Bohemian spirit! unencumbered by Penates,
And sole performer of the woodland band
Whose contributions I can recognise with great ease,
Let others count you shifting as the sand,
But surely underneath that bosom black-barred
There lurks a sentiment that I (the hack-bard)
Can fully comprehend. So, cuckoo, here's my hand.
Not for the sake of ease you flit about the copses
And bid your partner to an alien care,
Entrust the incubation of her popsy-wopsies,
Planting the eggy mites at unaware;
But art, the voice of art, is ever calling.
How could CARUSO sing with infants squalling?
To fetter genius is to drive it to despair.
Should I not turn also my heartstrings to macadam?
I too deposit, whereso'er I could,
A host of unmelodious babies (if I had 'em)
Or in the kindly shelter of some wood
(With robins), or whatever creche was going,
Soon as I felt the inspiration flowing,
The bubbling in my brain-pan? Yes, by Jove, I should.
'Tis therefore that I sometimes wonder when I hear you
Fulfil the valley with that vagrant noise,
Now by the holm-oak yonder, now beside this near yew
(Unhampered as you are by household ploys),
Why you have never hit on something neater,
Some outburst less monotonous of metre,
Less easy to be aped by unregenerate boys.
Is it perhaps that, like that other star, the throstle,
Simply to prove your throat can stand the strain,
You too keep on, the Spring's repetitive apostle,
Piping your pæan till it haunts the brain?
I cannot say. But what I find so sad is
One never knows if you or if the caddies
Are making all that rumpus. There it goes again!
E. G. V. KNOX.
April 21, 1909.