SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

  First let us watch the revelries within
  This well-kept castle whose great walls connote
  A home of the pre-eminently blest.

  The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole
    interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass. 
    Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of
    white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of
    the cells.  Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at
    attention, his face to the wall.

  At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve,
    and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they
    line up against the walls.

  Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not
    more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

  Enough!

SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC.

’Tis more than even we can bear.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

Would we had never come!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

            Brother, ’tis well
  To have faced a truth however hideous,
  However humbling.  Gladly I discipline
  My pride by taking back those pettish doubts
  Cast on the soundness of the central thought
  In Mr. Hardy’s drama.  He was right.
  Automata these animalculae
  Are—­puppets, pitiable jackaclocks.
  Be’t as it may elsewhere, upon this planet
  There’s no free will, only obedience
  To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry
  That justifies the horridest pessimism.
  Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat
  A quick but not disorderly retreat.

  He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his
    Chorus, and by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the
    Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours,
    Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel.

SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS

By

FR*NK H*RR*S

That Shakespeare hated Christmas—­hated it with a venom utterly alien to the gentle heart in him—­I take to be a proposition that establishes itself automatically.  If there is one thing lucid-obvious in the Plays and Sonnets, it is Shakespeare’s unconquerable loathing of Christmas.  The Professors deny it, however, or deny that it is proven.  With these gentlemen I will deal faithfully.  I will meet them on their own parched ground, making them fertilise it by shedding there the last drop of the water that flows through their veins.