A PEAL OF BELLS.

TRIKE the bells wantonly,

STRIK

Tinkle tinkle well;

Bring me wine, bring me flowers,

Ring the silver bell.

All my lamps burn scented oil,
Hung on laden orange-trees,
Whose shadowed foliage is the foil
To golden lamps and oranges.
Heap my golden plates with fruit,

Golden fruit, fresh-plucked and ripe, Strike the bells and breathe the pipe; Shut out showers from summer hours— Silence that complaining lute—

Shut out thinking, shut out pain,
From hours that cannot come again.

Strike the bells solemnly,

Ding dong deep:

My friend is passing to his bed,

Fast asleep;

There's plaited linen round his head,

While foremost go his feet

His feet that cannot carry him.
My feast's a show, my lights are dim;
Be still, your music is not sweet,—
There is no music more for him:

His lights are out, his feast is done; His bowl that sparkled to the brim

Is drained, is broken, cannot hold;
My blood is chill, his blood is cold;
His death is full, and mine begun.

66

"NOW

NOBLE SISTERS.

did you
Sister dear, sister dear,

mark a falcon,

Flying toward my window.

In the morning cool and clear?

With jingling bells about her neck,
But what beneath her wing?

"I marked a falcon swooping
At the break of day:

And for your love, my sister dove,
I 'frayed the thief away."-

"Or did you spy a ruddy hound,

Sister fair and tall,

Went snuffing round my garden bound,

Or crouched by my bower wall?
With a silken leash about his neck;
But in his mouth may be
A chain of gold and silver links,

Or a letter writ to me.".

"I heard a hound, highborn sister,
Stood baying at the moon:

I rose and drove him from your wall,
Lest you should wake too soon."-

"Or did you meet a pretty page

Sat swinging on the gate;
Sat whistling whistling like a bird,
Or may be slept too late:
With eaglets broidered on his cap,
And eaglets on his glove?

If you had turned his pockets out,

You had found some pledge of love.”— "I met him at this daybreak,

Scarce the east was red:

Lest the creaking gate should anger you,
I packed him home to bed."-

"Oh patience, sister. Did you see
A young man tall and strong,
Swift-footed to uphold the right
And to uproot the wrong,
Come home across the desolate sea
To woo me for his wife?

And in his heart my heart is locked,

And in his life my life."

"I met a nameless man, sister,

Hard by your chamber door :

I said: Her husband loves her much,
she loves him more."-

And

yet

“Fie, sister, fie, a wicked lie,

A lie, a wicked lie,

I have none other love but him,

Nor will have till I die.

And you have turned him from our door,
And stabbed him with a lie:

I will go seek him through the world
In sorrow till I die.".

"Go seek in sorrow, sister,

And find in sorrow too:

If thus you shame our father's name,
My curse go forth with you!"

Robert Buchanan.

A LONDON IDYL.

HEY, rain, rain, rain!

It patters down the glass and on the sill, And splashes underneath, along the lane

Then gives a kind of scream, and lies quite still One likes to hear it, though, when one is ill; Rain, rain, rain, rain!

Hey, how it pours and pours!

Rain, rain, rain, rain!

A weary day for poor girls out o' doors!

II.

Ah, don't! that kind of comfort makes me cry,
And, parson, since I'm bad, I want to die.
The roaring of the street,

The tramp, tramp, tramp of feet,
The sobbing,-sobbing, of the weary rain,
Have gone into the aching of my brain.
I'm lost and weak, and can no longer bear
To wander like a shadow here and there-

As useless as a stone-tired out-and sick! So that they put me down to slumber quick, It does not matter where.

No one will miss me; all will hurry by,

And never cast a thought on one so low; Fine gentles miss fine ladies when they go, But folk care naught for such a thing as I.

III.

"Tis bad, I know, to talk like that—too bad! Joe, though he's often hard, is strong and true(Ah, Joe meant well!) and there's the Baby too But I'm so tired and sad!

I'm glad it was a boy, Sir, very glad.

his say,

his head,

A man can fight along, can say
Is not looked down upon, holds up
And at a push can always earn his bread:
Men have the best of it, in many a way.

But ah! 'tis hard indeed for girls to keep
Decent and honest, tramping in the town,

Their best but bad-made light of-beaten down— Forever wearying, wearying, for sleep.

If they grow hard, go wrong, from bad to badder,
Why, Parson dear, they're happier being blind:
They get no thanks for being good and kind—
The better that they are, they feel the sadder!

Only nineteen, and yet so old, so old!

I feel like fifty, Parson—I have been

So wicked, I suppose, and life's so cold!