For I am Sad

'Twas but my own heart cryin' out for you
Magraw! Bulleen, shinnanigan, Boru,
Aroon, Machree, Aboo!7

379

Arthur Guiterman.

'Magraw, a Gaelic term of endearment, often heard on the baseball fields of Donnybrook.

'These last six words are all that tradition has preserved of the original incantation by means of which Irish rats were rhymed to death. Thereby hangs a good Celtic tale, which I should be glad to tell you in this note; but the publishers say that being prosed to death is as bad as being rhymed to death, and that the readers won't stand for any more.

LILIES

LILIES, lilies, white lilies and yellow-
Lilies, lilies, purple lilies and golden-

Calla lilies, tiger lilies, lilies of the valley-
Lilies, lilies, lilies-

Bulb, bud and blossom

What made them lilies?

If they were not lilies they would have to be something else, would they not?

What was it that made them lilies instead of making them
violets or roses or geraniums or petunias?
What was it that made you yourself and me myself? What?
Alas! I do not know!

Don Marquis.

FOR I AM SAD

No usual words can bear the woe I feel,
No tralatitions trite give me relief!

O Webster! lend me words to voice my grief
Bitter as quassia, quass or kumquat peel!
For I am sad . . . bound on the cosmic wheel,
What mad chthonophagy bids slave and chief
Through endless cycles bite the earth like beef,
By turns each cannibal and each the meal?
Turn we to nature Webster, and we see
Your whidah bird refuse all strobile fruit,

...

Your tragacanth in tears ooze from the tree
We hear your flammulated owlets hoot!
Turn we to nature, Webster, and we find
Few creatures have a quite contented mind.
Your koulan there, with dyslogistic snort,
Will leave his phacoid food on worts to browse,
While glactophorous Himalayan cows
The knurled kohl-rabi spurn in uncouth sport;
No margay climbs margosa trees; the short
Gray mullet drink no mulse, nor house
In pibcorns when the youth of Wales carouse
No tournure doth the toucan's tail contort
So I am sad! . . . and yet, on Summer eves,
When xebecs search the whishing scree for whelk,
And the sharp sorrel lifts obcordate leaves,
And cryptogamous plants fulfil the elk,

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,
Which stab me,

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,
Thro' all the wide border his horse has no equal,
Having cost him forty-five dollars at the market,
Where good nags, fresh from the country,
With burrs still in their tails are selling
For a song; and save his good broad sword
He weapon had none, except a seven-shooter
Or two, a pair of brass knuckles, and an Arkansaw

Toothpick in his boot, so, comparatively speaking,
He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone,
Because there was no one going his way.

He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for
Toll-gates; he swam the Eske River where ford
There was none, and saved fifteen cents

In ferriage, but lost his pocket-book, containing
Seventeen dollars and a half, by the operation.

Ere he alighted at the Netherby mansion
He stopped to borrow a dry suit of clothes,
And this delayed him considerably, so, when

He arrived the bride had consented the gallant
Came late for a laggard in love and a dastard in war
Was to wed the fair Ellen, and the guests had assembled.

So, boldly he entered the Netherby Hall
Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and
Brothers-in-law and forty or fifty cousins;

Then spake the bride's father, his hand on his sword
(For the poor craven bridegroom ne'er opened his head)

"Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in anger,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"
"I long wooed your daughter, and she will tell you
I have the inside track in the free-for-all
For her affections! my suit you denied; but let
That pass, while I tell you, old fellow, that love
Swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide,
And now I am come with this lost love of mine
To lead but one measure, drink one glass of beer;
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far
That would gladly be bride to yours very truly."

The bride kissed the goblet, the knight took it up,
He quaffed off the nectar and threw down the mug,
Smashing it into a million pieces, while
He remarked that he was the son of a gun
From Seven-up and run the Number Nine:
She looked down to blush, but she looked up again
For she well understood the wink in his eye;
He took her soft hand ere her mother could
Interfere, "Now tread we a measure; first four
Half right and left; swing," cried young Lochinvar.

Bygones

One touch to her hand and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall door and the charger
Stood near on three legs eating post hay;

So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,
Then leaped to the saddle before her.

"She is won! we are gone! over bank, bush, and spar,
They'll have swift steeds that follow "--but in the

Excitement of the moment he had forgotten
To untie the horse, and the poor brute could
Only gallop in a little circus around the
Hitching-post; so the old gent collared

The youth and gave him the awfullest lambasting
That was ever heard of on Canobie Lec;

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;

She fascinates me like a fly

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.