What!  Give up flirtation?  Change dimples for frowns
      Why, Nell, what’s the use?  You’re so pretty,
    That your beauty all sense of your wickedness drowns
      When, some time, in country or city,
          Your fate comes at last. 
          We’ll forgive all the past,
      And think of you only with pity.

    Indeed!—­so “you feel for the woes of my sex!”
      “The legions of hearts you’ve been breaking
    Your conscience affright, and your reckoning perplex,
      Whene’er an account you’ve been taking!”
          “I’d scarcely believe
          How deeply you grieve
      At the mischief your eyes have been making!”

    Now, Nellie!—­Flirtation’s the leaven of life;
      It lightens its doughy compactness. 
    Don’t always—­the world with deception is rife—­
      Construe what men say with exactness! 
          I pity the girl,
          In society’s whirl,
      Who’s troubled with matter-of-factness.

    A pink is a beautiful flower in its way,
      But rosebuds and violets are charming,
    Men don’t wear the same boutonniere every day. 
      Taste changes.—­Flirtation alarming! 
          If e’er we complain,
          You then may refrain,
      Your eyes of their arrows disarming.

    Ah, Nellie, be sensible; Pr’ythee, give heed
      To counsel a victim advances;
    Your eyes, I acknowledge, will make our hearts bleed,
      Pierced through by love’s magical lances. 
          But better that fate
          Than in darkness to wait;
      Unsought by your mischievous glances.

    ZWEI KONIGE AUF ORKADAL. 
    FROM THE GERMAN.

    There sat two kings upon Orkadal,
    The torches flamed in the pillared hall.

    The minstrel sings, the red wine glows,
    The two kings drink with gloomy brows.

    Out spake the one,—­“Give me this girl,
    With her sea-blue eyes, and brow of pearl.”

    The other answered in gloomy scorn,
    “She’s mine, oh brother!—­my oath is sworn.”

    No other word spake either king—­
    In their golden sheaths the keen swords ring.

    Together they pass from the lighted hall—­
    Deep lies the snow by the castle-wall.

    Steel-sparks and torch-sparks in showers fall. 
    Two kings lie dead upon Orkadal.

    A SONG.

    I shouldn’t like to say, I’m sure,
      I shouldn’t like to say,
    Why I think of you more, and more, and more
      As day flits after day. 
    Nor why I see in the Summer skies
    Only the beauty of your sweet eyes,
      The power by which you sway
    A kingdom of hearts, that little you prize—­
      I shouldn’t like to say.