Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/537

526 This somewhat free rendering does not, of course, preserve the peculiar character of the original.

On being reminded by a lady that she had forgotten a promise made on a certain occasion to extemporise a verse, the Ciega answered:

O yes! I heard thee at the college;

For blind, alas! I had no knowledge

Of whom thou wert; but now I here

Fulfil the promise made thee there,

And with this hurried verse I bring

Good wishes, blessings, everything

Which the suggestion of a minute

Can offer; and I only pray

Forgiveness for this roundelay,

And all the faults—too many—in it.

The Spaniards are remarkable for the success with which they cultivate the art of improvisation, and I have heard excellent asonante verses sung by the muleteers, in which they recounted their own adventures, and lightened the fatigues of their journeys by rhymed extempore narratives of their own invention.

The most extraordinary improvisator of whom I have had personal knowledge, was Willem de Clercq, of the Hague who in a language—the Dutch—not remarkably poetical, would pour out fine verses by the hour, distinguished alike for the perfection of the stanza and the variety of fanciful thought and excursive knowledge they displayed.

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deep bay windows lit the room In which we watch’d the evening gloom; In this myself and Lucy sat, Pater and maiden aunts in that; The gaslight on the flags below And on our ceiling cast a glow.

While pater and his coterie Talk’d matters parliamentary; Or rul’d, with solemn shake of head, How prudently the young should wed, In my committee I said, “This, My dearest, is the time to kiss!”

Lured by the shadowy hour and nook, The proffer’d pledge she coyly took; When, lo! by our unlucky fate, In silhouette, our tête-a-tête, Noses and pouted lips were all Obliquely shadow’d on the wall!

So, when the footman brings in tea, Sombre are they, and scarlet we: The lamp has prematurely shown A truth we had not dared to own: Small thanks to light untimely cast,— And yet this kiss was not our last!

J. S.