POETRY.

ON PRESERVING A POETICAL FORMULA.

"THERE'S less and less cohesion

In each collection Of my published poetries ?"

You are taking me to task?

And "'What were my last Royalties ?

Reckoned in pounds, were they, or shillings, Or even perhaps in pence ? "

No, do not ask I'm lost, in buyings and sellings.

You warn, wagging a finger, "These monies will persist In sinking, lower and lower, Till they cease altogether If you cannot soon resist Temptation of antagoixising Fame : You lose your reading public faster Than you renew the same.

Treacle and vitriol out of one pint-measure Is a fool's game."

Sir, please permit only once more for luck Irreconcilabilities in my book. . . .

For these are all the game stuff really The obverse and reverse, if you look closely Of busy Imagination's new-coined money; And if you watch the blind Phototropisms* of my fluttering mind, Whether, growing strong, I wrestle Jacob-wiso With fiendish darkness blinking threatfully Its bale-fire eyes, Or whether childishly I dart to Mother-skirts of love and peace

To play with toys until those horrors leave me—

Yet note, whichever way I find release By fight or flight, By being harsh or tame,

The SPIRIT's the same, the Pen-and-Ink's the sante.

One day, only to please, You'll find me hunting round Collecting in their several categories My innoc,encies in limp white lambskin bound, My gay Fantastic s bound in cracker-tinsel, My Domesticities in (say) red flannel, My Bellicosities and Odiosities In human skin Printed the colour of blood within, My Neuro-what-d'ye-call-'ems, foretasting ruins and disasters, In—in—well, what shall we decide ?

Chameleon-hide ?

Or boards of 1Jpas-tree with mustard-plasters And long, grey horse-hair tied ?

H.

EPITAPH ON AN UNFORTUNATE ARTIST. He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits: This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid, So in the end he could not change the tragic habits This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.

ROBERT GRAVES.