curves in mirth at the slow drawl
Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine
Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind
So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long
Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line
The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned
Taking the crab out: let's redress his wrong.

V. The Fire Smouldering

I look into the burning coals, and see
Faces and forms of things; but they soon pass,
Melting one into other: the firm mass
Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually,
Shape into shape as in a dream may be,
Into an image other than it was:
And so on till the whole falls in, and has
Not any likeness,--face, and hand, and tree,
All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought,
This hastening, and that pressing upon this,
A mighty crowd within so narrow room:
And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come,
The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss
Their way, and what was so alive is nought.

Papers of "The M.S. Society" {12}

{12} The Editor is requested to state that "M. S." does not here mean
Manuscript.

No. I. An Incident in the Siege of Troy, seen from a modern Observatory

Sixteen Specials in Priam's Keep
Sat down to their mahogany:
The League, just then, had made _busters_ cheap,
And Hesiod writ his "Theogony,"
A work written to prove "that, if men would be men,
And demand their rights again and again,
They might live like gods, have infinite _smokes_,
Drink infinite rum, drive infinite _mokes_,
Which would come from every part of the known
And civilized globe, twice as good as their own,
And, finally, Ilion, the work-shop should be
Of the world--one vast manufactory!"

From arrow-slits, port-holes, windows, what not,
Their sixteen quarrels the Specials had shot
From sixteen arblasts, their daily task;
Why they'd to do it they didn't ask,
For, after they'd done it, they sat down to dinner;
The sixteen Specials they didn't get thinner;
But kept quite loyal, and every day
Asked no questions but fired away.

Would you like me to tell you the reason why
These sixteen Specials kept letting fly
From eleven till one, as the Chronicle speaks?
They did it, my boys, to annoy the Greeks,
Who kept up a perpetual cannonade
On the walls, and threaten'd an escalade.
The sixteen Specials were so arranged
That the shots they shot were not