RONDE.

A MAID sat by her cottage door,

When flowers were fair and Spring was young;

There came a knight the green wold o'er,

And thus to her his song he sung:

" I speak yet once, and speak no more.

"I pleaded many a time to thee,

When flowers were fair and Spring was young;

I loved thee truly and tenderly;

Thy silence cold my heart hath wrung,

Yet still thou hast a slave in me."

She answered him with laughter light,

When flowers were fair and Spring was young:

"I'll love thee some day, gallant knight;

It may be short, it may be long, -

Love hath a strange, uncertain flight."

A maid sits by her cottage door,

The flowers are dead, the Spring hath gone;

There comes no knight the green wold o'er;

She sits and sings her song alone,

For love hath fled, and youth 's no more.

WEST.