Southerly

Be sorry for the shivering wall-paper,
And leave the carpet's billowing agony
And stop the chattering teeth of window-panes
(Heigh Ho! the window-panes!)
Bring your barriers to stem the chilling
Torrent underneath the door.
The radiator,
Goddess of alternating current
Cribbed helplessly along a single wire
Confronts the nose—infrigorating cold.
The dust of last year's life
And last week's cigarette-ash
Shuddering.
Be sorry for the ghost of your dead self
Impotently drifting along the mantel-piece
Deader than rejected catsmeat.
It's chilly.

—Ung.

Elizabethan

If in the compass of this fluted shell
I could contain the waters of the sea
That break and fall and rise and surge and swell
And beat about the world incessantly.
Then could I tell
The depth of my exceeding love for Thee.

And as the may-fly breaks his wings with day.
Nor lives to see the setting of the sun.
Let these words say
How long I shall be constant, fairest one.

—B.M.

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