anche aubepine_!
He smiteth a stave on his gold citole,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!

"From her mangonel she looketh forth,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
'Who is he spurreth so late to the north?'
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!

"Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!

"For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!"

Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of saying--

"Hark, 'tis the troubadour
Breathing her name
Under the battlement
Softly he came,
Singing, "From Palestine
Hither I come.
Lady love! Lady love!
Welcome me home!"

The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and that the
butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the fashion of a time
simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the whole, minor poetry for
minor poetry, this artless singer, piping his native drawing-room notes,
gave a great deal of perfectly harmless, if highly uncultivated,
enjoyment.

It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to his bow--or,
rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great deal, to be sure, about the
passion of love, which Count Tolstoi thinks we make too much of. He did
not dream that the affairs of the heart should be regulated by the
State--by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage Office. That is what
we are coming to, of course, unless the enthusiasts of "free love" and
"go away as you please" failed with their little programme. No doubt
there would be poetry if the State regulated or left wholly unregulated
the affections of the future. Mr. Bayly, living in other times, among
other manners, piped of the hard tyranny of a mother:

"We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me.
He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me.
He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered,
I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered.
I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness;
Bright gems were in my hair,--how I hated their brightness!
He called me by my name as the bride of another.
Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!"

In future, when the reformers of