For, leafy-crowned or frosted, the English oaks are ours; The beeches are our playrooms, the elms our outlook towers; And we were forest rangers before these woods had name, And we were elves in England before the Romans came. We watched the Druids worship; we watched the wild bulls feed; We gave our oaks to ALFRED to build his ships at need; And often in the moonlight our pricked ears in the wood Have heard the hail of RUFUS, the horn of ROBIN HOOD. But if our age-old roof-beams can serve her cause to-day, The woodland elves of England will sign their rights away; For none but will be woeful to hear the axes ring, Yet none but would go homeless to aid an English King. W.H.O. * * * * * GOOD OLD GOTHIC. [An agitation for the total disuse of the Latin character, we learn from Press quotations published in _The Daily Chronicle_, is raging through the German Empire, and the Prussian Minister of the Interior has forbidden the use of any other character than German Gothic in the publications of the Statistical Bureau.] The ways of the Hun comprehension elude, They're so cleverly crass, so painstakingly crude; For, in spite of his cunning and forethought immense, He is often incurably stupid and dense To the point of allowing his patriot zeal To put a large spoke in his own driving-wheel. An excellent instance of zeal of this sort Is the movement, endorsed by official support, To ban Latin type in the papers that flow From the press of the Prussian Statistics Bureau. Now the pride of the Germans, as dear as their pipe And their beer, is their wonderful old Gothic type; It makes ev'ry page look as black as your hat, For the face of the letters is stodgy and fat; It adds to the labour of reading, and tries The student's pre-eminent asset, his eyes, And in consequence lends a most lucrative aid To people engaged in the spectacle trade. But these manifest drawbacks to little amount When tried by the only criteria that count: Though the people who use it don't really need it, It exasperates aliens whenever they read it. It is solid, _echt-Deutsch_, free from Frenchified froth, And in fine it is Gothic, befitting the Goth. So when the great Prussian Statistics Bureau Proscribes Latin letters and says they must go, They are giving a lead which we earnestly hope Will be followed beyond its original scope; For the more German books that in Gothic are printed The more will the spread of Hun "genius" be stinted, And the larger the number, released from its gripe, Of the students of Latin ideas--and type. * * * * *