"Sleep, oh, sleep! The Shepherd loveth His sheep. He that guardeth His flock the best Hath folded them to His loving breast; So sleep ye now, and take your rest,-- Sleep, oh, sleep!" From angel and from flower the years have learned that soothing song, And with its heavenly music speed the days and nights along; So through all time, whose flight the Shepherd's vigils glorify, God's Acre slumbereth in the grace of that sweet lullaby,-- "Sleep, oh, sleep! The Shepherd loveth His sheep. Fast speedeth the night away, Soon cometh the glorious day; Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,-- Sleep, oh, sleep!" DEAR OLD LONDON. WHEN I was broke in London in the fall of '89, I chanced to spy in Oxford Street this tantalizing sign,-- "A Splendid Horace cheap for Cash!" Of course I had to look Upon the vaunted bargain, and it was a noble book! A finer one I've never seen, nor can I hope to see,-- The first edition, richly bound, and clean as clean can be; And, just to think, for three-pounds-ten I might have had that Pine, When I was broke in London in the fall of '89! Down at Noseda's, in the Strand, I found, one fateful day, A portrait that I pined for as only maniac may,-- A print of Madame Vestris (she flourished years ago, Was Bartolozzi's daughter and a thoroughbred, you know). A clean and handsome print it was, and cheap at thirty bob,-- That's what I told the salesman, as I choked a rising sob; But I hung around Noseda's as it were a holy shrine, When I was broke in London in the fall of '89. At Davey's, in Great Russell Street, were autographs galore, And Mr. Davey used to let me con that precious store. Sometimes I read what warriors wrote, sometimes a king's command, But oftener still a poet's verse, writ in a meagre hand. Lamb, Byron, Addison, and Burns, Pope, Johnson, Swift, and Scott,-- It needed but a paltry sum to comprehend the lot; Yet, though Friend Davey marked 'em down, what could I but decline? For I was broke in London in the fall of '89. Of antique swords and spears I saw a vast and dazzling heap That Curio Fenton offered me at prices passing cheap; And, oh, the quaint old bureaus, and the warming-pans of brass, And the lovely hideous freaks I found in pewter and in glass! And, oh, the sideboards, candlesticks, the cracked old china plates, The clocks and spoons from Amsterdam that antedate all dates! Of such superb monstrosities I found an endless mine When I was broke in London in the fall of '89.