Ay, and would cause me now—­I have such bliss
    Seeing the star-set vale, the pearls, the agates
  Sown on the wintry boughs by Flora’s kiss—­
  Only the trouble in my case is this,
    I do not feed on maggots.

  Could I but share your diet cheap and rude,
    Your simple ways in trees and copses lurking;
  But no, I need a pipe and lots of food,
  A comfortable chair on which to brood—­
    Silence! the bard is working.

  Could I but know that freedom from all care
    That comes, I say, from gratis sets of suitings
  And homes that need not premium nor repair
  Except with sticks and mud and moss and hair,
    My! there would be some flutings.

  So and so only would the ivory rod
    Stir the wild strings once more to exaltation;
  So and so only the impetuous god
  Pound in my bosom and produce that odd
    Tum-tiddly-um sensation.

  And often as I heard the throstles vamp,
    Pouring their liquid notes like golden syrup,
  Out would I go and round the garden tramp,
  Wearing goloshes if the day were damp,
    And imitate their chirrup.

  Or, bowling peacefully upon my bike,
    Well breakfasted, by no distractions flustered,
  Pause near a leafy copse or brambled dyke,
  And answer song for song the black-backed shrike,
    The curlew and the bustard.

  But now—­ah, why prolong the dreadful strain?—­
    Limply my hand the unstrung harp relaxes;
  The dear old days will not come back again
  Whatever Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN
    Does with the nation’s taxes.

  Lambs, buds, leap up; the lark to heaven climbs;
    Bread does the same; the price of baccy’s brutal;
  And save (I do not note it in The Times)
  They make exemptions for evolving rhymes,
    Dashed if I mean to tootle!

EVOE.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Sportsman (just emerged from the brook).  “FOUR IN, DID YOU SAY?  DASH IT ALL—­JUST MY LUCK.  GOT MY GLASSES ALL MUD AND CAN’T SEE THER FUN.”]

* * * * *

THE METHODS OF GENIUS.

(BY OUR SPECIAL LITERARY PARASITE.)

The public already know something of the painful difficulties under which novelists labour at the present moment owing to the paper shortage and the enhanced cost of book production.  But “the economic consequences of the Peace” by no means exhaust the handicaps of the conscientious and sensitive novelist.  We are glad therefore to note the efforts of The Daily Graphic to enlist the sympathy of the public on behalf of this sorely tried and meritorious class.  Our contemporary tells us, for example, of one momentous writer who was reduced to dictating blindfold “because the facial peculiarities of first one and then another amanuensis” upset her equanimity.  Then