PHOEBUS, sitting one day in a laurel

tree's shade,

Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,

For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,

She took to the tree to escape his pursuing ;

Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk,

And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk;

And, though 't was a step into which he had driven her,

He somehow or other had never forgiven her;

Her memory he nursed as a kind of

a tonic,

Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic,

And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over

By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her.

My case is like Dido's," he sometimes remarked;

"When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked

In a laurel, as she thought-but (ah, how Fate mocks!)

She has found it by this time a very bad box;

Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,

You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it.

Just conceive such a change taking place | in one's mistress !

What romance would be left?-who can flatter or kiss trees? And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue

With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,

-

poets!

holds good,

never will cry till she's out of the wood!

We read of his verses- the Oracles, namely,

(I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely,

For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk,

They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors

Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores, —)

First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is

Would induce a mustache, for you know he's imberbis ; Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position

Was assailed by the age of his son the physician;

At some poems he glanced, had been

sent to him lately,

And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; "Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felonious,

Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius?

Look well to your seat, 't is like taking an airing

On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing;

It leads one, 't is true, through the primitive forest,

Grand natural features, but then one has no rest;

You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance,

When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,

Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?"

- Here the laurel-leaves murmured the

name of poor Daphne.

'T were

a kind of relief had I something to groan over:

If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over,

I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher,

And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her.

Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise,

Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes."

Now there happened to be among Phoebus's followers,

sighed, "for you know it's

swallowers,

the press, Without the least question of larger or less,

Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,

For reading new books is like eating new bread,

One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he

Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy.

On a previous stage of existence, our Hero

Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero;

He had been, 't is a fact you may safely rely on,

Of a very old stock a most eminent

scion, A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on,

Who stretch the new boots Earth's un

willing to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on

Whose hair's in the mortar of every new Zion,

Who, when whistles are dear, go directly

skill);

So, when his soul waited a new transmigration,

And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that station,

Not having much time to expend upon bothers,

Remembering he 'd had some connection with authors,

And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,

She set him on two, and he came forth a critic.

Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took

In any amusement but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age;

There were years when he did n't wear coat-tails behind,

But a boy he could never be rightly defined;

Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man;

While other boys' trousers demanded the toil

Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil,

He

Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one,

And at last choose the hard bed of honor

revel once

base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once;

He was just one of those who excite the benevolence

Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a ledger,

And are on the lookout for some young

men to "edger

cate," as they call it, who won't be too costly,

And who 'll afterward take to the ministry mostly;

Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious,

Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear

dred a year:

Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful

And here I must say he wrote excellent articles

On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles,

They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for;

And nobody read that which nobody cared for;

If any old book reached a fiftieth edition,

He could fill forty pages with safe erudition:

He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules,

And his very old nothings pleased very old fools;

But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart,

And you put him at sea without compass or chart,

His blunders aspired to the rank of an art;

For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him,

So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him,

Carving new forms of truth out of Na-
ture's old granite,
New and old at their birth, like Le
Verrier's planet,

Which,

to get a true judgment, themselves must create

In the soul of their critic the measure and weight,