Down comes rain-drop, bubble follows:
On the house-top one by one
Flock the synagogue of swallows,

Met to vote that autumn's gone.

There are hundreds of them sitting,
Met to vote in unison;

They resolve on general flitting,
"I'm for Athens off," says one.

"Every year my place is filled in
Plinth of pillared Parthenon,
Where a ball has struck the building,
Shot from Turk's besieging gun."

"As for me, I've got my chamber
O'er a Smyrna coffee-shop,
Where his beadroll, made of amber
Hadji') counts, and sips a drop."

"I prefer Palmyra's scantlings,2)
Architraves of lone Baalbec,

Perched on which I feed my bantlings
As they ope their bonnie beak."

While the last, to tell her plan says,
"On the second cataract

I've a statue of old Ramses,

And his neck is nicely crack'd."

A complete edition of Mahony's works appeared in 1870, not long after his death.

Lord Lytton (Edward Lytton Bulwer Lytton).

The celebrity of Lord Lytton (1805-1872) as a novelist has made many readers forget that he began his literary career as a poet; and, in fact it can hardly be said that he ever altogether gave up versemaking. His earliest effusions, especially O'Neil or the Rebel, he indirectly confesses, in his preface to the Siamese Twins, were imitations of Byron, but he frames

General name for a Mahometan pilgrim to Mecca.

2) Properly speaking, timber cut small for building purposes; but likewise, the general form or outline of an object.

for himself an ingenious excuse. He says: "While the public, fascinated by the brilliancy of a bold and uncommon genius, grow wedded to his style

even to

his faults they resent with peculiar contempt any resemblance to the object of an admiration which they affect to preserve as an exclusive worship. And yet how few can escape from a seeming imitation, which in reality is nothing more than the tone of the age in which they live; and though more emphatically noted in the most popular poet than in his less fortunate contemporaries, he also was influenced by, instead of creating." Of his more matured poetical efforts one of the best is Milton, which, as he informs us, "is founded upon the well-known, though unauthenticated tradition of the Italian lady seeing Milton asleep under a tree, and leaving some verses beside him, descriptive of her admiration of his beauty." Lord Lytton makes the young poet awake in time to distinguish the lady's features, and he is no less struck with her beauty than she is with his.

O'er him she leant enamour'd, and her sigh
Breath'd near and nearer to his silent mouth,
Rich with the hoarded odours of the south.
Did her locks touch his cheek? or did he feel
Her breath like music o'er his spirit steal?
I know not but the spell of sleep was broke;
He started faintly murmur'd and awoke!

-

He woke as Moslems wake from death, to see
The Houris of their heaven; and reverently,
He look'd the transport of his soul's amaze :
And their eyes met! the deep, deep love supprest
For years, and treasur'd in each secret breast
Waken'd, and glow'd, and center'd in their gaze.
And their eyes met one moment and no more!

Young Milton, after some time has elapsed, meets with the lady, who is called Zoe, in Rome, and they become declared lovers; but they are at last forced to part, and Milton returns to England, to aid in upholding the menaced cause of liberty. Years pass over. The poet becomes blind and old, and sinks gradually into the grave.

Beneath a church's chancel there were laid

A great man's bones and when the crowd was gone,
An aged woman, in black robes arrayed,

Lingered and wept beside the holy stone.

None knew her name, or land; her voice was sweet
With the strange music of a foreign tongue :

Thrice on that spot her bending form they meet,
Thrice on that stone are freshest garlands hung.
On the fourth day she came not; and the wreath
Look'd dim and withered from its odorous breath;
And if I err not wholly, on that day,

A soul that loved till death had passed away!

The Siamese Twins is a satirical poem, in four books. It purports to contain the history of the Siamese brothers, Ching and Chang, but is full of hard hits at English society, as it existed in 1831. Many of these have now lost their point; even the ironical compliments, in the dedication to the great traveller and champion of the English aristocracy, Captain Basil Hall, will be hardly understood by many readers. Another satire of Lord Lytton's, the New Timon, is really an admirable production, not unworthy of Byron or Pope, but the author has marred its effect a good deal, not only by the undiscriminating praise or blame which he lavishes on nearly all the leading men of the day, but also by encumbering it with an improbable romantic story, which he would have done better to omit. It is in the New Timon, the first part of which appeared in December 1845, that the sarcastic allusion to Tennyson occurred, which drew on Lord Lytton a severe castigation from the laureate. The obnoxious lines were:

Not mine, not mine (O Muse forbid!) the boon
Of borrow'd notes, the mock-bird's modish tune,
The jingling medley of purloined conceits,
Out-babying Wordsworth and out-glittering Keats;
Where all the airs of patch-work pastoral chime
To drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme!

Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight
On "darling little rooms so warm and light;"
Chant "I'm a-weary" in infectious strain,
And catch "the blue fly singing i' the pane;"

Tho' praised by critics and adored by Blues,
Tho' Peel with pudding plump the puling muse,
Tho' Theban taste the Saxon purse controls,

And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles.1)

Among Lord Lytton's more important poetical works, we have still to mention Eva, the Ill-omened Marriage, which appeared, in conjunction with some other pieces, in 1842; and King Arthur, a legendary, allegorical, satirical and serio-comic poem in twelve books, imitated from Spenser and Ariosto, but too long to sustain the interest and avoid tediousness, in spite of its many keen allusions to modern public personages. The first part of this poem was published in 1848, not long after the February revolution in Paris, the remainder in the following year; and many of the characters may be easily identified as actors in that great political drama. Thus, Guizot, under the name of Astutio, is presented to us as a man who

Took souls for wares, and conscience for a till; 2)

And damned his fame to serve his master's will.

In the volume previously mentioned (Eva), there are some good verses. The ingenious illustration of the difference between genius and mere talent is familiar to every educated Englishman:

Genius, the sudden Iris of the skies,

On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dyes:
And, to the earth, in tears and glory given,
Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of Heaven!
Talent gives all that vulgar critics need

From its plain horn-book learn the dull to read:
Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful,

Leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull

From eyes profane a veil the Isis screens,

And fools on fools still ask "What Hamlet means?"

1) Sir Robert Peel had granted Tennyson a pension of £ 200 a-year. Mr. Knowles finally obtained a pension to the same

amount.

2) A money-box in a shop.

Of Lord Lytton's shorter poems we give a few

specimens:

SONG.

Ah, let us love while yet we may:
Our summer is decaying;

And woe to hearts which in their gray
December go a-maying.

Ah, let us love, while of the fire
Time hath not yet bereft us:

With years our warmer thoughts expire,
Till only ice is left us.

We'll fly the bleak world's bitter air
A brighter home shall win us;
And if our hearts grow weary there,
We'll find a world within us.

They preach that passion fades each hour,
That nought will pall like pleasure:
My bee, if life's so frail a flower,

Oh, haste to hive its treasure!

Wait not the hour when all the mind
Shall to the crowd be given;

For links which to the million bind
Shall from the one be riven.

But let us love while yet we may:
Our summer is decaying;

And woe to hearts which in their gray
December go a-maying.

THE FLOWER GIRL BY THE CROSSING.
By the muddy crossing in the crowded streets

Stands a little maid with her basket full of posies, Proffering all who pass her choice of knitted sweets, Tempting Age with heart's-ease, courting Youth with roses. Age disdains the heart's-ease,

Love rejects the roses;

London life is busy

Who can stop for posies?

One man is too grave, another is too gay

This man has his hothouse, that man not a penny;

Flowerets too are common in the month of May,

And the things most common least attract the many.
Ill on London crossings

Fares the sale of posies;

Age disdains the heart's-ease,
Youth rejects the roses.