Voices I have not heard possessed

My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed
With relics of the far unknown;

And mixed with memories not my own
The sweet streams throng into my breast.

Before this life began to be,

The happy songs that wake in me
Woke long ago, and far apart
Heavily on this little heart
Presses this immortality.

ALICE MEYNELL.

THE JESTER'S PLEA.

[Published in a volume by several authors for the benefit of the starving weavers of Lancashire during the American civil war.]

THE World! Was jester ever in

A viler than the present?

Yet if it ugly be-as sin,

It almost is as pleasant!

It is a merry world (pro tem.);
And some are gay, and therefore
It pleases them-but some condemn
The fun they do not care for.

It is an ugly world. Offend

Good people-how they wrangle!
The manners that they never mend!
The characters they mangle!

They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plot
And go to church on Sunday;

And many are afraid of God—

And more of Mrs. Grundy.

The time for Pen and Sword was when

"My ladye fayre" for pity

Could tend her wounded knight, and then Grow tender at his ditty!

Some ladies now make pretty songs,

And some make pretty nurses;
Some men are good for righting wrongs
And some for writing verses.

I wish We better understood
The tax that poets levy!

I know the Muse is very good —
I think she's rather heavy.
She now compounds for winning ways

By morals of the sternest:
Methinks the lays of nowadays
Are painfully in earnest.

When Wisdom halts, I humbly try

To make the most of Folly;

If Pallas be unwilling, I

Prefer to flirt with Polly:
To quit the goddess for the maid
Seems low in lofty musers;
But Pallas is a haughty jade-
And beggars can't be choosers.

I do not wish to see the slaves
Of party, stirring passion;
Or psalms quite superseding staves,
Or piety" the fashion."

I bless the hearts where pity glows,
Who, here together banded,
Are holding out a hand to those
That wait so empty-handed!

A righteous work!-My Masters, may
A Jester by confession,

Scarce noticed join, half sad, half gay,
The close of your procession?
The motley here seems out of place
With graver robes to mingle;

But if one tear bedews his face,
Forgive the bells their jingle.

FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON.

VERSES WHY BURNT.

How many verses have I thrown
Into the fire because the one
Peculiar word, the wanted most,

Was irrecoverably lost!

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

SWEET NATURE'S VOICE.

FROM "SUSAN: A POEM OF DEGREES."

HER Master gave the signal, with a look:
Then, timidly as if afraid, she took

In her rough hands the Laureate's dainty book,
And straight began. But when she did begin,
Her own mute sense of poesy within

Broke forth to hail the poet, and to greet

His graceful fancies and the accents sweet

In which they are expressed. Oh, lately lost,
Long loved, long honored, and whose Captain's post
No living bard is competent to fill-

How strange, to the deep heart that now is still,
And to the vanished hand, and to the ear
Whose soft melodious measures are so dear
To us who cannot rival them-how strange,
If thou, the lord of such a various range,

Hadst heard this new voice telling Arden's tale!
For this was no prim maiden, scant and pale,
Full of weak sentiment, and thin delight
In pretty rhymes, who mars the resonant might
Of noble verse with arts rhetorical

And simulated frenzy: not at all!

This was a peasant woman; large and strong,
Redhanded, ignorant, unused to song-
Accustomed rather to the rudest prose.
And yet, there lived within her rustic clothes
A heart as true as Arden's; and a brain,
Keener than his, that counts it false and vain
To seem aught else than simply what she is.
How singular, her faculty of bliss!

Bliss in her servile work; bliss deep and full
In things beyond the vision of the dull,
Whate'er their rank: things beautiful as these
Sonorous lines and solemn harmonies
Suiting the tale they tell of; bliss in love-
Ah, chiefly that! which lifts her soul above.
Its common life, and gives to labors coarse
Such fervor of imaginative force

As makes a passion of her basest toil.

Surely this servant-dress was but a foil
To her more lofty being! As she read,
Her accent was as pure, and all she said
As full of interest and of varied grace

As were the changeful moods, that o'er her face
Passed, like swift clouds across a windy sky,
At each sad stage of Enoch's history.
Such ease, such pathos, such abandonment
To what she uttered, moulded as she went
Her soft sweet voice, and with such self-control
Did she, interpreting the poet's soul,

Bridle her own, that when the tale was done

I looked at her, amazed: she seemed like one Who from some sphere of music had come down, And donned the white cap and the cotton gown As if to show how much of skill and art

May dwell unthought of, in the humblest heart. Yet there was no great mystery to tell:

She felt it deeply, so she read it well.

ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY.

GENIUS.

FAR out at sea- -the sun was high,

While veered the wind, and flapped the sailWe saw a snow-white butterfly

Dancing before the fitful gale,

Far out at sea!

The little wanderer, who had lost
His way, of danger nothing knew;
Settled awhile upon the mast,

Then fluttered o'er the waters blue,

Far out at sea.