L'ENVOI
(Departmental Ditties)
Rudyard Kipling

The smoke upon your Altar dies,
The flowers decay,
The Goddess of your sacrifice
Has flown away.
What profit then to sing or slay
The sacrifice from day to day?

'We know the shrine is void,' they said,
'The Goddess flown -
'Yet wreaths on the altar laid -
'The Altar-Stone
'Is black with fumes of sacrifice,
'Albeit She has fled our eyes.

'For, it may be, if still we sing
'And tend the Shrine,
'Some Deity on wandering wing
'May there incline;
'And, finding all in order meet,
'Stay while we worship at Her feet.'

Beeny Cliff
Thomas Hardy

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free-
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away
In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,
As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,
And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,
And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

-Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,
And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,
And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman now is-elsewhere-whom the ambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.                         

Crumbs of Comfort
Felix Dennis

How many crumbs of comfort - oaf!
Do men require to bake a loaf?
How many draughts of wine, my dear,
Will drown a fire and dry a tear?
For think of this - the rich can never know
Who loves them for their wit or for their gold;
And if men reap but what they sow,
Yet gold grows cold as bones grow old.
Keep friendships, then, in good repair,
We none of us have friends to spare -
And in the end,
Your one true friend
Is gold beyond compare.