Yet sometimes, as we trench our stubborn soil, Or feed our sows, or strow the peat-moss litter, Or set the morrow’s chicken-mash to boil, Or wander out where our young turkeys twitter, Or read by mellow candle-light--since oil Is dear and scarce; or talk--a little bitter Because we find that Food Control Committees Are all composed of men brought up in cities; Sometimes, in this five-acre paradise Whither my nerve-racked spirit fled the battle Deferring to sound Harley Street advice-- A silver badge its only martial chattel, I hear a voice, loud as the market price That butchers bid for Rhondda’s missing cattle, Voice of my Muse, still vibrant with old passion, Telling how poetry is now the fashion. “Look you,” she cries, “the Wheels are turning, turning. Though Pegasus long since wore out his pinions, Somehow his shod hooves keep the bread-mills churning. Shrill, night and day, sing Marsh Georgian minions: Each sinking sun sets some new Noyes a-burning, Each rising moon reveals fresh hordes of Binyons; Who batten fat on unsuspecting editors, And--unlike you--contrive to pay their creditors. “Poet, forsooth! You agricultural brute! Have you no soul above the weight of porkers? Was it for this I hearkened to your suit, Gave you my metres and my rhymes--some, corkers? Up, Gilbert! rummage out your rusty lute: Polish it blacker than your black Minorcas: And let its notes once more, in refluent stanzas, Dower the Income-tax with glad Bonanzas.” So she; and--since I loathe to disappoint The least illusion of the equal sex-- Let Byron’s oil once more these locks anoint, Once more let honour meet these Cox-drawn cheques ... Though well I know that times are spare of joint, And satire’s song less like to please than vex; Now small beer, Smallwood, raids and strikes and rations, Have near eclipsed the gaiety of nations: Still, let me sing. Yet not as once I sung: Love, fear, and death have chastened, sobered, saddened, One who knew life’s full burden-time too young; Whom never youth’s unhampered freedom gladdened, But only envy and ambition stung, And fickle passions--in love’s semblance maddened; So that he needs must tumble now, poor clown, On this Pindaric stage for half-a-crown: Yet one who, ’spite a past that shocked St. Tony And paid recording angels overtime, Still holds his own at sonnet or _canzone_. As some shall know who follow this, my rhyme-- Some few: for gladly would I lay a pony, Or larger sum, against a ten-cent dime, That most of those who read this metred tract’ll Not know a spondee from a pterodactyl. II.