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A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE

A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE

"De mémoires de Roses on n'a point vu mourir le Jardinier.”

HE Rose in the garden slipped her bud,

THE

And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood,

As she thought of the Gardener standing by--"He is old, so old! And he soon must die!

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,

And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare; And she laughed once more as she heard his tread

"He is older now! He will soon be dead!"

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the

ground;

And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,
For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener, Time.

DON QUIXOTE

BEHIND thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,

Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and

fro,

Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack!
To make wiseacredom, both high and low,
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go)
Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track:
Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest!
Yet would to-day when Courtesy grows chill,
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest. . were it but a mill!

A BROKEN SWORD

A BROKEN SWORD

(TO A. L.)

THE shopman shambled from the doorway out

And twitched it down

Snapped in the blade! 'Twas scarcely dear, I doubt,

At half-a-crown.

Useless enough! And yet can still be seen,
In letters clear,

Traced on the metal's rusty damaskeen—
"Povr Paruenyr."

Whose was it once?-Who manned it once in hope His fate to gain?

Who was it dreamed his oyster-world should ope To this- in vain?

Maybe with some stout Argonaut it sailed
The Western Seas;
Maybe but to some paltry Nym availed
For toasting cheese!

Or decked by Beauty on some morning lawn
With silken knot,

Perchance, ere night, for Church and King 'twas drawn

Perchance 'twas not!

Who knows-or cares? To-day, 'mid foils and gloves

Its hilt depends,

Flanked by the favours of forgotten loves,—
Remembered friends ;-

And oft its legend lends, in hours of stress,
A word to aid;

Or like a warning comes, in puffed success,
Its broken blade.

THE POET'S SEAT

THE POET'S SEAT

AN IDYLL OF THE SUBURBS

"Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes
Angulus RIDET."—Hor. ii. 6.

T was an elm-tree root of yore,

IT

With lordly trunk, before they lopped it, And weighty, said those five who bore

Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it
Not once or twice, before it lay,

With two young pear-trees to protect it,
Safe where the Poet hoped some day
The curious pilgrim would inspect 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;

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