When elvers fry for breakfast with egg chopped small And bacon from the side that’s hung upon the wall. When the dish is on the table how the children shout “O, what funny fish, Wormy squirmy fish, Weeny white fish, Our mother’s dishing out!” Eels have a flavour (and a baddish one) of oil. “When we have shuffled _down_ their mortal coil, What dreams may come!” what horrid nightmares neigh, Gallop or squat, Trample or trot, Vanishing not Till break of day! “Never start nothing,” says the motto in our pub: “It might lead to summat”: that’s (as Shakespeare said) the rub! So I’m not going to tell you, anyway not yet, If the elvers are eels, White baby eels, Tiny shiny eels, Caught with a net-- Or another quite separate wriggly kind of grub, For I’ve seen more fights over that outside a pub Than ever _you_ saw at Barton Fair when Joe The brown gipsy man, The tawny gipsy man, The tipsy gipsy man, Tried to smart up the show. But anyway, good people, you may search the river over Before a breakfast tastier or cheaper you discover Than elvers, and if all the year the elver season lasted I wouldn’t mind a bit, I wouldn’t care a bit, Not a little tiny bit, _How_ long I fasted! JOHN HELPS John Helps a wer an honest mon; The perry that a made Wer crunched vrom purs as honest As ever tree displayed. John Helps a wer an honest mon; The dumplings that a chewed Wer made vrom honest apples As Autumn ever growed. John Helps a wer an honest mon, And I be sorry a’s dead. Perry and honest men be scarce These days, ’tiz zed. _LOVE POEMS_ THE GOLDEN SNAKE Her body’s glory is a golden snake Around Life’s tree Coiled: the tree shall break In the blast of Eternity And the coil be crushed. Too late! immortal poison has rushed Through more-than-veins. Beauty remains Though bodies rot. The fang (Though flesh the pang To flesh deliver) Strikes down more deep Than flesh, to trouble Even the ultimate sleep, The eternal dream. Though all she seem To be, like a golden bubble Shall break at the prick of Death, This shall not break: Her beauty’s sting: sharp as the sting of a snake: The sting of Beauty failing not with breath. IN A CATHEDRAL From her sweet unrest and sting Hither I come. The cloisters like a frozen forest ring, Echoing back more faint and faintlier The tread of living. Home, Home flies the spirit. Faint and faintlier The surging waves of passion break to foam