Part 12 (1/2)

Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street

Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, (I credit Milton in parenthesis), Among the speculations that she made Was this:

”When”--these her very words--”when you return, A slave to duty's harsh commanding call, Will you, I wonder, ever sigh and yearn At all?”

Doubt, honest doubt, sat then upon my brow.

(Emotion is a thing I do not plan.) I could not fairly answer then, but now I can.

Yes, Amaryllis, I can tell you this, Can answer publicly and unafraid: You haven't any notion how I miss The shade.

Fifty-Fifty

[We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets, and experience a pa.s.sing melancholy because we are unacquainted with some of the girls we see.--From ”The Erotic Motive in Literature,” by ALBERT MORDELL.]

Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many girls I see Whose form and features I applaud With well-concealed glee!

I'd speak to many a sonsie maid, Or willowy or obese, Were I not fearful, and afraid She'd yell for the police.

And Melancholy, bittersweet, Marks me then as her own, Because I lack the nerve to greet The girls I might have known.

Yet though with sadness I am fraught, (As I remarked before), There is one sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er:

For every shadow cloud of woe Hath argentine alloy; I see some girls I do not know, And feel a pa.s.sing joy.

To Myrtilla

Twelve fleeting years ago, my Myrt, (_Eheu fugaces!_ maybe more) I wrote of the directoire skirt You wore.

Ten years ago, Myrtilla mine, The hobble skirt engaged my pen.

That was, I calculate, in Nine- Teen Ten.

The polo coat, the feathered lid, The phony furs of yesterfall, The current shoe--I tried to kid Them all.

Vain every vitriolic bit, Silly all my sulphuric song.

Rube Goldberg said a bookful; it 'S all wrong.

Bitter the words I used to fling, But you, despite my angriest Note, Were never swayed by anything I wrote.

So I surrender. I am beat.

And, though the admission rather girds, In any garb you're just too sweet For words.

A Psalm of Labouring Life

Tell me not, in doctored numbers, Life is but a name for work!

For the labour that enc.u.mbers Me I wish that I could s.h.i.+rk.