Vainly for succour Nassaw calls;
Know Zillah that thy Nassaw falls,
But prowling wolf and fox may joy
To quarry on thy Arab boy.
A happy thought is well worked out in the following quaint little jeu d’esprit which the writer came across in an old magazine many years ago. If you read it line after line you will find the author cheerfully contemplating the prospect of matrimony; but if you only read each alternate line you will discover him to be a confirmed old bachelor—
I always did intend
To take to me a wife,
Single my life to spend
Would grieve my very life.
It much delighteth me
To think upon a bride,
To live from woman free
I can’t be satisfied.
A female, to my mind,
The joy I can’t express,
I ne’er expect to find
So great in singleness.
A bachelor to live
I never would agree,
My mind I freely give
A married man to be.
A somewhat common form of poetic conceit is the arranging into one intelligent poem of lines from a number of well-known poets and thus forming what may be called a mosaic of verses. I here print one of the best examples of this kind that I have come across; the author, like those of the “e”-less verses, is unknown to fame—
I only knew she came and went, Powell.
Like troutlets in a pool; Hood.
She was a phantom of delight, Wordsworth.
And I was like a fool. Eastman.