ed, "you lie!"
He answered, ... "Let us see."

"Enough!" I returned, "let the dead decide:
And whosesoever the portrait prove,
His shall it be, when the cause is tried,
Where Death is arraigned by Love."

We found the portrait there, in its place:
We opened it by the tapers' shine:
The gems were all unchanged: the face
Was--neither his nor mine.
"One nail drives out another, at least!
The face of the portrait there," I cried,
"Is our friend's, the Raphael-faced young Priest,
Who confessed her when she died."

The setting is all of rubies red,
And pearls which a Peri might have kept.
For each ruby there my heart hath bled:
For each pearl my eyes have wept.

ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON (_Owen Meredith_).

ONLY A WOMAN.

"She loves with love that cannot tire:
And if, ah, woe! she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love flames higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone."

--COVENTRY PATMORE.

So, the truth's out. I'll grasp it like a snake,--
It will not slay me. My heart shall not break
Awhile, if only for the children's sake.

For his, too, somewhat. Let him stand unblamed;
None say, he gave me less than honor claimed,
Except--one trifle scarcely worth being named--

The heart. That's gone. The corrupt dead might be
As easily raised up, breathing,--fair to see,
As he could bring his whole heart back to me.

I never sought him in coquettish sport,
Or courted him as silly maidens court,
And wonder when the longed-for prize falls short.

I only loved him,--any woman would:
But shut my love up till he came and sued,
Then poured it o'er his dry life like a flood.

I was so happy I could make him blest!--
So happy that I was his first and best,
As he mine,--when he took me to his breast.

Ah me! if only then he had been true!
If for one little year, a month or two,
He had given me love for love, as was my due!

Or had he told me, ere the deed was done,
He only raised me to his heart's dear throne--
Poor substitute--because the queen was gone!

O, had he whispered, when his sweetest kiss
Was warm upon my mouth in fancied bliss,
He had kissed another woman even as this,--

It were less bitter! Sometimes I could weep
To be thus cheated, like a child asleep;--
Were not my anguish far too dry and deep.

So I built my house upon another's ground;
Mocked with a heart just caught at the rebound,--
A cankered thing that looked so firm and sound.