And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow, And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low, How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born. So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness, whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn? Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow As a lover’s that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn, Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow. * * * * * ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. _The Nineteenth Century._ March, 1888. ―――― ANOTHER ODE TO MARCH. (_Being a Counterblast to Mr. A. C. Swinburne’s rhythmical rhapsody in the “Nineteenth Century.” By one who has certainly “learned in suffering” what he endeavours to “teach in song.”_) Ere frost-slush and snow-slopping dried up and went, and the horrors of Winter had slid out of sight, The ways of the wood pavement fouler were far than a clay-country lane on a mucky March night. The breath of the month of the winds had stabbed us through top-coats and mufflers, and made us afraid. Such bronchial bothers, such blossomy noses, such frostbitten fingers for man and for maid! The sea was not lovelier then than the land, each appeared in a dismal and desolate plight; But the Winter is not so much worse than the Spring-time; each plays up the mischief with pleasure and trade. March, master of winds, is a flatulent fraud, a marshal of banes and a bringer of blight. And now that the rage of your rhythmical rapture, your revel of rhyming has finished its flow, Oh, incontinent ALGERNON CHARLES, what the dickens you mean by such rubbish I _should_ like to know. How, how can you love and rejoice, you, leader and lord of the lyrists of curses and scorn, In a beast of a month that half drives one to madness, and makes a man wish he had never been born? _Have_ you shaken the snow from your shoes on a doormat, with frost have your nose and your lips been aglow? _Have_ you met a March wind coming sharp round a corner, your mackintosh drenched and your gingham all torn, And tried to take breath in the nip of North-Easters? No, ALGERNON CHARLES, or you’d never talk _so_! (_Four verses omitted._)