ROBERT BROWNING

This is a heart the Queen leant on,

Thrill'd in a minute erratic, Ere the true bosom she bent on, Meet for love's regal dalmatic. O, what a fancy ecstatic

Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on Love to be saved for it, profFer'd to r spent oni

��729. Home-thoughts^ from Abroad

TO be in England

Now that April >s there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England now !

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows !

Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops at the bent spray's edge

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture !

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the httle children's dower

Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower !

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