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When the trill of my juvenile trumpet
Is dead and its echoes are dead;
Then the laurel shall lie on the crumpet
And crown of my

head!

Owen Seaman,

NEPHELIDIA

ROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the

FR dawn through a notable nimbus of

nebulous moonshine,

Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they

float,

Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moon

shine,

These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?

Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,

Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast ?

Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,

Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps

of death;

Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error,

Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath.

Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses

Sweetens the stress of surprising suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a

sigh;

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Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses, "Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die." Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be,

While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;

Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balmbreathing baby,

As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.

Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer :

Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;

Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that

pursue her,

Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

A

THE LAY OF MACARONI

Sa wave that steals when the winds are

stormy

From creek to cove of the curving shore, Buffeted, blown, and broken before me, Scattered and spread to its sunlit core: As a dove that dips in the dark of maples To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade, I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples, I bathe in thy beauty, by thee embayed.

What is it ails me that I should sing of her?

The queen of the flashes and flames that were! Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her,

The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her! I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters,

I have danced her dances of dizzy delight,

I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her

altars,

Between the nightingale's song and the night!

What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee? What is it now I should ask at thine hands ? Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee?

Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands?

Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni,

And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold, She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni,

The choice of her children when cheeses are old!

And over me hover, as if by the wings of it, Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet, The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it, Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat;

Lo! and the beautiful Queen, as she brings of it, Lifts me the links of the limitless chain,

Bidding mine mouth chant the splendidest things of it,

Out of the wealth of my wonderful brain!

Behold! I have done it: my stomach is smitten With sweets of the surfeit her hands have

unrolled.

Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten,
I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered,
and sold!

No man of thy millions is more macaronied,
Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me;
The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied,
And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee!
Bayard Taylor.

AFTER BRET HARTE

THE HEATHEN PASS-EE

W

By Bred Hard

HICH I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for plots that are dark
And not always in vain

The heathen Pass-ee is peculiar,
And the same I would rise to explain.

I would also premise

That the term of Pass-ee

Most fitly applies,

As you probably see,

To one whose vocation is passing
The ordinary B. A. degree.

Tom Crib was his name,

And I shall not deny

In regard to the same

What that name might imply;

But his face it was trustful and childlike, And he had a most innocent eye.

Upon April the First

The Little-Go fell,
And that was the worst

Of the gentleman's sell,

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