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 I wove the thing to a random rhyme, 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, 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, Traced on the metal's rusty damaskeen— 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 Or decked by Beauty on some morning lawn 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,— And oft its legend lends, in hours of stress, Or like a warning comes, in puffed success, THE POET'S SEAT THE POET'S SEAT AN IDYLL OF THE SUBURBS "Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes 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 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; |