R II

MENTAL COCKTAILS AND SPIRITUAL

PICK-ME-UPS

(Poems of Laughter)

SPRING ODE

BY DON MARQUIS

I

Fill me with sassafras, nurse,

And juniper juice!

Let me see if I'm still any use!

For I want to be young and to sing again,

Sing again, sing again!

Middle age is a curse!

It is Spring again, Spring again, Spring again!
And the big bull oyster comes out of his cave
At the flood of the tides

And bellows his love to his mate where she rides
On the crest of the wave!

The crimson pylorus is singing his song
And the scarlet sciaticas flame in the grass,
The snail is abroad with his periscope prong-

Fill me with sassafras!

I want to be one

With the joy of the earth, under the sun,

For the purple convolvulus convolves and volutes And the arbutus ups and arbutes—

Fill me with sassafras,

And cohosh and buchu and juniper juice.

And then turn me loose!

II

Out of the prison of Winter
The earth and its creatures emerge
And the woodlouse sits on a splinter
And flirts with the cosmic urge;
Steep me in camomile tea,

Or give me a shot with a needle,
For I want to be young again-Me!
And woo with a lyrical wheedle!
Go page Amaryllis,

And tell her Spring's here with a heluva moonOh, Chloe, come hither!

Here's a bald-headed Strephon that's willing to spoon! He brings to the business a lyre and a zither

And a heart that's been chewed by the romance bacillus; Nurse, the juniper juice,

And the sassafras, nurse, and then turn me loose,

Let me see if I'm still any use!

THE CHIMPANZEE

BY OLIVER HERFORD

Children, behold the Chimpanzee:

He sits on the ancestral tree

From which we sprang in ages gone.

I'm glad we sprang: had we held on,

We might, for aught that I can say,
Be horrid Chimpanzees to-day.

FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA

or, THE GENTLE PIEMAN

By W. S. GILBERT

PART I

At a pleasant evening party I had taken down to

supper

One whom I will call Elvira, and we talked of love and

Tupper,

Mr. Tupper and the poets, very lightly with them

dealing,

For I've always been distinguished for a strong poetic feeling.

Then we let off paper crackers, each of which contained a motto,

And she listened while I read them, till her mother told her not to.

Then she whispered, "To the ball-room we had better, dear, be walking;

If we stop down here much longer, really people will be talking."

There were noblemen in coronets, and military cousins, There were captains by the hundred, there were baronets by dozens.