Classic Poem

SWINBURNE

O dearth that is dead as desire!
O famine more frantic than fain!
O love that is frigid as fire!
And hate that is pleasant as pain!
Let the Swiss and the Serb and the Slav know,
To the Celt and the Cossack convey
The fatuous fact that we have no
Bananas to-day.

A. E. HOUSMAN

The cherry trees are laden
With berries ruby red,
And many a rose-lipped maiden
Lies in a lonely bed.

Of peaches there be plenty,
And apples acrid-sweet,
And many a lad of twenty
Straggles a starless street.

The grapes are big and bursting,
But plantains fair and gay,
For which the world is thirsting,
Are not for us to-day.