Winifred Roberts, Think of me, do, When the friends I am sending Are working for you. The song of the thimble Is, “Oh, forget her not.” Says the tape-measure, “Absent but never forgot.” Benjamin’s song He sings all day long, Though his voice is not strong: He hoarsely holloas More or less as follows:-- _Button boxes Never have locks-es, For the keys would soon disappear. But here’s a linen button With a smut on, And a big bone button With a cut on, A pearly and a fancy Of small significancy, And the badges of a Fireman and a Fusilier._ Which song he’ll alternate With sounds like a Turkish hubble-bubble Smoked at a furious rate, The words are scarcely intelligible:-- (_Prestissimo_) _Needles and ribbons and packets of pins, Prints and chintz and odd bodikins, They’d never mind whether You laid ’em together Or one from the other in pockets and tins._ _For packets of pins and ribbons and needles Or odd bodikins and chintz and prints, Being birds of a feather. Would huddle together Like minnows on billows or pennies in mints._ He’ll learn to sing more prettily When you take him out to Italy On your honeymoon, (Oh come back soon!) To Florence or to Rome, The _prima donnas’_ home, To Padua or to Genoa Where tenors all sing tra-la-la.... Good-bye, Winifred, Bless your heart, Ben. Come back happy And safe agen. AGAINST CLOCK AND COMPASSES “_Beauty dwindles into shadow, Beauty dies, preferred by Fate, Past the rescue of bold thought. Sentries drowsed_,” they say, “_at Beauty’s gate_.” “_Time duteous to his hour-glass, Time with unerring sickle, Garners to a land remote Where your vows of true love are proved fickle._” “_Love chill upon her forehead, Love fading from her cheek, Love dulled in either eye, With voice of love_,” they say, “_no more to speak_.” I deny to Time his terror; Come-and-go prevails not here; Spring is constant, loveless winter Looms, but elsewhere, for he comes not near. I deny to Space the sorrow; No leagues measure love from me; Turning boldly from her arms, Into her arms I shall come certainly. Time and Space, folly’s wonder, Three-card shufflers, magic-men! True love is, that none shall say It ever was, or ever flowers again. THE AVENGERS Who grafted quince on Western may, Sharon’s mild rose on Northern briar? In loathing since that Gospel day The two saps flame, the tree’s on fire. The briar-rose weeps for injured right, May sprouts up red to choke the quince. With angry throb of equal spite Our wood leaps maddened ever since.