The shade slipped onward to the falling gloom;
  Then came a soldier gallant in her stead,
Swinging a beaver with a swaling plume,
  A ribboned love-lock rippling from his head.

Blue-eyed, frank-faced, with clear and open brow,
  Scar-seamed a little, as the women love;
So kindly fronted that you marvelled how
  The frequent sword-hilt had so frayed his glove;

Who switched at Psyche plunging in the sun;
  Uncrowned three lilies with a backward swinge;
And standing somewhat widely, like to one
  More used to “Boot and Saddle” than to cringe

As courtiers do, but gentleman withal,
  Took out the note;—­held it as one who feared
The fragile thing he held would slip and fall;
  Read and re-read, pulling his tawny beard;

Kissed it, I think, and hid it in his breast;
  Laughed softly in a flattered, happy way,
Arranged the broidered baldrick on his crest,
  And sauntered past, singing a roundelay.

* * * * *

The shade crept forward through the dying glow;
  There came no more nor dame nor cavalier;
But for a little time the brass will show
  A small gray spot,—­the record of a tear.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

LOCKSLEY HALL.

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn,—­
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

’Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall: 

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,—­
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, “My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me;
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.”