It flooded the sense of my verses,

Like the break of a tinker's dam,
And I felt as one feels when the printer
Of your "infinite calm " makes clam.

It mixed up s's and x's

Like an alphabet coming to strife. It seemed the discordant echo

Of a row between husband and wife.

It brought a perplexed meaning
Into my perfect piece,

And set the machinery creaking

As though it were scant of grease.

I have tried, but I try it vainly,

The one last word to divine

Which came from the keys of my typewriter
And so would pass as mine.

It may be some other typewriter
Will produce that word again,
It may be, but only for others-
I shall write henceforth with a pen.

C. H. Webb.

AFTER GEORGE MEREDITH

AT THE SIGN OF THE COCK
(FRENCH STYLE, 1898)

(Being an Ode in further "Contribution to the Song of French History," dedicated, without malice or permission, to Mr. George Meredith)

R

OOSTER her sign,

I

Rooster her pugnant note, she struts
Evocative, amazon spurs aprick at heel;

Nid-nod the authentic stump

Of the once ensanguined comb vermeil as wine; With conspuent doodle-doo

Hails breach o' the hectic dawn of yon New Year, Last issue up to date

Of quiverful Fate

Evolved spontaneous; hails with tonant trump The spiriting prime o' the clashed carillon-peal; Ruffling her caudal plumes derisive of scuts; Inconscient how she stalks an immarcessibly absurd Bird.

II

Mark where her Equatorial Pioneer
Delirant on the tramp goes littoralwise.

His Flag at furl, portmanteaued; drains to the dregs

The penultimate brandy-bottle, coal-on-the-headpiece gift

Of who avenged the Old Sea-Rover's smirch.
Marchant he treads the all-along of inarable drift
On dubiously connivent legs,

The facile prey of predatory flies;
Panting for further; sworn to lurch

Empirical on to the Menelik-buffered, enhavened

blue,

Rhymingsee Cantique I.—with doodle-doo.

III

Infuriate she kicked against Imperial fact;
Vulnant she felt

What pin-stab should have stained Another's pelt
Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon,
Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed,
The perjured Scythian she lacked

At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely

cuffed

Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical

broke

Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower,
She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked

Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower;

Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon
She woke,

A nuptial-knotted derelict;

Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined
By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace

In guise of heavy-armed Gospeller to men, Tyrannical unto fraternal equal liberal, her. Not she;

Not till Alsace her consanguineous find
What red deteutonising artillery

Shall shatter her beer-reek alien police
The just-now pluripollent; not till then.

IV

More pungent yet the esoteric pain
Squeezing her pliable vitals nourishes feud
Insanely grumous, grumously insane.
For lo!

Past common balmly on the Bordereau,
Churns she the skim o' the gutter's crust
With Anti-Judaic various carmagnole,
Whooped praise of the Anti-Just;
Her boulevard brood

Gyratory in convolvements militant-mad;
Theatrical of faith in the Belliform,
Her Og,

Her Monstrous. Fled what force she had
To buckle the jaw-gape, wide agog
For the Preconcerted One,

The Anticipated, ripe to clinch the whole;
Queen-bee to hive the hither and thither volan.

swarm.

Bides she his coming; adumbrates the new

Expurgatorial Divine,

Her final effulgent Avatar,

Postured outside a trampling mastodon

Black as her Baker's charger; towering; visibly gorged

With blood of traitors. Knee-grip stiff,

Spine straightened, on he rides;

Embossed the Patriot's brow with hieroglyph

Of martial dossiers, nothing forged

About him save his armour.

So she bides

Voicing his advent indeterminably far,

Rooster her sign,

Rooster her conspuent doodle-doo.

Behold her, pranked with spurs for bloody sport,

How she acclaims,

A crapulous chanticleer,

Breach of the hectic dawn of yon New Year.
Not yet her fill of rumours sucked;
Inebriate of honour; blushfully wroth;
Tireless to play her old primeval games;
Her plumage preened the yet unplucked
Like sails of a galleon, rudder hard amort
With crepitant mast
Fronting the hazard to dare of a dual blast
The intern and the extern, blizzards both.

Owen Seaman.