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Beautiful!

DREAM POEM

Soft is the smell of it, sweet the sad sound of it,
Mournfully mingled on yon mountain's top,
Grateful and green and caressing the ground of it,
Calm as a calyx and deep as a drop.

Ah! the enlivenment, dark as the distance!
Ah! the allurements that lavish and lave!
Is there no sound but the sun's sweet insistence,
Night in the forest, and noon on the wave?
Fierce as a festival, fragrant and fading,

Grim as the grandeur that dreams of a day,
Is there no balm in Love's lavish unlading,
Born in the brightness, and grieving and grey?
Lo! in the glimmering, sweet Aphrodite,

Ghastly and gracious and groaning and grave,
Brilliant in banishment, mournful and mighty,
Soft as the samite that sinks in the wave!
Light are the longings that listen and linger:
Ah! the sick kingdoms that grapple and groan
Red as Republics that point the far finger,
Or hail the horizon, aghast and alone.

Sinks in the distance the Dream and the Dreaming,
Leaves the wide world to its pining and pain;
From the great Universe, lo! in the gleaming,
Blazes the bandersnatch, faithless and fain.

ANCESTRAL LORE

This man's of noble pedigree, and that is why, no doubt, he

Sits glum in his ancestral halls, so taciturn and gouty.

Of course heredity has laws, and in obedience thereto,

By looking at his ancestors, we learn what he is heir to.

"Tis from the gay, convivial one, he probably inherits

ANON.

His pretty taste in vintages, and judg ment of their merits.

And to the armoured gentleman, unsmiling and disdainful,

He owes the stiffness in his joints,

which is, no doubt, quite painful.

And thus, we see, heredity is quite a pretty science;

To its inexorable laws we may not bid defiance.

THE WEDDING

Lady Clara Vere de Vere!

I hardly know what I must say, But I'm to be Queen of the May, mother,

I'm to be Queen of the May!

I am half-crazed; I don't feel grave, Let me rave!

Whole weeks and months, early and late,

To win his love I lay in wait.

Oh, the Earl was fair to see,
As fair as any man could be;-
The wind is howling in turret and
tree!

We two shall be wed tomorrow morn,
And I shall be the Lady Clare,
And when my marriage morn shall fall,
I hardly know what I shall wear.
But I shan't say "my life is
dreary,"

And sadly hang my head,
With the remark, "I'm very weary,
And wish that I were dead."

But on my husband's arm I'll lean, And roundly waste his plenteous gold,

Passing the honeymoon serene

In that new world which is the old. For down we'll go and take the boat Beside St. Katherine's docks afloat, Which round about its prow has wrote

"The Lady of Shalotter" (Mondays and Thursdays,-Captain Foat),

Bound for the Dam of Rotter.
THOMAS HOOD, Jr.

And yet one of the younger English poets recently said that Tennyson's works ought to be thrown into the ashheap!

OUR HYMN

At morning's call

The small-voiced pug dog welcomes in the sun,

And flea-bit mongrels wakening one by one,

Give answer all.

When evening dim

Draws rounds us, then the lovely caterwaul,

Tart solo, sour duet and general squall, These are our hymn.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

INSPECT US

Out of the clothes that cover me Tight as the skin is on the grape, I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable shape.

In the fell clutch of bone and steel
I have not whined nor cried aloud;
Whatever else I may conceal,

I show my thoughts unshamed and proud.

The forms of other actorines

I put away into the shade; All of them flossy near blondines Find and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the tape,
How cold the weather is, or warm-
I am the mistress of my shape-
I am the captain of my form.
EDITH DANIELL.

Be good, sweet child, already you are clever.

THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU

O say, have you seen at the Willows so green-
So charming and rurally true-

A Singular bird, with a manner absurd,
Which they call the Australian Emeu?
Have you?

Ever seen this Australian Emeu?

It trots all around with its head on the ground,
Or erects it quite out of your view;

And the ladies all cry, when its figure they spy,
"O, what a sweet pretty Emeu!

Oh! do

Just look at that lovely Emeu!"

One day to this spot, when the weather was hot,
Came Matilda Hortense Fortescue;

And beside her there came a youth of high name-
Augustus Florell Montague:

The two

Both loved that wild foreign Emeu.

With two loaves of bread then they fed it, instead

Of the flesh of the white cockatoo,

Which once was its food in that wild neighbourhood Where ranges the sweet kangaroo

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Old saws and gimlets but its appetite whet
Like the world famous bark of Peru;

There's nothing so hard that the bird will discard,
And nothing its taste will eschew,

That you

Can give that long-legged Emeu!

The time slipped away in this innocent play,
When up jumped the bold Montague:

"Where's that specimen pin that I gaily did win
In raffle, and gave unto you,

Fortescue?"

No word spoke the guilty Emeu!

"Quick! tell me his name whom thou gavest that same, Ere these hands in thy blood I imbrue!"

"Nay, dearest," she cried as she clung to his side,

"I'm innocent as that Emeu!"

"Adieu!"

He replied, "Miss M. H. Fortescue!"

Down she dropped at his feet, all as white as a sheet,
As wildly he fled from her view;

He thought 'twas her sin-for he knew not the pin
Had been gobbled up by the Emeu;

All through

"I'm innocent as that Emeu!"

No, I don't think it's very funny, either.

"KULTURISED" POETRY

Being a determined effort of the creative brain to respond during the excitement of a world war

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep;
I shall be mute as all men must-

Now I lay me down to sleep.
For life, six hundred pounds a year,
Out of the everywhere into the here,
Oh God! that bread should be so dear!
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever
in the mornin'.

In winter I get up at night,

When stars are in the quiet skies; Yet, tho' thy smile be lost to sight, Look at me with thy large brown eyes.

"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest; Drink ye to her that each loves best-" When Jessie comes with her soft breast, My heart's right there!

A fool there was, and he made his prayer,

Too late for love, too late for joy; Wreathe no more lilies in my hair,

Blessings on thee, barefoot boy! The rosy clouds float overhead, Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, "The time has come," the Walrus said, Singing of Mount Abora,

BRET HARTE.

I never saw a purple cow, Unthinking, idle, wild, and young; Along the garden ways just now,

The accents of that unknown tongue. It was six men of Indostan, Weak and irresolute is man, "Catch her and hold her if you can," Said I to myself, said I.

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

In spring of youth it was my lot; That which her slender waist confined

Should auld acquaintance be forgot! The white moth to the closing vine, In lands of palm and southern pine, Why bowest thou, O soul of mine?

You're a better man than I am,
Gunga Din!

When I was ten, and she fifteen,
We pledged our hearts, my love and
I;

A rare old plant is the ivy green,

Whither, O whither didst thou fly? Oh leave this barren spot to me, With little here to do or see, Who is Silvia? What is she? My mother.

KENNETH F. H. UNDERWOOD.

About the best of this sort.

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