One was a transcendental monad; thin
And long and slim in the mind; and thus he mused: 
“Oh, vast, unfathomable monad-Souls! 
Made in the image”—­a hoarse frog croaks from the pool—­
“Hark! ’twas some god, voicing his glorious thought
In thunder music!  Yea, we hear their voice,
And we may guess their minds from ours, their work. 
Some taste they have like ours, some tendency
To wiggle about, and munch a trace of scum.” 
He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas
That burst, pricked by the air, and he was gone.

One was a barren-minded monad, called
A positivist; and he knew positively: 
“There is no world beyond this certain drop. 
Prove me another!  Let the dreamers dream
Of their faint gleams, and noises from without,
And higher and lower; life is life enough.” 
Then swaggering half a hair’s breadth, hungrily
He seized upon an atom of bug and fed.

One was a tattered monad, called a poet;
And with shrill voice ecstatic thus he sang: 
“Oh, the little female monad’s lips! 
Oh, the little female monad’s eyes! 
Ah, the little, little, female, female monad!”

The last was a strong-minded monadess,
Who dashed amid the infusoria,
Danced high and low, and wildly spun and dove
Till the dizzy others held their breath to see.

But while they led their wondrous little lives
AEonian moments had gone wheeling by. 
The burning drop had shrunk with fearful speed;
A glistening film—­’twas gone; the leaf was dry. 
The little ghost of an inaudible squeak
Was lost to the frog that goggled from his stone;
Who, at the huge, slow tread of a thoughtful ox
Coming to drink, stirred sideways fatly, plunged,
Launched backward twice, and all the pool was still.

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.

* * * * *

THE COMING OF ARTHUR.

[Abridged.]

LEODOGRAN, the King of Cameliard,
Had one fair daughter, and none other child;
And she was fairest of all flesh on earth,
Guinevere, and in her his one delight.

For many a petty king ere Arthur came
Ruled in this isle and, ever waging war
Each upon other, wasted all the land;
And still from time to time the heathen host
Swarm’d over seas, and harried what was left. 
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,
Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less. . . .

* * * * *

And thus the land of Cameliard was waste,
Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein,
And none or few to scare or chase the beast;
So that wild dog and wolf and boar and bear
Came night and day, and rooted in the fields,
And wallow’d in the gardens of the King.

* * * * *

. . . . .  And King Leodogran Groan’d for the Roman legions here again And Caesar’s eagle. . . . .