Short Poems

Puck and the woodland elves shall weep with me
For that lost joke I made in Ledborough Lane,
The joke that Mrs. Baines declined to see
Although I made it very loud and plain.
I made the joke again and yet again,
I analysed it, parsed it and explained:
I did my very best to entertain,
But Mrs. Baines would not be entertained.

Mr Leonard Magnus, being endowed for research
with several large state bounties
Tried once to pronounce an old High German verb
and was picked up in several counties
When family went out collecting his limbs
their spirits were bluer than Reckitt's
And his death was observed an annual fast by the
whole population of Beckett's.

To whom in summer long ago
Came the donor with the doe
Comes a doom more like my own
Red as blood and hard as stone;
Yet shall she adorned be
Whose sister's name is Poverty,
Dowering, for those who understand,
A province in my native land.

" WHAT ? rise again with all one's bones, "
— Quoth Giles, " I hope you fib:
I trusted, when I went to Heaven,
— To go without my rib. "

How blind is he who, powerless to discern
The glories that around his pathway burn,
Walks unaware the avenues of Dream
Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!
O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned
Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.
From sordid scenes he lifts his eyes at will
And sees a Grecian god on every hill.

Begirt with bombs that fall and flames that rise,
The Tsar, bewildered, stares. " Alas, " he cries,
" Life withholds joy and death denies release!
And Roosevelt would have me think this peace. "

Love ran with me, then walk'd, then sate,
Then said " Come, come! it grows too late: "
And then he would have gone . . but . . no . .
You caught his eye; he could not go.

You see the worst of love, but not the best,
Nor will you know him till he comes your guest.
Tho' yearly drops some feather from his sides,
In the heart's temple his pure torch abides.

With much ado you fail to tell
The requisites for writing well;
But what bad writing is, you quite
Have proved by every line you write.

LATE A FTERNOON

Smoke-colour, rose, saffron,
With a hard edge chipping the blue sky,
A great cloud hung over the village,
And the white-painted meeting-house,
And the steeple with the gilded weather-cock
Heading and flashing to the wind.