know that it is cruel, hard,
To make you fold your yearning arms
And think of things besides my charms."

Said Abelard to Heloise:
"Pray let's discuss the Portuguese;
Their status in the League of Nations.
... Come, slip me seven osculations."

"The Fourteen Points," said Heloise,
"Are pure Woodrovian fallacies."
Said Abelard: "Ten times fourteen
The points you have, O beaucoup queen!"

"Lay off," said Heloise, "all that stuff.
I've heard the same old thing enough."
"But," answered Abelard, "your lips
Put all my thoughts into eclipse."

"O Abelard," said Heloise,
"Don't take so many liberties."
"O Heloise," said Abelard,
"I do it but to show regard."

And Heloise told her chum that night
That Abelard was Awful Bright;
And--thus is drawn the cosmic plan--
She _loved_ an Intellectual Man.

Lines Written on the Sunny Side
of Frankfort Street

Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade,
(I credit Milton in parenthesis),
Among the speculations that she made
Was this:

"When"--these her very words--"when you return,
A slave to duty's harsh commanding call,
Will you, I wonder, ever sigh and yearn
At all?"

Doubt, honest doubt, sat then upon my brow.
(Emotion is a thing I do not plan.)
I could not fairly answer then, but now
I can.

Yes, Amaryllis, I can tell you this,
Can answer publicly and unafraid:
You haven't any notion how I miss
The shade.

Fifty-Fifty

[We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets,
and experience a passing melancholy because we are
unacquainted with some of the girls we see.--From "The Erotic
Motive in Literature," by ALBERT MORDELL.]

Whene'er I take my walks abroad,
How many girls I see
Whose form and features I applaud
With well-concealed glee!

I'd speak to many a sonsie maid,
Or willowy or obese,
Were I not fearful, and afraid
She'd yell for the police.

And Melancholy, bittersweet,
Marks me then as her own,
Because I lack the nerve to greet
The girls I might have known.

Yet though with sadness I am fraught,
(As I remarked before),
There is one sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er:

For every shadow cloud of woe
Hath argentine alloy;
I see some girls I do not know,
And feel a passing joy.

To Myrtilla

Twelve fleeting years ago, my Myrt,
(_Eheu fugaces!_ maybe more)
I wrote of the directoire skirt
You