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The poem which follows “The Fire-Fiend” is nearly as clever an imitation of Poe’s verbal eccentricities, but is perhaps a trifle too ghastly to be pleasant reading:—

GOLGOTHA:
A Phantasm.
While the embers flare and flicker, gathering shadows thick and thicker—
While the slender shaded lamplight sheds a glimmer gray and dull—
On my mantle, smoke encrusted, o’er two war-knives hacked and rusted,
In my fascinated vision grins a dark and dented Skull!
Through the midnight Forest leaping—Death’s red harvest fresh from reaping—
Once this skull was steeped and drunken in a revelry of gore:
In his crimson orgie shrieking, mad with lust, and murder reeking—
Thus the Blood-Avenger found him—smote him!—and he raved no more!
In that forest, leaf-enfolded, many a nameless year he mouldered,
Withered, shrivelled, fell to utter dry and desolate decay;
Till of all his savage glory naught there was to tell the story
Save this dark uncouth and dented skull I found, and bore away!
With the coward thought to mock it, in each eyeball’s blackened socket
Once I set a globe of silver as a dread and dismal jest.
Oh! full often has the glitter of those pale orbs caused a bitter
Burst of sharp and sudden terror to a timid twilight guest!
But to-night their flashes daunt me, and their changing glances haunt me,
And their cold glare shivers through me like a scymitar of ice!
Well I know their threat is seeming—that no life is in their gleaming,
Yet my soul is strangely troubled by my own accurst device!
Ay! my soul is strangely troubled! and my heart-throbs fiercely doubled!
And I cannot wrench my gaze from off those silver demon balls!
To my brain their blaze seems burning—Ah! by Heaven! I saw them turning!
Yes! see—see them! there! they roll! O God! a red light from them falls!
*??*??*??*??*
How its white teeth glint and glisten! Listen! Am I mad! O, listen!
No! It speaks! I hear a whisper rattle through its hollow jaws!
“With this jest my front adorning, Pale-Face, you are blindly scorning—
Sadly, sorrowfully scorning all your Being’s Primal Laws!
“Count the dim descent of ages! Turn Life’s crisp and crumbling pages!
Is a single leaf forgotten in this Golgotha of Doom?
Fool! You bear a fragile carnal shroud around your ghastly charnel
But to add another atom to the Inevitable Doom!
“I have stripped my shroud before you: You, perchance, now wear it o’er you!
Every shred of Life is worn from the Dead Past o’er and o’er!
Through the years the Earth is heaving with this weird and wondrous weaving,
And your slender thread but waiteth till the Loom hath need for more!”
*??*??*??*??*
It hath ceased! There is no glimmer on the hearth! The lamp grows dimmer,
Dimmer, dimmer,—now it flickers, flashes, wildly flares— is fled!
Through the Darkness round me heaving, now I hear a sound of weaving,
As a mighty loom were working, viewless, with a viewless thread!
 Illustration: Holly leaves
THE BELLS.
I.
Hear, the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the Heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
II.
Hear the mellow wedding-bells—
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats,
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
76
Oh, from out the sounding cells
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,—
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells.
III.
Hear the loud alarum bells—
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire.
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavour
Now, now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the dangers ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells—
Of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
In the clamour and the clangour of the bells!
IV.
Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone,
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human—
They are Ghouls;
And their King it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells;
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells;
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells—
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the throbbing of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells,—
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
Edgar Allan Poe.
(First Published after the Author’s death.)

——:o:——

The Swells.
By Edgardo Pooh.
See the Gardens with the swells—
Noble swells!
What power of foolery their presence here foretels!
How they chatter, chatter, chatter,
To each other left and right,
What to them is any matter?
Since their tailor and their hatter,
Are their sole delight.
Running tick, tick, tick,
And hastening to Old Nick,
By expending time and money on dancing, dicing, belles,
Are the swells, swells, swells, swells,
Swells, swells, swells!
Are the foolish and profligate young swells.
See the dressy little swells—
Snobby swells!
What a world of happiness that Moses’ paletot tells!
Through the murky air of night,
How they shout out their delight,
From their Cashmere-shawled throats,
And out of tune,
What a drunken ditty floats
To the gas-lamps shining on policemen’s coats,
On their shoon!
Oh, from out the Bow-street cells,
What a gush of harmony uproariously wells!
How it smells!
How it knells—
For the morrow! how it tells
Of the folly that impels
To the laughing and the quaffing
Of the swells, swells, swells,
Of the swells, swells, swells, swells,
Swells, swells, swells,
Of the dining and the fine-ing of the swells!
77
See the literary swells—
Writing swells!
What a tale of envy now their turbulency tells,
How they quarrel, snarl, and fight
With each other as they write!
Much too dignified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
With their pen,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the buyer,
In a mad expostulation with the dazed and doubting buyer!
And they leap high, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavour
Now—now to sit or never—
On a throne above all other men.
See the venerable swells!
By-gone swells!
What a world of solemn thoughts their gaiety compels!
In their ancient fashioned coats,
In their stiff cravatted throats,
How we recognize the Regent and his corps!
There remains now not e’en one,
All, all the set are gone,
Ils sont morts!
Save the few men—ah! these few men!
Who are left among the new men
All alone!
And who toiling, toiling, toiling,
Through their days, mere skin and bone,
Feel a pleasure now in spoiling
Each hearty, healthy tone—
Do these swells, swells, swells,
These swells, swells, swells, swells,
Swells, swells, swells,
These worn-out used up, godless, ancient swells!
Our Miscellany.—By E. H. Yates and R. B. Brough, 1857.
——:o:——

The Ball-Room Belles.
See, the ball-room full of belles,
Merry belles,
What an evening of flirtation their merriment foretells.
How they chatter, chatter, chatter,
Through the mazy Mabel valse.
Mothers glancing, but what matter!
Pleasant partners how they flatter,
Never dreaming girls are false
When they sigh, sigh, sigh,
And pretend that they would die—
But they dream of expectations of the golden studded swells
Hear the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles,
Hear the laughing and the chaffing of the belles.
See the richly-dowered belles,
Golden belles,
How they cotton to the stupid-headed swells.
With what grace and matchless art
They can play their pretty part
For the quartered coats of arms!
Champerones
How they advertise the charms
Of their darlings,—with ever ready alarms
Undertones!
Oh! and then these high-born swells,
What a want of education their conversation tells.
How it sells,
How it dwells
Upon bathos! how it tells
Of the lesson that impels
All the sighing and the lying
Of the belles, belles, belles,
Of the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles,
All the glancing and the dancing of the belles.
Hear the loudly-talking belles,
Prancing belles,
How we sorrowfully gaze upon their costume, since it tells
Of the latest Paris fashion!
And the dark eyes how they flash on
Every simple-looking girl!
They can only whirl, whirl
To the tune,
With a noisy explanation of their doings in the Row,
With a careless declaration that the ball is very slow.
Dancing round, round, round,
To the merry music’s sound,
Never pausing for a breath,
Tho’ their partners pale as death,
Look and gasp as if they’d fall into a swoon.
Oh, you belles, belles, belles,
What a tale your muslin tells;
And your hair.
How you sneer and pick to pieces
Major Maberly’s six nieces,
How you flirt upon the fifty-seventh stair;
Yet the people guess at last,
By your laughing,
And your chaffing,
Your vocabulary’s fast.
And the ear distinctly tells
You are slangy,
And slap-bangy,
From your joking with the swells,
And their easy conversation with the loudly-talking belles,
With the belles,
With the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles,
From the grinning and the dinning of the bells!
Fun, December 30, 1865.
——:o:——

Pills.
An Edgar Poe(m).
See the doctors with their pills—
Silver-coated pills!
What a world of misery their calomel instils!
How they twingle, twingle in the icy-colden night.
You have taken two that mingle,
And you wish you’d had a single;
While your cheeks are ashy white.
And every time, time, time
You groan in pantomime
A tan-tan-tantalising yearn for rum your bosom fills
To lull the paean of pills, pills, pills,
The mountain An Edgar Poemisery of pills!
78
Take one of Morrison’s pills,
Or Parr’s life pills—
Warranted, or the money returned, to cure all ills;
To bring repose at night,
And occasion you delight,
When they’re fairly down your throat,
From noon to noon.
And eloquence promote
For your turtle dove who listens while you doat
Neath the moon.
Oh, read the flaming bills
And the extract from a letter that voluminously fills
The hand-bills,
And the tills
Of the vendor of the pills,
Whose physic never kills,
Money ringing,
Money flinging
In the tills, tills, tills,
From the pills, pills, pills, pills,
And what chiming, and what rhyming on the pills!
Beware of strychnine pills—
Brazen pills.
What a work of horror their treachery fulfils!
The false friend with a smile
Stands beside you for a while;
And you’re pleased to hear him speak
While you shriek, shriek,
And moan, moan.
Your heart and brain consuming in the fire, fire;
Your pulse and temples throbbing in the fire;
Beating higher, higher,
While you gaze and still admire
The murd’rer beside you,
Who knows what must betide you,
As he watches for the swoon.
Oh, the pills, pills, pills,
What a pang of terror thrills,
And despair,
Every heart that beats with love;
When the evidences prove
That the murderer for days and nights was there;
Tending gently as a nurse,
Always whining,
While designing
How to make you worse and worse.
See! The glass he quickly fills
With some new fangle,
Life to strangle,
While your fine old port he slyly swills,
And knows the hour is fast approaching by the number of the pills,
Of the pills;
By the number and the poison of the pills.
And you roll, roll, roll,
Roll—
With the paean of the pills;
And he a draught distils
To qualify the pills,
And he’s thinking of the wills
That Doctor’s Commons fills (!)
Keeping time, time, time,
In the subtlety of crime,
By the paean of the pills,
Of the pills:
Keeping time, time, time,
In the hardihood of crime,
By the throbbing from the pills,
From the pills, pills, pills,
By your sobbing from the pills,
Keeping time, time, time,
As he kneels, kneels, kneels.
In the blasphemy of crime,
By the pulse he feels, feels;
While the pills, pills, pills
Are perfecting all their ills.
Oh, the pills, pills, pills—
Pills, pills, pills!
So ends my rhyming and my chiming on the pills.
Damer Cape.
Vagrant Leaves, No. 2., Nov. 1, 1866.
——:o:——

The Hells.
Hear the echoes from the Hells—
German Hells!
What a tale of selfishness their recollection tells!
How fickle fortune battles
With the ball that rolls and rattles
On its devilish career!
While the coins that oversprinkle,
All the numbers seem to twinkle,
With a simper or a sneer.
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of ruined rhyme.
To the hum of speculation that annually swells
From the Hells, Hells, Hells—
From the Hunters and the Punters of the Hells.
Hear the merry laughing Hells,
Baden Hells!
Ringing out their call to happiness like wedding bells;
Blinding eyes with lust of gain,
Dead’ning hearts to others’ pain,
With the molten gold and notes.
Calling out,
“We are misery’s antidotes!!
Come and clutch us!” o’er their poison-beauty gloats
Longing Doubt—
How the air resounding fills
With the cries from out that Hall of Cure for Ills!
How the swells
At the wells,
Dream of health or of wealth, how each tells
Of the craving that impels
To the winning and the sinning
Of the Hells, Hells, Hells,
To the losing and abusing of the Hells.
Hear the losers at the Hells—
Homburg Hells!
What an end of dread despondency their mien foretells!
When fortune turns her back,
And the promised Red looks Black,
And the Black grows Red with shame,
As it hears its worshipped name;
All is lost
In a timorous appealing to the mercy of Leblanc:
In a sad expostulation with the croupiers of Leblanc:
Playing higher, higher, higher,
With a maddening desire
And a desperate endeavour
Now—now to win or never,
79
Though it love and honour cost.
Oh the Hells, Hells, Hells!
What tale their echo tells
Of despair!
How they cling to Black and Red!
What a tremor they outspread
On the loving hearts that wait in hope at home.
Yet the year it fully knows
By the curses
Or the purses
How the fortune ebbs and flows!
How the scandal stinks and smells
By the sinking or the swelling in the budget of the Hells!
Hear the groaning in the Hells—
German Hells!
Ev’ry coin in hope thrown down,
Be it florin, thaler, crown,
Is a groan.
And the croupiers dressed in sable,
Sitting down before the table,
And who dealing, dealing, dealing,
In that well-known monotone
Coldly glory in the feeling
That their human heart is stone!
Green cloth their only scenery,
They go by some machinery
Without souls;
And their master takes the tolls,
While the ball it rolls and rolls,
Rolls
And rattles in the Hells.
But his heart no longer swells
At the P?an of the Hells;
For he hears above the echo of the Hells
The knells, knells, knells,
Of the Hells.
In the fast approaching time,
When ruin, lust, and crime
Will be driven from the wells,
In the downfall of the Hells—
Of the Hells, Hells, Hells,
To the moaning and the groaning of the Hells!
The Tomahawk, October 19, 1867.
——:o:——

Christmas Fancies.
Here is Christmas with its bills—Little Bills!
’Mid a world of merriment intruding with their ills.
What a tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
At the area bell all day,
They’re enough the brow to wrinkle
Of a placid periwinkle,
With their constant “Please to pay.”
Coming time after time,
Without reason, without rhyme,
Holding long confabulations on the lowness of their tills;
With their bills, bills, bills, bills!
Bills, bills, bills,
Oh, the worry and the scurry of the bills!
And the Host of other ills—Christmas ills!
Eatables in baronies and drinkables in rills,
All the day and all the night
Spent in over-eating quite,
And in pouring down your throat
Inopportune—
Floods of liquor that would float—
If not a merchant vessel—a big boat,
Pretty soon!
Oh, the gorges and the swills,
With no thought about the morrow, and the call for Dr. Squills,
And your wills,
Codocils,
That you write with shaky quills,
For ’tis indigestion kills!
Oh, the languish and the anguish
Of your ills, ills, ills, ills,
Ills, ills, ills,
Oh, the bother and the pother of your ills!
Then to-morrow and its pills—bitter pills!
Fever-heats succeeding on the heels of horrid chills,
All the livelong restless night—
What a cheerful Christmas plight!
Too much agonized to speak,
You can only squeak—squeak
Like a coon,
In a clamorous appealing from your indigestion’s pangs—
In a mad expostulation with the gnawing of its fangs,
And a sense of utter loathing for the pills,
For the pills, pills, pills, pills,
Pills, pills, pills—
And the comrades of the pills,
The pills, bills, ills!
Oh, the very name of Christmas all my soul with terror fills.
Fun, December 28, 1867.
——:o:——

The Bells.
Oh, those bells—oh, those bells!
Oh, those bells, bells, bells!
Oh, the weary, weary, worry that their ringing always tells!
How they jangle and they jangle
Through the troubled day and night!
How they clash, and clang, and mangle,
As if calling out in spite—
You must run, run, run!
Your work’s never done,
From the rising to the setting of the sun, sun, sun.
Oh, those never-ceasing bells—
Chamber-bells—
What a climbing and a fetching their music ever tells!
Now it’s number seven hundred—
Now it’s number twenty-five—
Now it’s forty more in chorus
Calling—Waiter, look alive!
Ting-a-ling, ling, ling,
Don’t you hear me ring, ring?
You, had better come a-running, or I’ll break a string, string!
Oh, those silver-sounding bells—
Parlour-bells—
What a coming and a running their melody compels!
How they jingle, jingle, jingle,
Till the horrid jingling seems
To multiply and mingle
Into harsh and mocking screams,
Crying—Fly, fly, fly!
We are paying very high,
We’ll get our money’s value, or we’ll know the reason why.
80
Oh, those cruel, clanging bells—
Front-door bells—
Oh, what cozy dreams of comfort their sounding forth dispels!
How their clanging and their banging
Keeps one trotting to and fro,
Till you seem a sort of nightmare,
Kept forever on the go
By the clang, clang, clang,
And the bang, bang, bang!
Till the ringers of those door-bells you could hang, hang, hang!
Oh, that best and blessed bell—
Dinner bell—
With what harmony and melody its brazen accents swell!
How its full and unctuous greeting
Seems to reach your inner man,
And you answer as a waiter,
And a hungry waiter, can
To its ding, dong, dong!
Come along, long, long!
So the blessed bell for dinner ends my song, song, song!
Anonymous.
——:o:——

The Bills.
See the members with their bills.
Private bills,
What a world of promises their bringing-in fulfils;
How they jostle one another,
And compete for vacant nights,
How they pant, and gasp, and smother,
Pushed aside by party fights,
While their movers, standing by,
Emit a doleful cry,
Apprehensive of the destiny that ultimately kills
Their bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
The dismal fate in keeping for their bills.
See the silly annual bills,
Foolish bills,
With what-deluded hopefulness their introduction fills
All their friends throughout the land,
Who can never understand,
That the House will throw them out
One by one;
That though the movers shout
At a speaker who is dozing while they spout,
When they’ve done,
With patience sorely tried,
But with a gush of thankfulness the members will divide,
And decide,
To deride
The foolish annual bills;
And the lesson each instils
Is, that clearly these are merely
Futile bills, bills, bills.
Bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
Never to be anything but bills.
See the Ministerial bills,
Burly bills,
With what prolonged expectancy their introduction thrills!
Through the country far and wide,
Their friends exult with pride;
Too much horrified to speak,
Their opponents only shriek
In affright,
In a clamourous appealing to the wisdom of the House—
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic House.
They declare the bills a chouse,
And affirm they will, by nous,
Rouse the country now or never,
By a resolute endeavour,
To resist the pale-faced premier,
With his bills, bills, bills,
While each party-leader drills
For the fight
His forces great or small
To enfranchise or enthral
The country on the great division night;
And the public hardly knows,
Mid the wrangling
And the jangling,
How the danger ebbs and flows,
But each newspaper instils
Into readers,
By its leaders,
All its own views of the bills,—
Its own views of the pestilent or patriotic bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
The stupendous and tremendous public bills.
See the sickly autumn bills,
Dying bills,
What a flood of penitence each moralist distils
From their slow but sure decay,
As the session wears away,
From the melancholy lesson that they teach;
For every dying scheme
Is in its turn the theme
Of a speech,
And is tediously debated
Until hopelessly belated,
Overthrown,
And its mover prosing, prosing,
In a muffled monotone,
Feels a glory in disclosing
All its merits little known.
In the spring he moves the bills,
And clears his voice and swills
From a tumbler set beside him,
While his enemies deride him,
And his friends cry out, “Hear, hear,”
And he wins a feeble cheer,
Now and then
Only, when
With brows knit in a frown,
His arm sways up and down,
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
?To the moving of the bills:
Of the bills,
To the solemn exposition of the bills,
Till at last the daylight lengthens,
And the summer sunshine strengthens,
And finally it grills
The members in their places,
So sadly, with long faces,
They consent to slay their bills,
81
To abandon all their bills;
All their bills, bills, bills,
To massacre their bills,
Though sorely ’gainst their wills.
And each bereaved one fills
The house with lamentations o’er his bills,
With sorrow at the slaughter of his bills:
Of his bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
With sorrow at the slaughter of his bills.
Fun, August 13, 1870.
——:o:——

The Flute.
Lo, the fluter, with his flute—
Grecian flute!
How long the world has waited
For its tantalising toot!
“Unheard melodies are sweetest,
Said the charming poet Keats;
But our pleasure is completest
When we hear them on the streets;
Or sounding loud and shrill
Through the homes of Murray-Hill—
On the heights of Murray-Hill
Loud and shrill,
Hear the flute, flute, flute, flute,
Flute, flute, flute.
That wicked Broadway Journal,
Whose Editor infernal,
Lets no trumpet but his own
Through the market place be blown—
Had the chief not been carousing,
Had the “Raven” not been drowsing,
The world had not been waiting,
Been waiting, all in vain,
For that melancholy strain
Of the flute flute—
In anxious expectation for the tintinnabulation
Of the flute.
American Paper.
——:o:——

The Chimes Done in Rhymes.
after poe and newman
Harken to the chimes
That in these Sunday times,
Ring out upon the air.
From the lofty spire,
Rising higher, higher,
In great waves of sound
Vibrating round and round,
Calling out to prayer,
And dropping iron blessings down,
In sweetest music on this wicked town.
We hear professor Pratt,
Keen and clear G flat,
And in each ring there seems to be,
A “horse” cry of agony—
The tortured tones
Of groans and moans—
A poor creature’s speechless agony,
They rise and swell,
Like cries from hell,
Calling the faithful forth to solemn prayer
Then came Schuyler—
Schuyler smiler, Schuyler smiler,
How it rings and sings and swings,
Vibrating on the ear,
As if the hollow smile were set to music here.
“Come ye Christians,” cryeth Schuyler,
The soft political beguiler,
“Come ye Christians, join with me
In praises of the powers that be,
For have we not a neat majority?”
Just such praise in troubled days
Of Our Savior; he would have cried,
“The law should take its course, let him be crucified.”
Schuyler smiler, Schuyler smiler,
From the spire, rising higher,
Rings and swings and sings
The bell,
That of a politician’s heaven seems to tell.
Of a deeper, coarser tone
Chimes the bass a lengthened groan,
For it tells alone,
Alone,
Of the punishment that’s sent
In the person of our President.
Dull and hollow, how it moans
In its heavy undertones!
As if it sought to tell—
That bell—
Of a burdened people doomed to toil
That rogues may fatten off a wasted soil;
Of want and degradation dire,
War, pestilence and fire;
Where rules no ballot but the bayonet,
And Liberty that was and is not yet;
Of Peace, sweet Peace and great content,
Ere the coarse soldier came to be our President
Of office sold for gifts;
Of a low greed that lifts
Mean men to power,
When cowards rule while good men cower.
How it rolls and roars,
And on us pours
Its flood of heavy sound
The vibrating air around,
As the iron tongue upon the iron rim
Clangs out its cry of sin:
Fasting and prayer for a people curs’d
Of all ills the evil far the worst—
A stupid tyranny that brings
No compensation on its blackened wings.
These are the Newman chimes,
And these our modern times.
Were Our Saviour, with weary feet,
Again to walk the dusty street,
And see that lofty steeple;
Hear its clangor calling in the people
See the saints with saintly faces;
In diamonds, silks, and costly laces
Thronging to their downy places—
Hear his apostle state
From marble stall to velvet-cushioned seats,
Not the words of peace, but those of deadly hate
While Mammon the scene completes—
Much would He marvel, and we fear,
Seizing the rod
Would drive old Newman out, and clear
Our goodly people from the house of God.
82
Ding, dong, bell,
Hear them swell—
Pratt, G flat, scat!
Schuyler smiler, Schuyler smiler;
While groans
And moans
In heavy undertones
The Presidential bell.
D. P.
The Capital, (U.S.A.) November 26, 1871.
——:o:——

The Bills.
By the late Edgar Allan Toe.
I.
Hear the duns with lots of bills—
Unpaid bills!
What a world of merriment their misery distils!
How they rattle, rattle, rattle,
On your sported outer door!
While within you drink and prattle.
For an oak is half the battle
With a dun—unchristian bore,
Keeping knock, knock, knock,
Like a sort of ticking clock,
To the bitter tribulation of your gyp whose hand he fills
With his bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
With a lumping and a thumping lot of bills,
II.
Hear the loud alarm of bills—
Tailors’ bills—
What a tale of trousers and of coats whose volume fills
Some dozen drawers. They might
Make one scream out with affright—
Too hard up to pay this week;
You can only speak, speak
Through the door,
In a pitiful appealing to the mercy of the dun,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and dirty dun.
Bills get higher, higher, higher,
And the parent’s wrath is dire;
His son’s resolute endeavour
Not now to pay nor ever,
Making him scold and swear and roar.
Oh the bills, bills, bills,
Hardest far of human ills
To remove!
How they cram and crowd each drawer,
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating gov!
Yet the ear it fully knows
When one’s thinking,
Or a drinking,
When a dun comes up or goes;
Yet the hand it fully fills
Up a beaker,
Getting weaker,
And the beggar drinks and swills.
But that drinking and that swilling gets one off some of the bills;
Of the bills—
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills—
In the paying or delaying of the bills.
The Light Green, Cambridge, 1872.
——:o:——

The Bells.
By an Overworked Waiter
Hear the strangers pull the bells—
Tinkling bells!
What voracious appetites their clattering foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
From morning until night,
And the dishes seem to twinkle,
As the gravies oversprinkle,
With a crystalline delight;
And they chime, chime, chime,
As a shout from time to time,
From “pottle-bodied” gourmands or animated swells,
Is mingled with the ever-ringing bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
The tintinnabulation of the bells.
Hear the early breakfast bells—
Tiresome bells!
Perhaps a Continental trip their harmony foretells,
With a guest awake all night,
And ringing, ere ’tis light,
For change of gold or note,
Hours too soon.
While the ship he wants to sail by does not float
Out of harbour until noon;
And in accents most unmusical he yells
For coffee to be taken,
With toast and eggs and bacon,
Up many flights of stairs, while he tells
Of twenty other wishes
Respecting drinks and dishes,
Which I strive to hear in vain,
For a train
A thousand country visitors propels
From Bath or Tunbridge Wells,
Who come ringing, ringing, ringing at the bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
And I march away to answer fifty bells.
Hear the hasty dinner-bells—
Frantic bells!
What a tale of hunger now their turbulency tells!
The fires are blazing bright,
The cooking is all right,
But I scarce can breathe or speak,
I’m so bothered all the week—
Don’t have a bit of rest—
Through the clamourous appealing of some gormandising guest,
And in mild expostulation to his deaf and frantic ire,
I say, “Yessir, yessir, yessir,”
To my hard-hearted oppressor,
’Mid the clatter
Of the platter,
And of dish and glass and spoon,
Or an organ,
With the owner like a Gorgon,
Grinding in the street some doleful tune;
Yet the ear it fully knows
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the dining ebbs and flows,
To the jangling of the bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
To the clamour and the clangour of the bells.
83
Later still the supper bells—
Busy bells!
What a world of cheerful thought their melody compels,
Of pleasant airs that float
From operatic throat,
Of farce and pantomime;
But the bells begin to chime,
And, alas! unlucky wight,
Not for me is such delight,
The pleasure-seekers claim me as their own;
Be it man or be it woman,
They are all alike inhuman—
They are ghouls
Wanting soles,
Sausages and rolls,
Flowing bowls,
Pie or tart,
Souper a-la-carte,
Lobster salad, oyster,
Peppered grill, or something moister;
And they chat and laugh and joke,
Heedless of the yoke
Of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,
Which my presence through the weary night compels,
Till morning comes again with the bells—
The merciless and everlasting bells.
Funny Folks, April 3, 1875.
——:o:——

