So to the year's first altar step I bring Gifts of meek song, and make my spirit free With the blind working of unanxious spring, Careless with her, whether the days that flee Pale drouth or golden-fruited plenty see, So that we toil, brothers, without distress,

My arms clung round her slender waist, Through gold and silk the form I traced, And glad as rain that follows drouth, I kissed and kissed her bright red mouth.

[* Many, company.] "Let birds be silent on the naked spray, 330 And shady woods resound with dreadfull yells; Let streaming floods their hastie courses stay, And parching drouth drie up the cristall wells; Let th'earth be barren, and bring foorth no flowres, And th'ayre be fild with noyse of dolefull knells, 335 And wandring spirits walke untimely howres.

" Thus in the high Roman fashion she faces danger; yet her sense of fun never deserts her, and in the very next letter she writes, parodying her husband's documents:"The drouth has been very severe.

But slakes the drouth of his awful mouth With pulls at the absinthe bottle.