ad of spent summer's greens,
and stalk with mincing sceptic steps,
and sound of snuffboxes snapping
to the capping of an epigram,
in fluffy attar-scented wigs ...
the exquisite Augustans.

Christopher Morley is too well-known as a poet to require any explicit
account in this place. I shall remind you of the pleasure of reading him
by quoting the "Song For a Little House" from his book, _The Rocking
Horse_, and also a short verse from his _Translations from the Chinese_.

I'm glad our house is a little house,
Not too tall nor too wide:
I'm glad the hovering butterflies
Feel free to come inside.

Our little house is a friendly house,
It is not shy or vain;
It gossips with the talking trees,
And makes friends with the rain.

And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green,
Against our whited walls,
And in the phlox, the courteous bees,
Are paying duty calls.

But there is a different temper--or, if you like, tempering--to the verse
in _Translations from the Chinese_. I quote "A National Frailty":

The American people
Were put into the world
To assist foreign lecturers.
When I visited them
They filled crowded halls
To hear me tell them Great Truths
Which they might as well have read
In their own prophet Thoreau.
They paid me, for this,
Three hundred dollars a night,
And ten of their mandarins
Invited me to visit at Newport.
My agent told me
If I would wear Chinese costume on the platform
It would be five hundred.

In speaking of the late Joyce Kilmer, the temptation is inescapable to
quote his "Trees"; after all, it is his best known and best loved poem--in
certain moments it is his best poem! But instead, I will desert his
volume, _Trees and Other Poems_, and from his other book, _Main Street and
Other Poems_, I will quote the first two stanzas of Kilmer's "Houses"--a
poem written for his wife:

When you shall die and to the sky
Serenely, delicately go,
Saint Peter, when he sees you there,
Will clash his keys and say:
"Now talk to her, Sir Christopher!
And hurry, Michelangelo!
She wants to play at building,
And you've got to help her play!"

Every architect will help erect
A palace on a lawn of cloud,
With rainbow beams and a sunset roof,
And a level star-tiled floor;
And at your will you may use the skill
Of this gay angelic crowd,
When a house is made you will throw it down,