I dart to Mother-skirts of love and peace
To play with toys until those horrors leave me—
Yet note, whichever way I find release,
By fight or flight
By being harsh or tame,
The SPIRIT’S the same, the Pen-and-Ink’s the same.
(II)
Epitaph on an Unfortunate Artist
He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid,
So in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.
A HISTORY OF PEACE
(Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant)
Here rest in peace the bones of Henry Reece,
Dead through his bitter championship of Peace
Against all eagle-nosed and cynic lords
Who keep the Pax Romana with their swords.
Henry was only son of Thomas Reece,
Banker and sometime Justice of the Peace,
And of Jane Reece whom Thomas kept in dread
By Pax Romana of his board and bed.
THE ROCK BELOW
Comes a muttering from the earth
Where speedwell grows and daisies grow,
“Pluck these weeds up, root and all,
Search what hides below.”
Root and all I pluck them out;
There, close under, I have found
Stumps of thorn with ancient crooks
Grappled in the ground.