Your tragacanth in tears ooze from the tree . I see the octopus play with his feet, And find within this sadness something sweet. The thing we like about that poem is its recognition of all the sorrow there is in the universe . . . its unflinching recognition, we might say, if we were not afraid of praising our own work too highly. combined with its happy ending. One feels, upon reading it, that, although everything everywhere is very sad, and all wrong, one has only to have patience and after a while everything everywhere will be quite right and very sweet. No matter how interested one may be in these literary problems, one must cease discussing them at times or one will be late to one's meals. Don Marquis. A LITTLE SWIRL OF VERS LIBRE NOT COVERED, STRANGE TO SAY, BY THE PENAL CODE I AM numb from world-pain I sway most violently as the thoughts course through me, And athwart me, And up and down me Thoughts of cosmic matters, Of the mergings of worlds within worlds, And unutterabilities And room-rent, Young Lochinvar And other tremendously alarming phenomena, Rip me most outrageously; 381 (Without a semblance, mind you, of respect for the Hague Convention's rules governing soul-slitting.) Aye, as with the poniard of the Finite pricking the rainbowbubble of the Infinite! (Some figure, that!) (Some little rush of syllables, that!)— And make me (are you still whirling at my coat-tails, reader?) Make me ahem, where was I?-oh, yes-make me, In a sudden, overwhelming gust of soul-shattering rebellion, Fall flat on my face! Thomas R. Ybarra. YOUNG LOCHINVAR THE TRUE STORY IN BLANK VERSE OH! young Lochinvar has come out of the West, Or two, a pair of brass knuckles, and an Arkansaw Toothpick in his boot, so, comparatively speaking, He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for In ferriage, but lost his pocket-book, containing Ere he alighted at the Netherby mansion. He arrived the bride had consented-the gallant So, boldly he entered the Netherby Hall Then spake the bride's father, his hand on his sword 66 Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in anger, The bride kissed the goblet, the knight took it up, Bygones One touch to her hand and one word in her ear, So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, "She is won! we are gone! over bank, bush, and spar, Excitement of the moment he had forgotten The youth and gave him the awfullest lambasting So dauntless in war and so daring in love, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar? 383 Unknown. IMAGISTE LOVE LINES I LOVE my lady with a deep purple love; Struggling in a pot of glue. Her eyes are grey, like twin ash-cans, Just emptied, about which still hovers A dainty mist. Her disposition is as bright as a ten-cent shine, Yet her kisses are tender and goulashy. I love my lady with a deep purple love. BYGONES OR ever a lick of Art was done, Or ever a one to care, I was a Purple Polygon, And you were a Sky-Blue Square. Unknown. You yearned for me across a void, You pined for me as well I knew, Until the Square that was heavenly Blue, A myriad years or less or more, Have softly fluttered by, Matters are much as they were before, I yearn for you, but I have no chance, I break my heart for a single glance, And ever I grow more pale and wan, When I was a Purple Polygon, And you were a Sky-Blue Square. Bert Leston Taylor. JUSTICE TO SCOTLAND AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY BURNS O MICKLE yeuks the keckle doup, An' a' unsicker girns the graith, For wae and wae! the crowdies loup O'er jouk an' hallan, braw an' baith Where ance the coggie hirpled fair, And blithesome poortith toomed the loof, There's nae a burnie giglet rare But blaws in ilka jinking coof. |