If your eyes are black as sloes,
And your locks of ebon hue;
O'er your cheeks if nature throws
Only just enough of rose.
Why, I think you'll do.
If with pretty mouth you sing,
Void of all extravaganza,
Tender melodies that bring
Hearts around you fluttering,
You are worth a stanza.
If you be in soul a child
Lively as a meteor,
Yet with a discretion mild.
Tempering the spirit wild,
You're a charming creature.
Nearly all the poets have sung of a Margaret (and in this they have all done well, though they have not all sung well)—here is Mr. Quillinan's contribution
Both meanings of La Marguerite,
The daisy or the pearl,
For once in perfect concord meet,
And suit the very girl!
Some prophet surely gave that name
At the baptismal hour
Of one who sparkles like a gem,
Though modest as the flower.[1]
We conclude our quotations with a fragment descriptive of Wordsworth, from some lines on the visit of Queen Adelaide to the aged bard:
Him, the High Druid of the oak-clad fells
And aqueous vales of our romantic North,
The breasts of thousands, yea of millions, own
To be the Seer, whose power hath o'er them most
A sway like that of conscience ….
He, in his sunny childhood, sported wild
Among the wild flowers and the pensile ferns
That fringe the craggy banks of waterfalls,
Whose pools were arched, with irises enwoven
Of spray and sunbeams: these into his mind
Pass'd, and were blent with fancies of his own;
And in that interfusion of bright hues
His soul grew up and brighten'd. On the peaks
Of mighty hills he learnt the mysteries
That float 'twixt heaven and earth. The strenuous key
Of cloud-born torrents harmonised his verse
- ↑ If ever we execute our project of an Anthology of what the poets ("blessings be with them, and eternal praise!") have said of the names of ladies (on whom be the same benediction invoked), in some six or eight volumes octavo, La Marguerite bids fair to monopolise one volume to herself/ Nor shall we grudge it. Meanwhile, we wish certain other names of significant sweetness had a richer literature of their own. Florence, for example—a name which (at least we have met with One to warrant the belief) might inspire stanzas fit to draw three souls out of one weaver. It might make, whom the gods have not made, poetical. But how unpardonable ever to bestow it on a creature with a beard!