The Girls.
Hear the laughter of the girls—
Pretty girls.
What a fund of merriment each ruby lip unfurls!
How they chatter, chatter, chatter,
In the balmy air of night!
While the stars that over-spatter
All the heavens hear their clatter
In a soft and wild delight;
To the tintinnabulation that, increasing, ever purls
From the girls, girls, girls, girls.
Girls, girls, girls,
From the wild, capricious, saucy, jaunty girls.
See the flirting of the girls,
Radiant girls!
How the lover’s softened brain wildly whirls
Through the mazes of the ball,
Up and down the stately hall!
How he skips to and fro
And perspires!
Would that we could tell the idiot all we know
Of the fires
Into which the false ones hurl.
Each new whim—see the flame—how it swirls!
How it curls!
How it curls!
Better far that they were churls,
Than fall victims to the girls;
To the prattle and the rattle
Of the girls, girls, girls,
Of the girls, girls, girls, girls,
Girls, girls, girls—
To the sacking and heart racking of the girls!
Merry Folks.
——:o:——

The Bills.
After Poe, by a Mercantile Poet.
See the traders with their bills
Showy bills;
What a joyous feeling every speculator fills,
As his bills go crinkle, crinkle,
On the counters smooth and bright;
And the eyes of bankers twinkle
At their shareholders delight,
Who are dreaming all the time,
Of dividends sublime—
Of a very high percentage made from cashing doubtful bills,
Bills, bills, bills, bills,
Of gratifying profits from accommodation bills.
See the foreign merchants’ bills,
Flimsy bills!
For railways, ships and waterworks and tunnels through the hills,
Oh, we take them with delight,
And for “3 months, after sight”
Give them sovereigns and notes;
And very soon
The merry gambler floats
Far away from British shores, while he gloats
On the boon;
An operatic melody he trills,
And his mellow meerschaum fills,
And he swills
A bumper as he chuckles at the state of bankers’ tills;
When his bills
Falling due,
Not a Jew
Will give twopence for the batch of foreign bills.
Then the failure of the bills,
Brazen bills!
What a tale of terror now the crazy city fills!
Managers, directors, how it thrills!
When they see from morn till night,
Houses crashing left and right,
Fearing, ere a week,
A crowd may shriek, shriek,
With a clamorous appealing at the counters of the bank
Saying, gentlemen, we’ll thank
You very much without delay to empty all your tills;
Things are looking very black,
And we want our money back;
And the banker fully knows
By the banging
And the clanging
How the danger ebbs and flows.
But we trust these passing ills
Will clear the city air,
By inducing greater care
How good money is exchanged for worthless bills,
Bills, bills, bills, bills,
In discounting such accommodation bills.
Funny Folks, 14 August, 1875.
——:o:——

The Belles.
I.
Oh, the dancing of the belles,
Silver belles!
What a world of merriment that glancing group foretells.
How they dance, dance, dance,
In the white and heated light,
84
Till the berries that o’ersprinkle
Every picture seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight.
Keeping time, time, time,
To the valse-exciting rhyme
Of Der Schonen Blauen Donau that so musically wells;
Oh, the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles,
Oh, the dancing and the glancing of the belles.
II.
Oh, the court-invited belles,
Golden belles!
What a world of plush and paint their dazzling grandeur tells.
Through the balmy air of night,
Through a vision of delight,
From the jarring city notes
Out of tune,
What a splendid vision floats
To the eyes of Miss Fitz-Neotes
Of Aroon!
Oh the crushing and the rout,
And the gathers that come out!
How the agony voluminously wells,
How it swells!
How it dwells!
On the temper how it tells!
To what anger it impels.
Oh, the rushing and the crushing of the belles!
Of the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles,
Oh, the tearing and despairing of the belles!
III.
Oh, the belles of the Mabille,
Brazen belles!
What a world of lying love their honied accent tells.
In the glare and in the light
How they dance out their delight,
Thinking of the future never,
Dancing on and dancing ever,
With a weary simulation of a love they cannot feel,
In the glare and in the glitter and the hell of the Mabille.
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavour
Now—now to win or never,
Golden youth!
Oh, the belles, belles, belles,
What a tale their laughing tells
Of despair.
How they dance, dance, dance,
With a weary smile and glance,
In the glare and in the glitter that are there!
Yet the eye it fully knows
By the sighing
Lips and dying
How the hoping ebbs and flows.
Yet the eye distinctly tells
How the hoping sinks and swells,
By the dancing, and the glancing, and the prancing of the belles,
Of the belles—
Of the belles, belles, belles, belles,
Belles, belles, belles,
By the sighing lips and dying of the belles.
Benjamin D——. His Little Dinner, 1876.
——:o:——

The Bills.
Hear the doctor with his bills,
Horrid bills!
What a world of medicine, of powders and of pills,
How you sicken, sicken, sicken,
When they burst upon your sight,
While your very pulse will quicken,
And your blood will seem to thicken,
And throb in fearful fright,
Keeping time, time, time,
In an allopathic rhyme,
To the merry little “guinea” that so very neatly fills
Up the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
That adds a portly total to the bills.
Hear the tailor with his bills,
Heavy bills!
What a vast extravagance their money column fills,
In the merry summer’s light,
How they pall upon the sight,
From the hard up debtors’ throats,
In dismal tune,
What a grumbling ditty floats,
To the sanguine “Master Stitchem” as he gloats,
Grasping loon.
Oh, from out his sounding tills
What a rush of chinking satirically trills,
How it trills,
How it spills.
Hopes of Future! How it fills
Up the cranium to “dils.”
Oh, the adding and the padding,
Of the bills, bills, bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
Till we’re bilious at the summary of bills.
Hear the butcher with his bills,
Meaty bills!
What a hearty appetite their money column fills,
On the thoughtful mind at night,
How they grin with blue delight,
We’re too much annoyed to speak,
But we shriek a dismal shriek,
And out of tune,
In a senseless, vain appealing to the mercy of the man,
In a vain expostulation with the deaf and grasping man.
Screaming man, man, man,
Make them smaller if you can,
And our sensible endeavour
Shall be never, never, never,
To pay the greasy, red-faced loon.
Oh, the bills, bills, bills,
What a cup their total fills,
Of despair!
How they come in more and more,
Till the eye is nearly sore
As it contemplates the culminating store.
Yet the mind it fully knows
By the ringing,
They are bringing,
A further lot which we must add to those,
Yet the bosom quickly fills,
By the ringing,
By the ringing,
With a dark foreboding fills,
For it knows of many long outstanding unreceipted bills,
Heavy bills!
Oh, the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
Oh, the torture we are put to by the bills!
85
Hear the matron with her bills!
Many bills,
What a pleasant breakfast time their large addition kills.
From our happy dreams by night,
How we start with ghastly fright,
And quick relapse with melancholy groan,
Again to hear their notes
From their grim fantastic throats
In threatening tone.
And the devils! Ah! the devils,
And minutely he that revels
All alone
In the padding, padding, padding,
In that dismal monotone,
Feels delight as thus he’s adding
Round the debtor’s neck a stone.
He is neither man nor woman,
But a junior clerk inhuman,
Worst of lads.
And his chief it is who pads,
And he adds, adds, adds,
Adds
More figures to the bills,
And his demon mind it fills
With delight to view the bills,
And he capers and he trills,
Keeping time, time, time,
In a Basinghall street rhyme,
To the rustle of the bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills,
To the total of the bills,
Keeping time, time, time,
As he trills, trills, trills,
In a Basinghall street rhyme,
To the padding of the bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills,
To the adding of the bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
Oh, the trying care, undying, of the bills!
The Corkscrew Papers.
London: W. H. Guest, 1876.
——:o:——

The Swells.
Listen to the lisping of the swells—
Awful swells
Ennui in intensity each drawling accent tells,
As they saunter in the “Row,”
With entourage comme il faut,
Far too blase e’en to speak,
Save in childish pipings weak,
Out of tune,—
In a mild expostulation at the want of something new,
In a clamorous appealing at the dearth of aught to do,—
Looking cool, cool, cool,
At all “get-ups” not by Poole,
As club scandal they retail
Of the last connubial sale
Of the day!
How they leer,
And peer, and sneer,
At Saint John’s Wood broughams queer,
In a charmingly debilitated way!
Next, we have another kind of swells—
Seedy swells!
Impecuniosity within their aspect dwells,
And their boots, and hats, and clothes,
Sadly foreign are to those
Which our former friends disclose
Every day!
And they dismally recur unto the days ere tick expired,
When they dined and wined ad lib., and were both feted and admired—
Ere the Hebrew would refuse
To transmute their I O U’s,
And they only knew the blues
As a bore;
When the features of their creeds
Were feeds, and weeds,
And steeds,
And the thought of being poor
In the future they ne’er saw,
But would greet it with a roar,
To be sure!
Last, we have the naughtiest of swells—
Howling swells!
Each, in larks nocturnal, both our other friends excels,
Thinking nought of getting “tight,”
Screeching out in wild delight
In the “startled eve of night”
Tavern melodies, despite
The warning of the much-disgusted “p’lice,”
Making rows, rows, rows,
Imitating small bow-wows,
While the cats on all the tiles,
Whom this mad defiance riles,
Add their quota to the torment of the Peace!
Yes, these swells, swells, swells,
Bibulation deep impels
To wake the peaceful midnight with their yells, yells, yells,
With their yells, yells, yells, yells, yells, yells, yells,
Their sleep-destroying, horrifying yells!
Worthy a Crown?—1876.
——:o:——

The Bells.
Hear the tramcars with their bells,
Merry bells,
What a good threepennyworth their melody foretels,
As they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
Through the day and through the night,
All the cars that oversprinkle
The lines fly in a twinkle,
From the red, or blue and white;
And from eight p.m. they chime,
Through the Corporation slime
(The proper term is mud, but then you see it wouldn’t rhyme—
It’s sometimes very difficult to hit upon a rhyme.)
Until the licensed-victualler his customers expels,
And their bacchanalian yells,
Join in chorus with the bells;
With the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
The racing and the chasing of the bells.
86
Hear the yellow dinner bells,
In hotels—
How pleasant to the tympanum of all the hungry swells,
How it conjures to the eye
Happy dreams of pigeon pie,
And gorgeous table d’hotes,
Coming soon;
And swimming butter boats,
And turtle soup that glistens as it floats
In the spoon:
Now rising from the dish
Comes the odour of the fish,
How it smells, and it tells
Why the eye so brightly glistens, and the ear so fondly listens
For the bells,
For the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,
The rousing to carousing by the bells.
Hear those clanging iron bells,
Railway bells.
What a page of accidents their dissonance foretels,
As we thunder o’er the river
How the nervous ladies shiver,
How they groan.
And the stoker, ah, the stoker,
He who wields the mighty poker,
All alone.
And who, like a thing of evil,
Sits undaunted on his throne,
As if he knew the devil
Would be careful of his own
(It has often been remarked that he is careful of his own.)
The engine is a pyre,
The poker is his lyre,
And he joins in ghastly cadence with the demons of the fire
(Perhaps you’re not aware that there are demons in the fire)
They rush across the fells
Through the forests and the dells,
And echo goblin choruses in answer to the bells,
Ringing knells for the swells,
With the bells,
With the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,
The rasping, and the grasping of the bells.
Zoz, October 26, 1878.
——:o:——

The Bills.

e. a. poe-tics for the season.

Hear the postmen with the bills—
Christmas bills!
What a world of merriment their frequency instils!
How they gather, gather, gather,
On the file to such a height,
That one wishes—don’t one, rather!—
Them considerably farther—
Altogether out of sight;
With their “Time, time, time,
With the proceeds of your rhyme—
Time to meet the invitation which so chronically fills
All the bills, bills, bills, bills,”
Prompts our glaring and our swearing at the bills.
Dash that fellow with the bills!
Olden bills!
What a world of happiness their cursed coming kills!
And from morning until night
How they check a man’s delight
With demands for gold and notes:
Payment for shoon,
Meat and drink and coal and coats;
While they nearly all desire their pounds and groats
Very soon!
Oh, the girls’ astounding frills!
Oh, the rare old sherry which papa at moments swills!
And the pills for the ills.
Thence resulting! it all fills
Up the avalanche which chills
Us, the starters and the martyrs
Of the bills, bills, bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills—
Of the pining and the whining of the bills!
Hear the checking of the bills,
Bothering bills!
What a lot of bitter spite their tedious tale distils!
In the silence of the night
How we plot to “fly a kite,”
To avoid the moody menace of their tone!
For their only antidote
To the check in every note
Is a loan.
And the people—hang the people!—
They would call from every steeple
How your payments you postpone.
And in calling, calling, calling
Oft enough to make them blown,
Proves they glory in appalling
Men whose debts are all they own
Be they man or be they woman,
They are certainly less human
Than like ghouls;
And their king is he who rolls
Most people into holes,
Bowls
Men over with his bills!
And his merry bosom fills
With delight at leaving bills;
And he dances and he trills,
Saying, “Time, time, time,
To pay up your pound and dime—
Pay the figure of the bills,
Of the bills.”
Saying, “Time, time, time!
Owing money is a crime;
It is robbing to have bills,
To have bills, bills, bills;
It is shocking to have bills!”
Saying, “Time, time, time!”
As he trills, trills, trills,
To the growing of the bills—
Of the bills, bills, bills,
To the growing of the bills—
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills—
To our groaning and our moaning o’er the bills.
Funny Folks, January 25, 1879.
——:o:——

87
The Hose.
Hear the ballad of the hose—
Striped hose.
What a blissful wealth of plumpness they tenderly enclose!
Naught you’ll find in ancient story
Like those shapely symmetries.
Solomon, in all his glory,
Was not arrayed in one of these
Dainty hose, hose, hose.
Nothing can compare with those
Striped with the crimson color of the fragrant-scented rose.
Oh! those hose, hose, hose, hose,
Hose, hose, hose—
Those softly rounded, garter-bounded hose.
There’s a charm about those hose—
Silken hose—
Which, from an ?sthetic standpoint, admiration will impose!
And whene’er we chance to spy them,
Then they seem our sole “Utopias,”
And we feel we’d like to buy them—
Buy them filled, like Cornucopias—
Saucy hose, hose, hose.
And the beauty they disclose—
How the eye of the beholder in entranced rapture glows
On those hose, hose, hose, hose,
Hose, hose, hose—
Those grace-enveloped, full-developed hose.
You, by chance, may see those hose—
Well-filled hose—
Peeping from the mystic meshes of a labyrinth of clothes.
Damsels dark and damsels fair,
Each, mayhaps, displays a pair
Of deftly-woven, parti-colored stockings, which more winsomely allure
By the floral garniture
Of their clockings.
But the people-ah! the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
Far from those:
’Mid the clanging and the rumble
Of the bells—they never “tumble”
To the hose.
At that lofty elevation,
They maintain their equipose,
Suffering not the excitation
Consequent on seeing those
Shapely hose, hose, hose—
White as winter’s snows,
Save the stripes, so richly tinted with the blushes of the rose,
Are the hose, hose, hose, hose—
Those hose, hose—
Are the fascinating, aggravating hose.
Lutin.
Puck, (New York), May 21, 1879.
——:o:——

The Bills.
(An apology for which Punch is proud to owe to Edgar Poe.)
I.
See the ever-swelling bills—
Heavy bills!
What a world of botherment Sir Stafford’s bosom fills!
How they tumble, tumble, tumble
In, to his extreme affright!
While the nation ’gins to grumble
At the wild financial jumble,
To the Liberals’ delight.
E’en the Times, Times, Times,
Hints at economic crimes
In the quick accumulation that the world with wonder fills,
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, bills,—
The growing and o’erflowing of the bills.
II.
See the Military bills—
Bouncing bills!
How their growth the Chancellor’s optimism chills!
For each little local fight,
Afghan, Zulu, what a sight
Of cash, in gold or notes,
Must come soon!
What triumphant mockery floats
From the Radical, who capers while he gloats
O’er the tune,
The pretty tune to which
The Nation, racked though rich,
Will have to pay the piper from its coffers and its tills,
For the bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, bills,
The ne’er ceasing increasing of the bills!
III.
See the long Imperial bills—
Bloated bills!
How their swoln proportions hint of choking bolus pills
For John Bull, who, at the sight,
Stares and stammers with affright!
Too much horrified to reckon
All the burdens piled his neck on
By the lune,
The mad hallucination which his fancy did inspire,
The wild and weak ambition, which his foolish brain did fire,
To soar higher, higher, higher,
With a lunatic desire,
And an imbecile endeavour
Now, now to swell, or never,
To Imperial plenilune!
Oh the bills, bills, bills!
What a tale their tottle fills!
Hard to bear!
How they mount to more and more!
What a cold, cold douche they pour
On the folly of the frantic Jingo scare!
Yet our pockets fully know,
By the waxing
Of the taxing,
How they flow, and flow, and flow;
Yet the ear that daily fills
With the wrangling,
And the jangling
Of the rival Party quills,
Knows how the Country chills,
At the swelling beyond telling in the number of the bills—
Of the bills—
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, bills,
The mounting past all counting of the bills!
Punch, Oct. 25, 1879.
88
Bills.

(Scene.—Paterfamilias discovered in the act of looking through his morning’s letters.)

I.
Here’s the postman with his bills—
Christmas bills!
What a world of coming trouble their very sight instils!
How they worry, worry, worry,
In their envelopes of blue!
Whilst though I conceal my flurry,
I am really in a hurry,
To break open and review
The long lines, lines, lines,
Of fours and noughts, and nines,
And the terrifying total—which, as it is, my heart so thrills—
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills—
Oh, the flurry and the worry of the bills!
II.
Here are two most lengthy bills—
Bonnet bills!
What a world of foolish details, to be sure, their columns fills!
Here are bonnets for all weathers,
Trimm’d with birds, and flowers, and feathers’
Tulle diaphanous that floats—
Each new device!
Gold-tipp’d grasses, silver oats,
Birds have yielded up their plumage, beasts their coats,—
At a price,
Which is down in Madame’s bills.
(Three guineas! only fancy for a wreath of daffodils!)
Why it chills,
And it thrills,
And a lesson new instils,
Does the wicked waste that fills,
And makes bigger every figure
Of those shameful bonnet bills!
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills—
These increasing and ne’er ceasing
Bonnet bills!
III.
Here are more alarming bills—
Butcher’s bills!
What a tale their total tells of the worst of household ills!
How the figures seem to glare,
And to tell one everywhere
Of bones weighed out as meat,
Of triumphant plans to cheat
In their bills.
In their bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills—
Change the prices and devices of their bills.
IV.
Here are countless other bills—
Sundry bills!
Of which the reckoning up is like climbing up high hills!
Now I tremble with affright
On my lawyer’s to alight,
With its endless six and eightpences
All shown;
And the doctors, though one line,
To bad language doth incline,
Or a groan;
Whilst the tailor—oh, the tailor!
Was he ever found to fail, or
Ever known
Not to pile up useless details
In the manner to him prone;
“Fancy twill’d,” and “double mill’d,”
“Blue Elysian,” “braided,” “drill’d,”
Till each garment that he retails
Is described in terms high flown.
Then there are bills, of course,
Sent by tradesmen, who, perforce,—
(Without doubt);
Of American sirloins sold as Scotch beef superfine,
Of suet charged but never sent, of fat skewer’d on the chine;
Of rump steak at one-and-nine,
And of “rounds” so steep’d in brine,
That, spite resolute endeavour,
One could eat it never, never!
Nor anyhow the salt boil out.
Oh these bills, bills, bills,
Writ with skewers ’stead of quills—
They recall
Prices always going higher,
Though at Newgate ’twould transpire
Often meat had had a most decided fall.
Yes, there’s scarce a line that shows
Joints overweighted,
Price o’erstated,
As one by experience knows.
Yet the whole with hope one fills,
Co-operation
Through the nation
Soon will empty butchers’ tills;
Or at least bring down the prices they are charging in their bills—
With under-dash—
Must make up by Tuesday week
Such a sum; so from you seek
Cash!
To assist them with their bills,
And here, too, like bitter pills,
Come the long-forgotten bills—
Accounts one fancied settled,
Till by them, newly nettled,
All the air with cries one fills,
Making moan, moan, moan,
In a muffled monotone,
At the checking of the bills—
Of the bills!
Making moan, moan, moan,
In the same old monotone,
At the reckoning of the bills!
Of the bills, bills, bills,
At the checking, the reck’ning of the bills.
With a deep and final groan,
At the bother of the bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills,
At the pother of the bills,
Of the bills, bills, bills, bills,
Bills, bills, bills,
At the bother, and the pother of the bills.
Truth, January 8, 1880.
——:o:——

89
THE BELLS.[8]
Hear a voice announcing Irving in The Bells—sledge’s bells!
What a scene of wild excitement the advertisement foretells!
See the rush upon the pay-hole—
People stand a night and day whole
To secure a little corner for The Bells!
To look ghastly pale and shudder, every man and every “brudder”
Feels that nothing can be equal to The Bells!
Bells! Bells! Bells! Bells!
Too horrified to cheer,
Folk will testify by fear
How appalled they are by Irving in The Bells;
While great beads of perspiration will appear,
For in conscience-stricken terrors he excels!
Gloomy Bells!
Pit and gallery will glory in the weird and frightful story,
Which may even thrill the bosom of the swells,
For every Yankee “dude”
Unquestionably should
Have nightmare after witnessing The Bells!
Will our cousins all go frantic from Pacific to Atlantic, or condemn as childish antic
Irving’s dancing, and his gasping, and his yells!
There’s a certain admiration which the strange impersonation
Still compels,
E’en from those who can’t see beauty in The Bells—
In the play that Mr. Lewis calls The Bells!
Wondrous Bells!
You first made Henry famous, so the stage historian tells,
Will the scene be now repeated which in London always greeted
His performance of Mathias in The Bells?
Or will every sneering Yankee,
In his nasal tones, say “Thankee,
I guess this is just another of your mighty British ‘sells?’”
Let the thought for ever perish, that the actor whom we cherish
Could fail to lick creation in The Bells!
But if there are detractors
Of this foremost of our actors,
Of the gentlemanly Irving—friend of Toole’s—
“They are neither man nor woman, they are neither brute nor human,”
They are fools!
Judy, October 24, 1883.
——:o:——

The following verses, in imitation of Poe, are quoted from a little work entitled “Original Readings and Recitations,” by W. A. Eaton, published by H. Vickers, Strand. Mr. Eaton is a well-known Temperance Advocate, and the author of many pathetic poems admirably adapted for public Recitations:—

The Voice of the Bells.
I love the sound of bells
At evening, when the sun
To the tired labourer tells
His hard day’s work is done.
I love to hear,
So soft and clear,
Their notes go sailing o’er mount and mere.
Bells, softly chime
Your sweet, low rhyme,
Ring on, still ring.
While softly the shadows creep,
Over the folded sheep.
The day is done;
Down goes the sun,
And Silence opens the gates of Sleep.
I love the sound of bells
On a glorious summer morn,
When ev’ry note that swells
Tells of a joy new born.
The wedding note
Doth lightly float,
Gaily o’er hill and dale,
Merrily, cherrily,
Madly, gladly,
Telling of joys that will never fail.
Bells, bells, bells!
Hark how their music swells!
How it floats along,
Like a glorious song!
Bells, bells, bells, bells!
Oh, teach me the joy that your glad music tells.
I love to hear the bell
That is rung for a passing soul,
As, solemnly over the dell,
Its mournful boomings roll.
Toll, toll, toll,
For a passing soul;
While the mourners tramp
Through the graveyard damp.
Toll, toll, toll!
Boom, boom, boom!
Over an open tomb.
With a voice of terrible gloom,
(Toll, toll, toll,)
As long as the ages roll,
Thou wilt tell men of their doom.
But yet I love thee well,
Thou mournful, chiming bell;
For who shall say,
While thou dost toll,
What glorious chimes
And echoing rhymes
Will welcome to heaven the new born soul?
*??*??*??*??*
——:o:——

The Bills.
respectfully dedicated to the gentle reader.
Hark! the postman! he brings Bills!
Christmas Bills!!
What a world of torment now my bosom fills!
How they trouble, trouble, trouble,
All the merry Christmas time,
While a woe unfathomable
Seems to bubble, bubble, bubble
In my mind and mars the merry Christmas chime.
For they come, come, come,
In a multiplying sum,
Admitting no evasion of their ills;
Oh the Bills! Bills!! Bills!!! Bills!!!!
Bills!!!!! Bills!!!!!! Bills!!!!!!!
Oh, the torment and the torture of the Bills!
90
Hang those Bills!
Christmas Bills!!
For their presence all our Christmas joy dispels;
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
And every note that floats
From our dry and dusty throats
Is a groan;
And we wish we were the people
Who dwell up in a steeple—
Happy people!
All alone!
And who, toiling, toiling, toiling
For their creditors’ despoiling,
Find it easy all cash payments to postpone,
And find pleasure in the spoiling,
In the spoiling and the moiling,
In the spoiling of a bailiff with a stone.
They are scarcely man and woman,
They are almost superhuman—
They are kings,
And like kings can sit and sing,
While they fling, fling, fling,
Fling rocks upon their duns;
While each dun gets up and runs
For his pistols and his guns,
And he dances and he groans,
Keeping time, time, time,
In a strange spasmodic rhyme,
To the volley of big stones,
Of big stones;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a ghastly sort of rhyme,
To the volleying of the stones,
Of the stones, stones, stones,
To the volley of the jolly big stones.
Keeping time, time, time,
While he yells, yells, yells,
In a wild galvanic rhyme,
For the payment of his bills,
Of his Bills! Bills!! Bills!!! Bills!!!!
Bills!!!!! Bills!!!!!! Bills!!!!!!!
For the instant liquidation of his Bills!
Free Press Flashes, 1883.
——:o:——

O! The Hammers.
O! the hammers, hammers, hammers,
Clanging hammers;
How they beat, how they chime,
With a joyous music time,
Soul-inspiring, never tiring
To the ear;
O’er the waters of the Tyne
Rolls the melody divine
Loud and clear;
And the toilers, strong and grim,
Glory in the sounding hymn,
For they know that each blow
Keeps the homely hearth aglow;
So they hammer, hammer, hammer,
And the far-resounding clamour
Gives them cheer.
O! the hammers, hammers, hammers,
Throbbing hammers,
How they leap, how they skip,
O’er the bosom of the ship,
Ever beating and repeating
Labour’s lay;
Hark! they tell of human might,
With an echoing delight,
All the day;
O! the battle must be won,
And the toiling must be done,
For the strife of each life
Is for children and for wife;
So they hammer, hammer, hammer,
And the wild, sonorous clamour
Is their stay.
From “Poems and Songs,” by William Allan.—Simpkin Marshall & Co., London, 1883.

