as he declaimed, a little too scanningly, perhaps--too much like an
enthusiastic boy:

"Love lurks upon my lady's lip,
His bow is figured there;
Within her eyes his arrows sleep;
His fetters are--her hair!"

"I call that nothing but a bundle of conceits, Major Favraud, mostly of
the days of Charles II., of Rochester himself--" interrupting him as I
in turn was interrupted.

"But hear further," and he proceeded to the end of that marvelous
ebullition of foam and fervor, such as celebrated the birth of Aphrodite
herself perchance in the old Greek time; and which, despite my perverse
intentions, stirred me as if I had quaffed a draught of pink champagne.
Is it not, indeed, all _couleur de rose_? Hear this bit of melody, my
reader, sitting in supreme judgment, and perhaps contempt, on your
throne apart:

"'Upon her cheek the crimson ray
By changes comes and goes,
As rosy-hued Aurora's play
Along the polar snows;
Gay as the insect-bird that sips
From scented flowers the dew--
Pure as the snowy swan that dips
Its wings in waters blue;
Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face,
Like clouds on the calm sea,