T

THE POSTER GIRL

HE blessed Poster girl leaned out
From a pinky-purple heaven.

One eye was red and one was green;
Her bang was cut uneven;

She had three fingers on her hand,

And the hairs on her head were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No sunflowers did adorn,

But a heavy Turkish portiere
Was very neatly worn;

And the hat that lay along her back
Was yellow, like canned corn.

It was a kind of wobbly wave
That she was standing on,
And high aloft she flung a scarf
That must have weighed a ton;
And she was rather tall. at least

She reached up to the sun.

She curved and writhed, and then she said.
Less green of speech than blue:
"Perhaps I am absurd - perhaps
I don't appeal to you;

But my artistic worth depends
Upon the point of view."

I saw her smile, although her eyes
Were only smudgy smears;

And then she swished her swirling arms,

And wagged her gorgeous ears.

She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob,
And wept some purple tears.

Carolyn Wells.

AFTER JEAN INGELOW

LOVERS, AND A REFLECTION

N moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may

IN

mean;

Meaning, however, is no great matter),

Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;

Thro' God's own heather we wonn'd together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):

I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats waver'd alow, above:

Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And oh, the sundazzle on bark and bight!

Thro' the rare red heather we danced together,
(O love my Willie !) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:

By rises that flush'd with their purple favors,

Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen, We walked and waded, we two young shavers, Thanking our stars we were both so green.

We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes:

Songbirds darted about, some inky

As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds; Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky –

They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!

But they skim over bents which the millstream washes,

Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem; They need no parasols, no goloshes;

And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.

Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather) That endowed the wan grass with their golden

blooms;

And snapt

(it was perfectly charming weather) — Our fingers at Fate and her goodness-glooms:

And Willie 'gan sing (oh, his notes were fluty; Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged

sea)

Something made up of rhymes that have done much

duty,

Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry :

Bowers of flowers encounter'd showers

In William's carol (O love my Willie!) Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow I quite forget what-say a daffodilly:

A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow,"
I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was "kneaden " of course in Eden
A rhyme most novel, I do maintain :

Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
And all least furlable things got "furled;
Not with any design to conceal their "glories,"
But simply and solely to rhyme with "world."

O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,

And carted or carried on "wafts" away,
Nor ever again trotted out ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!
Charles S. Calverley.

S

THE SHRIMP-GATHERERS

CARLET spaces of sand and ocean,

Gulls that circle and winds that blow; Baskets and boats and men in motion, Sailing and scattering to and fro.

Girls are waiting, their wimples adorning
With crimson sprinkles the broad gray flood;
And down the beach the blush of the morning
Shines reflected from moisture and mud.