——:o:——

Reminiscences of Summer.
See the frog, the slimy, green frog,
Dozing away on that old rotten log;
Seriously wondering
What caused the sundering
Of the tail that he wore when a wee pollywog.
See the boy, the freckled schoolboy,
Famed for cussedness, free from alloy;
Watching the frog
Perched on the log,
With feelings akin to tumultuous joy.
See the rock, the hard, flinty rock,
Which the freckled-faced boy at the frog doth sock;
Conscious he’s sinning,
Yet gleefully grinning
At the likely result of its terrific shock.
See the grass, the treacherous grass,
Slip from beneath his feet! Alas,
Into the mud
With a dull thud
He falls, and rises a slimy mass.
Now, see the frog, the hilarious frog,
Dancing a jig on his old rotten log;
Applying his toes
To his broad, blunt nose
As he laughs at the boy stuck fast in the bog.
*??*??*??*??*
Look at the switch, the hickory switch,
Waiting to make that schoolboy twitch;
When his mother knows
The state of his clothes
Won’t he raise his voice to its highest pitch.
Free Press Flashes, 1883.
——:o:——

That Amateur Flute.
Hear the fluter with his flute—
Silver flute!
Oh, what a world of wailing is awakened by its toot!
How it demi-semi quavers
On the maddened air of night!
And defieth all endeavours
To escape the sound or sight
Of the flute, flute, flute,
With its tootle, tootle, toot—
With reiterated tooteling of exasperating toots,
The long protracted tootelings of agonising toots,
Of the flute, flute, flute, flute,
Flute, flute, flute,
And the wheezings and the spittings of its toots.
91
Should he get that other flute—
Golden flute—
Oh, what a deeper anguish will its presence institoot!
How his eyes to heaven he’ll raise,
As he plays,
All the days!
How he’ll stop us on our ways
With its praise!
And the people—oh, the people,
That don’t live up in the steeple,
But inhabit Christian parlours
Where he visiteth and plays—
Where he plays, plays, plays—
In the cruellest of ways,
And thinks we ought to listen,
And expects us to be mute,
Who would rather have the earache
Than the music of his flute,
Of his flute, flute, flute,
And the tootings of his toot,
Of the toots wherewith he tooteleth its agonising toot,
Of the flute, flewt, fluit, floot,
Phlute, phlewt, phlewght,
And the tootle, tootle, tooting of its toot.
American Paper.
——:o:——

The Office Boy’s Mother in America.
“Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells!”
How their clashing, and their clanging, all thought of peace dispels!
Oh, well might Edgar Allan Poe—or any other poet, born in American clime—
Adopt the bells, the ceaseless bells, as subject for his rhyme.
From early morn, till dewy eve, their clamour resounds loud and long,
The railway train as it puffs and clatters through the streets, proclaims its passage with “ding, dong! ding, dong!”
The matutinal milkman tinkle tinkles on his way,
And the vegetable vendor tintinabulates “ting-a-ring! ting-a-ring!”—enough to drive one mad, as a body may say.
The steamboat bell resounds, as if summoning the nation to its doom,
And from chapel, church, and schoolhouse—at all hours—echoes forth the solemn “boom, boom, boom!”
And at any time—day or night—just as it were—to fill up the blank,
The fire-engine rushes through the streets, with its quick, sharp, metallic, warning voice, “Clank—clank—clank—clank!”
It ain’t till you’ve lived in an American city that you learn how it was they came to dub
The oh-no-we-never-mention-him with the name of Bells-ebub!
*??*??*??*??*
Judy, January 14, 1885.
 Illustration: Bud and leaves
BISAKEL.

“Israfel,” By Poe, Recast for a new roll.

The angel Bisakel, whose wings are wheels, has the
fleetest pace of all God’s creatures.—Koran.

In heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose great wing is a wheel.
None fly so wildly well
As the angel Bisakel,
And the giddy stars, so legends say,
Slowing their course, attend the play
Of his wondrous heel.
Maturing her age
In her highest noon,
The enamelled moon
Reddens with rage,
And to witness, with misgivin’,
(With the nautic Pleiads even,
More than seven.)
Pauses in heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other gossiping things)
That Bisakeli’s fire
Is owing to that tire
O’er which he sits and slings
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual wings.
But surely that angel trod
Treadles amazing flighty;
And, for a grown-up god,
Their bicycling Houris’ are
His rivals—Aphrodite
Transports faster than a star!
The ecstasies he took
With such company to deal—
His leg and style, his pure caoutchouc,
With the fervour of his wheel—
Well may the stars go reel!
We say thou art not wrong,
Bisakeli, who despisest
Feathers and psalming song;
Bloom thou the laurels among,
Best angel and the wisest,—
Merrily live, and long!
Ah, heaven is his’n, indeed—
This world is sweets and sours;
Our powers are puny powers,
And the slowest of his perfect speed
Is the swiftest of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Bisakel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not spin so wildly well
Our mortal wheelery,
While a better song than now might swell
From my lyre within the sky—
But—how is this “for high”?
Lyra Bicyclica, By J. G. Dalton, Boston, 1880.
——:o:——

THE STEED OF FIRE.
From Poe’s “Eldorado”—Fabled Golden
made true steel.
Soberly dight,
A modern knight,
Upon a hack of hire
Had journeyed long
Singing a song
In search of a steed of fire.
92
But he grew old,
This knight, tho’ bold,
With o’er his heart a dire
Dump as he found
Nothing around
That looked like a steed of fire
And as his strength
Waned, he at length
Met a bicycling flyer:
“Flyer,” said he,
“What! can it be—
Can this be the steed of fire?”
“Upon this mount
We surely count,
’Tis all you can desire;
Ride, boldly ride,”
Cycler replied,
“If you seek for a steed of fire!”
He dried his tears,—
And shed his years,
All on the windy wire,
And sweeps along
Singing much song
In praise of the steed of fire.
Lyra Bicyclica, By J. G. Dalton, Boston,
?Hodges & Co., 1880.
——:o:——

THE RAVEN.
Scene—Study in Chief Secretary’s Lodge, Ph?nix Park.[9]G.O.T. loquitor—
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
Over two delightful volumes rich in biographic lore.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis the footman with the tumblers, tapping at my chamber door—
Only that and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak November;
Wrought each separate dying ember, Gladstone’s nose upon the floor,
Terror-struck I feared the morrow; vainly had I sought to borrow
From those books surcease of sorrow; agony perhaps in store!
If those students, sons of Gladstone, failed to top Sir Stafford’s score!
Name it not for evermore.
Open then I flung the portal, when, with impudence immortal,
In there stepped a stately Raven of old Buckshot’s[10] days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he,
But as cool as Joseph Brady, perched upon my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Bradlaugh just above my chamber door—
Perched and spat, and nothing more.
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil, prophet still, Parnell, or devil,
Whether Gladstone or young Herbert sent or brought thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this island disenchanted,
In this home by horror haunted, tell me truly, I implore,
Shall I, shall I poll as many as did Roseberry before?”
Quoth the Raven, “Never more.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil, prophet still, Churchhill or devil,
By that bust that scowls beneath thee, by that God he don’t adore,
Tell this soul with terror haunted, tell this Secretary daunted,
Of the triumphs which we’ve vaunted, of the victory in store,
Shall the newsboys shout to-morrow how I’ve topped Sir Stafford’s score?”
Quoth the Raven, “Never more.”
Anonymous.
Received from Edinburgh, March 12, 1885.
——:o:——

The Raven.

The London correspondent of the Western Morning News, says:—“Speaking of poetry re-calls a very curious circumstance that has recently been talked about, and which is probably new to most readers. Everyone has read or heard that wonderful poem of Edgar Poe’s—‘The Raven’—and probably most of those who have read it know also of that very singular essay in which the poet explains the manner in which the poem was composed. He tells them how he came to make choice of the particular metre, how the burden suggested itself to his mind, how the last verse was written first and the others to lead gradually up to it, with a variety of minute and particular details, all tending to shew its originality. The whole of this essay turns out to be as ingenious a fiction as any of the ‘tales of mystery’ with which it is usually bound up. Poe’s sole accomplishment was a minute and accurate acquaintance with Oriental languages, and this he turned to account by translating almost literally the poem of ‘The Raven’ from the Persian. The translation is so minute and accurate that even the cadences are preserved throughout, while the curious repetition of rhymes by which it is distinguished is equally characteristic of the work of the Persian poet. As a singular specimen of a literary imposture such a matter as this deserves notice. The discovery is due to the well-known eastern traveller, Mr. Lang, formerly of the Bombay service, and has since been corroborated, I hear, by some of the most celebrated Orientalists in England.”—The Daily Review, Edinburgh, August 18, 1864.

Illustration: Mask and cherubs
93
SPIRITUAL POEMS.

A very curious feature of the modern American press has been the rapid growth of so-called Spiritual literature. Those who are incredulous in regard to these Spiritual manifestations simply assert that a poetical medium is one, who not having sufficient genius and originality to make a name and a place in literature for himself, falls back on the trick of imitating the style of some deceased popular author, and proclaims his (often stupid) Parody the veritable production of the spirit of the author imitated. Perhaps it is owing to the known partiality entertained by Edgar A. Poe for alcohol during his lifetime, or it may be due to the ease with which his style of versification may be imitated, that his spirit has been so often invoked, and his name so frequently used by the Spiritualists.

Without attempting to discuss the mode in which these poems have been given to the world, it will be quite sufficient to quote a few, and these of the very best, to show that Poe’s Spirit has not produced anything at all equal in quality to the poems written by Poe whilst he was still in the flesh. Power, freshness, and originality they seem to lack entirely, but the quantity is superabundant; the chief difficulty in making a selection that shall be at once illustrative and interesting, is to avoid making it too voluminous. Few, indeed, of these poems possess the attributes of Poe’s style,—his luxurious reiteration of thought in similar lines,—his musical alliteration—his exquisite sense of rhyme. Here and there occurs a slight assumption of the mystical, but it is mere obscurity without suggestiveness. It is asserted that most of these Spiritual Poems were taken down from the lips of persons whilst in a state of trance.

One of the earliest Spirit Poems was said to be dictated through the medium of Mrs. Lydia Tenney, of George Town, Mass., U.S.A., and was triumphantly claimed as a proof that Poe’s Spirit had written a poem. Mr. William Sawyer utterly demolished this poem in an article in the Brighton Herald, and as it does not possess any resemblance to Poe’s style, it would be out of place here.

The first Spirit poem to be quoted is a sequel to “The Raven,” by a certain R. Allston Lavender, who asserted that it was dictated to him by the spirit of E. A. Poe. When last heard of Mr. Lavender was an inmate of a lunatic asylum in the United States.

Sequel to the Raven.
Fires within my brain were burning,
Scorning life, despairing, yearning,
Hopeless, blinded in my anguish;
Through my body’s open door
Came a Raven, foul and sable,
Like those evil birds of fable,
Downward swooping where the drooping
Spectres haunt the Stygian shore.
Ghosts of agonies departed,
Festering wounds that long had smarted,
Broken vows, returnless mornings,
Griefs and miseries of yore;
By some art revived, undaunted,
I gazed steadfast: the enchanted,
Black, infernal Raven uttered
A wild dirge—not evermore.
Gazing steady, gazing madly
On the bird, I spoke, and sadly
Broke down, too deep for scorning,
Sought for mercy to implore.
Turning to the bird, I blessed it—
In my bosom I caressed it;
Still it pierced my heart, and revelled
In the palpitating gore.
I grew mad; the crowning fancies,
Black weeds they—not blooming pansies—
Made me think the bird a spirit.
Bird, I cried, be bird no more;
Take a shape—be man, be devil,
Be a snake; rise in thy revel!
From thy banquet rise—be human!
I have seen thee oft before;
Thou art a bird, but something more.”
*??*??*??*??*
Oh! thou huge, infernal Raven,
Image that Hell’s King hath graven,
Image growing more gigantic,
Nursed beyond the Stygian shore,
Leave me, leave me, I beseech thee,
I would not of wrong impeach thee;
I cried madly, then earth opened
With a brazen earthquake roar.
Downward, downward, circling, speeding,
Cries of anguish still unheeding,
Striking through me with his talons,
Still the Raven shape he bore;
Unto Erebus we drifted,
His huge wings by thunder lifted,
Beat ’gainst drifts of white-flamed lightning,
Sprinkled red with human gore—
’Twas a bird, but demon more.
*??*??*??*??*
Then I wakened, if to waken
Be to dwell by grief forsaken
With the God who dwelt with angels
In the shining age of yore.
And I stood sublime, victorious,
While below lay earth with glorious
Realms of angels shining,
Crown-like on her temples evermore,
Not an Earth, an Eden more.
Earth, I cried, thy clouds are shadows
From the Asphodelian meadows
Of the sky-world floating downward,
Early rains that from them pour;
Love’s own heaven thy mother bore thee,
And the Father God bends o’er thee,
’Tis His hand that crowns thy forehead;
Thou shalt live forever more,
Not on Earth, in Eden more.
94
As a gem hath many gleamings,
And a day hath many beamings,
And a garden many roses
Thrilled with sweetness to the core;
So the soul hath many ages,
And the life’s book many pages,
But the heart’s great gospel opens
Where the Seraphims adore,
Not on Earth, an Eden more.
There are in all sixteen verses in this imitation. The next example is one of the numerous poems delivered by Miss Lizzie Doten (a spiritual trance speaker) whilst supposed to be under the influence of the spirit of Edgar A. Poe.

A Grand Poem.
From the throne of life eternal,
From the home of love supernal,
Where the angels make music o’er the starry floor,
Mortals, I have come to meet you,
And with words of peace to greet you,
And to tell you of the glory that is mine forevermore.
Once before, I found a mortal
Waiting at the heavenly portal—
Waiting out to catch some echo from that ever-opening door;
Then I seized this quickened being,
And through all his inward seeing,
Caused my burning inspiration in a fiery flood to pour.
Now I come more meekly human,
And the weak lips of a woman,
Touched with fire from off the altar, not with burning, as of yore,
But in holy love descending,
With her chastened being blending,
I will fill your soul with music from the bright celestial shore.
As one heart yearns for another,
As a child turns to its mother,
From the golden gates of glory, turn I to the earth once more;
Where I drained the cup of sadness,
Where my soul was stung to madness,
And life’s bitter, burning billows swept my burdened being o’er.
Here the harpies and the ravens,
Human vampires, sordid cravens,
Preyed upon my soul and substance, till I writhed in anger sore;
Life and I then seemed mismated,
For I felt accursed and fated,
Like a restless, wrathful spirit, wandering the Stygian shore.
Tortured by a nameless yearning,
Like a fire-frost, freezing, burning,
Did the purple, pulsing life-tide through its feeble channels pour;
Till the golden bowl, life’s token,
Into shining shards was broken,
And my chained and chafing spirit let from out its prison door.
But, whilst living, stirring, dying,
Never did my spirit cease crying:
“Ye who guide the fates and furies, give, oh! give me, I implore—
From the myriad host of nations,
From the countless constellations,
One pure spirit that can love me—one that I, too, can adore.”
Through this fervent aspiration
Found my fainting soul salvation;
Far from out its blackened fire quick did my spirit soar,
And my beautiful ideal,
Not too saintly to be real,
Burst more brightly on my vision than the fancy formed Lenore.
’Mid the surging sea she found me,
With the billows breaking round me,
And my saddened, sinking spirit in her arms of love upbore;
Like a lone one, weak and weary,
Wandering in the mid-night dreary,
On her sinless, saintly bosom, brought me to the heavenly shore.
Like the breath of blossoms blending,
Like the prayers of saints ascending,
Like the rainbow’s seven-hued glory, blend on souls forevermore;
Earthly lust and lore enslaved me,
But divinest love hath saved me,
And I know now, first and only, how to live and how to adore.
O, my mortal friends and brothers!
We are each and all another’s,
And the soul which gives most freely from its treasures hath the more.
Would you lose life, you must find it,
And in giving love you bind it,
Like an amulet of safety to your heart for evermore.
Baltimore, August, 1872.
In a volume entitled Poems of the Inner Life written by the same lady, and published by Colby and Rich, of Boston, U.S.A., there is a long imitation of “Ulalume,” from which the following verses may be quoted:—

The Kingdom.
’Twas the ominous month of October—
How the memories rise in my soul!
How they swell like a sea in my soul!—
When a spirit, sad, silent, and sober,
Whose glance was a word of control,
Drew me down to the dark Lake Avernus,
In the desolate Kingdom of Death—
To the mist-covered Lake of Avernus,
In the ghoul-haunted Kingdom of Death.
And there, as I shivered and waited,
I talked with the souls of the dead—
With those whom the living call dead;
The lawless, the lone, and the hated,
Who broke from their bondage and fled—
From madness and misery fled.
95
Each word was a burning eruption
That leapt from a crater of flame,
A red, lava-tide of corruption,
That out of life’s sediment came,
From the scoriac natures God gave them,
Compounded of glory and shame.
“Aboard!” cries our pilot and leader;
Then wildly we rush to embark,
We recklessly rush to embark;
And forth in our ghostly Ellida[11]
We swept in the silence and dark—
Oh God! on that black Lake Avernus,
Where vampires drink even the breath
On that terrible Lake of Avernus,
Leading down to the whirlpool of Death!
It was there the Eumenides[12] found us
In sight of no shelter or shore—
No beacon or light from the shore.
They lashed up the white waves around us,
We sank in the waters’ wild roar;
But not to the regions infernal,
Through billows of sulphurous flame,
But unto the City Eternal,
The Home of the Blessed, we came.
To the gate of the Beautiful City,
All fainting and weary we pressed,
Impatient and hopeful we pressed.
“O, Heart of the Holy, take pity,
And welcome us home to our rest!
Pursued by the Fates and the Furies,
In darkness and danger we fled—
From the pitiless Fates and Furies,
Through the desolate realms of the Dead.”
*??*??*??*??*
Like the song of a bird that yet lingers.
When the wide-wandering warbler has flown;
Like the wind harp by Eolus blown,
As if touched by the lightest of fingers,
The portal wide open was thrown;
And we saw not the holy Saint Peter,
Not even an angel of light,
But a vision far dearer and sweeter,
Not as brilliant nor blindingly bright,
But marvellous unto the sight!
In the midst of the mystical splendour,
Stood a beautiful, beautiful child—
A golden-haired, azure-eyed child,
With a look that was touching and tender,
She stretched out her white hand and smiled:
“Ay, welcome, thrice welcome, poor mortals,
O, why do ye linger and wait?
Come fearlessly in at these portals—
No warder keeps watch at the gate!”
*??*??*??*??*
Then out from the mystical splendour,
The swift-changing, crystalline light,
The rainbow-hued, scintillant light,
Gleamed faces more touching and tender
Than ever had greeted our sight—
Our sin-blinded, death-darkened sight;
And they sang: “Welcome home to the Kingdom,
Ye earth-born and serpent-beguiled;
The Lord is the light of this Kingdom,
And His temple the heart of a child—
Of a trustful and teachable child.
Ye are born to the life of the Kingdom—
Receive, and believe, as a child.”
Another long poem, entitled “Farewell to Earth,” was delivered by Miss Lizzie Doten at the conclusion of a Lecture at Clinton Hall, New York; it purported to be E. A. Poe’s final “Farewell to this World.” It was printed in Number 2 of Inspirational Poems, and published by F. N. Broderick, 1, St. Thomas’s Square, Ryde, Isle of Wight, for the small price of one penny; alas! it was dear at that. But the culmination of absurdity is to be found in a book entitled Improvisations from the Spirit, published in London in 1857. This ridiculous work was the production of Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, a rather well known character in St. John’s Wood about thirty years ago. If we are to credit this author, the 400 closely printed pages of this curious jumble of clerical cant terms, spiritualism, and Swedenborgianism, were written under a kind of inspiration. Since August 1857 the inspired volume had rested undisturbed on the library shelves of the British Museum, nor had any sacrilegious paperknife disturbed its uncut edges until the Editor of Parodies assailed them. And there he found an “Imitation of E. A. Poe,” a mad kind of poem, a dribbling in rhyme, of which, one verse will surely be sufficient for even the most spiritualistic reader:—

And that his feet were gaining
Strange features from below;
And that his toes were raining
Toe-nails upon his brow:
And that his heart and liver
Were shuffling in their seats;
And that he heard them quiver
And saw their anxious heats.
 Illustration: scroll design
96
Illustration: Pot-Pourri
In the library of the British Museum there is a small octavo pamphlet of 24 pages, entitled “Pot-Pourri.” It was apparently printed for private circulation only. The author’s name is not given, but it bears the imprint, “Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Abel Reid, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.” “S. W. Green, Printer and Electrotyper, 16 & 18, Jacob St., New York.” The eleven poems it contains are all parodies of Poe’s writings, as the titles sufficiently indicate. Indeed many of the lines are taken bodily, and without the slightest acknowledgement, from Poe himself, whilst the stanzas, entitled, “Part of an Unfinished Ghoul-Poem,” in “Poetic Fragments,” were written by Poe, and intended by him to form the conclusion of “Ulalume.” He had, however, suppressed these lines at the request of Mrs. Whitman, the lady to whom he was engaged to be married, when his career was cut short by his miserable excesses. The author of “Pot-Pourri,” though evidently an admirer of the genius of Poe, utters a protest against the excessive hero-worship of some American critics; but it is a pity that he was not himself more candid and ingenuous in his treatment of the dead poet’s works. The following is an exact reprint of this scarce pamphlet; to facilitate comparison with the originals, a few stanzas from Poe’s poems are quoted at the foot of several of the parodies.

POT-POURRI.

The Ruined Palace.
Dream-Mere.
Israfiddlestrings.
The Ghouls in the Belfry.
Hullaloo.
To Any.
Hannibal Leigh.
Raving.
The Monster Maggot.
Poetic Fragments.
Under-Lines.
——:o:——

* The Ruined Palace.
In a green depth, like a chalice,
By most sweet flowers tenanted,
Stood a fair and stately palace.
There a poet-soul—now dead—
Lived in days in vain lamented,—
Had lived to-day,
But was wayward—or demented,—
Weak, or worse,—who dares to say?
For his thought was streak’d with fancies,
To all simple truth untrue;
Bizarre, as the hues of pansies,—
The dark shades he knew;
And he wander’d from this Aidenn:
Wander’d, and was lost, alas!
Though his own beloved maiden
Track’d his footsteps through the grass.
He return’d not. Devastation
Housed in his disorder’d rooms;
On his couch lay Desolation;
Vampyres flitted through the glooms.
By the pure white Parian fountains
Lounged the ghouls, obscenely bare;
Never wind came from the mountains
To refresh the stagnant air.
O’er the garden walks neglected
Crawl’d the toad, the worm, the snail;
Droop’d the young buds unrespected:
Loving care could not avail.
For the poet-soul, the master,
Could alone that place
Make beautiful, and from disaster
Free—as Aidenn—by God’s grace.
When he the palace left, and garden,—
The moment that he would depart—
*??*??*??*??*
Speech is vain, and tears but harden
On the world’s ice heart.
[*] The Haunted Palace.
I.
In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace,
Radiant palace, reared its head.
In the Monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there;
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
II.
Banners—yellow, glorious, golden—
On its roof did float and flow
(This, all this, was in the olden
Time, long ago);
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
*??*??*??*??*
E. A. Poe.
——:o:——

Dream-Mere.
On a root, knobbed, gnarl’d, and lonely.
Overstruck with toadstools only,
Sits an Eidolon named Night,—
On a toadstool half upright.
I have seen this sprite but newly,
And I look’d at him quite throughly,
In his ultimate dim Thule
As he sate there half upright.
In a wild, weird clime, and singing sublime,
Out of Tune—out of Time.
97
Bottomless hollows and roaring floods,
And caves and chasms and haunted woods,
Forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Shoreless seas that still aspire,
Surging to hellish heavens of fire;
Boundless lakes all lone and dead,
Where sometimes Night lies outspread
In the waters still and chilly,
With his nose in a lolling lily.
By these shoreless lakes outspread,
These lone waters, lone and dead,
These lone waters, still and chilly
(Night’s nose in the lolling lily);
By these toppling crags,—no river
Murmurs near, no leaflets quiver—
All so dark and dead and chilly;
By these dank woods, by the swamp,
Where the toad and bull-frog romp;
By these dismal tarns, by the holes
Where dwell the Ghouls—
Poor damp souls!
By each corner most unjolly,
By each crevice melancholy,
By my own poetic folly—
Frenzy of poetic drift,
In an unexpected rift,
There, I swear, I met aghast
In a sheet the unmemoried Past,
In a shroud a Ghost, whose eye
Looking into vacancy
Made me shudder, start, and sigh,—
One forgotten, from thought outdriven,
I know not whether on Earth or in Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
’Tis a peaceful, soothing region—
This same desert drear of Night,
Where the Eidolon sits upright
On his toadstool, or outspread,
Lies lolling on his lily-bed.—
For the spirit that likes a shadow
’Tis, O, ’tis an Eldorado,—
Though the traveller, travelling through it,
Ever fails to interview it
(No one ever openly knew it),
For its mysteries all are closed
By the darkness superposed
Of the Eidolon, who, I ween,
Wills not the formless should be seen:
And thus the sad soul that here passes
Is like a blind ass without glasses.
On his root, knobb’d, gnarl’d, and lonely,
Overstruck with toadstools only,
Squats the Eidolon named Night,
Squats in sad poetic plight.
Is there more, and would you know it?
Fix the headgear of the Poet,
Wandering God knows where, but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule. *
* Dreamland.
I.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth sublime
Out of Space—out of Time.
II.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms and caves and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging into skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
Their still waters, still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
*??*??*??*??*
E. A. Poe.
——:o:——

Israfiddlestrings.
The Angel Israfel, whose heart strings are a fiddle.
In heaven a Spirit doth dwell
Whose heart strings are a fiddle,
(The reason he sings so well—
This fiddler Israfel),
And the giddy stars (will anyone tell
Why giddy?) to attend his spell
Cease their hymns in the middle.
On the height of her go
Totters the Moon, and blushes
As the song of that fiddle rushes
Across her bow.
The red Lightning stands to listen,
And the eyes of the Pleiads glisten
As each of the seven puts its fist in
Its eyes, for the mist in.
And they say—it’s a riddle—
That all these listening things,
That stop in the middle
For the heart strung fiddle
With which the Spirit sings,
Are held as on a griddle
By these unusual strings.
98
Wherefore thou art not wrong,
Israfel! in that thou boastest
Fiddlestrings uncommon strong;
To thee the fiddle strings belong
With which thou toastest
Other hearts as on a prong.
Yes! heaven is thine, but this
Is a world of sours and sweets,—
Where cold meats are cold meats,
And the eater’s most perfect bliss
Is the shadow of him who treats.
If I could griddle
As Israfiddle
Has griddled—he fiddle as I,—
He might not fiddle so wild a riddle
As this mad melody,
While the Pleiads all would leave off in the middle
Hearing my griddle-cry. *
* Israfel.

