Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/193

Rh If your eyes are black as sloes,

And your locks of ebon hue;

O'er your cheeks if nature throws

Only just enough of rose.

Why, I think you'll do.

If with pretty mouth you sing,

Void of all extravaganza,

Tender melodies that bring

Hearts around you fluttering,

You are worth a stanza.

If you be in soul a child

Lively as a meteor,

Yet with a discretion mild.

Tempering the spirit wild,

You're a charming creature.

Nearly all the poets have sung of a Margaret (and in this they have all done well, though they have not all sung well)—here is Mr. Quillinan's contribution

We conclude our quotations with a fragment descriptive of Wordsworth, from some lines on the visit of Queen Adelaide to the aged bard:

Him, the High Druid of the oak-clad fells

And aqueous vales of our romantic North,

The breasts of thousands, yea of millions, own

To be the Seer, whose power hath o'er them most

A sway like that of conscience ….

He, in his sunny childhood, sported wild

Among the wild flowers and the pensile ferns

That fringe the craggy banks of waterfalls,

Whose pools were arched, with irises enwoven

Of spray and sunbeams: these into his mind

Pass'd, and were blent with fancies of his own;

And in that interfusion of bright hues

His soul grew up and brighten'd. On the peaks

Of mighty hills he learnt the mysteries

That float 'twixt heaven and earth. The strenuous key

Of cloud-born torrents harmonised his verse