or be she devil,--
Yet, uneasy is his life
Who is married to a wife.

_Charles Cotton._

THE THIRD PROPOSITION

If I were thine, I'd fail not of endeavour
The loftiest,
To make thy daily life, now and forever,
Supremely blest--
I'd watch thy moods, I'd toil and wait, with yearning,
Incessant incense at thy dear shrine burning,
If I were thine.

If thou wert mine, quite changed would be these features.
Then, I suspect,
Thou wouldst the humblest prove of loving creatures,
And not object
To do the very things I am declaring
I'd undertake for _thee_, with selfless daring,
If thou wert mine.

If we were ours? And now, here comes the riddle!
How would that work?
I'm sure _you'd_ never stoop to second fiddle,
And--I might shirk
The part of serf. And, likewise, each might neither
Be willing slave or servitor of either,
If we were ours!

_Madeline Bridges._

THE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA BROWN

Though I met her in the summer, when one's heart lies round at ease,
As it were in tennis costume, and a man's not hard to please,
Yet I think that any season to have met her was to love,
While her tones, unspoiled, unstudied, had the softness of the dove.

At request she read us poems in a nook among the pines,
And her artless voice lent music to the least melodious lines;
Though she lowered her shadowing lashes, in an earnest reader's wise,
Yet we caught blue, gracious glimpses of the heavens which were her
eyes.

As in paradise I listened--ah, I did not understand
That a little cloud, no larger than the average human hand,
Might, as stated oft in fiction, spread into a sable pall,
When she said that she should study Elocution in the fall!

I admit her earliest efforts were not in the Ercles vein;
She began with "Little Maaybel, with her faayce against the payne
And the beacon-light a-t-r-r-remble"--which, although it made me wince,
Is a thing of cheerful nature to the things she's rendered since.

Having heard the Soulful Quiver, she acquired the Melting Mo-o-an,
And the way she gave "Young Grayhead" would have liquefied a stone.
Then the Sanguinary Tragic did her energies employ,
And she tore my taste to tatters when she slew "The Polish Boy."

It's not pleasant for a fellow when the jewel of his soul
Wades through slaughter on the ca