DRAMATIS PERSON.E

IV.

I earned no more by a warble
Than you by a sketch in plaster;
You wanted a piece of marbie,

I needed a music-master.

V.

We studied hard in our styles,

Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,

For air looked out on the tiles,

For fun watched each other's windows.

VI.

You lounged, like a boy of the South,

Cap and blouse-nay, a bit of beard too;

Or you got it, rubbing your mouth

With fingers the clay adhered to.

VII.

And I-soon managed to find

Weak points in the flower-fence facing,

Was forced to put up a

blind

And be safe in my corset-lacing.

VIII.

No harm! It was not my fault

If you never turned your eye's tail up As I shook upon E in alt,

Or ran the chromatic scale up:

IX.

For spring bade the sparrows pair,
And the boys and girls gave guesses,
And stalls in our street looked rare

With bulrush and watercresses.

X.

Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power

Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

XI.

I did look, sharp as a lynx,

(And yet the memory rankles)

When models arrived, some minx

Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

XII.

But I think I gave you as good!
"That foreign fellow,-who can know

"How she pays, in a playful mood,

"For his tuning her that piano?'

XIII.

Could you say so, and never say

"Suppose we join hands and fortunes,

"And I fetch her from over the way,

"Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?"

XIV.

No, no: you would not be rash,

Nor I rasher and something over: You've to settle yet Gibson's hash, And Grisi yet lives in clover.

XV.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,

I'm queen myself at bals-paré,

I've married a rich old lord,

And you 're dubbed knight and an R.A.

XVI.

Each life unfulfilled, you see;

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,-been happy.

A FACE.

If one could have that little head of hers

Painted upon a background of pale gold, Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers!

No shade encroaching on the matchless mould
Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,
For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft

Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's
Burthen of honey-coloured buds to kiss
And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.

Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround,
How it should waver on the pale gold ground
Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb :
But these are only massed there, I should think,
Waiting to see some wonder momently

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