“And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.”—Koran.

I.
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell,
“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel;
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
II.
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured Moon
Blushes with love;
While to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiades even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in heaven.
III.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings,—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
*??*??*??*??*
VII.
Yes, heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
VIII.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
E. A. Poe.
——:o:——

The Ghouls in the Belfry.[13]
Hear the story of the Ghouls!
Who will tell us of the Ghouls?
Who has been told?
Of the Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls,—
Who are neither man nor woman.
Who are neither beast nor human,
Who are neither fish nor cayman,—
Who will tell us, clerk or layman?
They are Ghouls;
Live in holes
Like moles
Under the boles, boles, boles
Of old trees, where the forest rolls
Of the mouldy days of old;
Or in tarns, tarns, tarns,
Dull and dismal as the yarns
Of morbific spools,—
Dank tarns and dismal pools,
There dwell the Ghouls,
With other tarn’d fowls,—
Not to say fools.
But the high tarn nation place is
The dank tarn of Auber
In the Ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
There they sit, with their faces
Bow’d down to their knees,
At the feet of dead trees.
With the dew dropping down from their hair,
They sit there from the end of October,
To the end of the winter next year,
These are woodlandish Ghouls,
Damp, desolate souls
Who have nothing to do
But be haunting the dank tarn of Auber
Through the mildewest part of the year,
That begins at the end of October,
In the woodlandish Ghouldom of Weir.
Yes! these are the woodlandish Ghouls—
Ghouls—Ghouls—Ghouls—
With no business kind of controls—
Mere shoals.
But busier—ah! much busier polls
Have the Churchyard Ghouls,
Prowling there for the bodies of poor dead souls;
And who after supper
Take an upper
Climb to their goal in the steeple!
Where they sit, where they brood, where they heap ill
On the people undergone;
Sitting cheeks by jowls.
99
Now and then they roll a stone,
Having set the bells a-tolling
In a muffled monotone,
On the people undergone.
And their King it is who tolls,
As he lolls, lolls, lolls
On his throne all carved with scrolls
In his palace in the steeple.
Where he lolls among his people!
Ah! his people who roll stones,
In muffled monotones,
On the hearts of the underfolk,
In the dead of night awoke
By the melancholy yells,
By the miserable howls,
To say nothing of the growls,
Of these Ghouls,
Of these tollers of the bells,
As they toll, toll, toll
Toll;
Toll;
Toll
A p?an from the bells:
And the merry bosom swells
Of the Ghoul-King as he tolls,
As he dances and he yells
To the throbbing of the bells
As they toll,
Toll,
Toll.
It is so the poet tells
Who has heard these Ghoulish bells;
And whose rheumy running rhyme,
Bowl’d in time, time, time,
With the throbbing and the sobbing
And the bobbing and hobnobbing
And sense-robbing of the bells,
Could alone expound their yells
For the clamor each expels,
From the loud full-hammer’d tone,
Sometime hoarsening to a groan,
Sometime worsening to a moan,
Till one bell tolls out alone
In a muffled monotone
Between murmuring and moan,—
Till the King lolled there, as shown,
On his scroll-becarven throne,
Grown weary of the yells
And the bowling of the bells
(Well! well! to be so bold)
As they moan and groan and yell
Pell-mell,
Would be fain to be unthroned,
For the pain too wholly own’d,
Untold but wholly known,
(Toll de roll!)
Of the moans, groans, yells,
As they shake the steeple stone,
And awake the undergone
(Rest his soul!)
With the tolling of their knells,
Roll’d like blood-drops from heart wells,
Misereres out of cells,
Or weird witch-moulded spells
Under fells!
The bells, bells, bells,
Whose tolling ever tells
Of Ghouls, of hells, of knells,
Told by bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,
The unholy yelling, knelling, wholly sense dispelling,
Moaning, groaning, all-atoning,
Rolling, tolling of the bells,
Bells,
Bells.
——:o:——

Hullaloo.[14]
The eves were as grey as grey embers,
The leaves dirty yellow and sere,—
They were yellow, but dusky and sere;
That eve was the worst of November’s,
And they are the worst of the year.
’Twas an eve that one surely remembers,
Being out in the dusk with my dear;
For the fire was gone out to weak embers;
So I went out too, with my dear.
Hear then! Through an alley Satanic—
Of hemlock, I roam’d with my love,—
Of hemlock with Sarah, my love.
O my passion was quite oceanic,
With waves like the wind in a grove,
When the wind maketh waves in a grove—
And the leaves with a sort of a panic
Seem taken; I thought of the stove,
And, shivering, as if with a panic
Was taken, at thought of the stove.
Our talk at the first had been jolly,
But our words soon were slow as our walk,—
Our young memories scarcely could walk;
Then we thought it was right melancholy
To be out in the dark without talk—
For we knew that we came out to talk
Still we felt in our hearts it was folly
The vast dream of silence to baulk,
Till, whispering at last, I said—Golly!
And Sarah back whisper’d me—Lawk!
100
And now as the night was senescent,
And some roosters were hinting of morn,—
Foolish roosters then hinting of morn!—
As the night grew more old and unpleasant,
We saw in the distance a horn,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
To the sides of the road was outborne;
’Twas Sal’s father’s horn lanthorn there present,
The crescent distinct from the horn.
And I said—He is better than Dian;
But I wish that his light had more size,—
And the light wasn’t much for its size;
He has guess’d—that’s a thing to rely on—
Has father, the way our walk lies,
And he has come out like Orion,
The fellow up there in the skies,—
Yes, Sally! those stars in the skies—
Come out like another Orion
To help me take care of my prize,
To take her safe home bye-and-bye on
The pathway that fatherward lies.
But Sarah, uplifting her finger,
Said—Surely that light I mistrust,—
That lanthorn I strangely mistrust;
O hasten! O let us not linger!
O fly! let us fly! for we must.
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Voice,—O, he’ll make such a dust!
In anguish she sobbed, letting sink her
Sweet voice, as if fearing a bust,—
O but father’ll kick up such a dust!
I replied—This is nothing but dreaming;
We need but keep out of the light,—
But he kept dodging us with the light;
And Sarah would soon have been screaming—
She shook like a leaf with affright,
Like a leaf, or a bird in a fright;
So I lifted her out of the gleaming,
Through a gap in the hedge, out of sight:
And her father went on, never dreaming
He left us behind in the night.
Then to pacify Sarah I kiss’d her,
And soon took her out of the gloom,—
It was getting quite cold in the gloom,
And she cried; but I said—Dear! desist, or
I never shall get you safe home.
Then we ran, and in good time got home.
Father said—How on earth have I miss’d her?
She said—I was never from home.
No, Pa! I was never from home.
I have been all the night in my room.
Now my head is as grey as an ember;
And my heart is all crisped and sere,—
Like a crisp leaf that’s wither’d and sere;
And yet I am fain to remember
Above all the nights in the year—
Ah, Sally! if you were but here—
That night of all nights in the year—
Ah, Sally! if you were but here—
That cold dreamy night of November,
That night of all nights in the year,
That long ago night of November,—
The night we were out in, my dear!
——:o:——

To Any.
Thank heaven! the crisis
Of hunger is past;
And you can’t guess how nice is
This little breakfast,
Now the thing call’d good living
Is come to at last.
I eat what I love
And recover my strength;
And my jaws only move
As I lie at full length.
I might sit—but I feel
I am better at length.
And I lie so composedly,
Feeding and fed,
A careless beholder
Might fancy me dead.
Not seeing my jaws work
Might fancy me dead.
The grunting and groaning,
The writhing and raving,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible craving
At stomach—that horrible
Stomachic craving.
The sickness, the faintness,
The emptiness—pain
Have ceased; and my stomach’s
A stomach again,
And feels like a stomach
Not living in vain.
And oh! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated,—the terrible
Torture of Thirst,
For a napthaline river
Or fusil lake burst:
I’d have drunk dirty water,
For quenching that thirst.
101
Of a puddle that flows
With a smell, and no sound
From a hole but a very few
Feet underground,
Though I holded my nose
As I stoop’d to the ground.
And ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That this my mahogany
Is not well spread!
With such victual before me
I call it a spread;
And such drink—my cosmogony
Knows nought instead.
My tantalized spirit
Here blandly reposes:
The upsetting or ever
’Twas wetting one’s nose is
All over. Sweet spirit!
Thy scent in my nose is.
And now while so pleasantly
Curl’d up it fancies,
A fragranter odour
Than rue has, or pansies,—
Or even than rosemary
Mingled with pansies,—
The beautiful bourbon,
The Puritan fancies.
And so I lie happily
Drinking a many
And eating a few,
It will cost a big penny;
I don’t mind the cost;
For I have not a penny. *
*??*??*??*??*
* For Annie.
I.
Thank heaven, the crisis,
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last;
And the fever called “living”
Is conquered at last.
*??*??*??*??*
IV.
The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart—Ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!
V.
The sickness, the nausea,
The pitiless pain,
Have ceased, with the fever,
That maddened my brain—
With the fever called “living,”
That burned in my brain.
VI.
And, O! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated—the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the napthaline river
Of Passion accurst.
I have drunk of a water
That quenches all thirst.
*??*??*??*??*
E. A. Poe.
——:o:——

Hannibal Leigh.[15]
It was many and many a year ago—
It seems so long to me,
That there lived in a city which you may know
A man named Hannibal Leigh;
And this man he seem’d to have nothing to do
But to drink and get drunk with me.
I was a fool and he was a fool,
In this city by the sea
For we drank and got drunk till we made it a rule
That neither should drunker be;
And we drank till we might have lesson’d a school
Of fishes, such drinkers were we.
And this was the reason that long ago
In this city by the sea
A fusilier spirit of ill distilling
Destroy’d my Hannibal Leigh.
’Twas a spirit of ill when my pal was willing
To drink for ever with me;
And some were saying it was fulfilling
A kind o’ warning to me.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying him and me—
Yes! that was the reason, whatever was given
In that city by the sea,
Why the fusilier spirit came out a-killing
My still-swilling Hannibal Leigh.
But I drink all the longer and drink it more strong,
For the two, for I drink like three,—
For myself once and twice for Leigh;
And no fusil here nor in heaven along,
Nor spirit down under the sea,
Shall ever dissever our drinks to do wrong
To the spirit of Hannibal Leigh.
102
For whenever I drink I endeavour to think,
I am drinking with Hannibal Leigh;
And my hand never raise but to drink to the praise
Of my drink-Kaiser Hannibal Leigh;
And in all the night tide I hold on to the side
Of the counter, the counter where Hannibal died;
And I think that I Hannibal see
And I’m Hannibal, Hannibal’s me.
——:o:——

Raving.[16]
Once upon a midnight, weary,
As I maundered, gin-and-beery,
O’er an oft-repeated story,
Till my friends thought me a bore—
Sitting weeping, and half sleeping,
Something set my flesh a-creeping,
And I saw a Raven peeping
Through my room’s unopen’d door.
“See that Raven,” said I to them,
“Trying to get through the door,—
A Black Raven—nothing more?”
Now, I was not drunk, but weary,
For my head was out-of-geary
With close study of quaint volumes,
Curious in forgotten lore;
(Though they said delirium tremens)
I’d been reading bits of Hemans,
And some leaves of Jacob Behmen’s,
Two or three—perhaps a score;
And I said—“It is a Raven
Rampant just outside the door—
Striding through,” I said—and swore.
I insisted, and I twisted,
And resisted and persisted
Though they held me and, close-fisted,
Saw no Raven at the door:
I forgot all I had read of,
For that ill bird took my head off,
Like a coffin lid of lead off
The dead brain of one no more.
Would I trust their words instead of
What I saw right through the door?
Through the door,—I said—and swore.
Yes! it is a Raven surely,
Though he does look so demurely
Like a doctor come to assure me
I am drunk: Not so,—I swore.
Drunk? I drunk? I’ve not been drinking;
I’m but overcome with thinking;
There I saw that Raven winking
In the middle of the floor.
Doctor! there’s the Raven rampant
In the middle of the floor;
He has hopp’d straight through the door.
Look! his curst wings brush the dust off
That fallen, broken, batter’d bust of
Psyche,—where it lies in the shadow,
Shatter’d flung down on the floor.
See! he spurns the broken pieces.
Catch him, Doctor! When he ceases
He will rend me. Past release is—
Nothing! Nothing on the floor?
Yes! The Psyche lies in the shadow,
Lieth shatter’d on the floor—
To be lifted nevermore.
*??*??*??*??*
——:o:——

The Monster Maggot.[17]
A Poet! With never a single theme
Of glory or delight;
He folds his wings for a gloomy dream
Of death, despair, bedight;
And, willing not that Beauty use
His wilderness of soul,
He chooseth, for his daintier muse
Raven or Ghoul.
And now a “Conqueror Worm” he sings,
A blood-red crawling shape,
Invisible woe from its condor wings
Out-flapping, all agape;
While angels bewing’d, bedight in veils,
Watch mumbling mimes, with tears,
In a play, where a maniac, Horror, wails
To the music of the spheres.
The play is the play of Human Woes,
Of Madness, Sin, and Death!
There is nothing else the Poet knows
God’s azure sky beneath,
But Madness, Horror, and Sin
Death and Sorrow, and Wrong:
Even so doth the singer begin,
So ends his song.
“It writhes”—the Worm—“with mortal pangs
“The mimes become its food;
“And the angels sob at vermin fangs
“In human gore imbued,”
This monster terrible, formless, huge,
Means—put in plainest terms:
Our Poet needs a vermifuge.
The child’s disease is worms.
103
POETIC FRAGMENTS.

Part of an Unfinished Ghoul—Poem—

Said we then—the two, then—Ah! can it
Have been that the woodlandish Ghouls—
The pitiful, the merciful Ghouls,
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds—
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—
Have drawn up the spectre of a planet,
From the limbo of lunary souls—
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the hell of the planetary souls?
——:o:——

Pot-Pourri.
“A Rosemary odour
“Commingled with pansies—
“With rue:”—
Your poet has fancies.
But methinks such an odour
Were odious to more than a few.
——:o:——

UNDER LINES.

On a Poet’s Tomb.
Tomb’d in dishonor! Not like thine own Ghoul
Have I thus dug thee out, Unhappy One!
For critical devouring; but some words
Writ heedlessly above thee call for words
Of answering rebuke. If Israfel
In heaven needs his own heart-strings for his lyre—
The only organ of harmonious worth—
Shall not earth’s poet? And if he be weak,
Rent by ill memories, harsh with sour desire,
Untunable, rejoicing not in good,
Can aught but discord issue? Speech absurd
Of “art for art’s sake!” when art is not art
Out of the circles of the universe,
Out of the song of the eternities,
Or unfit to attend the ear of God.
My mocking words aim at, not thee, but those
Who would strain praise for thee, disgracing Truth.
[Conclusion of Pot-Pourri.]

Illustration: Mask with horns
Illustration: Art of Parody
Many good and honest souls, neither prigs nor pedants, are disposed to look with suspicion on the parody. They are not incapable of appreciating its good points; they will even allow it, when it is so, to be very good fun of its kind; but it is the kind they cannot away with. Nor are they always of that sort—a numerous and flourishing sort in our day—which, being itself one monstrous parody, is naturally prone to look with dislike on all who are blessed—or cursed, as some would say—with a sense of the ridiculous. But they regard it as an abuse of the gifts both of nature and of art; as apt to degrade and vulgarize what should really elevate and refine; as itself intrinsically an injustice; and, indeed, the more unjust as it is the more skilful.

There is so much both of justice and reason in this dislike that one cannot but respect it, though seeing how unreasonably it may be pushed and how unjust it may become. It is based, primarily, of course, upon sentiment—but it is a sentiment, in its original shape, both honourable and true. The word sentiment has come in these days to have a ridiculous twang in our ears partly through the silly and perverted uses to which the thing itself is too often applied, and partly through a confusion between the two qualities, sentiment and sentimentality, which may best be distinguished perhaps by defining the latter as the abuse of the former. It is sentiment which leads us to mark the houses where great men have been born or lived; it is sentiment which leads us to gaze with reverent admiration on that place of honour in the British Museum wherein are enshrined the handwritings of so many of our illustrious dead; all the care we take to preserve the memorials of the past is inspired by sentiment. But it is a sentiment which every right-thinking man would be far more ashamed to miss than to share. It is a very different feeling, for example, from that which induced a young lady on the other side of the world to preserve under a glass case the cherry-stones which she had snatched from the plate of a Royal Duke; it is a very different feeling from that which induces so many pious souls to play such fantastic tricks at the knees of living men. This objection, then we are not disposed in the first instance to quarrel with, especially as most of the so-called parodies, burlesques, or “perversions” of to-day are certainly bad enough to cover even a greater intolerance. They are bad both in art and tactics. They deal too often with subjects which should be kept free even from the most good-natured ridicule, and they deal with them clumsily. There is a sort of mind to whom every success, however lawfully and honourably gained, is sufficient cause for mockery; the higher a great figure towers above their heads the more active are their monkeyish gambols at its feet. The living and the dead are alike the objects of their impish regard, and if they perhaps enjoy a livelier pleasure in the thought of the irritation they can cause to the living, they seem to share a peculiar satisfaction in showing themselves superior to any feeling of reverence for the dead—to say nothing of the fact that in the latter case the game is apt to be a little the safest. The most part of mankind will sooner laugh at their more successful fellows than try to imitate, or, at least, to respect them; it is easy, then, to understand why the most witless and illiberal parody will never want an audience.

Nevertheless, the parody in itself is not only capable of increasing the gaiety of nations by perfectly harmless and legitimate means, but can also, when properly handled and directed, be made to play the part of a chastener and instructor. It has been often said that to parody a writer is really to pay a compliment to his popularity; and this is so far true that no one would think it worth his while to parody any work which was not tolerably well known, for half the point of any imitation must always lie in the readiness with which its resemblance to the original is recognized; if the 104 original be not known the imitation must necessarily fall flat. No really good writer was ever injured by a parody; few, we may suppose, have ever been annoyed by one. No one, for example, was more quick to recognize the cleverness and laugh at the fun of “A Tale of Drury Lane” in the Rejected Addresses than Scott himself; Crabbe, though he thought there was a little “undeserved ill-nature” in the prefatory address owned that in the versification of “The Theatre” he had been “done admirably.” On the other hand, we can fancy that Messieurs Fitzgerald and Spencer saw very little fun or wit, or anything but “undeserved ill-nature” in “The Loyal Effusion” and “The Beautiful Incendiary.” The paradoxical saying attributed to Shaftesbury, which so puzzled and irritated Carlyle, that ridicule is the test of truth, finds its true explanation in his real words, “A subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious.” Nothing good was ever destroyed by raillery; where it plays the part of iconoclast, the images it breaks are the images of false gods. Nay, and even to the true it may sometimes prove of service. It may gently admonish, for instance, the best and most established writer, when, from haste, from carelessness, from over-confidence, he is in danger of forfeiting his reputation; it may gently lead the tiro, while there is yet time, from the wrong into the right path. Nor on writers only may it be exercised with advantage. All men who have in any capacity become, as it were, the property of the public may by its means be warned that they are trespassing too far on their popularity, that they are in danger of becoming not only ridiculous themselves, but harmful to others; for every strong man who presumes upon his strength is capable of becoming a source of injury to his weaker brethren. We do not say that its lessons are always, or even often, taken to heart; but that does not detract from their possible virtue. If such a plea were allowed, what, in the name of humanity, would become of so many of us? What would become of our lawyers, our statesmen, our philosophers, our doctors, our policemen, our—appalling thought!—our critics, if the failure of their endeavours to set and to keep their erring brethren in the straight path were to be taken as a right reason for their abolition? Their resistance to error may seem hopeless, may be often ineffectual, but not for that should they abandon it; rather should they cry, with the author of Obermann, “Let us die resisting.”

But whatever may be the moral virtue of a parody, there can be no question that to show any reason for its existence at all it must be very good. There is nothing in the world so pitiful as poor fun, and a bad parody is perhaps the poorest kind of fun. In his review of the famous Addresses, Jeffrey discussed the various sorts of parody at some length, and with a good deal of acuteness, distinguishing between the mere imitation of externals, mere personal imitation, so to speak—and that higher and rarer art which brings before us the intellectual characteristics of the original. “A vulgar mimic,” he says, “repeats a man’s cant phrases and known stories, with an exact imitation of his voice, look, and gestures; but he is an artist of a far higher description who can make stories or reasonings in his manner, and represents the features and movements of his mind as well as the accidents of his body. It is a rare feat to be able to borrow the diction and manner of a celebrated writer to express sentiments like his own—to write as he would have written on the subject proposed to his imitator—to think his thoughts, in short, as well as to use his words—and to make the revival of his style appear a natural consequence of the strong conception of his peculiar ideas.” And he goes on, “The exact imitation of a good thing, it must be admitted, promises fair to be a pretty good thing in itself; but if the resemblance be very striking, it commonly has the additional advantage of letting us more completely into the secret of the original author, and enabling us to understand far more clearly in what the peculiarity of his manner consists, than most of us would ever have done without this assistance.” Jeffrey here carries the parody into the regions of very high art indeed, if he does not, as we are rather inclined to think he does, lay more upon its shoulders than it can bear. In a note to the same review, when reprinted in the collected edition of his essays, he remarks of these Addresses that “some few of them descend to the level of parodies, but by far the greater part are of a much higher description;” from which it would seem that he draws a distinction between a parody and something “of a much higher description,” which we must confess to being a little in the dark about, unless it be an imitation, and that we should be disposed to rank very much below a good parody. Many of our minor bards, for example, have produced extraordinarily close imitations of Mr. Swinburne’s style; but we should certainly rank these far below a clever parody, such a one, for instance, as that on Locksley Hall in the “Bon Gaultier Ballads,”[18] or as Mr. Calverley’s inimitable “The Cock and the Bull,” or “Lovers,” and “A Reflection.” No better imitations, both of style and substance, have ever been written in prose than Thackeray’s “Codlingsby” and “George de Barnwell;” but they are most unquestionably parodies. Indeed it is hard to see what virtue there can be in an imitation which is not also a parody—that is, as we take it, a consciously exaggerated imitation; an imitation which is not that, surely, instead of, as Jeffrey says, descending to the level of a parody, goes near to descend to the much lower level of a plagiarism.

If we wished to distinguish between the parody designed to ridicule and that designed only to amuse, we should be inclined to say that, while the latter contents itself with an imitation of the style, the former aims also at an imitation of the thought and substance. In the parodies we have noticed, for example, Thackeray unquestionably intended to ridicule the authors of Eugene Aram and Coningsby. Both their subjects and the manner of handling those subjects seemed to him such as deserved ridicule and he ridiculed them accordingly, as no one but Thackeray could. On the other hand, we do not for a moment suppose that the clever Oxford parodist who sang the labours and ultimate triumph of “Adolphus Smalls of Boniface” intended to ridicule Macaulay. He took The Lays of Ancient Rome as his model, because they were more familiar probably to his readers than any other form of verse, and because their external characteristics were most easy to reproduce. We read such lines as—

Now thickly and more thickly
To the Five Orders gates,
In cap and gown throng through the town
White-chokered candidates.
Stunner of Christ Church, ne’er before
In academics seen;
And Nobby of the collars high,
Girt with the scarf none else may tie;
Loud-trowsered Boozer, stripes and all;
And whiskered Tomkins from the hall
Of seedy Magdalene;
or as—

They gave him his testamur,
Which was a passman’s right;
He was more than three examiners
Could plough from morn to night,—
we read such lines, and laugh at them without feeling that105 any injustice is done to Macaulay. Again, when we read of another and less fortunate sufferer,—in the schools of Cambridge this time—how

In the crown of his cap
Were the Furies and Fates,
And a delicate map
Of the Dorian States;
And they found on his palms, which were dirty,
What is frequent on palms—that is dates—[19]
we entirely acquit the writer of any design to laugh at Mr. Bret Harte. In both these cases the parodies are really no more than proofs of the universal popularity of the writers parodied. But when we read in Rejected Addresses the parodies on Wordsworth and Coleridge, we feel that the writers were intentionally casting ridicule on certain trivialities, certain commonplaces both of diction and thought, to which these great men did occasionally sink.

