Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime, family arguing-bout, and go back, one to his | The withered body of a girl was brought, curacy, another to his chambers and another to his regiment, freshened for work and more than ever convinced that the Browns are the height of company. This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness, makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile. Most other folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white whiskers and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age. They have always a crotchet going till the old man with the scythe reaps and ners them away for troublesome old boys, as they are. And the most provoking thing is that no failures knock them up, or make them hold their hands, or think you or me, or other sane people, in the right. gar And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid But when they had unloosed the linen band was found, Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand, ground, Did wondrous show of starry blossoms bear, air. With such strange arts this flower did allure Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell; For not a thing of earth it seemed to be, In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white At its own beauty, hung across the stream; The purple dragon-fly had no delight With its gold-dust to make his wings Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss, For love of it the passionate nightingale Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king, And the pale dove no longer cared to sail Through the wet woods at time of blossoming, But round this flower of Egypt sought to float With silvered wing and amethystine throat. While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue A cooling wind crept from the land of snows, And the warm south with tender tears of dew Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos uprose Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie. But when o'er wastes of lily-haunted field The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune, And, broad and glittering like an argent shield, High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon, Did no strange dream or evil memory make Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake? Ah no! To this bright flower a thousand years Seemed but the lingering of a summer's day'; It never knew the tide of cankering fears Which turn a boy's gold hair to withered gray, The dread desire of death it never knew, rue. For we to death with pipe and dancing go, Nor would we pass the ivory gate again, As some sad river wearied of its flow Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men, Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea, We mar our lordly strength in barren strife With the world's legions, led by clamorous Care; 'Twas no choice plant in hothouse bred And guarded with a tender care; No hand had propped its drooping head Or shielded it from midnight air; Yet choicest flowers might fail to bring To their rich owners thoughts as fair As did that simple, lowly thing To that unhappy man of care, Who from the hedgeside, free to all, Had plucked himself that blossom small. No floweret in a lady's dress, Where all beside is meet and bright, So touching to the gazer's sight, That star amidst the gloom of night— On, on he passed, that human flower Whom men set foot on like a weed; Yet, waiting for a kinder hour, Within was many a precious seed. The beggar's spirit, like his dress, Might not be wholly fair, indeed, Yet some bright bud of loveliness, The germ of many a noble deed, The simple plucking of that flower The kindred sweetness that it soughtA sense of beauty seldom found Where all within is darkly fraught, But often trampled to the ground And mercilessly set at naught |