| |
| 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, | 5 |
| 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…” | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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.” | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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.” | 30 |
| |
| 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 | 35 |
| A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings. | |
| |
