The tricksy Monkey, the Goat, the Ass, and bandy-legged Mishka the Bear, determine to play a quartette. They provide themselves with the necessary pieces of music — with two fiddles, and with an alto and counter-bass. Then they sit down on a meadow under a lime-tree, prepared to enchant the world by their skill. They work away at their fiddle-sticks with a will; and they make a noise, but there is no music in it.

Not to look down, or blanch, or care,
But fearless still the foe to meet,
And fearless still to do or dare —
Ah! there are honours of defeat.

Who knows his opportunities? They come
Not trumpet-tongued from Heaven, but small and dumb,
Not beckoning from the future's promised land,
But in the narrow present close at hand.
They walk beside us with unsounding feet,
And like those two that trode the Eastern street
And with their Saviour bartered thought for thought,
Our eyes are holden and we know them not.

Once on a time I fair Dorinda kiss'd,
Whose nose was too distinguish'd to be miss'd:
My dear, says I, I fain wou'd kiss you closer,
But tho' your lips say Aye — your nose says No, Sir —
The maid was equally to fun inclin'd,
And plac'd her lovely lilly-hand BEHIND:
Here, swain, she cry'd, may'st thou securely kiss,
Where there's no nose to interrupt thy bliss.

For her Husband deceas'd Sally chants the sweet lay,
Why, faith, this is singular sorrow;
But (I doubt) since she sings for a dead man to day,
She'll cry for a live one to-morrow.

" No more!" I said to Love. " No more!
I scorn your baby-arts to know!
Not now am I as once of yore;
My brow the Sage's line can show!"
" Farewell!" he laughed. " Farewell! I go!"
And clove the air with fluttering track.
" Farewell!" he cried far off; — but lo!
He sent a Parthian arrow back!

Apollo made, one April day,
A new thing in the rhyming way;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear,
Then M OMUS gave a touch satiric,
And it became a " London Lyric."

Is it to kindest Friend I send
This nosegay gathered new?
Or is it more to Critic sure, —
To Singer clear and true?
I know not which, indeed, nor need;
All Three I found — in You.

In the duo of Love
There is little libretto;
There are few rhymes but " dove"
In the duo of Love;
Yet we prize it above
All our Epic falsetto; —
In the duo of Love
There is little libretto.

To Heaven's high peace let him depart,
And with him go the minstrel art.