ncy so;
She had eyes--no! cheeks a-blushing with the peach's ripening flush,
Was ecstatically gushing--and I like a girl to gush.
She'd the loveliest of faces, and the goldenest of hair,
And all customary graces lovers fancy in the fair.

Now, she doated on romances, she was yearnful and refined,
She had sentimental fancies of a most aesthetic kind,
She was sensitive, fantastic, tender, too, as she was fair,
But alas! she was not plastic, as I owned in my despair.
And, for all she was so gentle, yet she gave me this rebuff--
Though I might be sentimental, I'd not sentiment enough.

Then I _did_ grow sentimental, for that seemed to be my part,
And I talked in transcendental fashion that might move her heart,
Sighed to live in fairy grottoes with my Dora all alone,
And I studied cracker mottoes, which I quoted as my own.
Thus I strove to be romantic, but I failed upon the whole,
And she nearly drove me frantic when she said I had not "soul."

So, despair tinged all my passion, sorrow mingled with my love,
Though I wooed her in a fashion which the stones of Rome might move,
Though I wrote her fervid sonnets with the fervour underlined,
Though I bought her gloves and bonnets of the most artistic kind,
Yet for me life held no pleasure, and my sorrow grew acute
That she smiled upon my presents, but she frowned upon my suit.

All in vain seemed love and longing till upon one fateful day
Hopes anew came on me thronging, as I heard my Dora say--
"Richard mine, I saw you sobbing o'er my photograph last night,
With a look that set me throbbing with unspeakable delight.
Wide your eyelids you were oping and your look was far from hence
With a passionate wild hoping that was soulful and intense.

"I have seen that look on Irving and sometimes on Beerbohm Tree,
And it seems to be observing joy and rapture yet to be.
In the nostril elevated and the lip that lightly curled
Was a cold scorn indicated of this vulgar nether world.
I could marry that expression. Show it once again then, do!
And I meekly make profession--I--I--I will marry you!"

Joy was then my heart's possession, joy and rapturous content,
For I'd practised that expression, and I knew just what she meant:
So my eyebrows up I lifted and I stared with all my might
And my right-hand nostril shifted somewhat further to the right,
But I quite forgot--sad error was this dire mnemonic slip!--
I forgot in doubt and terror how to move my lower lip!

With one eyebrow elev