Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/81

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS

Her waist you weel micht span;

And she has a rolling eye,

And for bonnie Annie Laurie

I'd lay me doun and die.

The heroine's rolling eye cast its glances away from poor Douglas, and she married a Mr. Ferguson, of Craigdarrock, who found some better mode of winning a maiden's heart than singing under her window-panes. After all, the pleasure is as great in loving as in being loved; and, to put the matter allegorically, Apollo, indignant at the slight inflicted by Venus upon his servant, gave him, unawares, a seat in his temple, and ordained that, for centuries, lovers should sing the song of him who sang in vain.

What manlier love-poetry was ever written than the verses, "To his Mistress," of James Grahame, Marquis of Montrose, wherein he vowed

The poem itself fulfilled half the pledge. More than two hundred years have gone by, and still no lines are more often quoted than this quatrain from the same lyric:

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