It seems to us, also, that Jeffrey has rated the virtue of sound in a parody too low—which is, perhaps, only to say that he rates the whole art of parody higher than we do. Surely it is an essential of this sort of imitation that the words should strike the ear with the very echo of the original. For this reason the specimens we have quoted seem to us so particularly good; and for the same reason, with the exception of the “Lay of the Lovelorn,” the clever ballads of Bon Gaultier do not seem to us to really come under the definition of parodies at all. And it is this quality which gives the point to Mr. Bromley Davenport’s “Lowesby Hall.”[20] In such lines as these—though, indeed, the whole parody is so good that selection is difficult—it is the sound which does everything, but how inimitably it does it!—

Here at least I’ll stay no longer, let me seek for some abode,
Deep in some provincial country far from rail or turnpike road;
There to break all links of habit, and to find a secret charm
In the mysteries of manuring and the produce of a farm.
To deplore the fall of barley, to admire the rise of peas,
Over flagons of October, giant mounds of bread and cheese;
Never company to dinner, never visitors from town,
Just the Parson and the Doctor (Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown).
Droops the heavy conversation to an after-dinner snort,
And articulation dwindles with the second flask of port.
We are very far from saying that parody is a matter of sound only; to borrow a well-known line,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

But certainly it strikes us as being a very important point, and we doubt whether any really clever parody ever was written, or ever will be, in which it does not play a conspicuous part, if not the most conspicuous. And this, perhaps, is the reason why those greatest works of poetry, where the style strikes one as the natural and inevitable vehicle of the thought, are really above the reach of parody; why all attempts to parody them, however clever, lose their cleverness in the larger consciousness of bad taste. But to place all parodies under this ban is surely unreasonable. It is unreasonable, as depriving the world of a great deal of harmless amusement, and also, as we have said, of a method, often more truly efficacious than more serious castigation, of exposing incompetence and affectation.

The Saturday Review, February 14, 1885.

Illustration: Mask
106
Miss Ann Taylor’s “My Mother.”

MY MOTHER.
Who fed me from her gentle breast,
And hush’d me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.
When sleep forsook my open eye,
Who was it sung sweet hushaby,
And rock’d me that I should not cry?
My Mother.
Who sat and watched my infant head,
When sleeping on my cradle bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed?
My Mother.
When pain and sickness made me cry,
Who gazed upon my heavy eye,
And wept for fear that I should die?
My Mother.
Who dress’d my doll in clothes so gay,
And taught me pretty how to play,
And minded all I had to say?
My Mother.
Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My Mother.
Who taught my infant lips to pray,
And love God’s holy book and day,
And walk in wisdom’s pleasant way?
My Mother.
And can I ever cease to be,
Affectionate and kind to thee,
Who was’t so very kind to me,
My Mother?
Ah, no! the thought I cannot bear,
And if God please my life to spare,
I hope I shall reward thy care,
My Mother.
When thou art feeble, old, and gray,
My healthy arm shall be thy stay,
And I will soothe thy pains away,
My Mother.
And when I see thee hang thy head,
’Twill be my turn to watch thy bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed,
My Mother.
For God, who lives above the skies,
Would look with vengeance in His eyes,
If I should ever dare despise
My Mother.
The Athen?um of May 12, 1866, contained a note speaking favorably of the general tone of the poem “My Mother,” but stating that it was spoilt by the last verse, in which the only reason given why a child should not despise its mother is the fear of God’s vengeance. The writer proposed that Mr. Tennyson should be asked to compose a final verse more in accordance with the sentiments contained in the preceding lines.

In the following number of The Athen?um (May 19, 1866), appeared a reply from the authoress of “My Mother,” then a very old lady:—

College Hill, Nottingham,
May 15, 1866.??

“Allow me to thank your Correspondent of last Saturday for both his praise and blame; I am grateful for one and confess to the other, in his notice of a little poem—‘My Mother,’ of which I was the author, it may be something more than sixty years ago. I see now, so much as he does, though not in all its implications, that, should another edition pass through the press, I will take care that the offending verse shall be omitted; or, as I may hope (without troubling the Laureate), replaced. I have regarded our good old theologian, Dr. Watts, as nearly our only predecessor in verses for children; and his name—a name I revere—I may perhaps plead in part, though not so far as to accept now, what did not strike me as objectionable then. There has been an illustrated edition of our ‘Original Poems’ recently published by Mr. Virtue, and I am sorry to see it retained there; but, as still the living author, I have sufficient right to expunge it.

“Possibly you may have heard the names of Ann and Jane Taylor, of whom I am the Ann; and remain, yours, &c.,

Ann Gilbert.”

The Editor added: “She sends us the following alteration of the verse:—

For could our Father in the skies,
Look down with pleased or loving eyes,
If ever I could dare despise,
My Mother?”
This suggested alteration, does not, however, remove the objectionable word “despise,” which is utterly absurd as applied to such a mother as the poem describes.

It may be added that the original last verse is still very generally printed with the poem.

The history of the poem was thus given in that valuable storehouse of literary facts, “Notes and Queries,” in August 30, 1884.

“In 1798, Ann Taylor, then residing with her family in Colchester, aged about sixteen, made a purchase of A Minor’s Pocket-Book, a periodical published by Harvey and Darton, 55, Gracechurch Street, London. This contained enigmas, and the solutions of previous ones, and poetical pieces to which prizes were adjudged. Fired with enthusiasm, she set to work, and unravelled enigma, charade, and rebus, and forwarded the results under the signature of ‘Juvenilia.’ They were successful, and obtained the first prize—six pocket-books. She continued 107 her contributions for some years, at first anonymously, assisted by her younger sister Jane, and subsequently she became the editor during twelve or fourteen years, up to the time of her marriage in 1813.

“On July 1, 1803, Darton and Harvey wrote requesting some specimens of easy poetry for young children. The letter proceeds: ‘If something in the way of moral songs (though not songs) or short tales turned into verse, or—but I need not dictate. What would be most likely to please little minds must be well known to every one of those who have written such pieces as we have already seen from thy family,’ &c. Their father (Isaac Taylor, afterwards of Ongar) did not quite approve of the proceeding, remarking, ‘I do not want my girls to become authors.’

“The commission was undertaken by the two sisters, and, at the end of 1803, a small volume appeared, with the title, Original Poems for Infant Minds, by several Young Persons. The work did not consist exclusively of the Taylor contributions. Ann remarks, ‘Having written to order, we had no control over the getting out of the volumes, and should have been better pleased if contributions from other hands had been omitted.’ The sisters received five pounds for the first volume, which succeeded so well that a commission was given in November, 1804, for a second volume, for which they were paid another five pounds. It is in the first volume that ‘My Mother,’ entirely written by Ann, appears.

“Jane Taylor continued to devote herself to literature until her decease, in April, 1824, at the age of forty-one. Ann married the Rev. Joseph Gilbert, in December, 1813, and withdrew from literary work for the rest of her life, except very occasionally. This is much to be regretted, as she possessed rare talents; many of the most popular poems usually ascribed to Jane having been really written by Ann. Mrs. Gilbert survived to a happy and honoured old age, and died Dec. 20, 1866, within a month of the completion of her eighty-fifth year.

“Only a fortnight before her death she wrote, ‘You remember that in May last there was a discussion in the Athen?um on my poem, ‘My Mother,’ which surprised everybody as an announcement and advertisement of my continued existence, so that the Post Office has gained all but a revenue from letters addressed to me, which, kindly complimentary as they are, I have, of course, had to answer.’

“The above brief notices of an estimable member of a talented family may not be without interest in connexion with the poem to which allusion has been made.

“Sandyknowe, Wavertree.
J. A. Picton.”

A further account of Miss Ann Taylor and her family will be found in “The Family Pen,” by Isaac Taylor, which contains memorials, biographical and literary, of the Taylor family, of Ongar. The work was published in two volumes in 1867. The poem “My Mother,” has recently been translated into German by Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania. Before quoting any parodies of this poem it may be as well to insert the well-known lines “To Mary,” written by the poet Cowper ten years before the publication of Miss Taylor’s “My Mother.” The similarity of the two poems can scarcely have been accidental, and authors of parodies of the one, often approach near to an imitation of the other.

To Mary. (Mrs. Unwin.)

Autumn 1793.
The twentieth year is well nigh past
Since first our sky was overcast;
Ah, would that this might be our last!
My Mary!
Thy spirits have a fainter flow,
I see thee daily weaker grow;
’Twas my distress that brought thee low,
My Mary!
Thy needles, once a shining store,
For my sake restless heretofore,
Now rust disused, and shine no more,
My Mary!
For though thou gladly would’st fulfil
The same kind office for me still,
Thy sight now seconds not thy will,
My Mary!
But well thou play’dst the housewife’s part,
And all thy threads, with magic art,
Have wound themselves about this heart,
My Mary!
Thy indistinct expressions seem
Like language uttered in a dream;
Yet me they charm, whate’er the theme,
My Mary!
Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,
Are still more lovely in my sight
Than golden beams of orient light,
My Mary!
For, could I view nor them, nor thee,
What sight worth seeing could I see?
The sun would rise in vain for me,
My Mary!
Partakers of thy sad decline,
Thy hands their little force resign;
Yet gently pressed, press gently mine,
My Mary!
Such feebleness of limbs thou prov’st,
That now at every step thou mov’st
Upheld by two; yet still thou lov’st,
My Mary!
And still to love, though pressed with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
My Mary!
But ah! by constant heed I know,
How oft the sadness that I show,
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe,
My Mary!
And should my future lot be cast
With much resemblance of the past,
Thy worn-out heart will break at last,
My Mary!
William Cowper.
——:o:——

The Victim of Circumstances.
By an Outcast.
Who tucked me up in bed at night,
And cried as she blew out the light:
“Now go to sleep, you little fright?”—
My Mother!
108
Who patted me upon the head,
And in the gruffest accents said:
“Get out, you oaf, and earn your bread?”—
My Father.
Who dropped on me a scalding tear,
Exclaiming, as she boxed my ear:
“The gallows is your doom, I fear?”—
My Sister.
Who gently asked me what I’d got,
And cried, while pocketing the lot:
“Be off, or else you’ll get it hot?”—
My Brother.
Who with my locks would gently play,
And wrote me when she ran away:
“With such a fool I cannot stay?”—
My Wife.
Who stuck to me through thick and thin,
Then drew a bill and let me in,
Exclaiming: “What an ass you’ve been?”—
My Friend.
Who filled with tears my sorrow’s cup,
By crying, as she went to sup:
“Here, p’leesman, lock this blackguard up?”—
My Aunt.
Who rescued me from out the dirt,
And said, in accents harsh and curt,
“No more nor sixpence on this shirt?”—
My Uncle.
Judy, November 26, 1879.
——:o:——

My Relations.
Who taught my baby-lips to coo,
And trained them first to utter “Boo!”
And spanked me pretty soundly, too?—
My Mother.
Who rapped me smartly on the head
Because I said his nose was red,
And sent me howling off to bed?—
My Father.
Who called me “Clever little lad,
The very picture of my dad.”
And gave me sixpence—which was bad?—
My Grandfather.
Who, when I asked her if her hair
Was all her own, said, “Little bear!”
And fixed me with a stony stare?—
My Aunt.
Who is, alas! the only friend
On whom I can at all depend,
And will remain so to the end?—
My Uncle.
Funny Folks, November 29, 1879.
——:o:——

Nursy Pursy.

[This poem, written by a child aged only five years and three months, is printed more as a literary curiosity than for any other reason. A kind of tender pathos may be observable here and there, which in a child so young is, at least, surprising.]

Who wore a hideous high-crown’d cap,
Who called me tootsy-wootsy chap,
Yet used my little head to slap?
Dear Nursy-pursy.
Who said she’d watch, then meanly slept,
And pinch’d me spiteful when I wept.
And for my pap her stale crusts kept?
Dear Nursy-pursy.
Who gazed into my heavy eye,
And said, “A powder we must try;
This horrid child, he lives too high?”
Dear Nursy-pursy.
Who, when I yell’d, cried, “Hold your din!”
Or choked me with a drop of gin
(It wasn’t spasms, but a pin)?
Dear Nursy-pursy.
Who on my toddlums let me run
Much sooner than she should have done,
Which I’ve grown up a bandy one?
My Nursy-pursy.
Anonymous.
——:o:——

Competition in Long Clothes.

A Lay of North Woolwich.
(Apropos of the Baby Show).
Who felt the weight, and scanned the size
Of rival yearlings with surprise,
Yet doubted not to win the Prize?
My Mother!
The heat, the Baby-freighted train,
To change thy purpose all were vain;
Was’t love of me? or hope of gain,
My Mother?
Who let the public eye make free
With secrets of our nursery,
That int’rest only you and me?
My Mother!
Who babes with piglings would confound,
Show both for flesh, so firm and sound,
And weigh their merits by the pound?
My Mother!
Ambition noble! to prepare
Spring infants, fattened up with care,
First Quality, Ten Pounds the Pair,
My Mother!
If breeders prizes be allowed,
Maternity, to please the crowd,
Concurrently must be endowed,
My Mother!
Home joys, my mother, now are cheap:
I pass my time in healthy sleep,
Yet win a cup to pay my keep,
My Mother!
The Tomahawk, July 31, 1869.
——:o:——

My Mother-in-Law.
Who kissed me when I first was wed,
And said I was her “dear son Fred”—
But did not mean a word she said?
My Mother-in-law.
Who when our honeymoon was o’er
Came just to stop a week, no more!
And proved herself a horrid bore?
My Mother-in-law.
109
Who coming for a week to stay,
Remained serene day after day,
And showed no wish to go away?
My Mother-in-law.
Who sowed the seeds of married strife
Between the husband and the wife,
And so embittered all our life?
My Mother-in-law.
Who never let a quarrel flag,
Whose tongue was ne’er too tired to wag,
Who taught her daughter how to nag?
My Mother-in-law.
Whom would I fain, ah! fain beguile
To some far distant Sandwich Isle?[21]
That infamous old crocodile,
My Mother-in-law.
——:o:——

A Lay of Real Life.
Who ruined me ere I was born,
Sold every acre, grass and corn,
And left the next heir all forlorn?
My Grandfather.
Who said my mother was “no nurse,”
And physicked me and made me worse,
Till infancy became a curse?
My Grandmother.
Who said my mother was a Turk,
And took me home and made me work,
But managed half my meals to shirk?
My Aunt.
Who, “of all earthly things,” would boast
“He hated other’s brats the most,”
And therefore made me feel my post?
My Uncle.
Who got in scrapes, an endless score,
And always laid them at my door,
Till many a bitter bang I bore?
My Cousin.
Who took me home when mother died,
Again with father to reside,
Black shoes, clean knives, run far and wide?
My Stepmother.
Who marred my stealthy urchin joys,
And, when I played, cried “What a noise!”—
Girls always hector over boys—
My Sister.
Who used to share in what was mine,
Or took it all, did he incline,
’Cause I was eight and he was nine?
My Brother.
Who stroked my head and said, “Good lad;”
And gave me sixpence—“all he had”—
But at the shop the coin was bad?
My Godfather.
Who, gratis, shared my social glass,
But when misfortune came to pass,
Referred me to the pump?—Alas!
My Friend.
Through all this weary world, in brief,
Who ever sympathised with grief.
Or shared, my joy, my sole relief?
Myself.
Anonymous.
——:o:——

Her Mother.
Who comes and causes little tiffs;
And gives the most suggestive sniffs,
Whene’er a man takes twenty whiffs?
My Mother-in-law!
Who, when a babe is born, appears,
And in my business interferes,
Until at last she domineers?
My Mother-in-law!
Who comes to stay a day or two,
And then stops all the winter through;
Pretending she’s obliging you?
My Mother-in-law!
Who makes out you ill-treat her child,
When preternaturally mild,
You are at last by her driven wild?
My Mother-in-law!
Who makes the servants notice give,
And when she at your house will live,
Makes you from home a fugitive?
My Mother-in-law!
Who at the meals turns up her nose,
Who loves your projects to oppose,
And very nasty hints out-throws?
My Mother-in-law!
Who, cuckoo like, invades the nest,
Till happiness is dispossest,
And then remains a tiresome guest?
My Mother-in-law!
From Finis.
——:o:——

Dick’s Letter to the Editor of the “Boy’s Own Paper.”

I think the public ought to know
The miseries I undergo
From one who only love should show;
My Brother!
Who thinks my head was made to hit?
My hat a subject for his wit,
Till laughing almost brings a fit!
My Brother!
Who makes me by the hour stand scout,
But kicks me if I catch him out,
Demanding what I am about?
My Brother!
Who goes financially to smash,
And borrows all my hoarded cash,
To purchase stamps, or some such trash?
My Brother!
Who makes me copy out his lines
When he’s been kicking up his shines,
And forces me to pay his fines?
My Brother!
Yes, spite of all the ties of birth,
To him my woes cause only mirth;—
You are the biggest fraud on earth,
My Brother!
——:o:——

110
Audi Alteram Partem.
Tom’s Letter to the Editor.
Dick’s my small brother; that’s enough
To show my lot is rather rough;
Of one thing I get quantum suff,
My Brother!
Who’s always writing home to sneak?
Who gives me endless kinds of cheek,
Yet wants me to correct his Greek?
My Brother!
Who never at a game will play
Unless you let him have his way,
And bat at least ten times a day?
My Brother!
Who cannot stand the mildest snub?
Who gets his double share of grub?
And if you touch him starts to blub?
My Brother!
’Tis sad to see one’s rackets “go”;
’Tis hard to slog and miss a slow;
You’re worst! for you’re a constant woe,
My Brother!
The Boy’s Own Paper, Feb. 16, 1884.
——:o:——

Some “Confidences” to the Editor.

A “Sister” writes from Newcastle-upon-Tyne:—“Dear Mr. Editor,—In the March part of ‘B. O. P.’ occur two poems, ostensibly Dick’s and Tom’s Letter to yourself, anent the miseries which Tom inflicts upon Dick, and vice versa. Now, on perusal of the said poems, my small brother Harry discovered that some features of (to him, at least) absorbing interest had been omitted in their construction. ‘But that fellow hasn’t got red hair,’ he exclaimed, indignantly, ‘or else his brother would have bullied him about that, too.’ ‘Then since you have,’ I mildly ventured, to hint, ’suppose you write a description of your woes, and we’ll send it to the Editor. While I will have my say about ‘brothers,’ for really I don’t see why girls shouldn’t have a voice in the matter, seeing that they often have not only to mend, at unreasonable times, the said brothers’ wearing apparel, but also to bear at all seasons with their growlings.’

“So, Mr. Editor, Harry and I send you our humble offerings, which you are at perfect liberty to make public, if you see fit, or to banish to the realms of the W. P. B. if you don’t.

“Very truly yours,

“His Sister.”

Harry’s Complaint.
Who would not help me when I fell,
But bade me, roughly, “Stop that yell!”
Or, straightway, he “would go and tell?”
My Brother!
Who took my marbles all away—
Because, “you don’t know how to play”—
And wouldn’t heed my plaintive “Nay?”
My Brother!
Who wouldn’t let me use his ball,
Nor cricket ever learn at all,
Because I was “so very small?”
My Brother!
Who laughed because my hair was red,
And filled it full of crumbs of bread,
Then, jeering, cried, “The baby’s fed?”
My Brother!
Who always was so nice and meek,
And never(!) could a harsh word speak
(And yet he was the biggest sneak)?
My Brother!
Whom all the ladies thought “so good”
And only wished their brothers would
Follow his footsteps, if they should!
My Brother!
——:o:——

A “Sister’s” Complaint.
Who, subsequently, older grown,
Becomes a bore, as will be shown,
Prating of “time,” and “tune,” and “tone!”
My Brother!
Who plays the fiddle in a key
Midway between keys “A” and “B,”
And scorns all mild advice from me?
My Brother!
Who holds it as a solemn charge
To wear the “Masher” collar large,
Nor knows the draper’s overcharge?
My Brother!
Who walks with stately port upright?
Who wears his “pantaloons” too tight,
Which adds absurdly to his height?
My Brother!
Who always will a silk hat wear
Upon his highly-scented hair,
And in his hand a cane-stick bear?
My Brother!
Who think there ought to be no boys,
Who nothing make save “rents” and noise,
And rudely spoil our household joys?
Their Sisters!
The Boy’s Own Paper, May 10, 1884.
——:o:——

Who! Ah, Who?
Who culled me from a foreign source,
And trotted me as his own horse,
In brain—spun harness; Why, of course,
My Author!
Who set me up in type so rare
(I heard him at his “devils” swear!)
And for my future didn’t care?
My Printer.
Who sent me like a sandwich forth,
And tastily my inward worth
Displayed upon the sweetest cloth?
My Binder.
Who-eyed me with a guardian’s eye,
And thought my price, a sov., not high,
Cast me forth with, “hey! buy, buy!”
My Publisher.
Who found a strong “coincidence,”
Informed the public how and whence
My author gleaned at small expense?
My Critic.
The Figaro, February 18, 1874.
——:o:——

111
Mr. Wilson Barrett (producing MS.). As my
collaborateur and friend is late,
I think I will begin, at any rate.
Our scene, then, Prince——
[Enter Mr. Henry Irving, hurriedly.]
Mr. H. Irving.?But what is this I see?
This is not what we settled, Wilson B.?
I was to read, you know——
Mr. W. B. ?Yes, you are right,
But in your absence, well, I thought I might
At all events commence.
Mr. H. I. (bitterly). ?Ha, ha! again,
That eagerness advantage to obtain.
Pardon me, Prince, if I, to check emotion,
Carol a strain I made up on the ocean:—
Who first in melodrama played,
And then, when he a name had made,
Like me, Shakespearean parts essayed?
My Barrett!
Who copied me in sundry ways,
And jealous of my early bays,
Got Wills to write him blank-verse plays?
My Barrett!
Who, when I Romeo’s part had done,
Vowed he would play a younger one,
And so came out with Chatterton?
My Barrett!
Whose breast with such ambition burned,
That he the whole of “Hamlet” learned,
And played it when my back was turned?
My Barrett!
And who, if I do not take care,
Will my dramatic sceptre share;
Nay, perhaps to rival me will dare?
My Barrett!
Truth, Christmas Number, 1884.
——:o:——

My Banker.
Who puts my money in his till,
And when in difficulties will
Employ it to take up a Bill?
My Banker.
Who cuts a very pretty dash
By spending other people’s cash,
And ends with a tremendous smash?
My Banker.
Who has a pleasant country seat,
With park and grounds and all complete,
And is a thorough going cheat?
My Banker.
Who goes to Church and says his prayers,
And gives himself religious airs,
And pawns my bonds and sells my shares?
My Banker.
Who, when convinced his house must go,
Hints to a friend to let him know,
’Tis well to keep his balance low?
My Banker.
Who lives in most recherche style,
And wears the very blandest smile,
Though he’s insolvent all the while?
My Banker.
Who may a lesson yet be taught,
And find himself some morning brought
Before the Central Criminal Court?
My Banker.
Punch, June 30, 1855.
——:o:——

My Broker.
Who leads me on to fields Elysian,
Where golden prospects, greet my vision,
And charges but a small commission?
My Broker.
Who, while I trudge through muddy ways,
Rides (for that small commission pays)
Behind a handsome pair of bays?
My Broker.
Who, sitting at Pactolus’ fount,
Buys, sells, or holds for “next account,”
Charging, of course, a small amount?
My Broker.
Whose tone is soft, whose manner bland;
Who, lightly holding by my hand,
Talks figures I don’t understand?
My Broker.
When panics come, who seems to wear
A calm, serene, superior air,
As if it wasn’t his affair?
My Broker.
Whose villa’s somewhere in the West;
Whose wife’s in silk and sealskin drest;
Whose wines and weeds are of the best?
My Broker’s.
Whose waist expands; who still can sport
A face of roundest, ruddiest sort,
Through drinking forty-seven port?
My Broker.
Whom did I look on as my friend,
Till he those “Turks” would recommend,
Yet knew the inevitable end?
My Broker.
Punch, October 23, 1875.
Audi Alteram Partem.

Dear Mr. Punch,—Although a Broker myself, I heartily enjoyed your lines this week, which are true of here and there a case in our calling, though about as applicable to the great body of Brokers as those I enclose are to the generality of Clients. The portrait I have sketched is, however, drawn from nature, and by no means libels a constantly increasing class, whose little game is “Heads, I win: tails, you lose.”

Your highly-tickled reader,?

Fair Play.

Throgmorton Street, Oct. 29.

My Client.
Who hangs about the Courts all day,
And deals in a most reckless way,
With every Broker who will stay?
My Client!
112
Who talks a guttural foreign lingo,
And, whilst he wins, still lets the thing go,
Until a panic comes? By jingo!
My Client!
Who dabbles in a hundred “specs,”
His Broker’s hazards little recks,
And chuckles as he takes large cheques?
My Client!
Who, when his ventures, “bear”-hugged, quake,
Commissions, quick, a double stake,
Vowing the thing all right to make?
My Client!
Who, when the threatened crash has come,
And he owes me a stiffish sum,
Fails to turn up—and leaves me glum?
My Client!
Who, for his “little games” out-lawed,
His pockets filled with fruits of fraud,
Coolly retires, and lives abroad?
My Client!
——:o:——

Alter et Idem.
(From Broker No. 2).
Who swaggered down from West End Club,
As fierce as any half-pay “Sub,”
Prepared all City Men to snub?
My Client!
Who, when I gave him sound advice,
And landed him on “something nice,”
Declared I’d robbed him in the price?
My Client!
Who (though when things were going well,
He took his profits like a Swell)
Firmly, for loss, declined to “shell?”
My Client!
Who, on that panic settling-day,
Just calmly kept himself away,
And left me all his debts to pay?
My Client!
Whom did I find “Gone out of Town,”
Whose assets not worth half-a-crown,
And who’d done twenty Brokers “brown?”
My Client!
Punch, November 6, 1875.
——:o:——

My Bismarck!
Who, safe immured as in an ark,
Keeps all his counsels close and dark,
And acts the part of Nick’s chief clerk?
My Bismarck!
Who to poor Johnny wouldn’t hark,
But seized and ransack’d poor Denmark,
Like, what he is, a greedy shark?
My Bismarck!
Who looks on Europe as a park,
Where men, like dogs, may bite and bark,
While he looks on all grim and stark?
My Bismarck!
Who yet will overshoot the mark,
And wreck proud Prussia’s lofty barque,
And get his hide tann’d? What a lark!
Why Bismarck!
Judy,[22] May 15, 1867.
——:o:——

Who’s Who in 1851.
Who, when I feel a little ill,
Sends me a daily draft and pill,
Followed by a tremendous bill?
My Doctor!
Who preaches self-denying views,
Charges a heavy rent for pews,
And calls on me for Easter dues?
My Parson!
Who, when a law-suit I have won,
For a large sum begins to dun,
To which the extra costs have run?
My Lawyer!
Who, for my trousers, which, with straps,
Have cost him half-a-sovereign, p’raps,
Down in the bill two guineas claps?
My Tailor!
Who, when I wish of beef a stone,
Composed of wholesome meat alone,
Sends me at least three pounds of bone?
My Butcher!
Who, when I send a joint to bake,
Away from it contrives to take
Enough a hearty meal to make?
My Baker!
Who lends my Times to read in town,
And when I at the lateness frown,
Tells me the engine’s broken down?
My Newsman!
Who coolly pawns my “other” shirt,
And tells me, with assurance pert,
She’s only dropped it in the dirt?
My Laundress!
Who peeps in every private note,
Wears my best neckcloth round his throat,
And at the “Swarry” sports my coat?
My Footman!
Who brings my shaving water late,
And with a basket full of plate
One morning doth evaporate,
My Valet!
Who flirts with soldiers dressed so fine,
And leaves that sweetest pet of mine,
To tumble in the Serpentine,
My Nursemaid!
Who comes to make a formal call,
Merely to criticise us all,
When severed by the party wall?
My Neighbour!
Who’s who, or where shall he be sought,
Who may not now and then be caught
At something wrong in act or thought,
Why! No one!
Punch, January 11, 1851.
——:o:——

113
My Boot-Hooks.
The Lay of a Lunatic.

[This poem is selected from a variety of contributions intended for The Hanwell Annual. It shows a true spirit of poetry, although the subject is not perhaps clearly followed out. The last stanza, in particular, is a fine instance of poetical license.]

