8.

So that when (Ah joy !) our singer
For his truant string

Feels with disconcerted finger,

What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note

Wanted by the throbbing throat?

9.

Ay and, ever to the ending,
Cricket chirps at need,
Executes the hand's intending,
Promptly, perfectly, - indeed
Saves the singer from defeat
With her chirrup low and sweet.

10.

Till, at ending, all the judges
Cry with one assent

"Take the prize-a prize who grudges
Such a voice and instrument?

Why, we took your lyre for harp,
So it shrilled us forth F sharp!"

II.

Did the conqueror spurn the creature,
Once its service done?

That's no such uncommon feature

In the case when Music's son Finds his Lotte's power too spent For aiding soul-development.

St. II. when Music's son, etc.: a fling at Goethe.

12.

No! This other, on returning
Homeward, prize in hand,
Satisfied his bosom's yearning:

(Sir, I hope you understand!)

- Said "Some record there must be Of this cricket's help to me!"

13.

So, he made himself a statue :
Marble stood, life-size;

On the lyre, he pointed at you,
Perched his partner in the prize;
Never more apart you found

Her, he throned, from him, she crowned.

14.

That's the tale: its application?

Somebody I know

Hopes one day for reputation

Through his poetry that's — Oh,

All so learned and so wise

And deserving of a prize!

15.

If he gains one, will some ticket,
When his statue's built,

Tell the gazer ""Twas a cricket

Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt Sweet and low, when strength usurped Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped?

16.

"For as victory was nighest,

While I sang and played,

What I viewed there once, what I view again

Where the physic bottles stand

On the table's edge, is a suburb lane,

With a wall to my bedside hand.

3.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry

O'er the garden-wall is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?

4.

To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;

And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"

Is the house o'er-topping all.

What right had a lounger up their lane?

But, by creeping very close,

With the good wall's help, their eyes might strain

And stretch themselves to Oes,

8.

Yet never catch her and me together,

As she left the attic, there,

By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether,"

And stole from stair to stair,

9.

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,

We loved, sir used to meet :

DEAR, had the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim "I know you both,
Have recognized your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you: live in peace!
How many precious months and years
Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,

The world, and what it fears?

2.

How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,

Society's true ornament,

Ere we dared wander, nights like this,

Through wind and rain, and watch the Seine,

And feel the Boulevart break again

To warmth and light and bliss?

3.

I know the world proscribes not love;

Allows my finger to caress

Your lips' contour and downiness, Provided it supply a glove.