Murk night seemed lately fair-complexioned day;
          Hope-bringing day now seems most doleful night. 
        End, weary day, that art no day to me! 
          Return, fair night, to me the best of days! 
        But O my rose, whom in my dreams I see,
          Enkindle with like bliss my waking gaze! 
        Replete with thee, e’en hideous night grows fair: 
        Then what would sweet morn be, if thou wert there?

THE NEW HAT.

        My boots had been wash’d, well wash’d, by a shower;
          But little I car’d about that: 
        What I felt was the havoc a single half-hour
          Had made with my beautiful Hat.

        For the Boot, tho’ its lustre be dimm’d, shall assume
          New comeliness after a while;
        But no art may restore its original bloom,
          When once it hath fled, to the Tile.

        I clomb to my perch, and the horses (a bay
          And a brown) trotted off with a clatter;
        The driver look’d round in his humorous way,
          And said huskily, “Who is your hatter?”

        I was pleased that he’d noticed its shape and its shine;
          And, as soon as we reached the “Old Druid,”
        I begged him to drink to its welfare and mine
          In a glass of my favourite fluid.

        A gratified smile sat, I own, on my lips
          When the barmaid exclaimed to the master,
        (He was standing inside with his hands on his hips),
          “Just look at that gentleman’s castor.”

        I laughed, when an organman paus’d in mid-air—­
          (’Twas an air that I happened to know,
        By a great foreign maestro)—­expressly to stare
          At ze gent wiz ze joli chapeau.

        Yet how swift is the transit from laughter to tears! 
          How rife with results is a day! 
        That Hat might, with care, have adorned me for years;
          But one show’r wash’d its beauty away.

        How I lov’d thee, my Bright One!  I pluck in remorse
          My hands from my pockets and wring ’em: 
        Oh, why did not I, dear, as a matter of course,
          Ere I purchas’d thee purchase a gingham?

        C.S.  CALVERLEY.

Mr. Dodgson spent the last night of the old year (1872) at Hatfield, where he was the guest of Lord Salisbury.  There was a large party of children in the house, one of them being Princess Alice, to whom he told as much of the story of “Sylvie and Bruno” as he had then composed.  While the tale was in progress Lady Salisbury entered the room, bringing in some new toy or game to amuse her little guests, who, with the usual thoughtlessness of children, all rushed off and left Mr. Dodgson.  But the little Princess, suddenly appearing to remember that to do so might perhaps hurt his feelings, sat down again by his side.  He read the kind thought which prompted her action, and was much pleased by it.