Rumble, tumble, growl, and grate! Skip, and trip, and gravitate! Lunge, and plunge, and thrash the planks With your blameless, shameless shanks: In excruciating pain, Stand upon your head again, And, uncoiling kink by kink, Kick the roof out of the rink! In derisive bursts of mirth, Drop ka-whop and jar the earth! Jolt your lungs down in your socks, Oh! tempestuous equinox Of dismembered legs and arms! Strew your ways with wild alarms; Fameward skoot and ricochet On your glittering vertebræ! WRITTEN IN BUNNER'S "AIRS FROM ARCADY" O ever gracious Airs from Arcady! What lack is there of any jocund thing In glancing wit or glad imagining Capricious fancy may not find in thee?-- The laugh of Momus, tempered daintily To lull the ear and lure its listening; The whistled syllables the birds of spring Flaunt ever at our guessings what they be; The wood, the seashore, and the clanging town; The pets of fashion, and the ways of such; The _robe de chambre_, and the russet gown; The lordling's carriage, and the pilgrim's crutch-- From hale old Chaucer's wholesomeness, clean down To our artistic Dobson's deftest touch! IN THE AFTERNOON You in the hammock; and I, near by, Was trying to read, and to swing you, too; And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye, And the shade of the maples so cool and blue, That often I looked from the book to you To say as much, with a sigh. You in the hammock. The book we'd brought From the parlor--to read in the open air,-- Something of love and of Launcelot And Guinevere, I believe, was there-- But the afternoon, it was far more fair Than the poem was, I thought. You in the hammock; and on and on I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff-- But, with always a half of my vision gone Over the top of the page--enough To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff Of your hair and your odorous "lawn." You in the hammock--and that was a year-- Fully a year ago, I guess-- And what do we care for their Guinevere And her Launcelot and their lordliness!-- You in the hammock still, and--Yes-- Kiss me again, my dear! AT MADAME MANICURE'S