Who, when the sea did toss and roar,
And I thought soon to be no more,
Came and knock’d loudly at my door?
My Boot?hooks.
*??*??*??*??*
Who pulled the nose of Rome’s first Pope,
For looking after Johnny Cope,
Who was so poorly off for soap?
My Boot?hooks.
Who at Vingt-un hid all the aces,
Then threw the counters in our faces,
The night preceding Epsom races?
My Boot?hooks.
Who, whilst I was residing at Constantinople,
Took advantage of my absence to open my bureau,
And thus betrayed the confidence I placed in them?
My Boot?hooks.
The Man in the Moon, Vol. 4.
——:o:——

My Bicycle.
By Jagy Torlton.
He cadgily ranted and sang.—Old Song.
What spins around “like all git out,”
And swiftly carries me about,
So light, so still, so bright and stout?
My Bicycle.
Regard me now where I sit high on
Nag forty pound of mostly iron;
And don’t you wish that you might try on
My Bicycle?
Monstrum imforme, ingens! some
Cry, seeing first this courser come,
Our “fine knee-action” strikes them dumb,
My Bicycle!
Call him a monster from the east,
And both a lean and fatuous beast,
You comprehend not in the least
My Bicycle.
Revolve it in your mind, and my way
Will show to be a more than guy way—
High way of riding on the highway—
My Bicycle.
Those now who stand and stare and say,
O, “parce nobis, s’il vous plait,”
Will beg to tread, another day,
My Bicycle.
What tho’ Hans Breitmann did, almost,
And Schnitzerlein gave up the ghost?
’Twas all because they couldn’t boast
My Bicycle.
And saying mine, I do not mean
There are not many others seen
Who ride like me on my machine,
My Bicycle.
I’m not stuck up, tho’ seated high;
To ride, at once, and run and fly—
My pride is so to travel by
My Bicycle.
Who will my head with learning stow,
I work the light, ped-antic toe,
’Tis cyclopedic lore to know
My Bicycle.
And when the saddled arc I span,
What care I for the fall of man
Let him remount! I always can
My Bicycle.
All the mutations I discern
Of men and States not me concern,
While I avoid to overturn
My Bicycle.
See Russia rotten, Turkey eat—
And John Bull in a stewing heat;
We have a better kind of meet,
My Bicycle!
Then hurry spokes and spokesman too,
We only have an hour or so,
And almost twenty miles to go.
My Bicycle.
Lyra Bicyclica, By J. G. Dalton,
(E. C. Hodges & Co.) Boston, 1885.
——:o:——

My Chignon.
What was it all my fears did quell,
When down six flights of stairs I fell,
Preserved my cranium so well?
My Chignon!
What is it, when some young knight pries
Out of his blue orbs corner-wise,
That tilts my hat down o’er my eyes?
My Chignon!
What is it so exceeding kind,
When I walk through the rain and wind,
On some stray twig will stay behind
To form a nest for feathered kind?
My Chignon!
Girl of the Period Miscellany, August, 1869.
——:o:——

My Dentist.
In childhood who my first array
Of teeth pluck’d tenderly away,
For teeth, like dogs, have each their day?
My Dentist.
Who, when my first had run their race,
And others had usurp’d their place,
When overcrowded gave them space?
My Dentist.
Whether the cavities were slight,
Or vast and deep, who stopp’d them tight,
Then made their polish’d surface white?
My Dentist.
When void of bone a gap was seen,
Who fix’d, the vacancy to screen,
An artificial one between?
My Dentist.
114
Who, when ambitious to be first
My horse fell headlong in the burst,
Replaced the ivories dispersed?
My Dentist.
Who “Baily” left on parlour chair
With leaf turn’d down to show me where
Jack Russell’s life was pictured there?
My Dentist.
Or reading in that doleful cell
Whyte-Melville’s verse, who knew full well
Its charm would every pang dispel?
My Dentist.
Who lull’d with laughing gas my fear
When conscious that a tug was near
For man’s endurance too severe?
My Dentist.
And lastly, when infirm I grew,
Who skilfully each relic drew,
And framed for me a mouth-piece new?
My Dentist.
From “Songs and Verses on Sporting Subjects,”
by R. E. Egerton-Warburton
(Pickering & Co., Piccadilly, 1879.)
——:o:——

Rondeau.
To-day, it is my natal day,
And threescore years have passed away,
While Time has turned to silver gray
My hairs.
Pursuing pleasure, love, and fun,
A longish course I’ve had to run,
And thanks to Fortune I have won
My hares.
But now, exhausted in the race,
No longer I can go the pace,
And others must take up the chase,
My heirs.
Tom Hood.
——:o:——

The following Parody is taken from a small and very scarce volume, entitled, “My Hookah; or, The Stranger in Calcutta.” Being a collection of Poems by an Officer. Calcutta: Printed at the Press of Greenway and Co., 1812.

The volume contains a Preface, 73 pages of Poetry, of a mildly humourous type, and a List of Subscribers, headed by the name of The Right Honourable Lord Minto, Governor General, etc., etc., etc. In a foot note to My Hookah, the Author (whose name is not given), remarks, “Cowper’s beautiful lines to ‘Mary’ have given rise to innumerable Parodies—we have had ‘My Father,’—‘My Mother,’ and even ‘My Granny;’ why then should not ‘My Hookah’ be added to the number?”

My Hookah.
What is it, that affords such joys
On Indian shores, and never cloys,
But makes that pretty, bubbling noise?
My Hookah.
What is it, that a Party if in
At breakfast, dinner, or at Tiffin,
Surprises and delights the Griffin?
My Hookah.
What is it to Cadets gives pleasure?
What is it occupies their leisure?
What do they deem the greatest treasure?
My Hookah.
Say—what makes Decency wear sable?
What makes each would-be nabob able
To cock his legs upon the table?
My Hookah.
What is it (trust me, I’m not joking,
Tis truth—altho’, I own, provoking)
That sets e’en Indian belles a smoking?
My Hookah.
What is it—whensoe’er we search
In ev’ry place;—except the Church,
That leaves sweet converse in the lurch?
My Hookah.
But hold my Muse—for shame, for shame—
One question ere you smoking blame—
What is it gives your book a name?
My Hookah.
My fault I own—my censure ends;
Nay more—I’ll try to make amends,
Who is the safest of all friends?
My Hookah.
Say who? or what retains the power,
When fickle Fortune ’gins to lour,
To solace many a lonely hour?
My Hookah.
When death-like dews and fogs prevailing
In Pinnace or in Budg’-row sailing,
What is it that prevents our ailing?
My Hookah.
When we’re our skins with claret soaking,
And heedless wits their friends are joking,
Which friend will stand the greatest smoking?
My Hookah.
By what—(nay, answer at your ease,)
While pocketing our six rupees—
By what d’ye mean the town to please?
My Hookah.
——:o:——

My Jenny.
A Lay of Lumley.
“Jenny scait quoi.”—French idiom.
“Jenny knows what’s what.”—English translation.
Oh! when by all my troop forsaken,
And Beale had all my singers taken,
Who just appeared to save my bacon?
My Jenny!
Who was it I at last cajoled,
To break her word for British gold,
[23]By which the Poet Bunn was sold,
My Jenny!
115
Who is this Swedish nightingale,
Of whom each told a different tale,
“She’d rival Grisi;” “No, she’d fail,”
My Jenny!
Alboni, Castellan, or Grisi
Are tolerable, and may please ye,
But where’s the girl who’ll beat them easy,
My Jenny!
Who made so brilliant a debut,
And such an awful audience drew,
That all soprani pallid grew,
My Jenny!
Who is’t I hope will still remain,
Because I can foresee, with pain
All’s up when she’s gone back again,
My Jenny!
The Man in the Moon. Vol. I.
——:o:——

My Landlady.
By a Lodger.
Who greets me with a greasy smile,
Though she is cheating me the while—
And says, “I’m out of coals and ile?”
My Landlady.
Who says she’s seen much better days,
And will her “poor departed” praise,
And with her chat my meal delays?
My Landlady.
Who lets her son my collars wear,
And with me my clean linen share?
Who with my clothes-brush does her hair?
My Landlady.
Who on my viands waxes fat!
Who keeps a most voracious cat!
Who often listens on my mat?
My Landlady.
Who won’t bring up cold joints to me,
Who drinks my spirits—prigs my tea—
Who for my sideboard keeps a key?
My Landlady.
Who “cooks” the little bills I pay,
And cheats me—yes! in every way;
Who is it I shall leave to-day?
My Landlady.
The Figaro Album, 1873.
——:o:——

My Lodger.
By a Landlady.
Who chips my marble mantelpiece,
Drops on my “Brussels” spots of grease,
Deprives my tabby of his peace,
And more than once has kissed my niece?
My Lodger.
And who my balcony did fill
With an election posting-bill,
And spouted to a mob, until
The uproar really made me ill?
My Lodger.
Who plays the horn at ghostly hours,
And brings the ceiling down in showers,
By beating time, and thoroughly sours
The people in the house next ours?
My Lodger.
And who, when Sunday morning comes,
Some operatic chorus hums
With wild young men he calls his “chums,”
While one a harp, or banjo thrums?
My Lodger.
Who doth the acrobats engage,
The “happy family” in the cage;
Delights in Punch and Judy’s rage
With ragged boys of every age?
My Lodger.
Who wakes my neighbour in a fright,
Invites that pious man to fight,
Hiccups—“I’ll see—mishtake—all right,”
And who’ll have warning, too, this night?
My Lodger.
Judy, February 10, 1869.
——:o:——

The Undergrad’s Soliloquy.
What darkens all my bright career,
And takes away my breath with fear,
As I behold it looming near?
My Little-go.
I used to feel so free and jolly,—
Indulged in fun, perhaps in folly,—
What makes me now so melan-choly?
My Little-go.
What makes me blush, and look so shy,
When up the Turl, or down the High,
I catch the stern Exam’ner’s eye?
My Little-go.
O would I were a little lamb
A-skipping with my gentle fam—
Ily, nor troubled by Exam.
My Little-go.
What makes my sister Mary Jane
Keep writing in that mournful strain,—
“Dear John, don’t overtax your brain?”
My Little-go.
Oh! will this frightful harass last?
No! I can see I’m thinning fast,
And soon my body will be past
All Little?goes.
These mental faculties of mine
Their powers and energies resign—
I die a martyr at the shrine
Of Little-go.
And when beneath some yew-tree’s gloom,
My bones shall into dust consume,
This epitaph shall grace my tomb,—
O Little-go!
Epitaph.
“No ceaseless coughings racked his side,
No agues shook him; in his pride
(Weep, gentle reader, weep!) he died
Of Little?go.”
C. E. W. B. Worc. Coll. Oxford.
College Rhymes. T. & G. Shrimpton, Oxford, 1865.
——:o:——

116
My Member.
Dedicated to the Marquis of Londonderry.
Who, now that naughty Castlereagh
With Sharman Crawford’s gone astray,
For Downshire ought to win the day?
My Member.
Who, since the seat I’ve dearly bought,
Must in for it at once be brought
(At least, so I have always thought)?
My Member.
Who, if he calls his soul his own,
And don’t his views to mine postpone,
Shall overboard at once be thrown?
My Member.
Who, when I say that wrong is right,
That truth is falsehood, black is white,
Must take the self-same point of sight?
My Member.
Who, at my will, is deaf, dumb, blind,
And, howsoever disinclined,
Must, if he will speak, speak my mind?
My Member.
Who with my letters ne’er must fence,
But praise the style and guess the sense,
Despite the number, mood, and tense?
My Member.
Who, in the park or in the street,
Shall have a nod whene’er we meet,
And at my balls shall shake his feet?
My Member.
Who, ’neath such favours shower’d en masse,
From mere humanity shall pass,
And be my man, my ox, my ass?
My Member.
Punch, June 5, 1852.
[The Viscount Castlereagh, eldest son of the Marquis of Londonderry, sat as the member for County Down from 1826 to 1852, and the seat had always, until then, been regarded as family property.]

——:o:——

To My Murray.
Autumn, 1857.
The Wind and tide have brought us fast,
The Custom House is well nigh past,
Alas; that this should be the last;
My Murray.
The spirits in my flask grew low,
Mine sinking too, I rushed below,
And in despair, cried, “Steward, oh!”
My Murray.
But once on shore, my troubles end,
Sights, sounds, no longer me offend,
I clap thee on the back, my friend!
My Murray.
My classics, once a shining store,
For thee put by this month or more,
Now rust disused and shine no more,
My Murray.
So well thou’st played the hand-book’s part,
For inns a hint, for routes a chart,
That every line I’ve got by heart
My Murray.
And though thou gladly would’st fulfil,
The same kind office for me still,
My purse now seconds not my will,
My Murray.
Thy shabby sides once crimson bright
Are quite as lovely in my sight,
As mountains bathed in roseate light,
My Murray.
For should I view them without thee,
What sights worth seeing could I see,
The Rhine would run in vain for me,
My Murray.
Companion of my glad ascent,
Mount Blanc I did with thy consent,
And saw wide-spread the Continent,
My Murray.
Once, I could scarce walk up the Strand,
What Jungfrau now could us withstand,
When we are walking hand-in-hand,
My Murray.
But ah! too well some folk I know,
Who friends on dusty shelves do throw,—
With us it never shall be so,
My Murray.
Punch, December 5, 1857.
——:o:——

My Nose.
What leads me on where’er I go,
In sun and shade, in joy and woe,
Thro’ fog and tempest, rain and snow?
My Nose.
In youth’s most ardent reckless day,
And when arose disputes at play,
What would be foremost in the fray?
My Nose.
And should my tongue rude blows provoke,
What would protrude and brave each stroke,
Till coral streams its pains bespoke?
My Nose.
And falling in an airy bound,
In chase of some new charm or sound,
To save me—what came first to ground?
My Nose.
When some dark pass I would explore,
With neither shut nor open door,
What oft for me hard usage bore?
My Nose.
And when in want I yearn’d to eat,
And hunger might my judgment cheat,
What prompted me to food most sweet?
My Nose.
’Mid violet banks and woodbine bowers,
And beds where bloom’d the fairest flowers,
What fed me with their fragrant powers?
My Nose.
Each eye may need in age a guide,
And when young helpmates I provide,
Thy back thou’lt lend for them to stride,
My Nose.
And can I or in care or glee,
Refuse my aid and love to thee,
Who thus has felt and bled for me,
My Nose?
117
No; when cold winter’s winds blow high,
And bite thee hard and thou shalt cry,
Thy tears with sympathy I’ll dry,
My Nose.
And if for snuff thy love shall come,
Thy slaves, my finger and my thumb,
Shall faithful be, and bear thee some,
My Nose.
Still as I follow thee along,
Oh, mayst thou never lead me wrong!
But thou must hush our sleeping song,
My Nose!
Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, an old Servant.
(Edited by Robert Southey, poet laureate, 1831.)
——:o:——

My Punch.
Upon the express train of the Michigan Railway.
February, 1864. Midnight. Mercury at Zero.
What, in this far benighted West,
Brings comfort to my lonely breast,
And gives my life its sweetest zest?
My Punch.
The ragged boy who brought the news,
Offered me much from which to choose.
Times, Tribune, Herald, I refuse,
My Punch.
Within the carriage sickly white
Were men from Chicamanga’s fight.
My eyes were moistened by the sight,
My Punch.
“Discharged from hospital,” they sigh,
“Where yet a thousand sufferers lie,
And coming home at last” to die,
My Punch.
For those sad faces homeward turned,
Their short-lived pensions fully earned,
How many mother’s hearts had yearned,
My Punch.
’Twas scarce a twelvemonth since, I know,
When eager crowds beheld them go,
Their youthful faces all a-glow,
My Punch.
And now all twisted by the cramps,
Which wrung them ’mid the noxious damps
Of fenny bivouacks and camps,
My Punch.
Bright were those eyes, now bleared and dim,
Lithe was each crutch-supported limb,
Merry were once those spectres grim,
My Punch.
What contrast between now and then!
Their mothers scarce would know again
Those mournful, feeble, dying men,
My Punch.
One speechless on his pallet lay,
They take him forth, “His home” they say
A wretched hamlet by the way,
My Punch.
My wandering fancy sadly bore
My vision to the half-ope’d door,
The tearful clasp—I saw no more,
My Punch.
Oh, fearful reign of greed and hate!
Oh, Nation haughty and elate,
Writing in blood its dreadful fate!
My Punch.
It haunts me, this repulsive theme,
With gory phantasies which seem
The nightmares of a troubled dream,
My Punch.
For through the surface gloze so thin
One sees the Carnival of Sin,
The devil’s dice they play. Who win?
My Punch.
The train is stopped by drifting snows,
An inn is reached, but no repose
Exhausted hungry nature knows,
My Punch.
Here I am forced to sit up late,
Amid the chewing crowds I hate,
Who patiently expectorate
My Punch.
The whistle sounds ere I depart,
I clasp thee to my aching heart,
Balm for the exile’s keenest smart,
My Punch.
——:o:——

My Stockings.
A nobler theme let others choose;
Fit subject for my humble muse
Are ye, whom night and day I use,
My Stockings.
Soon as Aurora points the skies,
(Ere from my sluggard couch I rise,)
For you I raise my earliest cries,
My Stockings.
The live-long day, around my thigh
Ye cling: and seldom turn away;
With me ye trudge through wet and dry,
My Stockings.
At night, one serves to stop a gap
I’th’ wall—I sink in Somnus’ lap,
And t’other serves me for a cap,
My Stockings!
Let none their various deeds decry:
For ever as the week goes by,
They’re washed, and then I hang to dry,
My Stockings!
About 1800. ? Anonymous.
——:o:——

The Man of Fashion.
Who made this moving piece of clay,
So bright, and beautiful and gay
As though life were one holiday?
My Tailor.
Whose magic shears, and cloth, and tape,
Gave to my ugly neck a nape,
And brought my bow-legs into shape?
My Tailor.
Who all deformity effaced,
And beautified, and stuffed and laced,
And stamp’d Adonis on my waist?
My Tailor.
118
Who made the coat, the pantaloon,
That in the gay and bright saloon,
Won me a spouse and honey-moon?
My Tailor.
Reverse the picture; who was it,
That taught me wisdom was unfit
A beau, a gentleman, and wit?
My Tailor.
Whose magic shears, and cloth, and tape,
Made me in bearing, form, and shape,
The very mockery of an ape?
My Tailor.
Who bound me to a worthless wife,
Whose vanity, and spleen, and strife
Will be the nightmare of my life?
My Tailor.
Who passes me with threatening looks?
Who’s got me deepest in his books?
Who’ll nab me yet? Why, Mr. Snooks—
My Tailor.
The Maids, Wives, & Widows Penny Magazine,
May 25, 1833.
——:o:——

My Ticker.
Old friend that once with me did dwell
Vouchsafing all the hours to tell,
Where art thou gone? I know too well,
My Ticker!
Thou art not gone to artists’ care
To try the good of change of air
Or undergo a slight repair,
My Ticker.
No! thou art gone—no fault of thine—
Unto a relative of mine,
Entitled “Uncle,” I opine,
My Ticker.
And there must thou remain awhile,
Spite of thyself, in durance vile,
Accompanied by my best tile,
My Ticker.
And much I fear thou must remain
Until a shower, not of rain,
Impels thee down the spout again,
My Ticker.
Punch, 1842.
——:o:——

My Uncle.
(By Louis Napoleon Bounaparte.)
Who raised our race up from the dregs,
And set us youngsters on our legs,
Putting us up so many pegs?
My Uncle!
Who scratch’d up Europe like a hen,
To fling out grains for us young men?
Who shut the mouth and stopped the pen?
My Uncle!
Who broke through rights and smash’d through laws,
To find neat crowns for our papas,
And shot young D’Enghien in our cause?
My Uncle!
Who left us something still to do—
A name to keep French passions true
To us—the name of Waterloo?
My Uncle!
Who gave me all my little name,
My little hopes, my little fame,
My little everything, but blame?
My Uncle!
Punch, January 3, 1852.
——:o:——

My Uncle.
Who, by a transmutation bold,
Turns clothes or watches, new and old,
Or any other goods, to gold?
My Uncle!
Who, by a duplication rare,
Makes Hunger’s chattels (scant and bare)
Produce first cash, and then good fare?
My Uncle!
Who, when my credit got quite low,
Handed me cash on Jane’s trousseau,
And lent a suite of paste for show?
My Uncle!
Who caused her silks our mouths to fill,
And made my full-dress shirt with frill
Discharge a fortnight’s butcher’s bill?
My Uncle!
When creditors—a ruthless crew—
Had “small accounts just coming due,”
Who stopped their clamorous tongues? Why you,
My Uncle!
And when attorneys round me pressed
With writs of judgment and arrest,
Who set for weeks their quills at rest?
My Uncle!
Who lent us hundreds three and four,
And kindly kept our plate secure,
When we commenced our foreign tour?
My Uncle!
Punch, March, 1845.
My Uncle.
Who dwells at yonder three gold balls
Where Poverty so often calls
To place her relics in his walls?
My Uncle.
Who cheers the heart with “money lent,”
When friends are cold, and all is spent,
Receiving only cent. per cent?
My Uncle.
Who cares not what distress may bring,
If stolen from beggar or from king,
And, like the sea, takes everything?
My Uncle.
Who, wiser than each sage of yore,
Who Alchemy would fain explore,
Can make whate’er he touches ore?
My Uncle.
Who, when the wretch is sunk in grief
And none besides will yield relief,
Will aid the honest or the thief?
My Uncle.
Who, when detection threatens law,
His secret stores will open draw,
That future rogues may stand in awe?
My Uncle.
Bought wisdom is the best, ’tis clear,
And since ’tis better as more dear,
We, for high usance, should revere,
My Uncle.
119
And though to make the heedless wise,
He cheats in all he sells or buys,
To work a moral purpose tries
My Uncle.
Who, when our friends are quite withdrawn,
And hypocrites no longer fawn
Takes all but honour into pawn
My Uncle.
John Taylor.
——:o:——

The Pawnbroker before Congress.
(Of Social Science,
Represented by Mr. Attenborough.)
Who is the Poor Man’s constant friend,
Aid ever ready to extend,
And sums at moderate usance lend?
My Uncle.
Who’s the philanthropist, maligned
By thoughtless, ignorant, unkind
Perverters of the people’s mind?
My Uncle.
Who stolen goods will ne’er receive,
In fact, is shunned by them that thieve
For pledges they’re afraid to leave?
My Uncle.
Who, when a Nephew, or a Niece,
Would pawn a doubtful gem, or piece
Of plate, apprises the Police?
My Uncle.
Who keeps the shop whose “Two-to-one,”
Denotes that you shall not be done,
For all that has been said in fun?
My Uncle.
Who is particular about
All articles put “up the spout,”
Again, (almost all,) taken out?
My Uncle.
The false suspicion, therefore, drop,
That Nunky keeps a Fence’s shop,
Who’d lose by prey which thieves might pop,
My Uncle.
Punch, October 21, 1871.
——:o:——

My Valentine.
In furs and velvets orthodox,
With laughing eyes and sunny locks,
And, oh! the very shortest frocks,
My Valentine.
With lips like full ripe cherries bright,
With eyes ablaze with inward light,
With dainty frills all gleaming white,
Sweet Valentine.
Her voice but like the rippling stream,
Her face but like an artist’s dream,
Her form but fit for poet’s theme,
My Valentine.
In silk her shapely limbs encased,
With tiny bottines deftly laced,
On modelled feet so fitly placed,
Dear Valentine.
Her merry tricks, her roguish ways,
Her playful pranks, her earnest gaze,
Her gleeful laugh, her well-turned phrase,
My Valentine.
Who is there bold enough to dare
With her sweet beauty to compare,
Or even claim her throne to share?
Loved Valentine.
The chief she is of all coquettes,
The prettiest of pretty pets;
What thoughts her memory begets!
My Valentine.
Could I but hope her heart to fix!—
Ah me! old Time plays cruel tricks,
For I, alas! am fifty-six;—She’s only nine,
My Valentine.
Judy, February 2, 1880.
——:o:——

The Jesuit to his Grandmother.
Who, when I was a puny child
And drew my interference mild,
Shrieked at me, and grew very wild?
My Whalley!
Who, when the country let me play,
Grabbed at my toys day after day,
And scared my very foes away?
My Whalley!
Who thus, when things seemed growing slack,
With injudicious, wild attack,
Brought all my finest business back?
My Whalley!
Who, when the House discussed my claim,
Yelled at me—called me every name,
Till I got votes—for very shame?
My Whalley!
Who, when he rose his change to ring,
“Like Paganini, on one string,”
Was very strongly urged to sing?
My Whalley!
Who, when his name became a jest,
By friends well cursed—by foes well blest—
Himself to other arts addressed?
My Whalley!
Who all his nasty powers tasked,
And spread—Lord Campbell’s Act unasked—
His famed “Confessional Unmasked”?
My Whalley!
Who foremost in the Turnbull chase,
When bigots drove him from his place,
In savage war-paint led the race?
My Whalley!
Turnbull no more, who still must rave,
And, none to answer, call him knave—
Insult the dead man in his grave?
My Whalley!
Who, by such wiles—friends not too true,
And enemies by no means few—
Rallied them all around me?—Who?
My Whalley!
Who thus, should the whole Order fail,
And Grand Inquisitors turn tail,
In any mess will stand my bail?
My Whalley!
120
And who, unto the very end,
My honour—life—will e’er defend?—
My grandmother!—my truest friend!—
My Whalley!
The Tomahawk, August 31, 1867.
[The late Mr. G. H. Whalley sat for many years as M.P. for Peterborough, and was noted for the bitterness of his attacks on the Roman Catholics. On rising to address the House of Commons he was frequently greeted with cries of “Sing, Whalley, sing!”]

