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A VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ ANTHOLOGY




    “_I’M a florist in verse, and what would people say
        If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?_”
                                       OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.




A Vers de Société Anthology

    Collected by
    Carolyn Wells

    New York
    Charles Scribner’s Sons
    1907




    COPYRIGHT 1907 BY
    CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

    Published November, 1907

[Illustration]




NOTE


ACKNOWLEDGMENT is hereby gratefully made to the publishers for
permission to use poems by the following authors:

To Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company for poems by Thomas Bailey
Aldrich, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf
Whittier, Bret Harte, John G. Saxe, Norah Perry, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, James T. Field, Edith Thomas, Edmund Clarence Stedman and
Charles Henry Webb.

To Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company for poems by Austin Dobson.

To the Macmillan Company for poems by Lewis Carroll.

To Messrs. D. Appleton and Company for “Song,” by William Cullen Bryant.

To The Century Company for poems by Robert Underwood Johnson and Mary
Mapes Dodge.

To Messrs. Little, Brown and Company for “A Valentine,” by Mrs. Laura
E. Richards, and “Shadows” and “Les Papillottes,” by Gertrude Hall.

To Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons for “The Debutante,” by Guy Wetmore
Carryl.

To The Frederick A. Stokes Company for poems by Frank Dempster Sherman
and Samuel Minturn Peck.

To The Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company for poems by Sam Walter Foss.

To Messrs. E. H. Bacon and Company for poems by James Jeffrey Roche.




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE
  Introduction                                                       xix
  To Celia                              _Ben Jonson_                   3
  Cupid                                 _Ben Jonson_                   4
  Rosalind’s Madrigal                   _Thomas Lodge_                 5
  All Things Except Myself I Know       _François Villon_              6
  Cupid and Campaspe                    _John Lilly_                   8
  A Ditty                               _Sir Philip Sydney_            8
  Song from “Twelfth Night”             _William Shakespeare_          9
  Sigh No More (from “Much Ado About
      Nothing”)                         _William Shakespeare_          9
  Phillida and Corydon                  _Nicholas Breton_             10
  Cherry-Ripe                           _Richard Allison_             11
  Send Back My Long-Stray’d Eyes to Me  _John Donne_                  12
  Pack Clouds Away                      _Thomas Heywood_              13
  Shall I, Wasting in Despair           _George Wither_               14
  To the Virgins to Make Much of Time   _Robert Herrick_              15
  The Bracelet                          _Robert Herrick_              16
  An Old Rhyme                          _Anonymous_                   17
  Love Me Not for Comely Grace          _Anonymous_                   17
  On a Girdle                           _Edmund Waller_               18
  To My Love                            _Sir John Suckling_           18
  To Althea (From Prison)               _Richard Lovelace_            19
  Song                                  _Sir Charles Sedley_          21
  The Despairing Lover                  _William Walsh_               22
  Cupid Mistaken                        _Matthew Prior_               23
  The Contrast                          _Charles Morris_              24
  Oh, Tell Me How to Woo Thee           _Robert Graham_               27
  Song from “The Duenna”                _Richard Brinsley Sheridan_   28
  The Races                             _George Ellis_                29
  To Lady Anne Hamilton                 _Hon. William R. Spencer_     32
  To Mrs. Leigh Upon Her Wedding Day    _George Canning_              33
  Names                                 _Samuel T. Coleridge_         34
  The Exchange                          _Samuel T. Coleridge_         34
  Defiance                              _Walter Savage Landor_        35
  Her Lips                              _Walter Savage Landor_        35
  Commination                           _Walter Savage Landor_        36
  Margaret and Dora                     _Thomas Campbell_             36
  A Certain Young Lady                  _Washington Irving