II
What the Professor said to the Editor of “Wheels”
OLD Professor Goosecap
Watched the planet’s flower-show.
“Pedagogues well-drilled, mayhap,
Marshalled in a row,
Can perceive in China asters
Half a hemisphere’s disasters,
With rays to pierce the fourth dimension:
Come, limit it to our declension!
Pedagogues, through schoolroom bars,
Must thrust their faces like a map
Crownèd with a dunce’s cap,
To hiss like geese at the stars,
And crush with wooden toe—
All growing,
And blowing,
These Canterbury bells as they blow,
These silvery bells in a row!”
SWITCHBACK
BY the blue wooden sea,
Curling laboriously,
Coral and amber grots
(Cherries and apricots),
Ribbons of noisy heat,
Binding them head and feet,
Horses as fat as plums
Snort as each bumpkin comes.
Giggles like towers of glass
(Pink and blue spirals) pass,
Oh, how the Vacancy
Laughed at them rushing by!
“Turn again, flesh and brain,
Only yourselves again!
How far above the Ape,
Differing in each shape,
You with your regular,
Meaningless circles are!”
TRAMS
CASTLES of crystal,
Castles of wood,
Moving on pulleys
Just as you should!
See the gay people
Flaunting like flags,
Bells in the steeple,
Sky all in rags.
Bright as a parrot
Flaunts the gay heat—
Songs in the garret,
Fruit in the street;
Plump as a cherry,
Red as a rose,
Old Mother Berry—
Blowing her nose!