——:o:——

My Whiskers.
What causes all the folks to stare,
As I strut by en militaire,
And makes my face all over hair?
My Whiskers.
Why do the children laugh with glee?
’Tis no uncommon sight to see.
Ah! no; they only envy me
My Whiskers.
What wounds with twenty thousand darts
When practising the game of hearts,
And such sweet vanity imparts?
My Whiskers.
How I can quiz a naked chin,
And mimic every vulgar grin;
But I’ll be bound they’ll laugh who win,
My Whiskers.
Should ever cruel fate decree,
That we, alas! should sever’d be,
I’ll lay me down and die with thee—
My Whiskers.
The Penny Belle Assemblee, October 26, 1833.
——:o:——

“My Yot.”

(A confidential Carol, by a Cockney Owner, who inwardly feels that he is not exactly “in it” after all.)

What makes me deem I’m of Viking blood
(Though a wee bit queer when the pace grows hot),
A briny slip of the British brood?
My Yot!
What makes me rig me in curious guise,
Like a kind of a sort of—I dont know what,
And talk sea-slang, to the world’s surprise?
My Yot!
What makes me settle my innermost soul
On winning a purposeless silver pot
And walk with a (very much) nautical roll?
My Yot!
What makes me learned in cutters and yawls,
And time-allowance—which others must tot—
And awfully nervous in sudden squalls?
My Yot!
What makes me sprawl on the deck all day,
And at night play “nap” till I lose a lot,
And grub in a catch-who-can sort of a way?
My Yot!
What makes me qualmish, timorous, pale,
(Though rather than own it I’d just be shot)
When the Fay in the wave-crests dips her sails?
My Yot!
What makes me “patter” to skipper and crew
In a kibosh style that a child might spot,
And tug hard ropes till my knuckles go blue?
My Yot!
What makes me snooze in a narrow close bunk,
Till the cramp my limbs doth twist and knot,
And brave discomfort, and face blue-funk?
My Yot!
What makes me gammon my chummiest friends
To “try the fun”—which I know’s all rot—
And earn the dead-cut in which all this ends?
My Yot!
What makes me, in short, an egregious ass,
A bore, a butt, who, not caring a jot
For the sea, as a sea-king am seeking to pass?
My Yot!
Punch, August 28, 1880.
 Illustration: Double griffin
Your Friend.
By the Countess of Blessington.
Who borrows all your ready cash,
And with it cuts a mighty dash,
Proving the lender weak and rash?
Your Friend!
Who finds out every secret fault,
Misjudges every word and thought,
And makes you pass for worse than naught?
Your Friend!
Who wins your money at deep play,
Then tells you that the world doth say,
“’Twere wise from clubs you kept away?”
Your Friend!
Who sells you, for the longest price,
Horses, a dealer in a trice
Would find unsound, and full of vice?
Your Friend!
Who eats your dinners, then looks shrewd,
Wishes you had a cook like Ude,[24]
For then, much oft’ner would intrude—
Your Friend.
Who tells you that you’ve shocking wine,
And owns that, though his port’s not fine,
Crockford’s the only place to dine?
Your Friend!
Who wheedles you with words most fond,
To sign for him a heavy bond?
“Or else, by Jove, must quick abscond?”
Your Friend!
Who makes you all the interest pay
With principal, some future day,
And laughs at what you then may say?
Your Friend!
121
Who makes deep love unto your wife,
Knowing you prize her more than life,
And breeds between you hate and strife?
Your Friend!
Who, when you’ve got into a brawl,
Insists that out your man you call,
Then gets you shot, which ends it all?
Your Friend?
From The Keepsake.
Another Friend.
When Satan for his sins was driven
Forth from the eternal joys of heaven,
We read that unto him was given
A Stick.
In infancy, what was my pride?
What was’t for which I often cried?
What did I saddle, mount, and ride?
My Stick.
And when my tardy teens began,
I flourish’d oft my gay rattan,
Thou graced me while I ape’d the man,
My Stick.
Theatre, market, church, or fair,
Wherever I am, thou art there,
Ev’n children cry—there goes a pair
Of Sticks.
But till my door of life is shut
Till in my kindred earth I’m put,
Till life’s extinct, I’ll never cut
My Stick.
——:o:——

Woman.
When our first parents liv’d in blissful ease,
In Eden’s flowery fields, enjoying peace,
Who was it caus’d those blissful days to cease?
A Woman.
Who was’t (beguil’d by our inveterate foe),
Gave to man’s happiness a mortal blow,
And brought into the world, sin, death, and woe?
A Woman.
When Lot from his detested country fled,
Who was’t the heavenly mandate disobey’d,
And to the city turned her daring head?
A Woman.
Who was’t, with naked and resistless charms,
Rais’d in King David’s bosom wild alarms,
And clasp’d the monarch in adultrous arms?
A Woman.
Who was’t inflam’d King Ahab’s lurking vice,
His thirst of blood, his grasping avarice,
And caus’d the wretched Naboth’s sacrifice?
A Woman.
Who was’t (enamour’d of the Phrygian boy,
King Priam’s blooming hope) with secret joy,
Left her brave spouse, and fir’d Imperial Troy?
A Woman.
Who was’t, regardless of her nuptial vows,
To Atreus’ son betray’d her Trojan spouse,
And saw him sink beneath the murd’rer’s blows?
A Woman.
Who was it caus’d the deadly strife to grow
Betwixt Pelides and his royal foe,
And brought on Greece unutterable woe?
A Woman.
When Agamemnon (through all Greece renown’d)
From Trojan wars returned, with conquest crown’d,
Who caus’d th’ unguarded monarch’s mortal wound?
A Woman.
Who was’t, with witchcraft, and each am’rous wile,
Detain’d Ulysses from his native isle,
His wife’s embraces, and his parent’s smile?
A Woman.
When Antony’s victorious arms had gain’d
One half the world, o’er which he jointly reign’d,
Who caus’d his death, and all his glory stain’d?
A Woman.
Who was’t the royal Edward’s life betray’d,
The unhappy martyr’s confidence repaid,
By plunging in his heart the assassin’s blade,
A Woman.
Who was’t, inflam’d with false religious ire,
Caus’d Latimer and Ridley to expire,
Roasted like lobsters in a Smithfield fire?
A Woman.
Who still in man’s weak heart retains her place,
And with a smile upon a lovely face,
Can lure the fool to misery and disgrace?
False Woman.
The Duel, with other Poems, by L. O. Shaw, Blackburn,
printed and sold by T. Rogerson, 1815.
(Referring to this Poem, in his preface, the author quaintly remarks “Truth offends none but fools and knaves.”)

——:o:——

ODE XXV.

My Godwin!
Parcius junctas quatiunt fenastras.
Our Temple youth, a lawless train,
Blockading Johnson’s window pane,
No longer laud thy solemn strain,
My Godwin!
“Chaucer’s” a mighty tedious elf,
“Fleetwood” lives only for himself,
And “Caleb Williams” loves the shelf,
My Godwin!
No longer cry the sprites unblest,
“Awake! Arise! Stand forth confess’d!”
For fallen, fallen is thy crest,
My Godwin!
Thy muse for meretricious feats,
Does quarto penance now in sheets,
Or cloathing parcels roams the streets,
My Godwin!
Thy name at Luna’s lamp thou light’st,
Blank is the verse that thou indit’st,
Thy play is damn’d, yet still thou writ’st,
My Godwin!
And still to wield the grey goose quill,
When Ph?bus sinks, to feel no chill,
“With me is to be lovely still,”
My Godwin!
122
Thy winged steed (a bit of blood)
Bore thee like Trunnion through the flood,
To leave thee sprawling in the mud,
My Godwin!
But carries now, with martial trot,
In glittering armour, Walter Scott,
A poet he—which thou art not,
My Godwin!
Nay, nay, forbear these jealous wails,
Tho’ he’s upborne on fashion’s gales,
Thy heavy bark attendant sails,
My Godwin
Fate each by different streams conveys,
His skiff in Aganippe plays,
And thine in Lethe’s whirlpool strays,
My Godwin!
From Horace in London, by James and Horace Smith, authors of “Rejected Addresses,” 1815. William Godwin, the author of a Life of Chaucer; “Fleetwood;” “Caleb Williams,” “St. Leon,” and other works, was a well known character in the literary world in the beginning of the present century. He married Mary Wollstonecraft, and their daughter, the authoress of Frankenstein, became the wife of Shelley the poet. William Godwin died in 1836, aged 81. There is a short sketch of his career in “The Maclise Portrait Gallery.”

——:o:——

The News-paper; or, Ready-made Ideas.
I sing not of a tale of woe
That happ’d some ninety years ago:
I urge a theme that all must know—
The Paper.
At morn, when tea and toast appear,
And to the table all draw near,
What gives a zest to welcome cheer?
The Paper.
In vain the urn is hissing hot,
In vain rich Hyson stores the pot,
If the vile newsman has forgot
The Paper.
What is’t can draw the Vicar’s eye,
Ee’n from the tithe-pig smoking by,
To mark some vacant Rectory?
The Paper.
What is’t attracts the optic pow’rs
Of Ensign gay, when fortune show’rs
Down prospects of “a step” in “ours”?
The Paper.
Who is’t can make the man of law,
Neglect the deed or plea to draw—
Ca. Sa.—Fi. Fa.—Indictment, Flaw?
The Paper.
What is’t can soothe his client’s woe,
And make him quite forget John Doe,
Nor think on Mister Richard Roe?
The Paper.
What is’t absorbs the wealthy Cit,
The half-pay Sub, the fool, the wit,
The toothless Aunt, the forward Chit—
The Paper.
What is’t informs the country round,
What’s stol’n or stray’d, what’s lost or found,
Who’s born, and who’s put under ground?
The Paper.
What tells you all that’s done and said,
The fall of beer, the rise of bread,
And what fair lady’s brought to bed?
The Paper.
What is it tells of plays and balls,
Almack’s, and gas lights, and St. Paul’s,
And gamblers caught by Mr. Halls?
The Paper.
What is’t narrates full many a story,
Of Mr. Speaker, Whig, and Tory,
And heroes all agog for glory?
The Paper.
What is it gives the price of stocks,
Of Poyais Loans, and patent locks,
And wine at the West India Docks?
The Paper.
What tells you too who kill’d or hurt is,
When turtles fresh arriv’d, whose skirt is
Much relish’d by Sir William Curtis?
The Paper.
What speaks of thieves and purses taken,
And murders done, and maids forsaken,
And average price of Wiltshire bacon?
The Paper.
Abroad, at home, infirm or stout,
In health, or raving with the gout,
Who possibly can do without
The Paper?
It’s worth and merits then revere,
And since to-day begins our year,
Think not you e’er can buy too dear
The Paper.
The Spirit of the Public Journals, 1823.
——:o:——

Velluti.
Heards’t thou not the peacock shriek?
Heards’t thou not the cricket squeak?
Heards’t thou not the door-hinge creak?
No—it was Velluti!
Heards’t thou the parrot’s shrilly cry?
Heards’t thou the screech-owl hooting by?
Heards’t thou the sea-mew screaming nigh?
No—it was Velluti!
Heards’t thou the angry mastiff growl?
Heards’t thou grimalkins midnight howl,
And croaking frogs in waters foul?
No—it was Velluti!
Some there are who mock the song
And warblings of the feather’d throng—
But birds and beasts alike belong
To thy tones, poor Velluti!
For thou art each—first this, then that—
A husky rook, a squeaking rat—
Famed Punch, a frog, a love-sick cat—
These form thy voice, Velluti!
Spirit of the Age Newspaper, 1828.
——:o:——

The Bishop and Don Miguel.
(A recent correspondence.)
Who, false alike in war and peace,
Hath nothing done but cheat and fleece,
His brother bilk, and rob his niece?
My Miguel!
123
Who, on his way to all this evil,
In London looked so sweet and civil,
In Lisbon pitch’d us to the devil?
My Miguel!
Whose tyrant deeds e’en roused the spleen
Of tyrant-loving Aberdeen
To call thee names he didn’t mean
My Miguel?
Who rules his realm with guns and drums,
And sends poor devils to martyrdoms,
With “little angels”[25] round their thumbs?
My Miguel!
Yet, ah! atrocious as thou art,
So well thou play’st a monarch’s part,
Thou’rt dear unto a bishop’s heart,
My Miguel.
For thine the sceptre and the purse,
And wert thou even ten times worse,
To us ’twould matter not a curse,
My Miguel.
The Answer.
As welcome as a richer see
Would prove to Exeter, or thee,
Thy kindly greeting comes to me,
My Bishop!
’Tis sweet to think whoever draws
His sword against the people’s cause
Is sure, at least, of thy applause,
My Bishop.
And whether ’tis Old Nick or Nero,
With morals, like my own, at zero,
Thou’lt hail him as the Church’s hero,
My Bishop.
The world may hold thy “Nolo” light,
But where men come to ask their right
Thy “Nolo” may be trusted quite,
My Bishop.
Love to the bench, should you and they
Chance to be ousted some fine day,
Pop over here to Lisbon, pray,
My Bishop.
For though ’twill doubtless dull appear
Without your thousands five per year,
You’ll meet some kindred spirits here,
My Bishop.
Thomas Moore.
(In 1826 Don Pedro, King of Portugal, abdicated the throne in favour of his daughter, Maria II., but his brother Don Miguel, usurped the crown, which he retained until 1833, amidst almost incessant civil war, and commotion. His character was detestable, and his reign cruel and tyrannical, yet Henry Phillpotts, the grasping and intolerant Bishop of Exeter, gave him his sympathy. Thomas Moore, in this parody, refers to the Bishop’s greed (at one time he held no less than five rich livings, and two prebendal stalls), and to the part he took in defence of the detestable Peterloo massacre of innocent people assembled at a public meeting. Fortunately for Portugal there were few Englishmen who followed Phillpotts in befriending Don Miguel, and the news of his downfall, in 1833, and the proclamation of Queen Maria, were loudly welcomed in England. Miguel had visited London in 1827; he died in exile in November, 1866.)

——:o:——

The Proctor.
Who is it, that with bull-dogs two,
With brass-bound book, and cloaks of blue,
Is capped on Sundays by a few?
The Proctor.
Who is’t in bands and silk so fine,
Is seen about soon after nine,
Like glow-worm doomed at night to shine?
The Proctor.
Who was it when I doused a glim,
Dispatched to catch me bull-dog Jem,
And begged that I would call on him?
The Proctor.
Who was it too, when sporting hat,
On Queen’s bridge rails one night I sat,
Just asked my name—no more than that?
The Proctor.
Who was it, when a row began,
Between the Snobs and Gownsmen ran,
And seized me, as I floored a man?
The Proctor.
And when I bribed with half-a-dollar
The bull-dog to let go my collar,
Who was it ran, and beat me hollow?
The Proctor.
And when he caught me—asked my name—
Who was it found I could die game?
(For I kicked his shins and made him lame),
The Proctor.
Who was it of this aggravation,
Before the vice laid accusation,
Who kindly sentenced rustication?
The Proctor.
Who was it, when Degree was near,
By frowning looks taught me to fear,
He meant to harass me?—Oh dear!
The Proctor.
Who was it said, “Sir, if you please,
“I’ll trouble you to pay your fees,
“We never trust for no degrees”?
The Proctor.
Who after all this long delay
Examination, lots to pay,
Declined to make me a B. A.
—And then got licked that very day?
The Proctor.
The Gownsman.
(Conducted by Members of the University),
Cambridge. No. 10. January 7, 1831.
——:o:——

Ode to a Blackguard.
Who, nurs’d in ev’ry roguish villainy,
Taught, while he shamm’d the face of truth, to lie,
Who came into the world? the Lord knows why!
Blucher.
Who grew in size and cunning, till his eye,
Trained to its art, gave what he meant the lie,
Who, young in years, grew old in roguery?
Blucher.
Who trains a dog, which, Freshmen thinking cheap,
Purchase, which leaves them with a homeward leap,
Who keeps a dog, which no one else can keep?
Blucher.
124
Who daring impudence, the Gownsman stops,
To tell him of the B—nw—l evening hops,
And then, brings Proctor who upon him pops?
Blucher.
Who is a Judas on the face of Earth,
Spirit, accomplish’d in all blackguard mirth,
Whose days disgrace the region of his birth?
Blucher.
Would, that the Castle Bell’s prophetic clang
Should call grim Newgate’s Ketch, when next it rang,
That he, next Session, Justice due, should hang.
Blucher.
From the “Cambridge Odes,” by Peter Persius. Published by W. H. Smith, Rose Crescent, Cambridge. There is no date to this little pamphlet, nor any account of the character entitled “Blucher.” Several verses are omitted on account of their coarseness.

——:o:——

The Turncock.
Who is it, when we’re taken ill,
And slops require all day to swill,
The grateful cistern helps to fill?
The Turncock.
Who is it, when the dreadful sound
Of “Fire” echoes all around
Is hardly ever to be found?
The Turncock.
Who is it, when upon his beat,
Will very often, for a treat,
Turn on the main and swamp the street?
The Turncock.
Who is it often comes to state
The Company no more will wait,
But must insist upon the rate?
The Turncock.
Who is it waits another day,
And then no longer will delay,
But cuts the water right away?
The Turncock.
Punch, 1843.
——:o:——

The Ramoneur’s Address.
Who, when the chimney is on fire,
Than any sweep can go up higher,
And do whatever you require?
The Ramoneur.
Who saves the bother and the noise
Of dirty little climbing boys,
Whose feet the furniture destroys?
The Ramoneur.
Who human nature never shocks,
By torturing mortal knees and hocks,
And who deserves a Christmas box?
The Ramoneur.
Punch, Christmas, 1843.
This refers to the invention of a new Chimney Sweeping Machine. Before the Act of 1842 it was customary to compel little boys to climb up the insides of chimneys to sweep them, and many were suffocated, or got jammed in the narrow flues.

——:o:——

The Protectionist Catechism.
(To be Sung or Said in all places where they talk Nonsense.)
What is it makes Provisions cheap,
Turns last year’s corn too soft to keep,
And breeds the rot in Cows and Sheep?
Free Trade!
What caused last summer’s heavy rains?
What makes stiff clays insist on drains?
What will have farmers use their brains?
Free Trade!
What brought about potato blight?
What is the cause of Ireland’s plight?
What won’t let anything go right?
Free Trade!
What caused two years’ short cotton crops?
What made the Funds to ninety drop?
What soon will make the world shut shop?
Free Trade!
What drains our gold and silver out,
Makes quassia to be used in stout,
Puts foreign monarchs up the spout?
Free Trade!
What makes poor tenants quite content
To pay whatever’s asked for rent,
Though corn go down fifteen per cent?
Free Trade!
What soon will raise the labourers’ hire
To something past mere food and fire,
And make him saucy to the squire?
Free Trade!
What works the Constitution woe,
At Church and State doth strike a blow,
And brings up everything that’s low?
Free Trade!
What is the thing to save our bacon,
Restore our Constitution shaken,
And give us back what Peel has taken?
Protection!
What will vote draining tiles a bore,
What Coprolites and Guano floor,
And good old rule of thumb restore?
Protection!
What will make sunshine, rain and snow,
As farmers want them, come and go,
Keeping all things in statu quo?
Protection!
What, for a shield ’gainst foreign grain
Will give us Law to trust again,
Instead of British Brawn or Brain?
Protection!
What will leave landlords as of yore,
And tenants as they did before,
On the old paths to snooze and snore?
Protection!
Then raise on high a general call,
For that which works the good of all,
By robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Protection!
Punch, April 21, 1849.
——:o:——

The Baker.
Who is it, in an idle hour,
Grinds up some beans both cheap and sour,
To mix them with his wheaten flour?
The Baker!
125
Who, if a trifling rise in price
Occurs in corn, will not be nice,
But in the bread will charge it twice?
The Baker!
Who, when the corn is “down again,”
Is such a thorough rogue in grain,
The rise in bread still to maintain?
The Baker!
Who is it, when we send a pie,
Will child-like take a straw and try
To suck it of the syrup dry?
The Baker?
Who is it, when we trust some ribs
Of beef to bake, a portion cribs,
And hides the fault by wicked fibs?
The Baker!
Who, if we miss a piece of fat,
Has always got an answer pat,
And lays it on a neighbour’s cat?
The Baker!
Who, from rice pudding, with a cup,
Extracts the custard—every sup—
And says the fire has dried it up?
The Baker!
Who, the unpleasant truth to state,
Cheats us at such a fearful rate,
That every loaf is short in weight?
The Baker!
Punch, January 15, 1853.
——:o:——

The Poet.
Who welcomes first the powers of spring?
The swallow twittering on the wing,
Who pines to hear the cuckoo sing?—
The Poet.
Who loves the snowdrop, modest flower,
First of the year to grace the bower,
To cause its stay, who sighs for power?
The Poet.
Who marks it lowlier droop its head,
And kiss its cold and damp death bed,
Weeping when all its life is shed?
The Poet.
Who, when the lark awakes refreshed,
And soars above its little nest,
Loves its sweet morning song the best?
The Poet.
Who smiles to see the dark mist free,
Young morning dawn o’er earth and sea,
Who then feels proud of being free?
The Poet.
Who, when the bright stars stud the sky,
The pale moon smileth from on high,
Beholds them with admiring eye?
The Poet.
Who, when the snows of winter fall
O’er earth, obedient at his call,
Wondering, reveres the cause of all?
The Poet.
Who feels that love, which few e’er feel,
Which bids him every thought reveal,
To her—his own in woe or weal?
The Poet.
Who, when soft twilight’s sober grey
Obscures the light of lessening day,
To love’s pure feast hies swift away?
The Poet.
Who then in maiden’s raptured ear
Pours the sweet sounds she loves to hear,
Dispelling doubt, destroying fear?
The Poet.
Who pines not, toils not for the gold,
In search of which the young grow old,
To whom doth love true joys unfold?
The Poet.
Who dearest loves his brother man,
Nor stains with hate life’s little span?
Who glads the heart of all he can?
The Poet.
Who feels there is a God in Heaven,
By whom all love, all life is given,
Who oft the scoffer’s jest hath riven?
The Poet.
Who pauses, nor with hasty tread
Stalks o’er the turf-hid, silent dead:
Weeping, although no tear is shed?
The Poet.
Who, when his eye is glazed and dim,
And life a dying ember’s gleam,
Relies on, finds a friend in Him?
The Poet.
He’s not, who, ’mid Time’s onward flow,
Can’t mark, and learn, and wiser grow,
He’s not, who lives not, dies not so
A Poet.
Lays and Lyrics, By C. Rae. Brown, London.
Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 1855.
——:o:——

King Clicquot.
Who rules the Kingdom, till of late
Which was a leading German State,
But he has made it second-rate?
King Clicquot.
When Nicholas the Turks attacked,
Who joined the league against that act,
Then out of his engagement backed?
King Clicquot.
Who feigned to hold with the Allies,
But to co-operate denies,
And, underhand, to thwart them tries?
King Clicquot.
Swayed by domestic feelings weak,
His people’s good who does not seek,
But plays the traitor and the sneak?
King Clicquot.
By private ties who only bound
Breaks those of honour, like a hound,
And yet his head continues crowned?
King Clicquot.
Who has a crafty project planned,
Denmark and Holland to command,
Meanwhile betraying Fatherland?
King Clicquot.
Who Russia would abet, as base
Accomplice, to enslave his race,
If he but durst the danger face?
King Clicquot.
126
Who, double minded, double sees?
Whose conduct with his gait agrees?
Who breaks his nose ’gainst apple-trees?
King Clicquot.
Whose dirty tricks have brought about
His nation to be quite shut out
From Europe’s Council? Germans, shout—
King Clicquot.
Who vacillates ’twixt knave and fool?
Who’s the Czar’s satrap, pander, tool?
Who is no longer fit to rule?
King Clicquot.
Punch, March 31, 1855.
Frederick William, King of Prussia, (the elder brother of the present German Emperor,) had the credit of being a stupid sensualist, and was long known in England by the nickname “King Clicquot.” During his reign Prussia had come to occupy a lower position in Europe than she had ever before held during her existence as a Kingdom. It seemed almost marvellous how by any process the country of the Great Frederick could have sunk to such a condition of insignificance. At the period just preceding the Crimean War the King of Prussia, with his usual indecision of character, led the Allies to believe he would side with them, and then, at the last minute, withdrew from the compact, saying that the interests of Prussia did not require him to engage in a war. Prussia was relieved from the rule of this weak and vacillating individual, by his death in January, 1861.

——:o:——

The Baby Show.

