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Calverky: Verses and Fly Leaves
But they skim over bents which the millstream washes,
Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;
They need no parasols, no goloshes;
And good Mrs Trimmer she feedeth them.
Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather)
That endowed, the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt—(it was perfectly charming weather)—
Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms:
And Willie 'gan sing (O, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white-wing'd sea)—
Something made up of rhymes that have done much
duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of 'ancientry':
Bowers of flowers encounter'd showers
In William's carol—(O love my Willie!)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow
I quite forget what—say a daffodilly:
A nest in a hollow, 'with buds to follow,'
I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was 'kneaden' of course in Eden—
A rhyme most novel, I do maintain:
Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
And all least furlable things got 'furled';
Not with any design to conceal their 'glories',
But simply and solely to rhyme with 'world'.
* * * *
O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the Jxrave rhymes of an elder day,
R 257 c.v.