|O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill! Will a swallow--or a swift, or some bird-- Fly to her and say, I love her still? Say my life's a desert drear and arid, To its one green spot I aye recur: Never, never, although three times married-- Have I cared a jot for aught but her. No, mine own! though early forced to leave you, Still my heart was there where first we met; In those "Lodgings with an ample sea-view," Which were, forty years ago, "To Let." There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest Little daughter. On a thing so fair Thou, O Sun,--who (so they say) beholdest Everything,--hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er. There she sat--so near me, yet remoter Than a star--a blue-eyed bashful imp: On her lap she held a happy bloater, 'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp. And I loved her, and our troth we plighted On the morrow by the shingly shore: In a fortnight to be disunited By a bitter fate for evermore. O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed! To be young once more, and bite my thumb [Illustration: 003;] At the world and all its cares with you, I'd Give no inconsiderable sum. Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed, Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn: Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we'd Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:-- Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper, That sweet mite with whom I loved to play? Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper, That bright being who was always gay? Yes, she has at least a dozen wee things! Yes--I see her darning corduroys, Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things, For a howling herd of hungry boys, In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil! But at intervals she thinks, I know, Of those days which we, afar from turmoil, Spent together forty years ago. O my earliest love, still unforgotten, With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue! Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton To another as I did to you! ----C. S. Calverley. SAD MEMORIES |They tell me I am beautiful: they praise my silken hair, My little feet that silently slip on from stair to stair: They praise my pretty trustful face and innocent grey eye; Fond hands caress me oftentimes, yet would that I might die! Why was I born to be abhorr'd of man and bird and beast? The bullfinch marks me stealing by, and straight his song hath ceased; The shrewmouse eyes me shudderingly, then flees; and worse than that, The housedog he flees after me--why was I born a cat? Men prize the heartless hound who quits dry- eyed his native land; Who wags a mercenary tail and licks a tyrant hand. The leal true cat they prize not, that if e'er compell'd to roam Still flies, when let out of the bag, precipitately home.