They climb up into my turret O’er the arms and back of my chair: If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses; Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine. LONGFELLOW: _The Children’s Hour_. * * * * * Men and devils both contrive Traps for catching girls alive; Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,— How, oh, how can you resist? HOLMES. * * * * * Kiss but the crystal’s mystic rim, Each shadow rends its flowery chain, Springs in a bubble from its brim, And walks the chambers of the brain. HOLMES. * * * * * Now, why thy long delaying? Alack! thy beads and praying! If thou, a saint, dost hope To kneel and kiss the Pope, Then I, a sinner, know Where sweeter kisses grow— Nay, now, just one before we go! TILTON: _Flight from the Convent_. * * * * * [Before closing this portion of our selections, it is worth while to note the popular misconception of the favorite ditty “Coming through the Rye,” as shown in the pictorial illustrations which present a laddie and lassie meeting and kissing in a field of grain. The lines,— “If a laddie meet a lassie Comin’ thro’ the rye,” and especially the other couplet,— “A’ the lads they smile on me When comin’ thro’ the rye,” seem to imply that traversing the rye was a habitual or common thing; but what in the name of the Royal Agricultural Society could be the object in trampling down a crop of grain in that style? The song, perhaps, suggests a harvest-scene, where both sexes, as is the custom in Great Britain, are at work reaping, and where they would come and go through the field indeed, but not through the rye itself, so as to meet and kiss in it. The truth is, the rye in this case is no more grain than Rye Beach is, it being the name of a small shallow stream near Ayr, in Scotland, which, having neither bridge nor ferry, was forded by the people going to and from the market, custom allowing a lad to steal a kiss from any lass of his acquaintance whom he met in mid-stream. Reference to the first verse, in which the lass is shown as wetting her clothes in the stream, confirms this explanation: “Jenny is a’ wat, puir bodie; Jenny’s seldom dry; She drag’lt a’ her petticoatie, Comin’ thro’ the rye.”] EXTRACTS FROM THE OLD BALLADS. MARRIAGE OF GILBERT BECKET. And quickly hied he down the stair; Of fifteen steps he made but three; He’s ta’en his bonny love in arms, And kist, and kist her tenderlie. BIRTH OF ROBIN HOOD. He took his bonny boy in his arms, And kist him tenderlie; Says, “Though I would your father hang, Your mother’s dear to me.”