English

ACT III.

Scene I. Padua . BAPTISTA'S house .

Enter LUCENTIO , HORTENSIO , and BIANCA .

Luc. Fiddler, forbear; you grow too forward, sir:
Have you so soon forgot the entertainment
Her sister Katharine welcomed you withal?
Hor. But, wrangling pedant, this is
The patroness of heavenly harmony:
Then give me leave to have prerogative;
And when in music we have spent an hour,
Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.
Luc. Preposterous ass, that never read so far
To know the cause why music was ordain'd!

ACT II.

Scene I. Padua. A room in BAPTISTA'S house .

Enter KATHARINA and BIANCA .

Bian. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself,
To make a bondmaid and a slave of me;
That I disdain: but for these other gawds,
Unbind my hands, I 'll pull them off myself,
Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat;
Or what you will command me will I do,
So well I know my duty to my elders.
Kath. Of all thy suitors, here I charge thee, tell
Whom thou lovest best: see thou dissemble not.

B Y the way we met
My wife, her sister and a rabble more
Of vile confederates; along with them
They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain;
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy-hollow-eyed-sharp-looking-wretch,
A living dead man.

I

O THE way that Billy could ride!
You should hear Grandfather tell of the lad —
For Grandfather was a horseman too,
Though he couldn't ride now as he used to do,
It yet was his glory and boast and pride,
That he'd " back " Billy for all he had —
And that's a cool million, I'll say to you! —
And you should hear him, with all his praise
Of this boy Billy, and his wild ways; —
The way that he handled a horse, and the way
He rode in town on election day —
The way he bantered, and gaffed, and guyed,

US-FOLKS is purty pore — but Ma
She's waitin' — two years more — tel Pa
He serves his term out. Our Pa he —
He's in the Penitenchurrie!

Now don't you tell! — 'cause Sis ,
The baby, she don't know he is. —
'Cause she wuz only four, you know,
He kissed her last an' hat to go!

Pa alluz liked Sis best of all
Us childern. — 'Spect it's 'cause she fall
When she 'uz ist a child , one day —
An' make her back look thataway.

Pa — 'fore he be a burglar — he's
A locksmiff, an' maked locks, an' keys,

I'M thist a little crippled boy, an' never goin' to grow
An' git a great big man at all! — 'cause Aunty told me so.
When I was thist a baby onc't I falled out of the bed
An' got " The Curv'ture of the Spine " — 'at's what the Doctor said.
I never had no Mother nen — fer my Pa runned away
An' dassn't come back here no more — 'cause he was drunk one day
An' stobbed a man in thish-ere town, an' couldn't pay his fine!
An' nen my Ma she died — an' I got " Curv'ture of the Spine " !

Heigh-O! our jolly tilts at New World song! —
What was the poem indeed! and where the bard —
" Stabbing his ink-pot ever, not his heart, "
As Hector phrased it contumeliously,
Mouthing and munching, at the orchard-stile,
A water-cored rambo whose spirted juice
Glanced, sprayed and flecked the sunlight as he mouth'd
And muncht, and muncht and mouth'd. All loved the man!
" Our Hector " as his Alma Mater oozed
It into utterance — " Old Hec " said we
Who knew him, hide-and-tallow, hoof-and-horn!

But say, while light these songs resound,
What means that buzz of whispering round,
From lip to lip — as if the Power
Of Mystery, in this gay hour,
Had thrown some secret (as we fling
Nuts among children) to that ring
Of rosy, restless lips, to be
Thus scrambled for so wantonly?
And, mark ye, still as each reveals
The mystic news, her hearer steals
A look towards yon enchanted chair,
Where, like the Lady of the Masque,
A nymph, as exquisitely fair

If to see thee be to love thee,
If to love thee be to prize
Naught of earth or heaven above thee,
Nor to live but for those eyes:
If such love to mortal given,
Be wrong to earth, be wrong to heaven,
'T is not for thee the fault to blame,
For from those eyes the madness came.
Forgive but thou the crime of loving
In this heart more pride 't will raise
To be thus wrong with thee approving,
Than right with all a world to praise!

THE LEVEE AND COUCHHE

C ALL the Loves around,
Let the whispering sound
Of their wings be heard alone,
Till soft to rest
My Lady blest
At this bright hour hath gone.
Let Fancy's beams