Malbrouck Milady in her watch-tower While sitting quite forlorn in With fainting steps and slow. "O page, prithee, come faster! Your looks are so full of woe." "The news I bring, fair lady," With sorrowful accent said he, "But since to speak I'm hurried," "He's dead! he's dead as a herring! For I beheld his 'berring,' And four officers transferring His corpse away from the field. "One officer carried his sabre, And he carried it not without labour, The third was helmet-bearerThat helmet which on its wearer Filled all who saw with terror, And covered a hero's brains. 29 "Now, having got so far, I Translated by Father Prout. MARK TWAIN: A PIPE DREAM WELL I recall how first I met Mark Twain-an infant barely three Rolling a tiny cigarette While cooing on his nurse's knee. Since then in every sort of place I've met with Mark and heard him joke, Yet how can I describe his face? I never saw it for the smoke. At school he won a smokership, At Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.) His name was soon on every lip, They made him "smoker" of his class. Who will forget his smoking bout With Mount Vesuvius-our cheers When Mount Vesuvius went out The news was flashed to England's King, To smoke the London fog away. But Mark was firm. "I bow," said he, "To no imperial command, No ducal coronet for me, My smoke is for my native land!" From a Full Heart For Mark there waits a brighter crown! Oliver Herford. 31 FROM A FULL HEART IN days of peace my fellow-men Rightly regarded me as more like A Bishop than a Major-Gen., And nothing since has made me warlike; When the War is over and the Kaiser's out of print I never really longed for gore, And any taste for red corpuscles That lingered with me left before The German troops had entered Brussels. In early days the Colonel's ""Shun!" Froze me; and as the war grew older The noise of some one else's gun Left me considerably colder. When the War is over and the battle has been won The Captains and the Kings depart It may be so, but not lieutenants; Dawn after weary dawn I start The never ending round of penance; One rock amid the welter stands On which my gaze is fixed intently: An after-life in quiet lands Lived very lazily and gently. When the War is over and we've done the Belgians proud Oh, I'm tired of the noise and turmoil of battle, A. A. Milne. THE ULTIMATE JOY I HAVE felt the thrill of passion in the poet's mystic book Oh, eerie hour of drowsiness-'twas like a fairy spell, Old Fashioned Fun 33 In every life there comes a time of happiness supreme, shore. How vain is Art's illusion, and how potent Nature's sway When once in kindly mood she deigns to waft our woes away! And the memory will cheer me, though all other pleasures fly, Of how I woke and needed extra covers in July. Unknown. OLD FASHIONED FUN WHEN that old joke was new, True wit was seldom heard, And humor shown by few, It passed indeed for wit, Did this achievement rare, ́ When down your friend would sit, To steal away his chair. You brought him to the floor, You bruised him black and blue, And this would cause a roar, W. M. Thackeray. |