Nash's six preceding volumes and includes thirty poems never before published. It is a notable omnibus, a storehouse of wry laughter, penetrating appraisal, and inspired lunacy comparable to nothing written in the period-a collection which has already been admiringly called The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery.

THE RHINOCEROS

The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast,
But you and I will never know
Why nature chose to make him so.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros!

ADVENTURES OF ISABEL

Isabel met an enormous bear;

Isabel, Isabel, didn't care.

The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear's big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,

How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you!

Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry;

Isabel didn't scream or scurry.

She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.

Once on a night as black as pitch

Isabel met a wicked old witch.

The witch's face was cross and wrinkled,

The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled.

Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed,

I'll turn you into an ugly toad!

Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry;

Isabel didn't scream or scurry.

She showed no rage and she showed no rancor,
But she turned the witch into milk and drank her.

Isabel met a hideous giant,

Isabel continued self-reliant.

The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,

He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.

Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,

I'll grind your bones to make my bread.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry;

Isabel didn't scream or scurry.

She nibbled the zwieback that she always fed off,

And when it was gone, she cut the giant's head off.

Isabel met a troublesome doctor,

He punched and poked till he really shocked her.

The doctor's talk was of coughs and chills,
And the doctor's satchel bulged with pills.
The doctor said unto Isabel,

Swallow this, it will make you well.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry;

Isabel didn't scream or scurry.

She took those pills from the pill-concoctor,

And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.

GOLLY, HOW TRUTH WILL OUT!

How does a person get to be a capable liar?

That is something that I respectfully inquiar,

Because I don't believe a person will ever set the world on fire

Unless they are a capable lire.

Some wise man said that words were given to us to conceal our thoughts,

But if a person has nothing but truthful words why their thoughts haven't even

the protection of a pair of panties or shoughts,

And a naked thought is ineffectual as well as improper,

And hasn't a chance in the presence of a glib chinchilla-clad whopper.

One of the greatest abilities a person can have, I guess,

Is the ability to say Yes when they mean No and No when they mean Yes.

Oh to be Machiavellian, oh to be unscrupulous, oh, to be glib!

Oh to be ever prepared with a plausible fib!

Because then a dinner engagement or a contract or a treaty is no longer a fetter, Because liars can just logically lie their way out of it if they don't like it or if one comes along that they like better;

And do you think their conscience prickles?

No, it tickles.

And please believe that I mean every one of these lines as I am writing them Because once there was a small boy who was sent to the drugstore to buy some bitter stuff to put on his nails to keep him from biting them,

And in his humiliation he tried to lie to the clerk

And it didn't work,

Because he said My mother sent me to buy some bitter stuff for a friend of mine's nails that bites them, and the clerk smiled wisely and said I wonder who that friend could be,

And the small boy broke down and said Me,

And it was me, or at least I was him,

And all my subsequent attempts at subterfuge have been equally grim,

And that is why I admire a suave prevarication because I prevaricate so awkwardly

and gauchely,

And that is why I can never amount to anything politically or socially.

SONG TO BE SUNG BY THE FATHER OF

INFANT FEMALE CHILDREN

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;

Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.

For little boys as little boys,

No special hate I carry,

But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.

No matter how they tarry,

Eventually they marry.

And, swine among the pearls,

They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents who feed and clothe him.
Their lips are sticky with pride and praise,
But I have begun to loathe him.
Yes, I loathe with a loathing shameless
This child who to me is nameless.
This bachelor child in his carriage
Gives never a thought to marriage,
But a person can hardly say knife
Before he will hunt him a wife.

I never see an infant (male),
A-sleeping in the sun,
Without I turn a trifle pale
And think, is he the one?

Oh, first he'll want to crop his curls,
And then he'll want a pony,

And then he'll think of pretty girls

And holy matrimony.
He'll put away his pony,
And sigh for matrimony.
A cat without a mouse
Is he without a spouse.

Oh, somewhere he bubbles, bubbles of milk,
And quietly sucks his thumbs;

His cheeks are roses painted on silk,
And his teeth are tucked in his gums.
But alas, the teeth will begin to grow,
And the bubbles will cease to bubble;
Given a score of years or so,
The roses will turn to stubble.

He'll sell a bond, or he'll write a book,

And his eyes will get that acquisitive look,
And raging and ravenous for the kill,
He'll boldly ask for the hand of Jill.
This infant whose middle

Is diapered still

Will want to marry

My daughter Jill.

Oh sweet be his slumber and moist his middle!

My dreams, I fear, are infanticiddle.

A fig for embryo Lohengrins!

I'll open all of his safety pins,

I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle,
And give him readings from Aristotle.
Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring,
And Tabasco sauce for his teething ring,
And an elegant, elegant alligator

To play with in his perambulator.

Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water
To marry somebody else's daughter.

Countee Cullen

ountee Cullen was born in New York City, May 30, 1903. He was educated in the New York schools and at New York University, and was graduated with

the class of 1925. A year later he received his M.A. at Harvard (1926).

Color (1925) and Copper Sun (1927) suffer not only from the poet's influences but from his own juvenilia. There is, however, no gainsaying his gift of epigram and the neatness of his execution. Lacking the deep racial quality of Langston Hughes, Cullen's is a more literary accomplishment. If his verse is not as black as it might be painted, it is bold in concept and metaphor. "Heritage," which, in spite of reminiscences of Ralph Hodgson and Edna Millay, marks the peak of his first volume, still stands as one of the finest poems produced by an American Negro. The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927) appeared in the same year as his comprehensive anthology of Negro verse, Caroling Dusk, in which Cullen showed unexpected editorial acumen. The Black Christ (1930) suffers from the double handicap of formula in style and formula in feeling. Its program is ambitious and promises force; but here is no fire, only fluency. The poet seems to be victimized by his own epithets, and these lack surprise or conviction. As Harry Alan Potamkin wrote, reviewing the preceding volume, “Mr. Cullen has capitalized the fact of race without paying for such capitalization by the exploitation of the material and the essence of race. Once race becomes to him more than capital and its poetic form more than the statement of its fact, he will create, upon what are undoubtedly unusual gifts, poems of import."

The Medea and Some Poems (1935) contains an adequate but not inspired. version of the poetic drama with several other verses.

SIMON THE CYRENIAN SPEAKS

He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name.
He never gave a sign to see,
And yet I knew and came.

At first I said, "I will not bear
His cross upon my back-
He only seeks to place it there
Because my skin is black."

But He was dying for a dream,

And He was very meek;

And in His eyes there shone a gleam
Men journey far to seek.

It was Himself my pity bought;

I did for Christ alone

What all of Rome could not have wrought
With bruise of lash or stone.