ta,
Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum
Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo.

But with the advent of babies poetry declined, and the sympathetic
wife became more and more motherly. The father retired sadly into the
dreamland of books. He will not emerge again. Husband and wife will
stand upon the clear hill-tops together no more.

Neither quite knows what has happened; they both feel changed with an
undefined sorrow, with a regret that pride will not enunciate. She is
now again in India with her husband. There are duties, courtesies,
nay, kindnesses which both will perform, but the ghost of love and
sympathy will only rise in their hearts to jibber in mockery words and
phrases that have lost their meaning, that have lost their
enchantment.

"O love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

"Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the raven on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.

"From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter
When leaves fall and cold winds come."

ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No. XXI

ALI BABA ALONE

THE LAST DAY

"Now the last of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest, and the last is dead,
Rise, memory, and write its praise."

[December 27, 1879.]

How shall I lay this spectre of my own identity? Shall I leave it to
melt away gracefully in the light of setting suns? It would never do
to put it out like a farthing rushlight after it had haunted the Great
Ornamental in an aurora of smiles. Is Ali Baba to cease upon the
midnight without pain? or is he to lie down like a tired child and
weep out the spark? or should he just flit to Elysium? There, seated
on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Dian's (no allusion to little
Mrs. Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains wonderous and the
parle of voices thunderous, some wag might scribble on his door, "Here
lies Ali Baba"--as if glancing at his truthfulness. How is he to pass
effectively into the golden silences? How is he to relapse into the
still-world of observation? Would four thousand five hundred a month
and Simla do it, with nothing to do and allowances, a