f all the sorrow
there is in the universe ... its _unflinching_ recognition, we might
say, if we were not afraid of praising our own work too highly ...
combined with its happy ending.

One feels, upon reading it, that, although everything everywhere is
very sad, and all wrong, one has only to have patience and after a
while everything everywhere will be quite right and very sweet.

No matter how interested one may be in these literary problems, one
must cease discussing them at times or one will be late to one's meals.

_Don Marquis._

A LITTLE SWIRL OF VERS LIBRE

NOT COVERED, STRANGE TO SAY, BY THE PENAL CODE

I am numb from world-pain--
I sway most violently as the thoughts course through me,
And athwart me,
And up and down me--
Thoughts of cosmic matters,
Of the mergings of worlds within worlds,
And unutterabilities
And room-rent,
And other tremendously alarming phenomena,
Which stab me,
Rip me most outrageously;
(Without a semblance, mind you, of respect for the Hague Convention's
rules governing soul-slitting.)
Aye, as with the poniard of the Finite pricking the rainbow-bubble of
the Infinite!
(Some figure, that!)
(Some little rush of syllables, that!)--
And make me--(are you still whirling at my coat-tails, reader?)
Make me--ahem, where was I?--oh, yes--make me,
In a sudden, overwhelming gust of soul-shattering rebellion,
Fall flat on my face!

_Thomas R. Ybarra._

YOUNG LOCHINVAR

THE TRUE STORY IN BLANK VERSE

Oh! young Lochinvar has come out of the West,
Thro' all the wide border his horse has no equal,
Having cost him forty-five dollars at the market,
Where good nags, fresh from the country,
With burrs still in their tails are selling
For a song; and save his good broad sword
He weapon had none, except a seven-shooter
Or two, a pair of brass knuckles, and an Arkansaw

Toothpick in his boot, so, comparatively speaking,
He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone,
Because there was no one going his way.
He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for
Toll-gates; he swam the Eske River where ford
There was none, and saved fifteen cents
In ferriage, but lost his pocket-book, containing
Seventeen dollars and a half, by the operation.
Ere he alighted at the Netherby mansion
He stopped to borrow a dry suit of clothes,
And this delayed him considerably, so when
H