o-day all be the same,
With nothing to be hoped for?
Is not a soul athirst a joyous thing?
Where lies content to him whose eye doth rest on higher things?
What satiation can compare to hope?
Yet who among the satisfied hath need of hope?
What can he hope for if he's satisfied?
'Tis but conceit, and nothing more, to prate of satisfaction!
God spare the day when I am satisfied!
I do not want the earth,
Yet nothing less will leave me quite content;
And once 'tis mine,
I'm very sure you'll find me roaming off
After the universe!

_TO A WITHERED ROSE_

THY span of life was all too short--
A week or two at best--
From budding-time, through blossoming,
To withering and rest.

Yet compensation hast thou--aye!--
For all thy little woes;
For was it not thy happy lot
To live and die a rose?

_THE WORST OF ENEMIES_

I DO not fear an enemy
Who all his days hath hated me.

I do not bother o'er a foe
Whose name and face I do not know.

I mind me not the small attack
Of him who bites behind my back:

But Heaven help me to the end
'Gainst that one who was once my friend.

_JOKES OF THE NIGHT_

BLESSED jokes of my dreams! Your praises I'd sing.
No mirth can compare to the mirth that you bring.
I've read London _Punch_ from beginning to end,
On all comic papers much money I spend,
But naught that is in them can ever seem bright
Beside the rich jokes that I dream of at night.

How I laugh at those jests of my brain when at rest,
The gladdest and merriest, sweetest and best!
And how, when I wake in the morning and try
To call them to mind, oh how bashful, how shy
They seem, how they scatter and hide out of sight--
Those jokes of my dreamings, those jests of the night!

Take the one that came to me to-day just at dawn:
The Cable-Car turns and remarks to the Prawn,
"The Crowbar is seasick; but then what of that,
As long as the Camel won't wear a silk hat?"
I laughed--why, I laughed till my wife had a fright
For fear I'd go wild from that joke of the night.

And they're all much like that one--elusive enough,
Yet full of facetious, hilarious stuff--
Stuff past comprehension, stuff no man dares tell;
For nocturnal jests, e'en told ever so well--
'Tis odd it should be so--are not often bright,
Except to the dreamer who dreams them at night.

_AN AUTUMNAL ROMANCE_