FullReads

BY MR. SWINBURNE:

If you eat turkey stuffing,
And I eat hot mince pie,
We’ll vow that our digestion
Is quite beyond all question;
But soon we’ll quit our bluffing
And curl us up to die,
If you eat turkey stuffing,
And I eat hot mince pie.

BY MR. LONGFELLOW:

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls on our little flat,
As a feather is wafted downward
From a lady’s mushroom hat.

I’ve a feeling of fullness and sorrow
That is not like being ill,
And resembles colic only
As a pillow resembles a pill.

But the night shall be filled with nightmares,
And the food that was left to-day
Shall be given to poor street Arabs,
Or silently thrown away!

BY MR. MOORE:

‘Twas ever thus, from childhood’s bawl,
I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;
Whatever I want most of all,
I do not get it Christmas Day!

BY MISS PROCTER:

Seated one day at the table,
I was stuffy and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the nuts and cheese.

I know not what I had eaten,
Or what I was eating then,
But I struck a delicious flavor
That I’d like to taste again.

It linked all elusive savors
Into one perfect taste,
Then faded away on my palate
Without any undue haste.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost taste so fine,
That came from the head of the kitchen,
And entered into mine.

BY MR. RILEY:

There, little girl, don’t cry!
You are awfully broke, I know;
And of course you’ve spent
Far more than you meant,
And lots of bills you owe.
But at Christmas time one has to buy–
There, little girl, don’t cry, don’t cry!

The Re-Echo Club met in their pleasant rooms at No. 4, Poetic Mews. Spring had passed, so their fancy was lightly turning to other matters than Love, and it chanced to turn lightly to the Cubist Movement in Art.

“Of course,” mused the President, rolling his eyes in an especially fine frenzy, “this movement will strike the poets next.”

“Ha,” said Dan Rossetti, refraining for a moment from the refrain he was building, “we must be ready for it.”

“We must advance to meet it,” said Teddy Poe, who was ever of an adventurous nature. “What’s it all about?”

“The principles are simple,” observed Rob Browning, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; “in fact, it’s much like my own work always has been. I was born cubic. You see, you just symbolize the liquefaction of the essence of an idea into its emotional constituents, and there you are!”

“Dead easy!” declared Lally Tennyson, who went out poeting by the day, and knew how to do any kind. “What’s the subject?”

“That’s just the point,” said the President; “preeminently and exclusively it’s subjective, and you must keep it so. On no account allow an object of any kind to creep in. Now, here’s one of the Cubist pictures. They call it ‘A Nude Descending the Staircase.’ They pick names at random out of a hat, I believe. Take this, you fellows, and throw it into poetry.”

“Any rules or conditions?” asked Billy Wordsworth.

“Absolutely none. It’s the Ruleless School.”

Then the Poets opened the aspiration valves, ignited the divine spark plugs, and whiz! went their motor-meters in a whirring, buzzing melody.

Soon their Cubist emotions were splashed upon paper, and the Poets read with justifiable pride these symbolic results.

* * * * *

Ally Swinburne tossed off this poetic gem without a bit of trouble.

Square eyelids that hide like a jewel;
Ten heads,–though I sometimes count more;
Six mouths that are cubic and cruel;
Of mixed arms and legs, twenty-four;
Descending in Symbolic glories
Of lissome triangles and squares;
Oh, mystic and subtle Dolores,
Our Lady of Stairs.