Volume 99 / Act 3 — THE LESSON OF THE SEASON.

The Season's over; for relief You're off to scale the Alps; Say, do you, like some Indian Chief, Look back and count your scalps? Does someone rue your broken vows, And sigh he has to doubt you; Yet felt withal the week at Cowes Was quite a blank without you? Are hearts still broken, as of old, In this prosaic time, When love is only given for gold, And poverty's a crime. Say, are you conscious of a heart, And can you feel it beating; And is it ever sad to part, And finds a joy in meeting? The Seasons come, the Seasons go, With store of good and ill; Do all men find you cold as snow, And unresponsive still? O beautiful enigma, say, Will love's sublime persistence Solve for you, in the usual way, The riddle of existence? Alas! love is not love to-day, But just a bargain made, In cold and calculating way; And if the price be paid, A man may win the fairest face, A maiden tall and queenly, The daughter of some ancient race, Who sells herself serenely. What wonder that the cynic sneers At such a rule of life; That, after but a few short years, Dissension should be rife. Ah! Lady, you'll avoid heart-ache, And scorn of bard satiric, If haply you should deign to take A lesson from our lyric.