feminine form), which has an hereditary
predisposition to an early and tragic demise and invariably dies
first.]

[Footnote 6: Magraw, a Gaelic term of endearment, often heard on the
baseball fields of Donnybrook.]

[Footnote 7: These last six words are all that tradition has preserved
of the original incantation by means of which Irish rats were rhymed to
death. Thereby hangs a good Celtic tale, which I should be glad to tell
you in this note; but the publishers say that being prosed to death is
as bad as being rhymed to death, and that the readers won't stand for
any more.]

LILIES

Lilies, lilies, white lilies and yellow--
Lilies, lilies, purple lilies and golden--
Calla lilies, tiger lilies, lilies of the valley--
Lilies, lilies, lilies--
Bulb, bud and blossom--
What made them lilies?
If they were not lilies they would have to be something else, would they
not?
What was it that made them lilies instead of making them violets or
roses or geraniums or petunias?
What was it that made you yourself and me myself? What?
Alas! I do not know!

_Don Marquis._

FOR I AM SAD

No usual words can bear the woe I feel,
No tralatitions trite give me relief!
O Webster! lend me words to voice my grief
Bitter as quassia, quass or kumquat peel!
For I am sad ... bound on the cosmic wheel,
What mad chthonophagy bids slave and chief
Through endless cycles bite the earth like beef,
By turns each cannibal and each the meal?
Turn we to nature Webster, and we see
Your whidah bird refuse all strobile fruit,
Your tragacanth in tears ooze from the tree ...
We hear your flammulated owlets hoot!
Turn we to nature, Webster, and we find
Few creatures have a quite contented mind.
Your koulan there, with dyslogistic snort,
Will leave his phacoid food on worts to browse,
While glactophorous Himalayan cows
The knurled kohl-rabi spurn in uncouth sport;
No margay climbs margosa trees; the short
Gray mullet drink no mulse, nor house
In pibcorns when the youth of Wales carouse ...
No tournure doth the toucan's tail contort ...
So I am sad! ... and yet, on Summer eves,
When xebecs search the whishing scree for whelk,
And the sharp sorrel lifts obcordate leaves,
And cryptogamous plants fulfil the elk,
I see the octopus play with his feet,
And find within this sadness something sweet.

The thing we like about that poem is its recognition o