ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S‘ OLD WORLD IDYLLS’

At length arrived, your book I take

To read in for the author's sake;

Too gray for new sensations grown,

Can charm to Art or Nature known

This torpor from my senses shake?

Hush! my parched ears what runnels slake?

Is a thrush gurgling from the brake?

Has Spring, on all the breezes blown,

At length arrived?

Long may you live such songs to make,

And I to listen while you wake,

With skill of late disused, each tone

Of the Lesboum, barbiton,

At mastery, through long finger-ache,

At length arrived.

As I read on, what changes steal

O'er me and through, from head to heel?

A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside,

My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride,—

Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick Steele!

Down vistas long of clipt charmille

Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel;

Tabor and pipe the dancers guide

As I read on.

While in and out the verses wheel

The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal,

Lithe ankles that to music glide,

But chastely and by chance descried;

Art? Nature? Which do I most feel

As I read on?