WINE, WOMEN, AND SONG. - The Language Realm

Take your pleasure, dance and play,
Each with other while ye may:
Youth is nimble, full of grace;
Age is lame, of tardy pace.
We the wars of love should wage,
Who are yet of tender age;
'Neath the tents of Venus dwell
All the joys that youth loves well.
[67]
Young men kindle heart's desire;
You may liken them to fire:
Old men frighten love away
With cold frost and dry decay.
A roundelay, which might be styled the Praise of May or the exhortation to be liberal in love by
The Example of the Rose, shall follow.
THE EXAMPLE OF THE ROSE.
No. 9.
Winter's untruth yields at last,
Spring renews old mother earth;
Angry storms are overpast,
Sunbeams fill the air with mirth;
Pregnant, ripening unto birth,
All the world reposes.
Our delightful month of May,
Not by birth, but by degree,
Took the first place, poets say;
Since the whole year's cycle he,
Youngest, loveliest, leads with glee,
And the cycle closes.
From the honours of the rose
They decline, the rose abuse,
[68]Who, when roses red unclose,
Seek not their own sweets to use;
'Tis with largess, liberal dues,
That the rose discloses.
Taught to wanton, taught to play,
By the young year's wanton flower,
We will take no heed to­day,
Have no thought for thrift this hour;