A book of sonnets, thirty-two of them, written with the tongue firmly planted in cheek, each of them ending in the macabre. Then we come to thirty-three and find this:
"The poet blots the end the jester wrote:
For now I drop the dull quip's forced
pretence,
Forego the perch'd fool's dubious emi
nence-..."

And what follows are some very fine lines, perhaps just to prove he's capable. Then we have the poetry of famous love affairs at the end. Again, silly, silly stuff, such as:

"Paris was a pretty gent,
His lamps were quite hypnotic;
He used the most expensive scent;
His tastes were...well, erotic."

This is by no means politically correct reading, and some bits are downright offensive to our 21st century sensibilities. There is the racism and slang of the early 1920s. One becomes rather tired of the mocking tone, and then the last comes along and blows you away.

HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE
“When the soul of the year through its body
of earth
Burst forth in a bloom as of fire,
And the butterflies rose in a rainbow riot
of mirth
To flutter and burn and take wing and
aspire,
To her garden our Columbine came…
She was light as her laughter, and bright
as blown flame-
Flower, woman and music, and all these the same.”

What follows is the most moving tale of Harlequin and Columbine I have ever read. Through it all I saw the pantomime Lord Peter played in Murder Must Advertise, and really, I have to wonder if Dorothy L. Sayers read this poem before she wrote that. For the last poem alone I raised this to four stars instead of three. ( )

On the whole, the humor of these pieces is feebler than in the classic Archy and Mehitabel poems. The one of the sonnets I really like is the one, near the end where the poet drops the attempts at grisly humor. "The poet blots the end the jester wrote" and honwstly admits his affection. The "famous love affairs" are rather funnier. ( )