“Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girlsMarried impossible men?Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,Foul-tempered or depraved(Dramatic foils chosen to show the worldHow well women behave, and always have behaved).Impossible men: idle, illiterate,Self-pitying, dirty, sly,For whose appearance even in City parksExcuses must be made to casual passers-by.Has God's supply of tolerable husbandsFallen, in fact, so low?Or do I always over-value womanAt the expense of man?Do I?It might be so.”

“If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.”

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shameThat at the whisper of Love's name,Or Beauty's, presto! up you raiseYour angry head and stand at gaze?Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reachThe ravelin and effect a breach--Indifferent what you storm or why,So be that in the breach you die!Love may be blind, but Love at leastKnows what is man and what mere beast;Or Beauty wayward, but requiresMore delicacy from her squires.Tell me, my witless, whose one boastCould be your staunchness at the post,When were you made a man of partsTo think fine and profess the arts?Will many-gifted Beauty comeBowing to your bald rule of thumb,Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!”

“Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, Marching below, and we still gulping wine?” From the sad magic of his fragrant cup The red-faced old centurion started up, Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said, “Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead, Dead in the first year of this damned campaign— The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again. Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die, But we need pity also, you and I, Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss, Who live to see the Legion come to this, Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot, Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh! Where are they now? God! watch it struggle by, The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!” “Strabo,” said Gracchus, “you are strange tonight. The Legion is the Legion; it’s all right. If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, God damn it! you’ll not better them by drinking. They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands, And these same men before the autumn’s fall Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.”

“The Cabbage WhiteThe butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight, Yet has- who knows so well as I?- A just sense of how not to fly: He lurches here and here by guess And God and hope and hopelessness. Even the acrobatic swift Has not his flying-crooked gift.”

“On PortentsIf strange things happen where she is,So that men say that graves openAnd the dead walk, or that futurityBecomes a womb and the unborn are shed,Such portents are not to be wondered at,Being tourbillions in Time madeBy the strong pulling of her bladed mindThrough that ever-reluctant element.”

“But we are gifted, even in NovemberRawest of seasons, with so huge a senseOf her nakedly worn magnificenceWe forget cruelty and past betrayal,Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall.”