When classic scenes amid
For rest and peace he hankers,
Amari aliquid
His joys aesthetic cankers:
Whate'er he sees, he knows
He has to write upon it
A paragraph of prose
Or possibly a sonnet:
By mountain lakelets blue,
'Mid wild romantic heath, he's
A martyr always to
Scribendi cacoethes:
The Naiad-haunted stream
Or lonely mountain-top he
Considers as a theme
Available for "copy."
If on the sunlit main
With ardour rapt he gazes,
He's torturing his brain
For neat pictorial phrases:
When in a ship or boat
He navigates the briny
(And here 'tis his to quote
Examples set by Heine)
While fellow-passengers
Lie stretched in mere prostration,
He duly registers
Each horrible sensation—
He notes his qualms with care,
And bids the public know 'em
In "Thoughts on Mal de Mer,"
Or "Nausea: a Poem."
* * * *
Such is his earthly lot:
Nor is it wholly certain
If Death for him or not
Rings down the final curtain,
Or if, when hence he's fled
To worlds or worse or better,
He'll send per Mr St—d
A crisp descriptive letter!
VERNAL VERSES
When early worms began to crawl, and early birds to sing,
And frost, and mud, and snow, and rain proclaimed the jocund spring,
Its all-pervading influence the Poet's soul obeyed—
He made a song to greet the Spring, and this is what he made:—
They sadly lacked enlightenment, our ancestors of old,
Who used to suffer simply from an ordinary cold:
But we, of Science' mysteries less ignorant by far,
Have nothing less distinguished than a Bronchial Catarrh!
O when your head's a lump of lead and nought can do but sneeze:
Whene'er in turn you freeze and burn, and then you burn and freeze:—
It does not mean you're going to die, although you think you are—
These are the primal symptoms of a Bronchial Catarrh.