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He'd been writing State Papers, which means

he had stuck

Some heads and some tails to much cir

cumlocution.

This sounds rather weary and dreary; but, no!

Though strictly inglorious, his days were quiescent,

His red-tape was tied in a true-lover's bow Each night when returning to Rosemary Crescent.

There Joan meets him smiling, the young ones are there,

His coming is bliss to the half-dozen wee

things;

Of his advent the dog and the cat are aware,

And Phyllis, neat-handed, is laying the

tea-things.

East wind! sob eerily! sing, kettle! cheerily!

Baby's abed, but its father will rock it; Little ones boast your permission to toast The cake that good fellow brought home in his pocket.

This greeting the silent old Clerk understands,

His friends he can love, had he foes, he could mock them;

So met, so surrounded, his bosom expands,— Some tongues have more need of such scenes to unlock them.

And Darby, at least, is resigned to his lot, And Joan, rather proud of the sphere he's adorning,

Has well-nigh forgotten that Gunpowder

Plot,

And he won't recall it till ten the next

morning.

A kindly good man, quite a stranger to fame,

His heart still is green, though his head
shows a hoar lock;

Perhaps his particular star is to blame,—
It may be, he never took time by the fore-

lock.

A day must arrive when, in pitiful case, He will drop from his Branch, like a fruit more than mellow;

Is he yet to be found in his usual place? Or is he already forgotten, poor fellow?

If still at his duty he soon will arrive,— He passes this turning because it is shorter,

If not within sight as the clock's striking five,

We shall see him before it is chiming the quarter.

THE BROOK.

By A. TENNYSON.

"HERE, by this brook, we parted; I to the

East

And he for Italy-too late-too late:

One whom the strong sons of the world despise ;

For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,

And mellow metres more than cent for cent; Nor could he understand how money breeds,

Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make

The thing that is not as the thing that is.

O had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say,

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