25 NOVEMBER 1911, Page 19

POETRY.

0 I am so sick of the Big Things —The Big with a Big, Big B— The Important Things That Are Strictly Such, The Great Big Things That Matter So Much, They never can leave you free.

For I love to live in the little things If little they really be ; The mere little things, the near little things, The dear little things, the queer little things, That make up the world for me.

And so sick I am of the Strenuous,.

That never will let you rest; No quarter given or space allowed

For dreams that shift as a sunlit cloud

Adrift in the golden west;

No use for the shimmering Gossamer,

As it cannot be spun or tied, Or the glorious globe of the Soap-bubble, The golden blue of the Soap-bubble, The roseate green of the Soap-bubble

—Just because it has nought inside And 0 I am sick of the Practical, The serious sober sense, That never has walked in the Moony Ways, By the Mossy Dell of the Starry Pays To the Castle of Indolence.

And 0, and 0, your Sensible Man, With what disgust and scorn

Will he.banish and ban the aerial clan,

Peaseblossom, Puck and Peter Pan, And pack, in a Carter Patterson Van, With Scheherazade and Khubla Khan, To their faery lands forlorn !

A trio of excellence, wisdom, worth— And I'm weary of all the three.

And it is not good to feel like that ; It's exceedingly wicked to feel like that; I'm sure you never could feel like that ; It's only the case with me.

But, then, I was born a little bit cracked, So I hardly count, you see ; And—it wouldn't be fair to omit the fact They are wearier far of me.

PERAMBULATOR.