THE POET'S SEAT AN IDYLL OF THE SUBURBS "Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes Angulus RIDET." T was an elm-tree root of yore, IT -HOR. ii. 6. With lordly trunk, before they lopped it, And weighty, said those five who bore Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it With two young pear-trees to protect it, He saw him with his Poet's eye, The stately Maori, turned from etching The ruin of St. Paul's, to try Some object better worth the sketching : He saw him, and it nerved his strength What time he hacked and hewed and scraped it, Until the monster grew at length The Master-piece to which he shaped it. To wit a goodly garden-seat, And fit alike for Shah or Sophy, With shelf for cigarettes complete, And one, but lower down, for coffee; He planted pansies 'round its foot,— "Pansies for thoughts!" and rose and arum ; The Motto (that he meant to put) Was "Ille angulus terrarum.” But "Oh! the change" (as Milton sings)"The heavy change!" When May departed, When June with its "delightful things" Had come and gone, the rough bark started,— Began to lose its sylvan brown, Grew parched, and powdery, and spotted; And, though the Poet nailed it down, It still flapped up, and dropped, and rotted. Nor was this all. 'Twas next the scene Till, where he meant to carve his Motto, Strange leathery fungi sprouted thick, Briefly, it grew a seat of scorn, Bare, shameless,-till, for fresh disaster, From end to end, one April morn, 'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,― Drilled like a vellum of old time; This was the turning of the tide ; His five-act play is still unwritten ; The dreams that now his soul divide Are more of Lubbock than of Lytton; "Ballades" are "verses vain" to him Whose first ambition is to lecture (So much is man the sport of whim !). On "Insects and their Architecture." THE TOYMAN WITH Verse, is Form the first, or Sense? Hereon men waste their Eloquence. "Sense (cry the one Side),-Sense, of course. Its heartfelt Woes in 'six' and 'eight'? "Form is the first (the Others bawl); Why not your throbbing Thoughts expose Just at this Point-for you must know, Of MATT and DICK who played with Thought, And lingered longer than they ought (So pleasant 'tis to tap one's Box And trifle round a Paradox !)— There came-but I forgot to say, 'Twas in the Mall, the Month was May- |