ty faces
Hold "Parliaments" in public places
And, heaping curse on mountainous curse
In unintelligible Erse,
Harass with threats of war and arson
Base Briton and still baser CARSON.
But some day when the powers that be
Demobilise the likes of me
(Some seven years hence, as I infer,
My actual exit will occur)
Swift o'er the Irish Sea I'll fly,
Yea, though each wave be mountains high,
Nor pause till I descend to grab
Oxford's surviving taxicab.
Then "Home!" (Ah, HOME! my heart be still!)
I'll say, and, when we reach Boar's Hill,
I'll fill my lungs with heaven's own air
And pay the cabman twice his fare,
Then, looking far and looking nigh,
Bare-headed and with hand on high,
"Hear ye," I'll cry, "the vow I make,
Familiar sprites of byre and brake,
_J'y suis, j'y reste_. Let Bolshevicks
Sweep from the Volga to the Styx;
Let internecine carnage vex
The gathering hosts of Poles and Czechs,
And Jugo-Slavs and Tyrolese
Impair the swart Italian's ease--
Me for Boar's Hill! These war-worn ears
Are deaf to cries for volunteers;
No Samuel Browne or British warm
Shall drape this svelte Apolline form
Till over Cumnor's outraged top
The actual shells begin to drop;
Till below Youlberry's stately pines
Echo the whiskered Bolshy's lines
And General TROTSKY'S baggage blocks
The snug bar-parlour of 'The Fox.'"

ALGOL.

* * * * *

ROMANCE WHILE YOU WAIT.

My friend and I occupied facing seats in a railway-carriage on a
tedious journey. Having nothing to read and not much to say, I gazed
through the windows at the sodden English winter landscape, while
my friend's eyes were fixed on the opposite wall of the compartment,
above my head.

"What a country!" I exclaimed at last. "Good heavens, what a country,
to spend one's life in!"

"Yes," he said, withdrawing his eyes from the space above my head.
"And why do we stay in it when there are such glorious paradises to go
to? Hawaii now. If you really want divine laziness--sun and warmth and
the absence of all fretful ambition--you should go to the South Seas.
You can't get it anywhere else. I remember when I was in Hawaii--"

"Hawaii!" I interrupted. "You never told me you had been to Hawaii."

"I don't tell everything," he replied. "But the happiest hours of
my existence were spent in a little village two or three miles
from Honolulu, on the coast, where we used to