By Mrs. Gamp.
(Authoress of “Diary of a Monthly Nurse,” &c., &c.)
Where is the man with soul so badge,
Which could denige this moryal sage.
That Babby-shows is all the rage!
The Monster!
Which he should instantaneous go
Unto the famious Zo—
—ologic Gardings, to the show
Of Babbies.
There, where the beastiges does roar,
And bragian bands their toons play o’er,
To see the babes, the people pour
In thousands,
Like Cowcumbers on summer days,
These tender plants, though hard to raise,
Does win our most maternial praise:
The ducksy-wucksys!
Ah dear! I knows a lady—which
Her name is Harris—who had sitch
Two little cherryubs, with the
Scotch Complaint.
Which, likewige, was the cauge why they
Was not exhibited that day;
So Mrs. Harris could not say
As follows.
1st Mother.—
Who was the babe who gain’d the prize
For being, in the judges eyes,
The little boy of finest size?
My Tommy.
2nd Mother.—
Who was the lion of the ground?
Who gain’d the first prize of five pound
For well-developed limbs, and round?
My Billy.
3rd Mother.—
And who was it, all cloth’d in red,
Who for a month had been well fed
On rice, and oil, and oatmeal bread?
My Jimmy.
4th Mother.—
But who was it, with teeth like pearl,
And bright blue eyes, and sunny curl,
Was judged to be “the prettiest girl?”
My Jemimar.
(Hysterical, unlooked for, and utterly-out-of-place,
Chorus of Mothers): Singing:
“Ri-tol-looral, lal-looral, lal-looral, lal la!”
The Shilling Book of Beauty. Edited by Cuthbert Bede, 1856.
[Mrs. Gamp’s feelings are doubtless strong on this subject, and may be shared in, for aught we know, (though we very much doubt it), by a large number of “the women of England.” But we must confess that our feelings are so strongly opposed to these “Baby Shows”—which we think are cruel, degrading and disgusting exhibitions—that we should not have given insertion to Mrs. Gamp’s poetical effusion, had not Lady Slipslop kindly furnished us with an antidote, which will be found in the article next ensuing.—Ed. S. B. of B.]

——:o:——

Lines by a Girl of the Future to a
Girl of the Period.
Who taught me that our English ways,
So highly prized in former days,
In her time only bred amaze?
My Mother.
Whose ev’ry action went to show
That homely virtues were all slow,
And fit but for the mean and low?
My Mother.
That girls of spirit ne’er should care
For aught on earth save what they wear,
Short skirts—high heels—and false dyed hair?
My Mother.
That thoroughly they should despise
All plodding, dull, domestic ties,
Know naught of pickles, or of pies?
My Mother.
That always they should imitate
Young men in slangy talk and gait,
As bashfulness was out of date?
My Mother.
That hearts were to be weigh’d ’gainst gold,
Not love, as was the case of old
And to the highest bidder sold?
My Mother.
And that when wed, all girls should learn
Base thoughts of stupid thrift to spurn
And spend much more than husbands earn?
My Mother.
Girl of the Period Miscellany, April, 1869.
——:o:——

127
Our Bishops.
1.
Who follow Christ with humble feet,
And rarely have enough to eat,
Who “Misereres” oft repeat?—
Our Bishops.
2.
Who, like the fishermen of old,
Care not for house, nor lands, nor gold,
But boldly brave the damp and cold?—
Our Bishops.
3.
Who preach the gospel to the poor,
And nurse the sick, and teach the boor—
Who faithful to the end endure?—
Our Bishops.
4.
Who give up all for Jesus’ sake,
And no thought for the morrow take,
But daily sacrifices make?—
Our Bishops.
5.
And who count everything a loss
Except their Lord and Master’s cross,
And reckon riches as but dross?—
Our Bishops.
Jon Duan—Weldon’s Christmas Annual, 1874.
Episcopal Salaries.—The thirty-one prelates of the Church of England receive ?161,900 a year, and have more than thirty-one palaces. To contrast with this there are nearly one thousand clergymen whose average stipend is under ?76 per annum.

——:o:——

L. S. D.
What makes man selfish and morose,
The cause of troubles, trials, and woes,
What makes fierce friendship, fiercer foes?
Money!
What leads to murder and disgrace,
What aids young sparks to go the pace;
And takes him abroad to hide his face?
Money!
What leads to those sweet family rows,
When Pa tells Ma with fearful vows,
Tom shan’t spend more than he allows?
Money!
Again, what can’t we do without,
What gives us power to gad about,
Enjoy ourselves, and laugh and shout?
Money!
For what does man work hard all day,
What makes him sad his bills to pay,
(Paying them whether he will or nay)?
Money!
Oh, would I knew some little game
To make my name well-known to fame,
And bring me plenty of that same—
Money!
The Figaro Programme, November 28, 1874.
——:o:——

The Russians.
Who spread no Sclavic Empire far
O’er Khiva’s deserts and Kashgar,
And murder not, and name it war?
The Russians!
Whose scourging armies never chose
To make Darius’ sons their foes,
And dye in blood the Persian rose?
The Russians!
Who camp by Attrek’s lonely shore?
Whose sunny vales and Barakpore
Shall hear the clang of arms no more,
The Russians!
Who did not dare destroy, annul,
(Nor since defy us—coward, fool,)
The record of Sevastopol?
The Russians!
Whose new embrasures speak not scorn?
Whose fleet’s on never a billow borne
That flows towards the Golden Horn?
The Russians!
Who turn no envious gaze upon
The lands which Clive subdued and won—
Our Indian Empire and Ceylon?
The Russians!
Who were our friends in ’fifty-four,
And spared our country’s life and gore,
And hope to shed them nevermore?
The Russians!
Whom should we court and value more
Than bearded statesmen’s art and lore,
And love and cherish evermore?
The Russians!
Benjamin D—— His Little Dinner, 1876.
——:o:——

My Father.
By Mr. Gladstone, Junr.
Who loved me when I was a child,
And never at my pranks grew wild,
And when I broke his china, smiled?
My Father!
Who, when I used to mix his work
And his last manuscript to burke,
Would merely say, “you little Turk”?
My Father!
Who, when—this was my boyish dread—
My mother sent me up to bed,
Would give me jam with my dry bread?
My Father!
Who, when we led the Liberal host,
Made me so snug a treasury post?
A thousand pounds a year it cost—
My Father!
Who, now that he has lost his pow’r,
Is growing querulous and sour,
And more eccentric every hour?
My Father!
Who must again the Liberals lead,
And Hartington soon supersede?
Who is it that the people need?
My Father!
Truth, September 6, 1877.
——:o:——

128
The Doctor.

[The other day a baker was fined for adulterating his bread with what is called in the trade the “doctor,” a mixture composed principally of alum. The use of the “doctor,” it came out, results in making inferior bread look of a good quality.]

What makes the quartern loaf a sight
To glad the heart and bring delight,
So crusty brown, so crumby white?
The “Doctor.”
What turns the flour from mouldy wheat
Into a substance looking sweet,
Ambrosia that a god might eat?
The “Doctor.”
Who is the baker’s firmest friend?
Who passes all they choose to vend?
Who makes them wealthy in the end?
The “Doctor.”
Who is the public’s meanest foe?
Who deals it many a stealthy blow
With daily lumps of poisoned dough?
The “Doctor.”
Funny Folks, June, 1877.
——:o:——

Tight Lacing in the Pulpit.

[Mr. Haweis in addressing a crowded Congregation at St. James’s, Marylebone, spoke very strongly on the Criminal Ignorance and thoughtlessness of Tight Lacing.]

What is it makes a lady’s head
Feel heavy as a lump of lead?
What makes her nose’s tip so red?
Tight-lacing!
What makes her cheek burn like a coal,
Her feet as cold as Arctic pole?
What cramps her body and her soul?
Tight-lacing!
What makes her temper short and sharp?
What causes her to fret and carp,
And on the smallest ills to harp?
Tight-lacing!
What checks her proper circulation,
And dulls her ordinate sensation?
What blighted babes breeds for the nation?
Tight-lacing!
What makes her waist a wasp-like thing,
And gives her tongue a waspish sting?
What baulks her when high notes she’d sing?
Tight-lacing!
What is it, with its vice-like squeeze,
Destroys its fated victim’s ease,
And brings her doctors countless fees?
Tight-lacing!
What is it makes her gasp for breath,
And—so stern modern science saith—
Dooms her too oft to early death?
Tight-lacing!
What brings a “corn upon her heart,”
And makes her—spoil’d by cruel art—
Unfit to play the mother’s part?—
Tight-lacing!
What tortures her into a shape
Which “ruts the liver” past escape,
And which, at most, makes gommeux gape?—
Tight-lacing!
What beauty’s lines in her destroys,
And fashion’s powerful aid employs,
To crush from out her life its joys?—
Tight-lacing!
What ages her before her time,
And makes her feeble ere her prime?
What tempts to a self-suffer’d crime?—
Tight-lacing!
What quite ignoring nature’s facts,
Her waist so cruelly contracts,
That each inch saved fresh pain exacts?
Tight-lacing!
And what bad fashion of the day
Is it that ladies now should say
They’ll spurn without an hour’s delay?—
Tight-lacing!
Truth, April 24, 1879.
——:o:——

“Baby” at the Strand Theatre.
Who is’t whose life has just begun
With quip, and crank, and mirth, and fun,
Who cannot walk, yet’s bound to run—?
“The Baby!”
With grief o’erwhelmed and sore distrest,
By fear disturbed, by care opprest,
Who makes me laugh with merry jest?—
“The Baby!”
Who is it from each box and stall
Each night receives applause from all,
Because his birth was with a caul?—
“The Baby!”
French parentage he owns, but here
He’s godfathered, the pretty dear,
By C. H. Ross and A. T. Freer—
Sweet “Baby!”
And to the theatre ev’ry night
These sponsors all the world invite
To pay their money for a sight
Of “Baby!”
Fun, January 1, 1879.
——:o:——

A Song of the Season.
By Viscount Sandon, M.P.
What was it made the season fail,
Our commerce languish, tradesmen rail,
And landlords tell a dismal tale?
The weather.
What made the farmers grumble so,
And struck alike at high and low,
Till dukes and dustmen felt the blow?
The weather.
What caused the Customs and Excise
To droop before our very eyes,
Yet made quinine and borax rise?
The weather.
What made the Ascot week so dull,
Of glorious Goodwood made a mull,
And help’d the ring to backers gull?
The weather.
What made half London madly rush
French plays to see, and so to crush,
That they might hear “the Bernhardt” gush?
The weather.
129
What made the people stay away
From Mr. Boucicault’s new play?
’Twas very bad, though; so they say?
The weather.
What made the last new valse the rage,
And caused gay youth and hoary age
In Polo, that fresh dance, t’engage?—
The weather.
What made the hackney’d recitation
At dull “At-homes” a new sensation,
Much to Society’s vexation?
The weather.
What made all outdoor sports a snare,
What spoil’d lawn tennis everywhere,
And fill’d the archer with despair?—
The weather.
What “Princes’” turn’d and “Lords’” to mire,
What wholly damp’d the batsmen’s fire,
Till even Grace had to retire?—
The weather.
What made the late Lord Mayor abuse
His colleagues, and his temper lose,
And drove to acts we can’t excuse?
The weather.
What made him take so strange a view
Of what to decency was due,
And landed him in such a stew?—
The weather.
What made the Times such blunders make,
And praise each Government mistake,
Till honest readers’ hearts did ache?—
The weather.
What made the Great Sea Serpent late?
What “Cato” gave a chance to prate,
And gave us Mechi’s “Parson’s Grate”?—
The weather.
What was it rank obstruction bred,
And made Sir Stafford lose his head?
What kept the House from going to bed?
The weather.
What made the Home Rule Members spout
Sedition as they stump’d about?
What sent the threat’ning letter out?
The weather.
What brought the Bank rate down to one,
And sent up “railways” with a run?
What made so heavy Punch and Fun?—
The weather.
What made Lord B. to Aylesbury go,
To prose of black-faced ewes, and show
How from the land three profits grow?
The weather.
What made him, later try to pass
As words of wisdom nonsense crass—
Imperium et Libertas!—?—
The weather.
And to declare that for our land
There was a future great and grand
Since chemicals were in demand?—
The weather.
What made the British ironclads tack
And sail due East, and then, alack!
Upon the morrow sail straight back?—
The weather.
What made it cups and swords to rain,
When home across the stormy main
Our Zulu heroes came again?—
The weather.
What sent up bread and kept down wheat,
And made the Russian troops retreat,
Although the Turcomans they beat?—
The weather.
What made the youthful King of Spain
Resolve that he would wed again,
And add a bridal to his reign?—
The weather.
What made so many wives elope,
What damp’d our joy, and dull’d our hope,
And knock’d up Bismarck and the Pope?—
The weather.
What Bismarck to Vienna sent
The Austrian union to cement,
And Salisbury make so eloquent?—
The weather.
What made Peru and Chili fight,
And nerved Bolivian arms with might?
What smash’d up the Huascar quite?—
The weather.
In short, what can we safely blame
For all the ills that on us came,
Till one begins to loathe its name?—
The weather.
Truth, Christmas Number, 1879.
——:o:——

The Weather.
(By one who is much affected by it.)
What made me careless, cheery, gay,
What made me throw ten pounds away,
And cheerfully some large bills pay?
The weather!
What made my head feel iron-bound,
What made me kick my favourite hound,
Quarrel with wife and friends all round?
The weather!
What made me open wide my coat,
And get into a penny boat,
And talk of spring time like a “Pote?”
The weather!
What made me suddenly feel ill,
What gave me such a fearful chill,
That I went home to make my will?
The weather!
Punch, March 12, 1881.
——:o:——

Our Sunday—(Down East).

[N.B.—Permission to include these lines in the Programme of any Sabbatarian Penny Reading may be obtained from Mr. Punch.]

Which is the day that should be blest,
And to the weary, work-opprest,
Bring wholesome pleasure, peace and rest?
Our Sunday.
Yet which the day of all the seven
To our sour lives adds sourer leaven
And leaves poor folk most far from heaven?
Our Sunday.
130
When gutter-brats of tender years,
What filled our childish souls with fears
Of father’s curses, mothers tears?
Our Sunday.
What makes the sound of prayer and praise,
Heard ’mid our foul and filthy ways,
Like echoes of an empty phrase?
Our Sunday.
What day down East,—where day’s half night,
While West-End wealth enjoys the light—
Most feeds the public’s frowze and fight?
Our Sunday.
What, when the week’s toil stills its din,
Proclaims each simple pleasure sin,
And, preaching grace, provideth gin?
Our Sunday.
What, when we strive up from our sink,
Our souls with nobler things to link,
Bars all,—but one bar labelled drink?
Our Sunday.
And, when of this world we are clear,
What is it, in another sphere,
Won’t be flung at us, as ’twas here?
Our Sunday.
Punch. June 12, 1880.
——:o:——

The Egyptian Baby.
(As sung by the Khedive, Tewfik.)
Who made affairs grow pretty hot
About this Oriental spot?
Who were a rather shady lot?
My Pashas!
Who put me in a dreadful fright,
And wished to have me killed outright?
Who vowed they were resolved to fight?
My Army!
Who with a fleet of iron came
And stopped their naughty little game,
And rescued this child from the same?
My Beauchamp!
Who first said nay, and next said yea,
Asserting he would use his sway,
Then waited for another day?
My Abdul!
Who led the British troops he’d brought,
And with the rebels bravely fought
Till Arabi was smashed and caught?
My Garnet!
Who now will raise me where I fell
And kiss the place to make it well,
And keep me happy ’neath his spell?
My William!
1882.
——:o:——

What the Seasons Bring.
When comes the Southern summer breeze,
That softly blows from tropic seas,
Who lives in impecunious ease!
The bummer.
When borean blasts blow fierce and free,
And winter reigns on land and sea,
Who chuckles then with fiendish glee?
The plumber.
Or warm or cold the breezes blow,
From tropic seas or arctic snow,
Who comes his “sample lot” to show?
The drummer.[26]
E. J. S.
Free Press Flashes, 1882.
——:o:——

The Fog.
What stops the nation’s loud lament,
And makes some folks almost content
With Liberals in Parliament?—
The fog!
What, when debaters disagree
And fight on this and that decree,
With Ministers is pol-i-cee?—
Why, fog!
When questioned by Lord Randy, and—
Well, badgered by an adverse band,
Where takes the Grand Old Man his stand?—
In fog!
Judy, November 22, 1882.
——:o:——

The Mahdi.

Everyone just now is hearing a good deal about the Mahdi but no one seems to know what he is like. Until the London Stereoscopic Company sell the gentleman’s photo for a shilling, perhaps the following description may help the public to form some idea of the hero of the hour.

That’s “Him.”
Who’s forty years—well-nigh, not quite?
Who is about the medium height?
Who has a beard as black as night?
The Mahdi.
Whose eyes with fire and passion gleam?
Whose hue is that of coffee cream?
Whose face shows many a scar and seam?
The Mahdi’s.
Who’s thinner e’en than Sally B?
Who on his cheeks has gashes three?
Who’s quite upset our William G.?
The Mahdi.
Who got his living in the East
By dealing in wild bird and beast,
And then turned hermit—later priest?
The Mahdi.
And yet in town receive we may
As petted lion of the day—
(Perhaps at Labby’s house he’ll stay)—
The Mahdi.
G. R. Sims,
The Referee, May 11, 1884.
——:o:——

Our Marquis.
By a long suffering Tory Peer.
Who, by his tyrannous oppression
And obstinate and proud aggression,
Has really caused this Autumn Session?—
Our Marquis!
131
Who made us vote against the Bill,
And thus defy the people’s will?
Who wants to keep us stubborn still?—
Our Marquis!
Who, much against our inclination,
Forced us to take to “demonstration,”
And foster outdoor dissipation?—
Our Marquis!
Who goaded us by his remarks
To let off fireworks in our parks,
And let in ’Arry, with his “larks”?—
Our Marquis!
Who, too, with malice so prepense,
Made us attempt our own defence,
In feeble words and weaker sense?—
Our Marquis!
Who, in his arrogance and pride,
Brings us to town this autumn-tide,
Decided facts to re-decide?
Our Marquis!
Who spoils our sport, upsets our plans,
And trips to Cannes or Carthage bans,
Whilst popular disgust he fans?—
Our Marquis!
Who takes the time we would allot
To gun and game, to moor or yacht,
To waste it in abortive plot?
Our Marquis!
Who, ’stead of pheasants, gives us fog
Debate in place of horse and dog,
And “Whips” us when our streams we’d flog?—
Our Marquis!
Who class ’gainst class insanely sets
With his “Elizabethan” threats
And “Burleigh-nods” and epithets?
Our Marquis!
Who, knowing we are somewhat dull,
And slow of speech, and thick of skull,
Has found it easy us to gull?—
Our Marquis!
But who, though he our pleas may spurn,
Will find, ere we again adjourn,
That even Tory worms will turn?—
Our Marquis!
Truth, October 23, 1884.
——:o:——

The Lords.
Who, dwelling in ancestral halls,
Surrounded by emblazoned walls,
Are deaf to all the peoples’ calls?
The Lords.
Who, in a manner underhand,
Have stolen from the people land,
And on these stolen riches stand?
The Lords.
Who every measure do reject
Which will the people’s rights protect,
Or in some way their good effect?
The Lords.
Who always did oppress the Jew,
And the Roman Catholic, too,
Refusing to them their just due?
The Lords.
Who, Ireland ever did oppress,
And never would her wrongs redress,
But coercion always did caress?
The Lords.
Who, with well simulated fright,
To every man denies the right
With his wife’s sister to unite?
The Lords.
Who, in a manner uniform,
For years rejected all reform,
Till fearful of the coming storm?
The Lords?
Who, amidst speeches loud and shrill,
Have now thrown out the Franchise Bill,
And so oppose the peoples’ will?
The Lords.
Who, now their rashness recognise,
And by dark deceitful lies,
Attempt their action to disguise?
The Lords.
Who, though they’ve had long to repent,
Now with an air so insolent,
Appear on further follies bent?
The Lords.
Then since the warned ones will not mend,
But still continue to offend,
Let us now take quick means to end
The Lords.
H. E. Harker.
Hull Express, August 30, 1884.
——:o:——

The “Comp.”
Who is it that causes all the woes,
The editor so often knows,
And makes the poor man many foes,
“Setting up” what he don’t propose?
The “comp!”
Who is it eyes “The Force” askance,
Like he was waiting for the chance,
Their local items to enhance,
And cause “The Force” to swear and prance?
The “comp!”
Who is it grins in fiendish glee,
His error on the press to see,
And views all things cynically,
And never gives a big, big “D?”
The “comp!”
Detroit Free Pree, January 24, 1885.
——:o:——

The Peoples William.
How runs the ignominious story,
Since Britain’s ancient fame and glory,
Passed from its famous Premier Tory
To William?
Who fears the Bear’s aggressive paw,
And dare not show the Lion’s claw
But pleads the cause of vile Bradlaugh?
Timid William
Who feasts on legs of roasted lamb,
Of game and fowl, beef, eggs, and ham,
Then recommends the farmer jam?
Sweet William!
132
Who went to Ireland one fine day,
And promised Pat should have his way,
Then shuffled out as if in play?
Sneaky William!
Who strokes poor Paddy on the back,
And half persuades him white is black,
And irritates him with his clack?
Artful William!
Who sent out Gordon to the fight,
To set affairs in Egypt right,
Then left him in a woeful plight?
Base William!
Who sat with patient smile and sneer
The warning of M.P.’s to hear,
Then said there was no cause to fear?
False William!
Who smilingly went to the play
When news came of the sad affray
Of Gordon’s death and Mahdi’s sway?
Careless William![27]
Whose weak and vacillating sway
Has bartered Britain’s fame away,
And made our hearts to bleed to-day?
Weak William!
Great Britain’s sons are true as steel,
Now put your shoulders to the wheel,
Let him your indignation feel—
This William!
And take from his weak hands the reins,
Who only rules but for his gains;
Then who will thank you for your pains?
Not William!
B.
Ipswich Journal, March, 1885.
——:o:——

Nobody.
When I’m in want, who’ll seek me out,
And in my interest rush about,
And not my truth and honor doubt?
Nobody!
Who’ll clasp me to his manly heart,
Stick up for me, and take my part,
And fresh in life give me a start?
Nobody!
Who’ll give me cash, or give me food,
Who will believe me poor, but good,
And always be in generous mood?
Nobody!
——:o:——

Her Mother.
Who, when I took my pet for life,
Convinced me, through domestic strife,
That I had married with my wife—
Her mother?
Who, though ’twas clearly understood
That live with friends I never would,
Came for a week, and—stayed for good?
Her mother!
Who, whensoever “tiffs” befell,
Would irritating stories tell,
And chafe the place to make it well?
Her mother!
Who to control my household dares,
Each letter reads, each secret shares,
And takes the lead in my affairs?
Her mother!
Who, when from home I chance to stay,
Hints that work “might,” or business “may”
Detain—but there, no more she’ll say?
Her mother!
Who breaks our peace, destroys our bliss,
Coils on our hearth with frequent hiss—
Connubial rapture’s Nemesis?
Her mother!
Enough! But has it not a flaw,
That Act which says I may not draw
Two wives, and yet makes mine in law,
Her mother!
Funny Folks.
——:o:——

Cattle-show Queries.
By a Squeamish Visitor.
Who looked at me with oil-cake eyes,
Complaining dumbly of their size—
Agglomerate monstrosities?
The Cattle!
Who pushed me there, and shoved me here,
Who bawled their comments in my ear,
Until I called a Southdown, “steer?”
The Farmers!
Who never more will strive with Tag,
With Bobtail too, and eke with Rag,
Within the portals of the “Ag.”
The Writer.
——:o:——

Avitor.
An aerial Retrospect.
What was it filled my youthful dreams,
In place of Greek or Latin themes,
Or beauty’s wild, bewildering beams?
Avitor!
What visions and celestial scenes
I filled with aerial machines,—
Montgolfier’s, and Mr. Green’s?
Avitor!
What fairy tales seemed things of course!
The rock that brought Sinbad across,
The Calendar’s own winged-horse?
Avitor!
How many things I took for facts,
Icarus and his conduct lax,
And how he sealed his fate with wax!
Avitor!
The first balloons I sought to sail,
Soap-bubbles fair, but all too frail,
Or kites,—but thereby hangs a tail.
Avitor!
What made me launch from attic tall
A kitten and a parasol,
And watch their bitter, frightful fall?
Avitor!
What youthful dreams of high renown
Bade me inflate the parson’s gown,
That went not up, nor yet came down?
Avitor!
133
My first ascent, I may not tell:
Enough to know that in that well
My first high aspirations fell,
Avitor!
My other failures let me pass:
The dire explosions; and, alas!
The friends I choked with noxious gas,
Avitor!
For lo! I see perfected rise
The vision of my boyish eyes,
The messenger of upper skies,
Avitor!
Bret Harte.
 Illustration: Mask
Before closing the collection of Parodies on Miss Taylor’s poem, “My Mother,” a few serious imitations of its style may be given, and in order to avoid any suspicion of treating these with levity, or irreverence, they are printed separately from the Parodies properly so called; as might be expected from the style of the original, these poems are of a somewhat simple and childlike description.

The Bible, the Best of Books.
What taught me that a Great First Cause
Existed ere Creation was,
And gave a Universe its laws?
The Bible.
What guide can lead me to this power,
Whom conscience calls me to adore,
And bids me seek Him more and more?
The Bible.
When all my actions prosper well,
And higher hopes my wishes swell,
What points where truer blessings dwell?
The Bible.
When passions with temptations join
To conquer every power of mine,
What leads me then to help divine?
The Bible.
When pining cares and wasting pain
My spirits and my life blood drain,
What soothes and turns e’en these to gain?
The Bible.
When crosses and vexations tease,
And various ills my bosom seize,
What is it that in life can please?
The Bible.
When horror chills my soul with fear,
And nought but gloom and dread appear,
What is it then my mind can cheer?
The Bible.
When impious doubts my thoughts perplex,
And mysteries my reason vex,
Where is the guide which then directs?
The Bible.
And when afflictions fainting breath,
Warns me I’ve done with all beneath,
What can compose my soul in death?
The Bible.
Anonymous.
——:o:——

The Orange.
What is that fruit, so round and sweet,
So nice to smell, so good to eat,
Which gives the children such a treat?
An Orange!
How yellow and how bright its skin,
So smooth without, so sweet within!
To scorn thee surely were a sin—
Bright Orange!
What treat so great for little boys,
When, tired with their games and toys,
They’re safe with thee from tricks and noise,
Kind Orange!
Right glad am I when Christmas comes,
With puddings, mince-pies, tarts, and buns,
And, best of all, thy golden suns,
Round Orange!
Oh! kindly native of Azores,[28]
Round which the broad Atlantic roars,
I bid thee welcome to our shores—
Sweet Orange!
Anonymous.
——:o:——

The following poems are extracted from a scarce and curious chap book recently purchased from Mr. Salkeld, of 314, Clapham Road, from whom I have obtained many literary curiosities, and much useful information about books and their contents. This little chap book is entitled

FILIAL REMEMBRANCER.