SALTUS.
IN ROTTEN ROW.
In Rotten Row a cigarette
I sat and smoked, with no regret
For all the tumult that had been.
The distances were still and green,
And streaked with shadows cool and wet.
Two sweethearts on a bench were set,
Two birds among the boughs were met;
So love and song were heard and seen
In Rotten Row.
A horse or two there was to fret
The soundless sand; but work and debt,
Fair flowers and falling leaves between,
While clocks are chiming clear and keen,
A man may very well forget
In Rotten Row.
W.E. HENLEY.
THE DUET.
I was smoking a cigarette;
Maud, my wife, and the tenor, McKey,
Were singing together a blithe duet,
And days it were better I should forget
Came suddenly back to me,--
Days when life seemed a gay masque ball,
And to love and be loved was the sum of it all.
As they sang together, the whole scene fled,
The room's rich hangings, the sweet home air,
Stately Maud, with her proud blond head,
And I seemed to see in her place instead
A wealth of blue-black hair,
And a face, ah! your face--yours, Lisette;
A face it were wiser I should forget.
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