Yet are sweet faces flinging Their witchery o’er me here: I hear sweet voices singing A song as soft, as clear, As (previously to stinging) A gnat sings round one’s ear. Does Grace draw young Apollos In blue mustachios still? Does Emma tell the swallows How she will pipe and trill, When, some fine day, she follows Those birds to the window-sill? And oh! has Albert faded From Grace’s memory yet? Albert, whose “brow was shaded By locks of glossiest jet,” Whom almost any lady’d Have given her eyes to get? Does not her conscience smite her For one who hourly pines, Thinking her bright eyes brighter Than any star that shines— I mean of course the writer Of these pathetic lines? Who knows? As quoth Sir Walter, “Time rolls his ceaseless course: “The Grace of yore” may alter— And then, I’ve one resource: I’ll invest in a bran-new halter, And I’ll perish without remorse. LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY. ERE the morn the East has crimsoned, When the stars are twinkling there, (As they did in Watts’s Hymns, and Made him wonder what they were:) When the forest-nymphs are beading Fern and flower with silvery dew— My infallible proceeding Is to wake, and think of you. When the hunter’s ringing bugle Sounds farewell to field and copse, And I sit before my frugal Meal of gravy-soup and chops: When (as Gray remarks) “the moping Owl doth to the moon complain,” And the hour suggests eloping— Fly my thoughts to you again. May my dreams be granted never? Must I aye endure affliction Rarely realised, if ever, In our wildest works of fiction? Madly Romeo loved his Juliet; Copperfield began to pine When he hadn’t been to school yet— But their loves were cold to mine. Give me hope, the least, the dimmest, Ere I drain the poisoned cup: Tell me I may tell the chymist Not to make that arsenic up! Else, this heart shall soon cease throbbing; And when, musing o’er my bones, Travellers ask, “Who killed Cock Robin?” They’ll be told, “Miss Sarah J—s.” A, B, C.