Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming

All beneath yon flowery rocks.

Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping
Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers,
Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Soothe my ever-waking slumbers;
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors
Watering soft Elysian plains.
Mourning cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus hovering o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.

Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crowned.

Thus when Philomela drooping
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.

Dean Swift.

OLD FASHIONED FUN

W

HEN that old joke was new,
It was not hard to joke,
And puns we now pooh-pooh,
Great laughter would provoke.

True wit was seldom heard,

And humor shown by few,

When reign'd King George the Third,
And that old joke was new.

It passed indeed for wit,

Did this achievement rare,

When down your friend would sit,
To steal away his chair.

You brought him to the floor,

You bruised him black and blue,

And this would cause a roar,
When your old joke was new.

W. M. Thackeray.

THEMES WITH VARIATIONS

HOME SWEET HOME WITH
VARIATIONS

(Being suggestions of the various styles in which an old theme might have been treated by certain metrical composers)

FANTASIA

I

The original theme as John Howard Payne wrote it:

ID pleasures and palaces though we may

MTD

roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home!

A charm from the skies seems to hallow it there, Which, seek through the world, is not met with elsewhere.

Home, home! Sweet, Sweet Home!
There's no place like Home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain!
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!
The birds singing gaily that came at my call!
Give me them! and the peace of mind, dearer than all

Home, home! Sweet, Sweet Home!
There's no place like Home!

II

(As Algernon Charles Swinburne might have wrapped it up in variations)

('Mid pleasures and palaces —)

As sea-foam blown of the winds, as blossom of brine that is drifted

Hither and yon on the barren breast of the breeze, Though we wander on gusts of a god's breath, shaken and shifted,

The salt of us stings and is sore for the sobbing

seas.

For home's sake hungry at heart, we sicken in pillared porches

Of bliss made sick for a life that is barren of bliss, For the place whereon is a light out of heaven that sears not nor scorches,

Nor elsewhere than this.

(An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain —)

For here we know shall no gold thing glisten,

No bright thing burn, and no sweet thing shine; Nor love lower never an ear to listen

To words that work in the heart like wine.

What time we are set from our land apart, For pain of passion and hunger of heart, Though we walk with exiles fame faints to christen, Or sing at the Cytherean's shrine.

Variation: An exile from home — )

Whether with him whose head

Of gods is honored,

With song made splendent in the sight of men
Whose heart most sweetly stout,

From ravishing France cast out,

Being firstly hers, was hers most wholly then-
Or where on shining seas like wine

The dove's wings draw the drooping Erycine.

(Give me my lowly thatched cottage — )

For Joy finds Love grow bitter,
And spreads his wings to quit her,
At thought of birds that twitter
Beneath the roof-tree's straw
Of birds that come for calling,
No fear or fright appalling,
When dews of dusk are falling,
Or daylight's draperies draw.

(Give me them, and the peace of mind — )

Give me these things then back, though the giving Be at cost of earth's garner of gold;

There is no life without these worth living,

No treasure where these are not told.
For the heart give the hope that it knows not,

Give the balm for the burn of the breast
For the soul and the mind that repose not,
Oh, give us a rest!