SONNET[1]
JULIAN PARK '10
Where, where is Ganymede? Where are the fair
That graced the tales of Ilium years agone?
Where are the visions of earth's aureate dawn,
When the wing'd bearer bore Jove's nectar rare,
When Naiads laughed and wept and sunned their hair
At sun-kissed pools, deep-recessed, where the fawn
And satyr sought the sloping cool-cropped lawn,
And glimpsed the gods and lurking maidens there?
Where now is Ganymede, and where is Pan?
Where is fair Psyche, where Apollo brave?
Are they all fled, affrighted at the span
Of centuries? Or sunk beneath the wave
Of solemn Lethe? No, rare poet; when
I scan thy pages they all live again.
Literary Monthly, 1907.
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1908, by Julian Park.]
MORTAL VERSE
WILLIAM HUTCHESON WINDOM '11
The muse of poetry is a lady of many whims. Fancy, not reason, seems to determine her actions. She loads the untutored ploughman with the most lavish gifts, while the scholar sits neglected in his study. She places a golden crown on the brow of the slave and flings a tasselled cap at the master. And yet the fool's raiment is worn with as serious and dignified mien as is the kingly crown. She is a malicious person, and while she keeps a straight face before you, it is a hundred to one that she winks behind your back. To be most trusted when she is most deceitful, that is her role.
Very few of us have not at some time come under her spell. The most guiltless-looking has somewhere in the lower drawer of his desk or at the bottom of the tin box where he keeps his old papers, a manuscript, which he at times, half tenderly, half contemptuously, lifts out, after making sure that no prying eye is near. He has caught the muse winking. Were he still illusioned, that poem would never have wasted its aesthetic fragrance within such close confines. It would have been most neatly printed in calendar form and sent to appreciative friends.
But though the majority of us have become chary of the muse, there are some who have never seen through her trickery. To this unfortunate class belonged a certain Mrs. Simons—her real name is charitably withheld—who found that she could gratify a moody disposition, of which she was the unhappy possessor, by writing verses. No one appreciated them, but, far from dampening her enthusiasm, it afforded her a sort of bitter joy, that considerably increased her already large number of available themes. Her poems now proclaimed that she, Mrs. Simons, was singing to stocks and stones; no one would listen, and her tender nature would soon succumb to this unwarranted neglect. But triumph would come, when, as a cold corpse, she would lie in an open grave, with all her formerly unsympathetic friends and relatives weeping and wringing their hands at the sad spectacle. Alas, their grief and contriteness of heart would be too late. The little word which might have saved her from this early death, now spoken, would fall on deaf ears. At last her verses would be read and their gloomy prophecy would fill the world, ever afterwards, with remorse. But Mrs. Simons did not wilt away and die like a flower deprived of water and sunshine. She could not overcome her naturally sound constitution, and, in spite of her wishes to the contrary, she lived to a ripe old age.