Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Though Prelate of the Holy See ; Who dreams sometimes I know Of sweetness, sap, and sorcery — 0, years and years ago! Like over-wrought embroideries In dainty handicraft embossed, Producing strange complexities In which the true design is lost, So life a tangled fabric is, With threads half-hidden, linked and crossed. We all are weaving day by day, Like ancient, notable housewife, In our unskilled, imperfect way, 'Mid cares and disappointments rife, Rude ells of fretwork to portray At last the finished web of life. But proud success for which we yearn Is often hid in trembling doubt; And when the cause we would discern Of hinderance, or threatened rout, We find that some unlucky turn The woof of years has raveled out. A GOBELIN TAPESTRY. 79 [Of the lime of Louis Quatorze.] 0, had this royal, rich relique — This rare chef-d'oeuvre, odd and old — Volition, and a tongue to speak, What history it might unfold ! 'Twould take us back to gilded days Of dissolute, imperial France ; When Moliere wrote his classic lays, And Fenelon his grand romance. 0, time ! how nearly memory fails To trace its great antiquity — Revert to Fontainebleau, Versailles, And Louis, lord of luxury ! A sovereign's gift, it may have graced The palace home of Maintenon ; Or gratified the cultured taste Of connoisseurs, long dead and gone. It forms the imagery of dreams, Invades the Sabbath sanctity, Disturbs sweet solitude, and seems Like some hobgoblin mystery; The present fades and slips away, A panoramic view unrolls Of lords and ladies, good and gay, Or passion-fed, salacious souls. Then handed down from sire to son Along the Bourbon dynasty, What admiration hath it won In many a court festivity ! Perchanc...