s chart, And sweet as the fruit on its tree that grows is, It never was sold in the merchants’ mart. The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart, And sleep’s are the tunes in its tree tops heard; No hound’s note wakens the wild wood hart, Only the song of a secret bird. * * * * * A. C. SWINBURNE. ―――― A BALLAD OF AFTER DINNER. _A Month after Swinburne._ I hid my head in a rug from Moses, From the clatter of moving dishes apart, And curled up my feet for forty dozes, Just for to soothe my beating heart. Why did it sleep not? Why did it start, When never a dish remained to shock? What made the fluttering doze depart? Only the tick of an eight day clock. Be still, I said, for hope pre-supposes A still mild mood for the sleep-slain hart; Be still, for the wind, with its curled-up toes, is Silent and quieter yet than thou art. Doth a wound in thee deep as a thorn’s wound smart? Dost thou fretfully languish for Clicquot and hock? What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart; Only the tick of an eight-day clock. I wait in vain for the charm that encloses The green land of dreams in sleep’s mystical chart, For the fruit of its trees and the breath of its roses, More sweet than are sold in the merchants’ mart. So close to its border, why fails my heart? What holdeth it back, tho’ my dim brain rock? Without, the noise of the nightman’s cart, Within, the tick of an eight-day clock. _Envoi._ Erewhile in hope I had chosen my part, To sleep for a season as sound as a block, With never a thought of a nightman’s cart, Or the hateful tick of an eight-day clock. ―――― A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND.