our lyric lips,
And sets our hearts a-flame,
And then, like Ariel, off she trips,
And none know how she came.

Only, henceforth, for right or wrong,
By some dull sense grown keen,
Some blank hour blossomed into song,
We feel that she has been.

JOCOSA LYRA.

In our hearts is the Great One of Avon
Engraven,
And we climb the cold summits once built on
By Milton.

But at times not the air that is rarest
Is fairest,
And we long in the valley to follow
Apollo.

Then we drop from the heights atmospheric
To Herrick,
Or we pour the Greek honey, grown blander,
Of Landor;

Or our cosiest nook in the shade is
Where Praed is,
Or we toss the light bells of the mocker
With Locker.

Oh, the song where not one of the Graces
Tight-laces,--
Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly,
But archly,--

Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying,
Comes playing,--
And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer
In answer,--

It will last till men weary of pleasure
In measure!
It will last till men weary of laughter ...
And after!

MY BOOKS.

They dwell in the odour of camphor,
They stand in a Sheraton shrine,
They are "warranted early editions,"
These worshipful tomes of mine;--

In their creamiest "Oxford vellum,"
In their redolent "crushed Levant,"
With their delicate watered linings,
They are jewels of price, I grant;--

Blind-tooled and morocco-jointed,
They have Zaehnsdorf's daintiest dress,
They are graceful, attenuate, polished,
But they gather the dust, no less;--

For the row that I prize is yonder,
Away on the unglazed shelves,
The bulged and the bruised _octavos_,
The dear and the dumpy twelves,--

Montaigne with his sheepskin blistered,
And Howell the worse for wear,
And the worm-drilled Jesuits' Horace,
And the little old cropped Moliere,

And the Burton I bought for a florin,
And the Rabelais foxed and flea'd,--
For th