Whilst all the house my passion r In papers round her baby's hai

She may receive and own my flam For, though the strictest prudes

it,

She'll pass for a most virtuous da And I for an unhappy poet.

Then too alas! when she shall tear The rhymes some younger rival She'll give me leave to write, I fea And we shall still continue friend

For, as our different ages move,

"T is so ordained, (would Fate bu That I shall be past making love, When she begins to comprehend

MATTHE

FEMININE ARITHMETIC

LAURA

ON me he shall ne'er put a ring,

So, mamma, 't is vain to take trouble – For I was but eighteen in spring,

While his age exactly is double.

MAMMA

He's but in his thirty-sixth year,

Tall, handsome, good-natured and witty, And should you refuse him, my dear, May you die an old maid without pity!

LAURA

His figure, I grant you, will pass,

And at present he's young enough plenty;

But when I am sixty, alas!

Will not he be a hundred and twenty?

CHARLES GRAHAM HALPINE

TO CRITICS

WHEN I was seventeen I heard From each censorious tongue, "I'd not do that if I were you; You see you're rather young,'

Now that I number forty years,
I'm quite as often told
Of this or that I should n't do
Because I'm quite too old.

O carping world! If there's an age Where youth and manhood keep

An equal poise, alas! I must

Have passed it in my sleep.

WALTER LEAR

THE PRIME OF LIFE

JUST as I thought I was growing old,
Ready to sit in my easy-chair,

To watch the world with a heart grown cold,
And smile at a folly I would not share,

Rose came by with a smile for me,
And I am thinking that forty year
Is n't the age that it seems to be,

When two pretty brown eyes are near.

Bless me! of life it is just the prime,

A fact that I hope she will understand; And forty year is a perfect rhyme.

To dark brown eyes and a pretty hand.

These gray hairs are by chance, you see
Boys are sometimes gray, I am told:

Rose came by with a smile for me,

Just as I thought I was getting old.

WALTER LEARNED

UPON HIS GRAY HAIRE

FLY me not, though I be gray,
Lady, this I know you'll say;
Better look the Roses red,
When with white commingled.

Black your haires are; mine are w
This begets the more delight,
When things meet most opposite:
As in Pictures we descry,

Venus standing Vulcan by.

ROBERT HER