Meanwhile he wasted in the eyes of men,

So thin, he seem'd a sort of skeleton-key Suspended at death's door-so pale-and then He turn'd as nervous as an aspen tree; The life of man is three-score years and ten, But he was perishing at twenty-three, For people truly said as grief grew stronger, "It could not shorten his poor life—much longer.”

For why, he neither slept, nor drank, nor fed,
Nor relish'd any kind of mirth below-
Fire in his heart, and frenzy in his head,
Love had become his universal foe,
Salt in his sugar-nightmare in his bed;
At last, no wonder wretched Julio,
O sorrow-ridden thing, in utter dearth
Of hope,-made up his mind to cut her girth!

For hapless lovers always died of old,

Sooner than chew reflection's bitter cud; So Thisbe stuck herself, what time 'tis told, The tender-hearted mulberries wept blood; And so poor Sappho, when her boy was cold,

Drown'd her salt tear-drops in a salter flood, Their fame still breathing, tho' their death be past, For those old suitors lived beyond their last.

So Julio went to drown,-when life was dull,
But took his corks, and merely had a bath;
And once, he pull'd a trigger at his skull,

But merely broke a window in his wrath;
And once, his hopeless being to annul,

He tied a pack-thread to a beam of lath-
A line so ample, 'twas a query whether
Twas meant to be a halter or a tether.

Smile not in scorn, that Julio did not thrust
His sorrows through-'tis horrible to die
And come down with our little all of dust,
That Dun of all the duns to satisfy;

To leave life's pleasant city as we must,

In Death's most dreary spunging-house to lie, Where even all our personals must go

To pay the debt of Nature that we owe!

So Julio lived :-'twas nothing but a pet
He took at life-a momentary spite;
Besides, he hoped that Time would some day get
The better of Love's flame, however bright;
A thing that Time has never compass'd yet,
For Love, we know, is an immortal light;
Like that old fire, that, quite beyond a doubt,
Was always in,—for none have found it out.

Meanwhile, Bianca dream'd-'twas once when Night
Along the darken'd plain began to creep,
Like a young Hottentot, whose eyes are bright,
Altho' in skin as sooty as a sweep;

The flow'rs had shut their eyes--the zephyr light
Was gone, for it had rock'd the leaves to sleep,
And all the little birds had laid their heads
Under their wings-sleeping in feather beds.

Lone in her chamber sate the dark-eyed maid,
By easy stages jaunting through her prayers,
But list'ning side-long to a serenade,

That robb'd the saints a little of their shares;

For Julio underneath the lattice play'd

His Deh Vieni, and such amorous airs,

Born only underneath Italian skies,

Where every fiddle has a Bridge of Sighs.

Sweet was the tune-the words were even sweeterPraising her eyes, her lips, her nose, her hair,

With all the common tropes wherewith in metre

The hackney poets "overcharge their fair."

Her shape was like Diana's, but completer;

Her brow with Grecian Helen's might compare:

Cupid, alas! was cruel Sagittarius,

Julio-the weeping water-man Aquarius.

Now, after listing to such laudings rare,
'Twas very natural indeed to go-
What if she did postpone one little pray'r-

To ask her mirror "if it was not so?"
'Twas a large mirror, none the worse for wear,
Reflecting her at once from top to toe :

And there she gazed upon that glossy track
That show'd her front face though it "gave her back."

And long her lovely eyes were held in thrall,

By that dear page where first the woman reads:

That Julio was no flatt'rer, none at all,

She told herself-and then she told her beads;
Meanwhile, the nerves insensibly let fall

Two curtains fairer than the lily breeds;
For sleep had crept and kiss'd her unawares,
Just at the half-way milestone of her pray'rs.

Then like a drooping rose so bended she,

Till her bow'd head upon her hand reposed;
But still she plainly saw, or seem'd to see,
That fair reflection, tho' her eyes were closed,
A beauty bright as it was wont to be,

A portrait Fancy painted while she dozed:
'Tis very natural, some people say,

To dream of what we dwell on in the day.

Still shone her face-yet not, alas! the same,
But 'gan some dreary touches to assume,

And sadder thoughts, with sadder changes came-
Her eyes resign'd their light, her lips their bloom,
Her teeth fell out, her tresses did the same,

Her cheeks were tinged with bile, her eyes with rheum:

There was a throbbing at her heart within,
For, oh! there was a shooting in her chin.

And lo! upon her sad desponding brow,
The cruel trenches of besieging age,
With seams, but most unseemly, 'gan to show

Her place was booking for the seventh stage;

And where her raven tresses used to flow,

Some locks that Time had left her in his rage, And some mock ringlets, made her forehead shady, A compound (like our Psalms) of Tête and Braidy.

Then for her shape-alas! how Saturn wrecks,

And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about, Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks, Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout, Makes backs and stomachs concave or convex: Witness those pensioners call'd In and Out, Who all day watching first and second rater, Quaintly unbend themselves-but grow no straighter.

So Time with fair Bianca dealt, and made
Her shape a bow, that once was like an arrow;
His iron hand upon her spine he laid,

And twisted all awry her "winsome marrow."
In truth it was a change!—she had obey'd

The holy Pope before her chest grew narrow, But spectacles and palsy seem'd to make her Something between a Glassite and a Quaker.

Her grief and gall meanwhile were quite extreme,
And she had ample reason for her trouble;
For what sad maiden can endure to seem

Set in for singleness, though growing double?
The fancy madden'd her; but now the dream,
Grown thin by getting bigger, like a bubble,
Burst, but still left some fragments of its size,
That like the soapsuds, smarted in her eyes.

And here- just here- as she began to heed

The real world, her clock chimed out its score.; A clock it was of the Venetian breed,

That cried the hour from one to twenty-four; The works moreover standing in some need

Of workmanship, it struck some dozen more; A warning voice that clench'd Bianca's fears, Such strokes referring doubtless to her years.

At fifteen chimes she was but half a nun,

By twenty she had quite renounced the veil ; She thought of Julio just at twenty-one,

And thirty made her very sad and pale,

To paint that ruin where her charms would run;
At forty all the maid began to fail,

And thought no higher, as the late dream cross'd her,

Of single blessedness, than single Gloster.

And so Bianca changed; the next sweet even,
With Julio in a black Venetian bark,
Row'd slow and stealthily-the hour, eleven,
Just sounding from the tower of old St. Mark;
She sate with eyes turn'd quietly to heav'n,
Perchance rejoicing in the grateful dark

That veil'd her blushing cheek,-for Julio brought her,
Of course, to break the ice upon the water.

But what a puzzle is one's serious mind

To open;-oysters, when the ice is thick,

Are not so difficult and disinclined;

And Julio felt the declaration stick
About his throat in a most awful kind;

However, he contrived by bits to pick
His trouble forth,-much like a rotten cork
Groped from a long-neck'd bottle with a fork.

But love is still the quickest of all readers;
And Julio spent besides those signs profuse,
That English telegraphs and foreign pleaders,
In help of language are so apt to use:--
Arms, shoulders, fingers, all were interceders,
Nods, shrugs, and bends,-Bianca could not choose
But soften to his suit with more facility,

He told his story with so much agility.

"Be thou my park, and I will be thy dear."
(So he began at last to speak or quote ;)
"Be thou my bark, and I thy gondolier,"
(For passion takes this figurative note ;)