Propertius: Elegy VIII, Part 1
"Tune igitur demens, nec te mea cura moratur?"
O Cynthia, hast thou lost thy mind?
Have I no claim on thine affection?
Dost love the chill Illyrian wind
With something passing predilection?
And is thy friend—whoe'er he be—
The kind to take the place of me?
Ah, canst thou bear the surging deep?
Canst thou endure the hard ship's-mattress?
For scant will be thy hours of sleep
From Staten Island to Cape Hatt'ras;
And won't thy fairy feet be froze
With treading on the foreign snows?
I hope that doubly blows the gale,
With billows twice as high as ever,
So that the captain, fain to sail,
May not achieve his mad endeavour!
The winds, when that they cease to roar,
Shall find me wailing on the shore.
Yet merit thou my love or wrath,
O False, I pray that Galatea
May smile upon thy watery path!
A pleasant trip,—that's the idea.
Light of my life, there never shall
For me be any other gal.
And sailors, as they hasten past,
Will always have to hear my query:
"Where have you seen my Cynthia last?
Has anybody seen my dearie?"
I'll shout: "In Malden or Marquette
Where'er she be, I'll have her yet!"
Fragment
"Militis in galea nidum fecere columbæ."—PETRONIUS
Within the soldier's helmet see
The nesting dove;
Venus and Mars, it seems to me,
In love.
On the Uses of Adversity
"Nam nihil est, quod non mortalibus afferat usum."—PETRONIUS
Nothing there is that mortal man may utterly despise;
What in our wealth we treasured, in our poverty we prize.
The gold upon a sinking ship has often wrecked the boat,
While on a simple oar a shipwrecked man may keep afloat.
The burglar seeks the plutocrat, attracted by his dress—
The poor man finds his poverty the true preparedness.
After Hearing "Robin Hood"
The songs of Sherwood Forest
Are lilac-sweet and clear;
The virile rhymes of merrier times
Sound fair upon mine ear.
Sweet is their sylvan cadence
And sweet their simple art.
The balladry of the greenwood tree
Stirs memories in my heart.
O braver days and elder
With mickle valour dight,
How ye bring back the time, alack!
When Harry Smith could write!
Maud Muller Mutatur
In 1909 toilet goods were not considered a serious matter and no special department of the catalogs was devoted to it. A few perfumes and creams were scattered here and there among bargain goods.
In 1919 an assortment of perfumes that would rival any city department store is shown, along with six pages of other toilet articles, including rouge and eyebrow pencils.
—From "How the Farmer Has Changed in a Decade: Toilet Goods," in Farm and Fireside's advertisement.
Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Powdered her nose with Bon Sachet.
Beneath her lingerie hat appeared
Eyebrows and cheeks that were well veneered.
Singing she rocked on the front piazz,
To the tune of "The Land of the Sky Blue Jazz."
But the song expired on the summer air,
And she said "This won't get me anywhere."
The judge in his car looked up at her
And signalled "Stop!" to his brave chauffeur.
He smiled a smile that is known as broad,
And he said to Miss Muller, "Hello, how's Maud?"
"What sultry weather this is? Gee whiz!"
Said Maud. Said the judge, "I'll say it is."
"Your coat is heavy. Why don't you shed it?
Have a drink?" said Maud. Said the judge, "You said it."
And Maud, with the joy of bucolic youth,
Blended some gin and some French vermouth.
Maud Muller sighed, as she poured the gin,
"I've got something on Whittier's heroine."
"Thanks," said the judge, "a peppier brew
From a fairer hand was never knew."
And when the judge had had number 7,
Maud seemed an angel direct from Heaven.
And the judge declared, "You're a lovely girl,
An' I'm for you, Maudie, I'll tell the worl'."
And the judge said, "Marry me, Maudie dearie?"
And Maud said yes to the well known query.
And she often thinks, in her rustic way,
As she powders her nose with Bon Sachet,
"I never'n the world would 'a got that guy,
If I'd waited till after the First o' July."
And of all glad words of prose or rhyme,
The gladdest are, "Act while there yet is time."
The Carlyles
[I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who seemed to think that the fact that Mrs. Carlyle threw a teacup at Mr. Carlyle should be given to the public merely as a fact.
But a fact presented to people without the proper—or even, if necessary, without the improper—human being to go with it does not mean anything and does not really become alive or caper about in people's minds.
But what I want and what I believe most people want when a fact is being presented is one or two touches that will make natural and human questions rise in and play about like this:
"Did a servant see Mrs. Carlyle throw the teacup? Was the servant an English servant with an English imagination or an Irish servant with an Irish imagination? What would the fact have been like if Mr. Browning had been listening at the keyhole? Or Oscar Wilde, or Punch, or the Missionary Herald, or The New York Sun, or the Christian Science Monitor?"—Gerald Stanley Lee in the Satevepost.]
BY OUR OWN ROBERT BROWNING
As a poet heart- and fancy-free—whole,
I listened at the Carlyles' keyhole;
And I saw, I, Robert Browning, saw,
Tom hurl a teacup at Jane's jaw.
She silent sat, nor tried to speak up
When came the wallop with the teacup—
A cup not filled with Beaune or Clicquot,
But one that brimmed with Orange Pekoe.
"Jane Welsh Carlyle," said Thomas, bold,
"The tea you brewed for m' breakfast's cold!
I'm feeling low i' my mind; a thing
You know b' this time. Have at you!"... Bing!
And hurled, threw he at her the teacup;
And I wrote it, deeming it unique, up.
BY OUR OWN OSCAR WILDE
Lady Leffingwell (coldly).—A full teacup! What a waste! So many good women and so little good tea.
[Exit Lady Leffingwell]