LATER POEMS

VERSES WRITTEN FOR THE MENU OF THE OMAR KHAYYÁM CLUB

APRIL 22, 1910

ROSES Wou you

OSES and Wine your OMAR brings, Yet o'er the Cup, a Moment-Space, Peers into Naught with wistful Face, As One who views but bygone Things.

Not so with Us. Our larger Scope

Looks backward through the Past to see Not what has been, but what may be— We drink, not Memory, but Hope.

1910.

LA BONNE COMÉDIE

·

"Les Précieuses Ridicules' allèrent aux nues dès le premier jour. Un vieillard s'écria du milieu du parterre: Courage, Molière!' voilà de la bonne comédie!" (Notice sur Molière.)

'RUE Comedy circum praecordia ludit—

TRU

It warms the heart's cockles. 'Twas thus
that he viewed it,

That simple old Critic, who smote on his knee,
And named it no more than he knew it to be.

"True Comedy !" Ah! there is this thing about it,

If it makes the House merry, you never need doubt it:

It lashes the vicious; it laughs at the fool;

And it brings all the prigs and pretenders to school.

To the poor it is kind; to the plain it is gentle;
It is neither too tragic nor too sentimental;
Its thrust, like a rapier's, though cutting, is clean,
And it pricks Affectation all over the scene.

Its rules are the rules ARISTOTLE has taught us;
Its ways have not altered since TERENCE and
PLAUTUS;

Its mission is neither to praise nor to blame;
Its weapon is Ridicule; Folly, its game.

It clears out the cobwebs; it freshens the air; And it treads in the steps of its Master, MOLIÈRE !

1910.