Short Poems

He tells you when you've got on
too much lipstick
And helps you with your girdle
when your hips stick.

For a picture

This Pekingese, that makes the sand-grains spin,
Is digging little tunnels to Pekin:
Dream him emerging in a porcelain cave
Where wounded dragons stain a pearly wave.

Lysander talks extremely well;
On any subject let him dwell
His tropes and figures will content ye
He should possess to all degrees
The art of talk; he practises
Full fourteen hours in four-and-twenty.

Erinna is a model parent,
Her children have never discovered her adulteries.
Lalage is also a model parent,
Her offspring are fat and happy.

The passions that we fought with and subdued
Never quite die. In some maimed serpent's coil
They lurk, ready to spring and vindicate
That power was once our torture and our lord.

The passing spring
Birds mourn,
Fishes weep
With tearful eyes.

' A! fredome is a nobill thing!
Fredome mayse man to haif liking.
Fredome all solace to man giffis;
He levys at ese that frely levys!
A nobil hart may haif nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him plese
Gyff Fredome failythe.'

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.

Along the lamp-lit streets they glide and go:
Here Nature in her brutishness is nude:
See, thinly trickling from the age-old wound,
The steady stream of squandered womanhood!

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.