Why is it that o’er the wild waters That beastly North-Easter still blows, Dust-dimming the eyes of our daughters, Blue-nipping each nice little nose? Why is it these sea-skirted islands Are plagued with perpetual chills, Driving men to Italian or Nile-lands From Albion’s ills? Happy he, O Springtide, who hath found thee, All sunlit, in luckier lands, With thy garment of greenery round thee, And belted with blossomy bands. From us by the blast thou art drifted. All brag of thy beauties is bosh; When the songs of thy singers are sifted, They simply won’t wash. * * * * * What lunatic lune, what vain vision, Thy laureate, Springtide, may move To sing thee――oh, bitter derision!―― As season of laughter and love? You make a man mad beyond measure, O Spring, and thy lauders like thee: Thy flowers, thy pastimes and pleasures, Are fiddlededee! _Punch._ May 22, 1880. ――――:o:―――― SWINBURNISM. I trow, wild friends, God’s soul wots well by rote My sweet soft strains and lovely lays of love, And all the white ways of her sweet sharp throat, Which, not right yet, I have waxed weary of. * * * * * I never left off kissing her, I well think, But wrapped in rich red raiment of her hair, Kissed her all day, till her lips parch’d for drink As the parch’d often lips of a flute-player. No maid of a king’s blood, but held right high In God’s sharp sight, from whom no things are hid. “You must not tell,” she sighed and turned to cry. “That I should tell your mother, God forbid!” Said so I kept my word, I never told her You drink pure water? I, sir, I drink wine! Your cool clear brain must needs yield verse-water, But, sweet strong drunken maniac music, mine. S. K. COWAN. From _A Book of Jousts_. London, Field and Tuer. ―――― A VALENTINE. Ah, Love! if love lie still betwixt us twain, Through all these years――yea, love, before love wane Lift up thine eyes and slay me; the desire Of death consumes me, like the sun-god’s fire. Slay me, and kill me, dearest, deal me death. Lo! I will murmur with my latest breath, Laying this lily at thy gracious feet, How precious, nay, how _utter_ art thou, sweet. J. M. LOWRY. ―――― SWINBURNESE. Also thine eyes were mild as a lowlit flame of fire, When thou wovest the web whereof wiles were the woof and the warp was my heart. Why left’st thou the fertile field whence thou reapedst the fruit of desire? For the change of the face of thy colour I know thee not whence thou art!