Have chemists test in proper style
The drinking-fountain of Rebecca.
The route of ev’ry Tigris barge
I’d note, and find how much they’d ask us;
What good hotels in Bagdad charge,
And yellow taxis in Damascus.
And I would surely have on hand
The folders of that great excursion,
The Golden Road to Samarkand,
Thro Bahai bow’rs and gardens Persian.
Beyond, the Pullman rates I’d get
For Kiao-chau and Yokohama,
Arranging passage thro’ Thibet
To dally with the Dalai Lama.
In tropic isles I’d plan to stay
Till South Sea melodies would bore me,
And for the North Pole book a day,
Where only Peary went before me.
Thus might I scheme—till in the end
The year would slip away unheeded,
My money safe with me to spend,
And the wild outing scarcely needed!
July 24, 1925
A Summer Sunset and Evening
(In the metre—though perchance not the manner—of the “Poly-Olbion” of
Mike Drayton, Esq.)
The ruddy sun sinks down beyond the purple hill,
And all the painted west an hundred colours fill.
The bars of dark’ning clouds that streak the flaming sky
Set off the splendid scene and please the watching eye.
The shadow’d glen behind foretastes the coming night;
The placid pool before reflects the fading light.
The harmonies of birds are hushed with the eve,
But straight the insect choirs the still of dusk relieve.
Sweet are the summer chords the little host entune,
Whilst frogs in lily’d pool salute the rising moon.
Above yon tow’ring pine peeps out a single ray,
The first of Heav’n’s bright host to speed departing day.
And ev’ry shade that falls another starlet brings,
Till all the sphere above a silent anthem sings.
In pastures that extend to realms beyond our view,
The folding flow’rets nod, made drowsy by the dew.
And all the scene about an alter’d aspect gains,
As moonbeams gild the brook and wake responding strains.
