"Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay;

"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

"But low of cattle and song of birds,

And health and quiet and loving words."

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But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,

When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;

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And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms'
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed with a secret pain, 75 "Ah, that I were free again!

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.

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But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein;

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And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

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Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,

And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."

Alas for maiden, alas for judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

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For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

Ar Paris it was, at the opera there;And she looked like a queen in a book that night,

With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair, And the brooch on her breast so bright.

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Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,

The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore; And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note, The souls in purgatory.

The moon on the tower slept soft as snow; And who was not thrilled in the strangest way,

As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low,

"Non ti scordar di me"?

The emperor there, in his box of state,
Looked grave, as if he had just then seen
The red flag wave from the city gate,
Where his eagles in bronze had been.

The empress, too, had a tear in her eye: You'd have said that her fancy had gone back again,

For one moment, under the old blue sky,
To the old glad life in Spain.

Well! there in our front-row box we sat,
Together, my bride-betrothed and I;
My gaze was fixed on my opera-hat,

And hers on the stage hard by.

And both were silent, and both were sad;— Like a queen she leaned on her full white

arm.

With that regal, indolent air she had;

So confident of her charm!

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I have not a doubt she was thinking then

Of her former lord, good soul that he was! Who died the richest and roundest of men, The Marquis of Carabas.

I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven,
Through a needle's eye he had not to pass;
I wish him well for the jointure given
To my lady of Carabas.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love, As I had not been thinking of aught for

years;

Till over my eyes there began to move
Something that felt like tears.

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I thought of the dress that she wore last time, When we stood 'neath the cypress-trees

together,

In that lost land, in that soft clime,

In the crimson evening weather;

Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot) And her warm white neck in its golden

chain;

And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot,
And falling loose again;

And the jasmin-flower in her fair young breast;

(O the faint, sweet smell of that jasminflower!)

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