NEW VERSE FORMS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sra,

- After reading A. H. A.'s article on new verse forms in your issue of February 16th, in which he explains the Rhymbel and her kindred, I spent an idle half-hour experimenting with this form. I am so proud of the result that I feel I must send it to you. It seems to conform exactly to A. H. A.'S rules and is so execrably bad that it surely must be a perfect Rhymbel.

I call it, " The Complaint of a Writer of Heroic Verse in an Age of Disarmament."

" Arms virumque cano," or would If anyone would print my verses. But heroic stanzas, all quite good, Earn nothing now but pacifist curses. Sweet Reader, listen to my sorrow

And-you will be my foremost creditor. The first of many, alas. To-morrow

I search once more for a willing editor.

It ought not, you say, to be so hard To sell such powerful, moving rhymes, Yet bankruptcy faces a warrior bard - Who has not learnt to move with the times.

To verse apprenticed as a stripling - Assiduously I scribbled all day An equal I of Scott and Kipling And better far than Lord Macaulay.

All ages past have had their wars;

Great subjects fit for great narrations. - Our epoch loses all because Of a meddlesome League of Nations. Would that I lived in times gone by When troubadours their tales of fight read To barons armed cap-a-pie

And--bishops listened gowned and mitred.

My trade is gone, I may not sing

Of battle, strife, and flowing,blood. Of tourneys, jousts, and 'bloivs that ring

Nor even of Flanders' fields and mud. Thus Peace my thunder steals away, All poets now must aim, of her.

For Peace -has come, and come to stay So fools who would disarm aver.

The sentiment is deplorable, I admit, but it is surely atoned for by the triteness of expression and feebleness of -the puns.

May I please retain the copyright am, Sir, &c.,

B. H. HOMERSHAM.

Rattan, Umtali, Southern Rhodesia.

[We do not think this jets d'esprit will offend. ED. Spectator.]