Snake-crowned on your tresses and belted
With blossoms that coil and decay,
Ye are gone; ye are lost; ye are melted
Like ices in May. Hushed now is the bibulous bubble
Of 'lithe and lascivious' throats;
Long stript and extinct is the stubble
Of hoary and harvested oats;
From the sweets that are sour as the sorrel's
The bees have abortively swarmed;
And Algernon's earlier morals
Are fairly reformed. I have written a loyal Armada,
And posed in a Jubilee pose;
I have babbled of babies and played a
New tune on the turn of their toes;
Washed white from the stain of Astarte,
My books any virgin may buy;
And I hear I am praised by a party
Called Something Mackay! When erased are the records, and rotten
The meshes of memory's net;
When the grace that forgives has forgotten
The things that are good to forget;
When the trill of my juvenile trumpet
Is dead and its echoes are dead;
Then the laurel shall lie on the crumpet
And crown of my head!
2. FOR THE ALBUMS OF CROWNED HEADS ONLY.
(After Sir E. A.)
1. From the third Sa'dine Box of the eighth Gazelle of Ghazal.
Yá Yá! Best-Belovéd! I look to thy dimples and drink;
Tiddlihî! to thy cheek-pits and chin-pit, my Tulip, my Pink!
See my heart rises up like a bubble, and bursts in my throat,
And the dimples that draw it are Three, like the Men in a Boat.
Thrice Three are the Muses, and I that begat her should guess
That the Tenth is the TELE-EPHEMERA, Pride of the PRESS! And the Graces were triplets till lately the fruitful Dîtî
Propagated a Fourth, and the infant was W. G.
From my post of Propinquity prone on my languorous knees
My tears slither down like the Gum of Arabia's trees. "Am I drunk?" Heart-Entangler! By Hafiz, the Blender of Squish!
'Tis the camel that sits on the prayer-mat is drunk as a fish.
As I hope for the future Uprising, deny it who can,
Two years I have worn the Blue Ribbon, come next Ramadan!

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