Lines Suggested By The Fourteenth Of February.

Ere the morn the East has crimsoned,      When the stars are twinkling there,     (As they did in Watts's Hymns, and      Made him wonder what they were:)     When the forest-nymphs are beading      Fern and flower with silvery dew -     My infallible proceeding      Is to wake, and think of you.     When the hunter's ringing bugle      Sounds farewell to field and copse,     And I sit before my frugal      Meal of gravy-soup and chops:     When (as Gray remarks) "the moping      Owl doth to the moon complain,"     And the hour suggests eloping -      Fly my thoughts to you again.     May my dreams be granted never?      Must I aye endure affliction     Rarely realised, if ever,      In our wildest works of fiction?     Madly Romeo loved his Juliet;      Copperfield began to pine     When he hadn't been to school yet -      But their loves were cold to mine.     Give me hope, the least, the dimmest,      Ere I drain the poisoned cup:     Tell me I may tell the chymist      Not to make that arsenic up!     Else, this heart shall soon cease throbbing;      And when, musing o'er my bones,     Travellers ask, "Who killed Cock Robin?"     They'll be told, "Miss Sarah J-s."