Back from the Somme two Fusiliers
Limped painfully home; the elder said,
_S_. "Robert, I've lived three thousand years
This Summer, and I'm nine parts dead."
_R_. "But if that's truly so," I cried, "quick, now,
Through these great oaks and see the famous bough
"Where once a nonsense built her nest
With skulls and flowers and all things queer,
In an old boot, with patient breast
Hatching three eggs; and the next year ..."
_S_. "Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid
Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did."
Said he, "Before this quaint mood fails,
We'll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,"
_R_. "Hanging it up with monkey tails
In a deep grove all hushed and dim...."
_S_. "To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,"
_R_. "Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,"
_S_. "Which men are wise beyond their time,
And worship nonsense, no one more."
_R_. "Hard by, among old quince and lime,
They've built a temple with no floor,"
_S_. "And whosoever worships in that place,
He disappears from sight and leaves no trace."
_R_. "Once the Galatians built a fane
To Sense: what duller God than that?"
_S_. "But the first day of autumn rain
The roof fell in and crushed them flat."
_R_. "Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls
When nonsense is foundation for the walls."
I tell him old Galatian tales;
He caps them in quick Portuguese,
While phantom creatures with green scales
Scramble and roll among the trees.
The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings
A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings.