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SATURDAY SONGS.
SATURDAY

BY

Hy fy. TRALLE,

AUTHOR OF “RECAPTURED RHYMES,” ETC.

LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & CO., 18 WATERLOO PLACE.
AND AT CALCUTTA.

 

1890.

(All Rights Reserved.)
i LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE,
PALL MALL. 8.W.
Contents.

Hawarpen Oastiux on Locxsney Haut.
A FrrenpLy REMONSTRANCR

THe Contzst ror BaRLEYSHIRE .

Tue Port in tHe Pource-Court

Tue Foreian Gars

A Bauuap oF PARLIAMENTARY BURDENS
On THE WatcH  .

A Granp OL_p Cock—anp Butt Story ;

Toe PRECIPITATE GRANDMOTHER

Fancy 1n Nusrpsvus ‘ ‘ ‘i 2 ;

Tue CarTore of HawarpEn WILLIE .
HeEAios AnD OSHEEANUS ‘

A Bunearran APPEAL ‘ ‘ : 3
A Neeuectep Troura

Tue Reporter’s Fak EwE.u :

A Symporic AWAKING . % é ,

PAGE

12
15
18
21
vi CONTENTS.

 

THe Marryr’s TweEep

A Nosut Wartcuworp

Wire a DirFrERENCE

An APPEAL AND A REpLy

A Mawntuy Proresr

THe Voice or Faction

An HistoricaL PARALLEL
“To ‘FRIENDLIES’ ABOUT TO Fournisu 2
A Sap CasEe

Our CuHoice or HErRcunes

A Kworry Quest on

THE ARBITRATION on THE Bauric
A Lost Consonation
Raitways anp Ricxrts

Trea witHouT Toast

Wrone Again!

Accorpiné To ComTE

A DEGRADED ARTISAN .

Tur Reat Reason

Littie Biter

Two BaLLADEs oF PROGRESS
A Fuieut or tHE Fuyine ONE
“O Say Nor So!”

. 102
. 105
. 108
- lil
. 114
. 116
. 119
. 122

 

PAGE
55
58
61
65
68
val
75
78
81
33
86
90
23
96
99
[The Political Ballads which form the contents
of this Volume made, with one exception, their first

appearance in the “Saturday Review.’ |
Hawaydgn Castle on Jrogkstey Hall.

[Did Lord Tennyson, in his continuation of “ Locksley Hall,” deliver his own
mind or that of his moody hero? In other words, has he imaginatively conceived
the “ shallow-hearted” Amy's rejected lover as having become a pessimistic Tory
after middle life, or has he himself undergone that change in advanced age?
The question is one at which critics smile, but which has profoundly interested
and sharply divided politicians. That Mr. Gladstone entertains no doubt upon
this point will be evident from the following lines, in which he metrically antict-
pated a well-remembered article contributed by him to the “ Nineteenth Century.”

ATE, my luncheon! All the morning have I scanned these
angry rhymes
(Scanned ? I humbly think he works the tribrach rather too
many times).
Late, my luncheon! Yet I hardly seem to want it as I might,
‘“‘ Locksley Hall’s ” continuation has destroyed my appetite.

It is powerfully written. That I don’t at all deny.
Powerful all our Laureate’s writing; none admires him more
than I.
Ere another word I utter, be that point brought clearly out
Past all shadow of misconception, past all vestige of a doubt;
I, please God, will spare no effort, given life and health and sense,
To expose the injurious falsehood, to annihilate the pretence
Which would seek to represent me giving place to anyone
In my humble veneration for my friend Lord Tennyson.
1
2 HAWARDEN CASTLE ON LOCKSLEY HALL.

 

Powerful? Yes, but with submission I—though I may well be
wrong—

Venture to regard it as a most uncomfortable song.

Sixty years of retrogression—or at least of standing still !

Sixty years that leave behind them doubtful good and certain ill!

Sixty years of public effort, worse than wasted and misspent,

When for fifty of that sixty I have sat in Parliament !

‘Babble, babble!” ‘What? ‘Old England may go down in
babble at last!”

When for twenty years my babble has all other men’s surpassed !

Oh, but this is really dreadful! This is blasphemy indeed ;

How can Christian poet cherish such a pessimistic creed ?

Since the day he heard the curlews calling over Locksley Hall,

Does he in the London purlieus no improvement find at all ?

Since the day his shallow-hearted cousin that young man forsook,

Think of all the Statutes we have added to the Statute-Book.

Have we not a shower of blessings poured upon the human race ?

Freed the nigger, raised the workman, made the landlord know
his place,

Given the poor a loaf unburdened, and an untaxed breakfast-cup,

Fenced machinery, shortened hours, and made the capitalist ‘sit
up”?

Do we hang the petty pilferer ? No! we find the murderer mad.

With the bad corrupt the good? No! ’mongst the good we send
the bad.

See! to all our needy widows School Board officers go their round ;

Postage has been greatly cheapened, penny newspapers abound.

In the gain of his improvements now the happy farmer shares,

Harcourt’s done his level best to extirpate the breed of hares,
HAWARDEN CASTLE ON LOCKSLEY HALL. 3

 

From beyond the Border smiles a yeoman-race, no longer wroth _

With the exactions of hypéthec (accent, please, upon-the ‘‘ poth me

Gone the abuses of the Poor-Law, as the last year’s snowdrifts
are ; as

Purchase not corrupts the army, press-gangs do not bag the tat. ~

Do we fight the senseless duel? Do we sling the big, big D ? ’

No; our strongest word is ‘‘ Bother!’ and revolvers all we see.” ~

Votes protect the honest citizen, who can say both Yea and Nay,

Since the ballot-box conceals his voting whatsoever way.

Now the M.P. must pay his tailor—formerly it was not so ;

Now—and nothing, in my judgment, more instructively could
show

How the thoughts of man have widened with the progress of
the suns—

Now the affiliation-order against gay Tommy Atkins runs.

Truly when I set before me this imperfect list of gains,
Quite, or almost quite, omitted in the Laureate’s moody strains ;
When besides I note—forgive me—all the random shots he fires,
‘Rivals of realm-ruining party,” <‘‘ tonguesters,’”’ ‘“ babblers,”
“hustings-liars ”’ ;
Names of eloquent invective, yet of which I never can
Recognize the application to a single living man ;
Names in his own phrase “of little meaning, though the words
are strong,”
Spicing the trochaics of this most uncomfortable song—
When, I say, these things I ponder, though I hate polemics, still
I feel moved to write an answer—ay! and, if I’m spared, I will.
Yes, already through my brain a crowd of illustrations rolls ;
I will write without delay, and offer it to Mr. Kn-wl-s.
1 *
4 HAWARDEN CASTLE ON LOCKSLEY HALL.

 

Mr. Kn-wl-s, who still, for reasons which I cannot fathom quite,

Puts so flattering a value on the little things I write.

He will find, I make no doubt, some room upon his crowded page

For my modest vindication of the incriminated Age.

He, I know, will print it straightway ; he ll not lay it on the
shelf ;

And the injured Nineteenth Century thus shall answer for itself.
 

A Hatqudty Remonstrancy,

[‘* Mr, Lowell, so well known to you for his knowledge of his own country
and his friendly feeling for England, recently wrote to me his conviction that the
formidable strength or the absolute weakness of the Anti-English party in the
States depended upon whether we freely gave self-government to Ireland or
refused the boon.” —LORD GRANVILLE. ]

l\HET’S so! John Bull may shet his mouth;
*Twun’t du to meet sech warnins weighty -
By lumpin’ Ireland with the South,
Or, Sixty-two with Six-and-eighty.
We see our case nohow’s a match
Fer yours in morril pints or legle,
No more ’n our Lion ain’t a patch
On Miss Columby’s swoopin’ eagle.

Yit somehow when we jest rec’lec’
Hosea Biglow’s old-time thunder,
An’, hear him preach to such effec’
On the new text o’ knuckle-under,
We kind o’ feel that principle,
Ef firm to home, abroad ’s no fixtur’,
An’, dashed with prejoodice, that ‘twill
Make an oncommon pooty mixtur’.
A FRIENDLY REMONSTRANCE.

 

Fer, darned ef you wuz quite so—wal,
So Scripterally meek an’ humble,
When ole Jeff Davis, your Parnell,
Pervoked you to a rough-an’-tumble.
Nut you! you went in tooth-an’-nail,
You never loosed the Rebbles’ collars ;
An’ once, onless our mem’ries fail,
Som’ on’ gev utt’rance much as follers :—

“ Ther’s critters yit thet talk an’ act
Fer wut they call Conciliation,
They'd hand a buff’lo-drove a tract
When they wuz madder than all Bashan.
Conciliate? It jest means Be kicked,
No meiter how they phrase an’ tone it;
It means thet we’re to set down licked,
Thet we’re poor shotes an’ glad to own it.”

Bleedin’ with all his country’s hurts
Thet writer hed a call to scold us,
But “J. R. L.” was on his shirts,
Or so at least they ollers told us.
Hosea! that indignant bust
O’ wrath ‘gainst Copper-head beseechins
Doos it not—ther’! we know it must
Take sutthin frum your present preachins?

Ef in those days we ’d come aroun’
In sollum tones enjinin’ meekness,

So ’s ‘t you might bring your “ Anti’s’”? down
From ‘“‘form’ble strength” to “ abs’loot weakness,
A FRIENDLY REMONSTRANCE.

We ’d soon ben made to onderstand
Thet winnin’ en’mies to compliance,
By givin’ them wut they demand,
Ain’t ‘zactly new to p’lit’cal science ;—

Thet whether, too, it’s any gain

One’s vallables with thieves to barter,
Depends on whether ’t ’s watch-and-chain

Or coat an’ pants they ’re really arter ;
An’, ef the latter, you’d hev said

Thet backin down’s, by strict anal’gy,
A kind o’ cuttin’ off your head

To cure a facial neuralgy.

Bilieve me, Hosea, it’s a fact
Thet wut you’d call the Irish “ nation”
Would treat ‘“ self-gov’'ment” like your “ tract”
Flung to a bellerin’ drove of Bashan,
We’d rather deal with it as ’t is,
Though we dw think—we’re so romantic—
Thet, sence the Alabamy biz,
You might hev helped us, ’cross th’ Atlantic.

We grieve, too, that of all men you,
Your own great Union’s stout defender,
Should deacon-off the craven crew
Who here are clamouring for surrender.
Ez dear ez yours to you ’s our flag,
An’ ef ther’ must be disunitin’,
Ez in the case of Colonel Quagg,
We much perfer to ‘take it fightin’.”
 

Ghy Contyst toy Burlgyshine.

[The following ballad is dedicated, with the sincerest respect, to the political
party (I need not name it) which is most zealous for purity of election.]

Hoe simple-minded soldiers from legality can stray
Has never been exemplified in such a striking way

As when Colonel Blunt contested in a memorable fight

The vacant seat for Barleyshire with Mr. Tennent Wright.

It chanced upon a morning as the polling-day drew nigh

That the Colonel’s agent came to him with ill-foreboding eye,

And said, ‘I’m bound to tell you, though I know that youll be
vexed, ;

That Tennent Wright will beat us, I’m afraid, on Thursday next.”’

“What mean you, Mr. Wyers ?” said the Colonel, with a start
And a flash of sudden anger in his military heart.

“ That interloping rascal 2? What the doose, sir, can he do?”
‘Too much, I fear,” the agent said; ‘far more, I fear, than you.

‘He has gone among the farmers on the Bluntnomore estate
And told them, every one, that if they only voted straight
For Mr. Gladstone’s candidate, that Statesman wouldn’t fail
To fix them in their holdings and to give them right of sale ;
THE CONTEST FOR BARLEYSHIRE. 9

 

‘‘ And to get their rents reduced for them--’’ ‘‘ Reduced!” the
Colonel cried,

‘Reduced! Why I’ve returned them twenty-five per—’ ‘‘ And
provide

Most ample compensation for improvements : so you see—’”’

«« Improvements, sir, but dammy, sir! they've all been made by
me!”

The agent shrugged his shoulders with a melancholy smile ;
The Colonel stood in deep disgust, dumb-foundered for a while.
Then said he: ‘‘ The game's expensive, but it’s one that two can

play,
And I’ll play it too, and win it, let it cost me what it may.”

So he then instructed Wyers to write letters by the score

To Turniptop and Rickaby and Giles and many more ;

And so signally persuasive were these timely little notes
That the Colonel beat his rival by some five-and-thirty votes.

But whispers in a day or two began to bruit the dodge ;

A week—and a petition ’twas agreed upon to lodge ;

A fortnight—and attorneys’ clerks began to haunt the place ;
A month—and an election judge came down to try the case.

They summoned Farmer Turniptop, they summoned Farmer Giles,

They summoned Roger Rickaby, and others round for miles ;

And when they asked these tenants what had brought them to
the poll,

Their answers put their landlord in a very pretty hole.
10 THE CONTEST FOR BARLEYSHIRE.

 

"Twas proved he’d offered two of them a handsome bribe apiece
In the undeserv’d renewal of a most indulgent lease;

A third whose rent:he should have raised had had it lowered- instead,
And a fourth had got two hundred pounds for a half-erected shed.

In vain the Colonel’s counsel with effrontery averred

That lease, abatement, cheque, and votes by merest chance con-
curred,

His arguments availed him not; and Rhadamanthus stern,

With words of reprobation grave, avoided the return.

‘Of practices corrupt,” he said, ‘‘I find the clearest proof:

I schedule Pulman Wyers, who in Colonel Blunt’s behoof

Has bribed; and Colonel Blunt himself a close escape has had,
Since for bribery in person too his name I nearly add.”

The Colonel stared a moment mute, then cried in wonder, ‘‘ Eh ?'
What! guilty—practices corrupt? Look here, my lord, I say,

I only paid the farmers down what Mr. Tennent Wright

Had promis’d them in six months’ time if he should win the fight.”

The learned judge maintained his frown, although there seemed
to slip

The faintest flicker of a smile across his rigid lip:

“You are a simple soldier, sir, or you would hardly miss

The fallacy that vitiates comparisons like this.”

‘© Well, I shall always miss it,” said the Colonel, *‘ while I live.
I may not bribe these men, my lord, with what’s my own to give,
THE CONTEST FOR BARLEYSHIRE. 11

 

While those confounded Gladstonites, as far as I can see,
May bribe them, every mother’s son, with what belongs to me!”’

The Colonel still continues o’er this problem deep to muse,
And the problem still continues its solution to refuse ;
And this is all he’s ever gained from that disastrous fight
When he contested Barleyshire with Mr. Tennent Wright.

 
12

 

Ghe Poet in the Potire-Court,

[\\ And it fell upon a day that whenas the worthy magistrate looked upon the
charge-sheet and called upon them who should assoil the prisoners, one stood forth
and said, ‘I saw, God wot, the entire shindy, and it was the police, not the
Socialists, who began it.’ To whom the Beak said,‘ Who art thou?’ And he
made answer, ‘£ am a poet, and my name is ——.’”]

HE ‘‘idle singer of an empty day,”
A busy scuffler in a merry mill!
Where were ye, sisters of the twofold hill,
At the sad hour of that ignoble fray ?
Asleep, belike, beside your sacred rill;
Far from the Thames Police Court anyway,

Well was it that ye were not by, O Muses!
Methinks I witness your amazement wild,

Hear your nine shrieks of ‘ William! Blows and bruises !
Policemen ‘running in’ our favourite child!

“* Apollo, the Averter! Can it be?
Is this, indeed, the nursling of our lap
Who strikes the breast and tears the helmet-strap
From the stout chin of K Four-sixty-three ?
Mauling and mauled! By what accursed hap
Do we our William in this changeling see ?
THE POET IN THE POLICE-COURT. 13

 

‘And who are these we find around our stray son,
Germans and Cockneys, long of hair and ear ?

What lungs! what jargon! Life and death of Jason!
What tagrag and what bobtail have we here?”

Ay, ladies, they are rough; but well I wot
That Folly is like Misery, and can make
Strange bedfellows; nor let your wonder wake

To find your son among this shady lot,

Since, if a man be froward and forsake

His birthright, the high gods forgive it not.

And the high gods designed your graceful poet
To sing, not croak—for swan and not for frog

Nor, so designing, will they, if they know it,
Let him unpunished play the demagogue.

Him they intended, past all sort of doubt,
To rhyme of old-world legend and Greek myth
Not to run Quixote-tilts at Adam Smith,
Not to orate among the rabble rout
Of knaves and loafers that you see him with,
The ring of this last pugilistic bout ;

Not, surely, to command a later Argo,
More rashly bound upon a voyage new,

With sails of dream and visionary cargo,
Ballastless hold and half-demented crew.

The Golden Fleece, indeed! We know too well
The Argonautai of that modern quest,
And quarry of their chase; which is, ’tis guessed,
14

THE POET IN THE POLICE-COURT.

 

None other than the serviceable fell
Wherein the civilization of the West
Has thus far found sufficient cuticle.

William, that ram will take a deal of chasing,
And, should you catch it, you would only find

A fleece made worthless in the very racing,
And with its gold all somehow left behind.

Were it not better that ye bare him hence,

Muses, to that fair land where once he dwelt,

And, with those waters at whose brink he knelt
(Ere faction’s poison drugged the poet-sense)’

Bathed the unhappy eyes too prone to melt,
And see, through tears, man’s woes as men’s offence ?

Take him from things he knoweth not the hang of,
Relume his fancy and snuff out his ‘“ views,”
And in the real Paradise he sang of
Bid him forget the shadow he pursues.

 
 

Ghe Forgiqn Garb,

[Jt was stated with disgust, by an orator at one of the meetings of the Irish
Industrial League, that many of the Parnellite Party were in the habit of
obtaining their clothes from Saxon tailors, hatters, hosiers, haberdashers, boot-
makers, &c. Mr. O'Mulligan had the flure, and here follows his speech.]

Wyre ! silence, me bhoys! for wid less of your noise
I shall speak wid the less of fatigue ;
And I wish ye to lear-rn certain things of concer-rn
To the Irish Industhrial League.

Listen here, thin, bedad! ‘twas a blow that I had
On that mornin’ evintful in June

When the Whigs (and bad scran to them) showed the ould man
That they niver would dance to his chune.

For I tuk up me post where Parnell and his host
Must pass goin’ homeward to bed,

And the divil a hand of that patriot band
Had an Irish-made hat on uz head.

No! not an O’Brine who’d walked out in the line
Of the Ayes through the lobbies to file,

Not a single O’Connor had done us the honour
Of wearing a National tile,
16 THE FOREIGN GARB.

 

In the hat of O’Hea (who might well be O’Shea)
There was open contimpt for the cause,

And Lalor that night, in his billycock white,
Was as ‘‘ foreign” in garb as our laws.

Then the Bluchers of Blane (I observed it with pain)
Were no kin of the coat that he wears,

And I fancy the socks of the iligant Cox
Were ‘exclusively English affairs.’’

Mr. Davitt ’tig said wears clothes Irish made,
And others send London-bought suits

To be althered in Dublin; while Sexton is throublin’
His counthry for one pair of boots.

Wid the greatest of pleasure we’d made them to measure
But that he’s forgotten to tell—

I suppose he must take ut we're certain to make ut
The size of the shoes of Parnell.

Thin, as to ‘the King,” why he hasn’t a thing
To the back of um, you may depend, |

That could iver be thought to have elsewhere been bought
Than at London’s accursud West-End.

O wirra! ochone! O ould Ireland, our own!
Is this their protection of you ?

Wid your native-bred labour all rooned by your neighbour
Hwhat good would your Parliamint do?
THE FOREIGN GARB. V7

 

Native industhry is it—with divil a visit
To hatters of Erin down-trod,

And a party that wears of boots eighty-six pairs
By the hands of our inimies shod ?

If we crowned our Uncrowned, by me sowl, I'll be bound
That his robes would be or-rdered from Poole’s,

That his crown would be made by the Birmingham trade,
And that Bond Street would fur-rnish his jools.

 
18

 

A Ballad of Purkiamentary Burdens.

[With apologies to Mr. Swinburne.]

ee burden of long speeches. Men shall smite,
With many words, the brass-bound box and red
Upon the Speaker’s left, and on his right
With yet more words, till the third hour hath fled
And thy heart fail for very drearihed,
And thy pulse flags, and all thy senses tire
And cry aloud ‘Let fewer words be said!
This is the end of every man’s desire.”

The burden of vain questions. One shall ask
Who voted for the guardians of Rathrogue,
Who spanked the boy at Ballywhiskycask,
Who mocked the parish-priest of Scullabogue ?
And thou, while with the buzzing of the brogue
Burneth thine ear as with a burning fire,
Shalt say ‘“‘ Suppress this monopolylogue !
That is the end of every man’s desire.”
20 A BALLAD OF PARLIAMENTARY BURDENS.

 

And when the Chair itself takes by-and-bye
To calling names, thou, as the named retire,

May’st well exclaim, ‘‘ And doth this satisfy ?
Is this the end of every man’s desire?”

Ewvot.

First Lord and Leader! these thy rules are good ;
But several pegs thou ‘lt have to serew them higher
If thou wouldst compass what is understood
To be the end of honest men’s desire.
21

 

On thy Cateh.

[In the month of August 1887, politicians of all parties learned with the
deepest regret and concern that Sir George Trevelyan, who had just before found
salvation” in Home Rule, had been robbed of a valuable watch at a political
meeting in Glasgow. The following conversation, overheard a week afterwards
in Whitechapel, has possibly no connection whatever with the above incident. ]

Ee Bill; you may ‘ave it! I’m glad of the ’umbuggin’
thing to be rid;

Take and give it the missis, or spout it, or keep it to quiet the
kid.

To bring ’ome such a duffer as this as the honly contents of the
sack

Is a blessed poor show, I’m aweer, for a journey to Glasgow and
back.

I prigged it, yer know, in the crowd as was emptyin’ out of the
‘All.

Off a cove in a dark suit of togs, middle-aged, neither stumpy nor
tall ;
22 ON THE WATCH.

 

And a jolly tough job it turned out! for be ‘anged if, however I
tried

(And I ain’t a bad ’and, as yer know, Bill) to get to the beggar’s
blind side,

I could manage to sneak up be’ind ’m; I tell yer, without any
joke, ‘

He appeared to be facin’ me both ways, did thisher extr’or’nary
bloke.

Hows’ever, I did it at last, Bill; but there! what a ticker to bag!

Why, a boy as ’ad faked his fust wipe would be downright ashamed
of sech swag.

Eh! Wadderyer say? Don’ it go? Ho, yes! my right honnerble
friend,

It’s go, and go over the left; it’s go with a hook at the end.

It’s go-as-you-please with this turnip, and wot’s more, it’s stop
when you like,

And though the blank thing’s a repeater, Lord knows what it’s
goin’ to strike.

A repeater as really repeats—that ’s the chap as I thought I had

got.

But thisher chronom. is a fraud, and strikes different as often as
not.

While as to it chimin’ the quarters—or leastways the quarter wot’s
past—

I’m blowed if I think it could tell yer wot quarter it pointed to
last.

Well, I showed it to Jimmy the Jumper—you know—as was onst
in the trade,

Ar! ’e knows a watch wen he sees it, my boy; e’s as sharp as
they ’re made !
ON THE WATCH. 23

 

And Jimmy declared as ’e know’d it; his guvnor ‘ad ’ad it to
clean ;

And ’e ses it’s Sir George Watdyercallhim’s—the cove as has
“gone for the green.”

Trevelyan? Ar! ‘im wot’s come back and is cuddlin’ the old ’un—
’cos why ?

’E got him knocked off of his perch down at ’Awick last year in
July.

Ses Jimmy, he ses :—‘ It’s like this; it ain’t no bloomin’ wonder,”
ses he,

“That the hours and the minutes don’t seem with the ticker
you ’ve copped to agree ;

For the gent as you prigged it off, Hartful, has, so his old pals
seem to say,

Been pretty well put to it lately to know wot’s the time o’ the day ;

His own reggilator ’s all wrong, I was told by a party as knew,

And his ‘ works,’ though they ’re pretty enough—well, they don’t
somehow make him go true ;

While the ‘ands wot were firm as the pointer that stiff on the sun-
dial sits

Are a wav’rin’ on this side and that, like the sails of a windmill in
fits.

Sir George ses ‘ the case’ has been altered; yet nobody sees it but

‘im ;

It’s the back is more likely amiss, J should think, if you asks me,”
ses Jim.

«And as to ’is watch,” hadded Jimmy, *‘ there isn’t a doubt, as I
sees,

That the thing’s ‘ad a shake—like its owner—and maybe a bit of a
squeeze ;
24: ON THE WATCH.

 

It’s the pressure, pre’aps, of a table—why there! why o’ course,
I'll be bound,

He’s got squeezed at that table that ‘im and his pals has been
settin’ around.”

Well, to cut Jimmy’s tale a bit shorter, he said it’s no go, and he
swore

That neither the watch nor Sir George would be never no good any
more,

And that them as ’ad any pretence to be knowin’ in watches and
men

Would be hactin’ the fathead to trust either ’im or his ticker agen.

So take it and spout it, or swop it, or do wot yer likes with it,
mate,

No more of that sort for your pardner. Give me your old family
plate,

As yer know where to ‘ave when yer got it, and doesn’t turn out
when it’s tried

Only solid and O.K. to look at, and worth next to nothin’ inside.

Or if yer must go for a ticker, best visit the fobs of the gents

Who ain’t quite so apt to be shook—with their watches—by public
ewents.

 
25

 

A Grand Of Cock—and Bull Story.

[The reader is respectfully requested to make a momentary pause between the
fourth and fifth words of the title of this poem. Otherwise that title might
convey the impression that the adventure recorded is imaginary. On the contrary,
it belongs strictly to the Canon, and not the Apocrypha, af Gladstonian Scripture. ]

AVE you heard the thrilling story—
Story of instruction full—
How our country’s pride and glory
Tackled a Bavarian bull ?

High above a rocky hollow
He was driving, Miesbach by,
When a bull, ‘‘ with herd to follow,”
Sudden made the horses shy.

No more grim obstructive figure
Ever barred a statesman’s way,

E’en when Mr. Joseph Biggar
Rises—near the break of day.
26

A GRAND OLD COCK—AND BULL STORY.

 

Vainly did the youthful drover
Hammer the contrary brute—
Taurus “visited” all over,
Stood as though he’d taken root.

Plunged the horses, mooed the cattle,
Ladies shrieked—alack! alas!
Never was there such a battle
For a small Bavarian pass.

Come, then, Muse of England’s story,
Are you ready? Now’s the time
This half-ancient deed of glory
To rehearse in deathless rhyme.

Pull yourself, O Muse, together,
For the hero’s years advance,

And ’tis somewhat doubtful whether
You will get another chance.

Eagerly as to a marriage
Trips the bridegroom booked therefor,
Lightly, lightly, from the carriage
Sprang the Grand Old Matador.

Gingerly as steals a trapper

Towards his prey among the trees,
In his hand a rug or wrapper,

Such as warms a driver’s knees,
A GRAND OLD COCK—AND BULL STORY. 27

 

Thus equipped, and giving wide way
To the bull, as best he might,

W. G. approached him sideway
From the margin of the height.

Then close watching, as was needful,
Those twin spikes that towered on high,
And particularly heedful
Not to catch the spiker’s eye,

Our illustrious statesman featly
Flung the unfolded shawl, which sped
Straight unto its mark, and neatly
Draped the monster’s threatening head.

Easy, then, the task to bind him
And to lead him down the vale,
While his “items ’’ flocked behind him
Placid at their leader’s tail.

Thus that G. a victor’s laurel
In some sense should claim is meet;
But he draws the strangest moral
From his bull-bewildering feat.

“See, our John’s Bavarian brother,
How like John,” says he, ‘he is;

Who would master one or t’ other
Takes him by the horns like this.”
28

A GRAND OLD COCK—AND BULL STORY.

 

What—like this? Approach him ‘ sideways,”
Bind a shawl his eyes upon ?

Yes! we own you ’ve always tried ways
Much resembling this with John.

You ‘ve bamboozled him and blinded,
And, when fooled and put to scorn,
Have let anyone so minded
Face the peril of his horn.

Often, often had you round him,
Eyes and ears, your mantle cast,

Till one happy day you found him
Wide awake, and failed at last.

 
 

Ghe Procipitate Grandmother,

[Zhe American press almost unanimously condemns the Crimes Bill as unneces-
sary and unwise—New York 'Telegram.]

Hossa Bieiow, loquitur.

HER’, Granny England! Ther’s a fix!
Ye see the mis’able persition
Thet comes of all sech foolin’ tricks
Ez suckin’ eggs without tuition.
Wut, marm! ye think to get the yolk,
Onguided, as a younger few do!
To act without consultin’ folk
Who know your business better’n you do!

"Twas thet demoralizin’ soun’,

I guess, of Captin Moonlight’s bullets,
An’ sight of law an’ order down,

With Paddy’s fingers on their gullets,
THE PRECIPITATE GRANDMOTHER.

 

That druv ye to this hasty move
To save sassiety imperilled
Before ye’d heard ‘‘ We du approve”’
From New York Tribune, Times, or Herald.

Wal, ef the thing is dun, it’s dun,
I on’y wish ye’d tuk occasion
To ask fer good advice from one
Who ollers uses morril suasion;
Whose way of tacklin’ dandered snakes
Is to perpitiate the critters
With hominy an’ buckwheat cakes
An’ pumpkin-squash an’ apple fritters.

Who smiles on wolves in hungry pack,
An’ sketters buns among ‘em busily,
Who ‘hands a buffalo-drove a trac’ ”’
An’ starts a hymn to soothe a grizzly.
Who kin but shake her head an’ weep
At ragin’ troops o’ catamountins,
An’ try for leadin’ them ez sheep
Thru pasturs green to pleasint fountins.

O yes! Ameriky to-day

Is all ther’ is of milky meekness
With nary rival in the way

Of Christian turn-the-other-cheekness.
An’ since she tuk the Quaker vow,

An’ gev up wallopin’ the nigger,
Whips nobody an’ nothin’ now,

Not ev’n creation—'cept in figger.
THE PRECIPITATE GRANDMOTHER. 31

 

Thet’s so! An’ ef you think you ’ve heard
Of sech like facs a diff’rent version,

Ef som’ on’ tells ye Fredum’s Bird
Kin do a little in Coercion ;

Ef som’ on’ talks o’ railway strikes,
Chicago bombs, an’ ses (oniruly)

Thet when she—and she ollers—likes,
Ameriky doos squelch th’ onruly ;

An’ thet with Anarchy she copes
By means of some sech little trifles
Ez provost-marshal’s gallers-ropes,
Ef not the sojers’ swifter rifles,
B’lieve me, he wrongs both hemp and shot.
Rebbles? You never shoot or noose ’em ;
Halters and rifles these are not,
But swings and popguns to amoose ‘em.

Yes, Granny! ’twould ben best to wait,
Before beginnin’ legal thun’drin’,
Advice from some impartial State
(Who wouldn’t have to pay for blund’rin’,)
Who’s no onpleasantness to face
From Irish crime an’ its promoters,
Nor aught to think of in the case
’Cept right-an’ wrong—an’ Irish voters.

 
32

 

Hungy it Dubibus.

[* Great wits jump,” as is truly and with originality observed in the subjoined
poem. Mr. Wilfred Blunt is not Coleridge; but his memorable account of the
dark plot against the lives of Irish agitators, which Mr. Balfour revealed to him
in the course of a conversation at Clouds, must have convinced everyone that Mr.
Blunt possesses a quite Coleridgian activity of fantastic imagination. ]

‘O it is pleasant (and ‘tis done with ease
* When months have passed, so quickly memory flies)
To make a chat at Clouds mean what you please,
And let your easily persuaded eyes
See serious projects issuing from the mould
Of playful converse; or, with head bent low
And wits askew, find villanies untold
Preparing ; then, an agitator, go
From stump to stump through noisy Paddyland,
Till, crammed with blarney, and with closéd sight
To facts all pikestaff-plain, on every hand,
By one idea possessed all day and night,
At last this fiction-bubble huge you see
Rise like the swelling of soap-suddery.”
FANCY IN NUBIBUS. 33

 

Thus, or to very much the same effect,
In gist and substance so—or nearly so—
Sang Coleridge, in a sonnet I select
As one which you, a poet, ought to know.
How great wits jump! How seems this casual lay
Of that poetic Proteus to belong
To you and your adventures! None would say
That you take step for step with him in song—
That were too much: no “ Ancient Mariner”
Floats through your brain, or in your bosom swells ;
Nor do I think that you are destined, sir,
To witch the world with other ‘ Christabels.”
But “ Fancy!” and “in nubibus”! Ah! there
You and our Coleridge make a perfect pair.

What saw you in that retrospect of Clouds ?
Less bright is yours than Coleridge’s mirage.
Dungeons and manacles—nay, tombs and shrouds—
Planks for all bed, skilly pour tout potaye,
And wasting forms of patriots affront
Your shuddering gaze; for such the vision stern
That your strange colloquy, good Mr. Bl-ni,
With Mr. B-lf-r gave you to discern ;
Such, and more dread than such—the despot’s glee
Who counts his scalps the Castle’s walls within,
And, gaol-report in hand, smiles fiendishly
Over th’ unfavourable bulletin.
These were the nubes which your fancy, freed
From sense’s trammels, traversed—dark indeed !
34 FANCY IN NUBIBUS.

 

Yet did that retrospect of Clouds disclose
Something more marvellous and fraught with awe
Than, gazing on the ever-shifting shows
Of Heaven amid his courtiers, Hamlet saw.
Grotesque, or so it pleased the Prince to feign,
Seemed him the nebulous shapes his eye that met,
Nor to the deference of the Chamberlain
Appeared they less fantastical; and yet
How feeble was that fancy which espied
Only the camel o’er the welkin sail !
How dull that glance that in the clouds descried
“But the lean weasel and the floundering whale !
When you in such piled vapours of the air
Found the weird Nest of the Mysterious Mare!

 
35

 

Ghe Capture of Hawarden OLithe,

[A new Border Ballad. Discovered shortly after Mr, Gladstone’s speech in

favour of the second reading of Sir Edward Wathin’s Channel Tunnel Bill in
1888.]

HAVE ye na heard of the bauld Watkin
And his borings under the silver streak ?
And how he ha’ nobbled auld Hawarden Willie
In Parliament House for him to speak?

“°O what will ye gie me, auld Hawarden Willie?
O what will ye gie to the bauld Watkin,
Gif he rats frae his party and votes na mair
To comfort and keep the fause Tories in ?”’

“O gif ye’ll do that for me, Watkin my man,
I’ll sell ye the rags of my statesman’s fame;
And I'll gie ye my vote for your Tunnel plan
But and a speech to support the same.’’
36 THE CAPTURE OF HAWARDEN WILLIE.

 

Then the good Sir Edward laughed fu’ loud,
And he winkit the lid of his leerin’ e’e,
“ But what will ye say to the Tory crowd
When they taunt ye with changin’ your mind?” quo’ he.

«They ‘ll bid ye remember the vote ye gied
In the Highty-five and the Highty-four ;
And what will ye say when they ask ye why
Ye gie not against me the vote once more?”

‘* Now haud ye your clack!” quo’ Hawarden Willie,
“Now haud ye your clack, Sir Edward,” he cried;
«Tis little, I trow, is the good ye ha’ got
Of the days and the years ye ha’ sat by my side.

“QO think ye a vote is a collar of airn,
Or a fetter of steel about my wrist ?
O think ye a word is a pebble-stane
That I canna’ swallow it when I list ?

« Fu’ mony a word stands now to my name
And mony, fu’ mony a Parliament vote,
But ne’er knew I vote that I could na’ ‘ explain,’
Or the word that would na’ gae down my throat.”

And Hawarden Willie has hied him hame,
And shut himself up, twa hours ago,

Alane with a volume of gay Hansard,
But and a file of the Times also.
THE CAPTURE OF HAWARDEN WILLIE. 37

 

And Willie has gane to the Parliament House,
To the Parliament House and has entered in,

To vote for the plan of the Channel Tunnél,
To speak for the Bill of the bauld Watkin.

And syne he told how he killed the Bill
In the Highty-four and the Eighty-five,

And syne he “explained” how in Highty and eight
He was a’ for keeping the Bill alive.

And he talked till the Parliament House was hung
With the saft grey mirk of a mental fog;

And it’s O! but the clapper of Willie's tongue
Wad talk off the hind, hind leg of a dog.

Sae Willie has worked with the bauld Watkin
That the land of Britain to France be tied,
And sae with Willie will Watkin work
To break her bonds on the Irish side.

But Hawarden Willie and bauld Watkin
Will wait, I trow, for a lang, lang day,
If Watkin waits for to hae his will
Till Hawarden Willie has won his way.

 
38

 

Helios and Oshgeanus.

[My excuse for republishing the magniiicent Ode that follows is simply that I
desire, if possible, to perpetuate the record of an actual historic fact of the
highest importance—need I say that I mean the G'reat Ruction between Mr. Tim
Healy and Mr. O'Shea ?—and thus to prevent, if possible, a new and unnecessary
addition to the already over-crowded catalogue of Solar Myths.]

INCE Malachi wrested, in legend of old,
From the Saxon invader—who’d had, we are told,
The bad taste to bedeck
His detestable neck
With so ‘loud’? an adornment—the collar of gold,
Sure ne’er has been seen such an iligant quarrel,
Or one more delightfully barren of moral,
Than when t’other day
Tim Healy the brave,
In a fig’rative way,
But without ‘‘by your lave,”
Laid a hand rude and rough
On the recreant scruff
Of that worse-than-the-Saxon invader of Galway
Who dared to compete
For that glorious seat,
HEALIOS AND OSHEEANUS. 39

 

oe

a

And though never “the man for’ that county, but alway
A mere hanger-on
Of the party, yet won;

Yes, won it and sits for it now—who but he,

With the airs of a patriot, Captain O’Shea ?

Says Healy last week (he was writing to Lynch,

Who was beaten for Galway contesting each inch),
O’Shea, now the need for concealment has passed away,
Clearly stands forth a political castaway,

Dares not be honest, and bluntly rebel,

But secretly counter-works Mr. Parnell.”

«¢ Aha!” cries O’Shea,
“Tt is easy to see’’—
(Now this is important and noted should be)
It is easy to see why this scurrilous Tim
Uses language so hot ;
Sure he hasn’t forgot
What a snub I administered lately to him
When a Doblun acquaintance, who thought we might cease
From hostilities, came,
And in Timothy’s name
Made overchures plain for a treaty of peace.”

Says Healy, ‘‘ What I?
Make ov—it’s a le!
Could you prove it, I’d don a white sheet for my clothing,
And Galway all through
I would canvass for you;
But meanwhile with contempt I regard you and loathing.”
40 HEALIOS AND OSHEEANUS.

 

Now, what said O’Shea,
And what answer made he
When thus given the l-e in his teeth, as you see?
Did he instantly send
(As one might recommend)
For his ‘‘ Dod,” and its pages look through for “a friend” ?
Sure, there he’d find plenty,
“Q’s,”’ fifteen or twenty.
‘O’Brien, O’Brien, O’Brien, O’Brien ”’
(Thus runs a division-list line after line) ;
“O’Connor, O’Connor, O’Connor, O’Connor ”’
(All men, we believe, of ‘unscrupulous honour’);
* O'Doherty, O’Hanlon, O’Hea,
O’Kelly, O’Mara, O’Shea.”’
There are yet other ‘O’s,”
Who, we’re bound to suppose,
Would support any ‘“O” against any O’s foes.
But no! ah no!
There was not any “O”
With a “ message” to Healy instructed to go.

Sprung each from the loins of an Irish king,
Not one of that band did a cartel bring,
Not even O’Hea,
Though he surely should be
The predestinate stay and support of O’Shea.
But the Captain just wrote,
A contimptible note,
A six-line affair, to explain, if you please,
That his Doblun friend’s meaning he didn’t quite seize,
HEALIOS AND OSHEEANUS. 41

 

And in thinking that Healy would overchures make,
He had fallen into—hem—well, a sort of mistake.
But this from an “0,” and a Captain too!
Impossible! No;
Ii can not have been so!
That tale for posterity never will do.

They “ll discern in its form a symbolical pith,
And regard the whole thing as a Healiac myth.
The Sun will, no doubt,
As Tim Healy come out—
Its spots as his failings, its rays as his ire ;
Sun-swallowing sea
Will appear as O’Shea
(Short form of Osheeanus) Eater of Fire!

And though it is hard to arrive at the notion
Of what they will guess
From Tim Healy’s success,
And the signal and utter defeat of the Ocean,
They ‘ll surely reject all historical claim
For a story which seems to put heroes to shame,
Or appears to impute
Any snub so acute
To an “0,” an ‘‘M.P.,” and a Captain to boot.

 
42

 

A Bulgarian Appeal.

[Those who have not forgotten in these rapidly-moving days the incidents of
that Bulgarian Crisis, which terminated in the abdication of Price Alexander of
Battenberg, will appreciate the perplexities which find expression -in the bitter cry
of this worthy divine.]

STATESMEN professed from the lands of the West,
Ye to whom not a move on the board can be strange,
O skilled, as I hear, your light vessels to steer
*Mid the shallows and rocks of political change !
An appeal to that skill you can hardly take ill,
Any tyro the aid of the expert may pray ;
And I think ’twould be nice if you gave some advice
To a simple Bulgarian Vicar of Bray.

There is none who less cares for our public affairs,
Or to whom it less matters who’s in and who’s out;
There is none, I aver, who ’d more warmly prefer
With the crowd which is plainly the largest to shout.
But the course of events such a puzzle presents
That I turn to more ripe politicians and say,
O ye statesmen professed from the lands of the West,
Do advise a Bulgarian Vicar of Bray !
A BULGARIAN APPEAL. 43

 

Last Sunday I rose from my couch of repose,
An adherent attached of our excellent Prince,
And I wished him long life, and all triumph in strife—
But I never have ventured to wish it him since.
For I heard before noon (not a minute too soon)
That the Prince had been kidnapped and sprited away,
And that homage was due to a Government new
From a prudent Bulgarian Vicar of Bray.

My allegiance I give, and I shout my “ Long live”
For our Clement and Zankoff, that patriot pair ;
Nay, and more, if you please, I go down on my knees
To the Russian who kindly arranged the affair ;
For the space of two days I am loud in the praise
Of the Czar, our Deliv’rer, our strength, and our stay.
Do you think me to blame if I thought it the game
Of a canny Bulgarian Vicar of Bray ?

But Tuesday arrived, and I scarce had contrived
To assure my position with Zankoff and Co.,
When the army pronounced, and the rebels were trounced,
And Zankoff and Clement got notice to go.
Now I beg of you just to conceive my disgust,
My profound disappoimtment, my utter dismay—
O ye statesmen professed, cowld I ever have guessed,
I!—a simple Bulgarian Vicar of Bray ?

But however that be, I ‘ll be shot if I see

Who will probably win and who probably won't ;
I'll be shot if I do, though it ’s equally true

That it ’s quite on the cards ] "ll be shot if I don’t,
44, A BULGARIAN APPEAL.

 

I might substitute Blank for the syllable “‘ Zank”

(For we ‘re all of us ‘ off”), and for ‘‘ Blank-off” hooray,
Till events should decree with what letters ’twould be

Best prefixed by Bulgarian Vicars of Bray.

Tirndva, indeed! I am sorely in need
Of some formula loyal as handy as that

Which an Englishman friend was so kind as to send
Superscribed : ‘Once a day—for the use of the rat.”

God biess our ruler and supreme commander,
God bless—no harm in blessing—Alexander.
But Alewander? Is he Prince or Czar?
God bless us all! how curious you are!

But, however discreet, such a form may not meet
The occurrence of two revolutions a day,
Which is lively enough to be sensibly rough
On a quiet Bulgarian Vicar of Bray.

Then, O statesmen professed—though indeed in the West
Revolutions allow you, they tell me, a week
Or a fortnight of grace for a right-about-face—
Yet, O Harcourt, or thou, Campbell-Bannerman, speak !
Assist, for you can, an unfortunate man,
Teach, teach him salvation, and show him the way,
And you ll go to your rest everlastingly blessed
By a grateful Bulgarian Vicar of Bray.

 
45

 

A Legleated Gruth.

[“ he Irish tenant is the best rent-payer in the world.”—MR. GLADSTONE. |

DETEST, I abhor paradoxical statements,
I seek not to startle but strive to persuade ;
Propositions requiring the slightest abatements
Are not propositions I ever parade.

Hyperbole gives but a transient pleasure
(What stomach on spice or on stimulant thrives ?) ;
"Tis the word that is chastened by rule and by measure,
The strictly, the sternly weighed truth, that survives.

Let others delight in the wildly audacious,

The purposely strange, the aforethought perverse ;
Unassumingly accurate, drily veracious,

The truisms others despise I rehearse,

And I therefore remain with this mild proposition,
This quite unadventurous dictum content—

That the Irishman tenant, whate’er his condition,
Is best in. the world at the payment of rent.
46

A NEGLECTED TROTH.

 

For the cause, I pretend not, I own, to define it;
It may be the contract itself that strikes awe,

Or it may be, perhaps, more correct to assign it
To general, impartial respect for the law.

Or, as piety ’s closely connected with morals,
"Tis possibly due to religious restraints

That refusals of rent and agrarian quarrels
Are wholly unknown in the Island of Saints.

Peradventure that principle firm that we see is
So slow to rebel against honesty’s yoke

Represents the wise teachings of Kellers and Sheehys,
The fatherly counsels of Walsh and of Croke.

But, whatever the reason, with confidence fearless

I state—as a truth from which none will dissent—
I repeat that the tenant in Ireland is peerless

All tenants among in the payment of rent.

It is only in England, in England anarchic,
That “scenes at evictions” distress and alarm,
And that legal officials with ram and crowbar kick
The tenant recalcitrant out of his farm.

"Tis in England alone (or profoundly I err if
"Tig elsewhere than here) that the ‘stirabout’’ pan
Ever seethes on the hob for the head of the sheriff,
Or pitchforks repulse the Emergency man.
A NEGLECTED TRUTH. 4?

 

"Tis in England alone that Her Majesty’s lieges
Of lawlessness quite so outrageous give proof;
"Tis in England alone that ejectments are sieges,

And bailiffs get in through a hole in the roof.

But in Ireland the peace of the Queen is unbroken
By strife such as we in this country lament,
For in Ireland the tenant displays every token
Of eager delight in the payment of rent.

His passion for solvency knows no assuagements,
Although, with a view to correct its excess,

We have cancelled his debts and revised his engagements,
And made his starved landlord take constantly less.

No; still he will fill the proprietor’s coffers,
And every attempt to restrain him is vain ;
He has even declined the benevolent offers
Of those who proposed him the Plan of Campaign.

Thus deaf to incitements and blind to seductions,
Immovably proof against threat and intrigue,
He regards with disgust the immoral instructions
That issue at times from the National League.

And he tells the base tempter who fain would have bribed
him, .
He values more highly by hundreds per cent.
The distinction of being, as I have described him,
“The best in the world at the payment of rent.”

 
48

 

Ghe Raporter’s Tarqwell.

[The growing distaste of a pampered newspaper-reading public for the simple
“ sensations” which satisfied their fathers in the Silly Season is lamented with
manly pathos in the following lines. ]

E sat within his lofty den,
Above the swarming Strand,
His idle stylographic pen
Held idly in his hand.

‘Whose is the fault ?’’ he sadly cried,
“That unemployed I sit ?
Am I less ready to provide
My marvels? Not a whit!

“No! here at hand the record I
Of many a portent find,
Such as has oft in days gone by
Enthralled the public mind.
THE REPORTERS FAREWELL. 49

 

“Here has a trusty pen revealed
To all the wondering town
How lately in a Kentish field
A shower of frogs came down.

« Another tells, from actual view,
How an EHast-Anglian ram
Has been presented by an ewe
With a two-headed lamb.”

He paused a moment; then resumed—

«And, last and greatest, see,

Within yon punch-bowl barely roomed,
The Enormous Gooseberry !

«‘ What more could a reporter ask ?
What more could readers seek ?
Should I not find my daily task
Here for at least a week ?

“But, no! I try in vain as yet ’—
He laughed a bitter laugh—
‘‘From all these ‘items’ here to get

A single paragraph.

“ Sub-editors my ‘ pars’ reject,
And some have half confessed
That such-like matter, they suspect,
Has ceased to interest.
50 THE REPORTER'S FAREWELL.

 

“Ah! simpler tastes of earlier days !
Ah! manners of the past!
When every autumn found amaze
In wonders of the last.

‘None pleases in this restless hour,
Save who can track with skill
The Minister’s mysterious tour,
Or draft the undrawn Bill.

“To match my arts I venture not
With their devices new ;
My day is done, my bolt is shot;
Adieu! vain world, adieu ! ”’

Then, as his stylograph he drave
Through his despairing breast,

Far off, above the Western wave,
A monster reared its crest.

And, ‘Art thou gone,” it feebly whined,
“Thou who with graphic pen
My convolutions hast entwined

Around the hearts of men?

“Tf thou art gone whose graphic skill
Has kept my fame alive ?
Shall I, the creature of thy will,
Ingloriously survive ?
THE REPORTERS FAREWELL. 51

 

‘Never! no more by moonlit night,.
All in the waning year,
Shall my gigantic length affright
The voyaging marinere.

‘“No more in future anywhere
Shall masters or shall mates
The merry affidavit swear
At British Consulates.

“Never again, when things are flat,
And journals cry for food,
Will I supply half-columns pat.
Farewell! I’m off for good!”

And, with a wail that filled the breeze
And thrilled the distant shore,

The Serpent of the autumnal Seas
Sank, to arise no more.

 
52

 

A Symbolic Awaking.

[Shortly after one o'clock, while Mr. Gladstone was addressing a full House,
@ momentary sensation was caused by the movements of an hon. member sitting
immediately behind Ministers, whose neighbours were gently holding him. The
Prime Minister paused in his speech to discover the cause of the prevailing excite-
ment, and Dr. Lyons was proceeding to the relief of the apparently distressed
member, when the latter suddenly recovered consciousness, having sumply been
attacked by nightmare whilst sleeping. At 1.45 the House divided, and Mr.
Gladstone's Administration, which had survived Majuba Hill, Penjdeh, and
Khartoum, fell upon a “ wine-and-beer” amendment to the Budget.]

eee: whose medical skill and dexterity,
Aided thy friend with such kindly celerity,
Aid us to save from oblivion his name !
Let not, O let not, the mantle of mystery,
Balking the Muse of our national history,
Veil that symbolical slumberer’s name!

Leave not surmise in conjectural crudity ;

Nothing we knew but this fact in its nudity,
How while, debate drawing near to its close,

Gladstone was eagerly striving to dominate

Reason with railing, this member innominate
Sank, overcome, into troubled repose ;
A SYMBOLIC AWAKING. 53

 

How, when anon, as in fit paroxysmal he,

Struggling convulsively, groaning right dismally,
Laboured like one with a ponderous load,

Anxious companions alarmed at his agonies

Found that Dyspepsia, deadly night-hag, on his
Bosom, a burden unbearable, rode.

This we have heard; but the rest is obscurity.
Fain would we sift for behoof of futurity
Much in these things that significant seems—
What were the horrors his slumbers presented; him ?
What were the tortures that rent and tormented him ?
What was the terrible stuff of his dreams ?

Ghosts of his principles was it that taunted him ?

Shade of his country’s slain honour that haunted him ?
Dreamt he perchance of some confidence vote ?

Which of the pledges the man had been swallowing

Choked this backslider from Gladstonite following,
Stuck in this weak Ministerialist throat?

Or do I, may be, consider too curiously ?

Might not this dreamer distraught have been furiously
Wrestling with spectres more feared in our time ?

Since on the benches, Whig party, that you cumber

Conscience oppresses less gravely than cucumber,
Lobster avenges more sternly than crime.

Rebel digestion, or outraged morality ?
Let it be either ; he claims immortality
Who on that fatal ninth morning in June
54

A SYMBOLIC AWAKING.

 

Threw off an incubus so emblematic, so
Hateful, and woke in a way so emphatic, so
Apt, so appropriate, so opportune.

Parliament, look at him! Nation, take note of him!

Truly, I think, what the newspapers wrote of him,
Mighty germane to your cases appears ;

You who at last upon rhetoric surfeited,

Finding what measure of wisdom and nerve it hid,
Wake from your hag-ridden slumber of years.

Surely de vobis narratur hee fabula,

Save that, alas! to awake will no tabula
Rasa create in the national mind.

Penj-deh, Khartoum, are no fancied fatalities,

Shame and disaster are solid realities,
Millions dispersed leave a record behind.

Still, for the rest, the division united you,
Senate aroused, with the man who incited you
Thus by a symbol your duty to do.
Late was the hour, but ‘twas better than ‘‘ none o’ clock,
Praise we, then, next to this waker at one o’clock
Those who awoke at a quarter to two.

 
55

 

Ghe Qartyr’s Gweed,

[That the heroic idea enshrined (however unworthily) in the following lines did
actually suggest itself to an Irish Board of Guardians is certain. Whether it
was ever carried out or not, I have been unable to discover.)

ERIN ochone! when you come by your own,
And your Parlymint House is restored,
On your beadroll of fame sure yell scribble the name
Of the Clerk of the Kildysart Board.

The Garjins had met, and forninst them was set
On the table an iligant bale

With the pattern displayed of the suit that was made
For the hero of Tullamore Gaol.

Then said Misther Macmahon without hummun and ha’un,
“‘To the Board I’ve a plan to propose
That will serve as a sign to our noble O’Brine

That his country remembers his woes.
56 THE MARTYRS TWEED.

 

“’Twould be only correct as a mark of respect
If the Garjins to order agreed
Vests, trousers, and coats by unanimous votes
Of this neat and historical tweed.”

Said the Chairman: ‘“ Bedad! an injanious lad,
And a thoroughly practical plan ;

And all Garjins, I’m sure, who are patriots pure,
Will go in for these suits to a man.”

“But, begorra!’’ says Breen, “such a move, to be seen,
Must become universal, no less,
And our dittos of tweed must, in fact, supersede
Every other description of dress.

“Every Garjin, in fine, ought to dress like O’Brine,
Hanging all other clothes on their pegs,
Save the pattern of vest on his resolute breast
And of breeks on his stoical legs.”

So said and so done; for the Board every one
Ordered suits of their tailors straightway,

And in Ireland’s dear name they have begged that the same
Be sent home by the earliest day.

Then, says Walsh from the chair (he’s the boy to be there,
You'll agree, when his cuteness you mark):
“Tt’s a proud man this day that I am at the way
You have taken the hint of our clerk,
THE MARTYRS TWEED. 57

 

“Tis a thribute of grace to the gim of our race,
But ”’—and here the ould boy tipped the wink—

‘We will none of us grudge just a bit of a nudge
To our home manufactures, I think.”

So the Board they cried ‘‘ Yes,” and they hoped that the press
Would ‘do justice” to what had gone by,

And, considerin’ how grand is the subject to hand,
It may be the poor divils will try.

But I ask ye what print that may act on the hint
Will in doing us justice succeed ;

When our Garjins appear from the Boyne to Cape Clear
Clad in suits of the Tullamore tweed ?
58

 

A Qolle Catchword.

[Radicals are given to unseemly jesting about the elevation of brewers—or at
least of Conservative brewers—to the peerage. Perhaps there 18 something wrong
tn the politics of the Tory beer-maker : for certainly no Tory brewer-peer ever
justified his ennoblement like Lord Burton, who, at a moment of despondency
for his party, suddenly reanimated their spirits by providing them with a
batile-cry worthy of their intelligence. |

Was partisans political long down upon their luck
Have reached their final spark of hope, their final grain of
pluck,
In such a day of blank despair, such hour of devils blue,
What wonders of revival may a word in season do!
*T was thus we felt at Hanley when, on Monday of this week,
Lord Burton, as Lord Granville’s introducer, rose to speak,
And through our melancholy ranks the thrilling signal ran,
“We mean to go in solid for the Grand Old Man! ”

O battle cry inspiriting ! if such was ever heard,

Lord Burton, good Lord Burton, let us thank thee for the word ;
To go in solid for the cause how noble! (though, ’tis true,

We must hope at next election that you'll go in liquid too).
A NOBLE WATCHWORD. 59

 

But “ go in solid for the cause?”—nay! nay! we had forgot.

No causes now, no principles; ‘‘ measures’ have gone “to pot.”
And in their place has come the simple independent plan

Of those who “go in solid for a Grand Old Man!”

What rectitude! what virtue with intelligence combined !

How eminently worthy of a reasonable mind !

Ah Heavens! that improvement such as this on ancient ways

Had but dawned upon our fathers in the old pedantic days ;

What pains it would have spared them from our point of view to
start,

What wrestlings of the spirit, and what searchings of the heart,

Could they have settled all their doubts as their descendants can,

By merely ‘ going solid for a Grand Old Man!”

Their instincts must have recognized the progress that is made
When labour-saving processes our politics invade ;

They surely would we cannot doubt have welcomed, as they ought,
So excellent a substitute for time-consuming thought.

And, had they had a leader for such high devotion fit,

Instead of here a wretched Burke, or there a feeble Pitt,

The heart must have completed what the intellect began,

And made them ‘‘go in solid for some Grand Old Man!”

Then let us bless the modern art which led us to invent

This triple-hided shield against the darts of argument,

This panoply impervious to all weapons of the brain

Which Logic, Prudence, Common Sense, Experience, smite in
vain.

Thrice armed, the poet says, is he who hath his quarrel just

But he is ten times armed who takes its justice upon trust,
60 A NOBLE WATCHWORD.

 

Nor need they fear the foremost place in controversy’s van
Who are pledged to ‘go in solid for a Grand Old Man ”

No longer shall the Unionist disturb us and perplex ;

No longer shall his questions pose, his grave misgivings vex ;

No more shall sceptics such as he “‘ with shadowed hint confuse

A life that leads harmonious days ” without the bore of views.

O blessedest repose of mind! O peace beyond belief!

When once the conscience has been placed in keeping of the chief,
And all one’s duty lies within that comfortable span

Defined by “ going solid for a Grand Old Man!”

We heed not now whoever tries our faith to overwhelm

By stale objections to a disarticulated realm,

Or queries how with Parliaments convoked on College Green
We contemplate maintaining the imperium of the Queen.

If Chamberlain or any one of his seceding Rads

Should bother about Ulster’s rights or air their other fads,
Our answer ever ready for the pertinacious clan

Is ‘‘ We mean to go in solid for the Grand Old Man.”

Nay, even if inquiries take a more offensive shape,

And indicate an inference from which there ’s no escape;

If censors say that who obey Lord Burton’s rallying-word

Accept a solidarity with Egan and with Ford,

We care not, we; but, unabashed, with foreheads proof to shame,
We brazen out the charge, and our reply is still the same,

That, stewing though we feel we are in our Parnellian pan,

We “ mean to go in solid for the Grand Old Man.”

 
 

With a Dillgrence.

(“I wear the same uniform.”—SiR WILLIAM Harcourt at the Eighty
Club.

‘* T WEAR the self-same uniform,”
Said he, amid applausive thunder,
From all, save one, who through the storm
Sat mute, a type of speechless wonder.

Entranced he let the cheering pass,
He added nothing to the babel,

He clinked no fork against his glass,
He rapped no fruit-knife on the table.

Intently as the ‘‘ masher ’’ plies
O’er all the stage his double-barrel,
That Hightyer mute had fixed his eyes
Upon his honoured guest’s apparel.

“ He says it, and it must be true,
No falsehoods here are ever uttered,
And if that uniform were new,
He would not say ’twas old,” he muttered.
62

WITH A DIFFERENCE.

 

‘‘ And I, no doubt, am wrong, because,
Besides the tricks my memory plays me,
My eyesight isn’t what it was,
And now and then, I own, betrays me.

‘‘ And yet—and yet—I look again,
And my conviction is not shaken;
No! I was right. In vain, in vain
I try to think myself mistaken.

“TI was not wrong. No! I ’ll be shot
If I—that is, I don’t mind swearing
That H-re-rt’s uniform is not
The one I used to see him wearing.”

The feast was o’er: the puzzled guest

Had sought his couch and tried to slumber ;
But vainly strives that brain to rest

That unsolved mysteries encumber.

Could he have been deceived that night ?
Could memory have devised such treason ?
Must he lament his failing sight ?
Nay, must he tremble for his reason ?

Or, worst of all, where all was bad,
And scarce with sanity consistent,

Must he conclude that H-re-t had
Told—well—affirmed the non-existent ?
WITH A DIFFERENCE. 63

 

What he! the flower of knighthood—he
The mirror and the mould of honour
For all that noble companie,
From stern P-rn-ll to bowld O’C-nn-r—

Gladstonian chivalry’s jine fleur,

Whom for a Bayard his great heart meant,
Hero reproachless—(and sans peur,

Since he has left the Home Department)—

He, whom the Club its standard made
Of moral and of mental stature ?
“No! that indeed,” thé Hightyer said,
“‘ Would shake my faith in human nature.”

Yet still the dark suspicion lurked,

And with the growing dawn grew stronger ;
Upon the Eightyer’s mind it worked,

Till he could bear his doubts no longer.

He sprang from bed at half-past eight,
Huddled in haste his morning suit on ;
Hailed a fleet hansom at his gate,
And hurried to the street of Bruton.

« Admit me to Sir William’s room !
T bring him news of gravest presage ;
Express from Derby I have come,
Charged with a most important message.”
64 WITH A DIFFERENCE.

 

A footman waved him up the stair ;

He followed where that menial beckoned
(Which footman ’twas he’s not aware,

But rather thinks it was the Second*).

He bounded to the upper floor,
Into the bedroom he was rushing,
When lo! a youth appeared, who bore
The statesman’s coat downstairs for brushing.

‘«The very coat! Good heavens!” he cried;
Then, as amazement put to rout words,
He seized it, scanned its outer side,
And swiftly turned it inside outwards.

“Of course, it is the simplest case,
One glance suffices to declare it.
There! look at that now outward face ;
"Twas that side out he used to wear it.

“IT see! He spoke the truth last night
In what he said while we were dining ;
"Twas the ‘same uniform’ all right,
Only I didn’t know the lining.”

* The one who will live in history as an indiscreet purchaser of flowers at a
contested Oxford election.

 
65

 

An Appeal and a Roly.

[Rising nationalities continue to find a difficulty in understanding some of the
little ways of a risen nationality like ours. Mr. Gladstone's four petitioners,
whose appeal is set forth below, quite evidently believed in good faith that an
English statesman is the same man in Office that he is in Opposition. ]

Tue Appran.
ITANCHEFF, Caltchoff, Stoyanoff, and Tontcheff,
Deputies four Bulgarian, invoke
Him who once forth so gloriously shone, chief
Chosen of Heaven to redeem us from the yoke.

Good Mr. Gladstone! Wherefore are you silent?
Why has that voice so powerfully raised

Once for our race, not a solitary cry lent
Yet to the cause of the people that you praised ?

Grave is the crisis, arrogant the Kaulbars,
Hard is the road towards freedom which a Czar
’Gainst our advance with his autocratic scowl bars,
Ugly all round our circumstances are.

Everything, therefore, indicates a season

Most opportune for your pleadings to be heard ;
None can deny we have admirable reason

Just to entreat one sympathetic word.
AN APPEAL AND A REPLY.

 

Will you not save our threatened independence ?
Russia reveres you; Russia will retreat.

Haste, then, and drive from the country you befriend hence
Those whose attempt is to bring her to their feet.

Have you not warned Great Powers other lands off ?
Can we forget that messenger you sent

(One of ourselves—his name, we think, was Handsoff)
Once to Vienna to bid Austria repent ?

Send then, O send, that wonder-working agent,
Set him at Kaulbars, tell him what to say,

Gently to the General to moderate his rage hint;
Help him pack his traps up, and take himself away.

Speak! we proclaim you, as in days bygone, chief
Chosen of Heaven to protect us from the foe;

Whereunto witness the signatures of Tontcheff,
Kitancheff, Caltchoff, Stoyanoff, below.

Tue ANSWER.

Stoyanoff, Tontcheff, Kitancheff, and Caltchoff,
Flattered indeed with your homage should I be

(Though to such heights as a pagan might exalt Jove
You, it would seem, are for elevating me).

Austria, true, certain independent lands off

Once did I warn; but, it’s right that you should know,
He whom you style my wonder-working Handsoff

ook the name of Pensiondoff many years ago.
AN APPEAL AND A REPLY. 67

 

Still, your complaint is that, if it has your lot been
Never thus far to the Muscovite to bow,

Thanks none to me ‘tis; since my voice has not been
Raised in your cause—well, you shall hear it now.

Boldly I say then, Russia should relax her
Grip; her little hands—see Dr. Watts’s hymn.
Naughty, naughty Kaulbars! you should hurry back, sir,
Home, or the late Czar’s glory you will dim.

Deputies, there now! How is that for fearless ?
Have I not raised that voice for which you call ?

No? Not enough? Your visages are cheerless—
Raising my voice, then, means that I’m to bawl?

Agitate, write, in renewal of the glories
Won in the days when I Beaconsfield withstood ?
What should I gain? Why, a “ ditto”’ from the Tories,
Salisbury’s thanks—what on earth would be the good ?

Deputies, no, then! Speech would be my duty
Only if English parties disagreed,

Then would I back you stoutly—that’s the beauty,
Don’t you perceive, of the English party creed ?

Yes; but to stump my country for the Bulgar
Just at this moment—such a time to choose
That would be—well, at the risk of seeming vulgar,
What’s your native idiom for ‘‘ another pair of shoes” ?

 

5 *
68

 

A MQauly ‘Protest.

[Called forth by the entertainment of Mr. Parnell in May 1888, as the guest
of the Eighty Club—followers of the statesman who had a few years lefore
entertained the same gentleman at Kilmainham.]

(Cuawiss, loguitur).

I AM honly a waiter as waits on the Heighty ;
Yes, that is the dooty of yours to command ;
The position ain’t high, and the perks isn’t weighty,
But still, I was proud of my place, understand.

I had stood by the hinfant Society’s cradle,
And ’ailed its hauspicious political morn ;

I had ’arked to the praise which, with—Lord! what a ladle,
They sloosed the young ’ead of the ’appy new-born.

I have watched o’er its groath with peternal imotion,
I’ve welcomed its guests since its bankwets began,

I have frothed up the fizz of George Joeykin G-sh-n,
And ’ung on the words of our Grandest Hold Man.
A MANLY PROTEST. 69

 

Though I morned o’er the sizzum when ’Art-ngt-n left us,
I lived on the ‘ope of our ’ealing the breach,

And I fancied, pore fool! that the quarrel as cleft us
Would never be widened by haction or speech.

So conceive what I feel—for a waiter has reely
Some feelings, I venture the ’auty to tell—

When I see the old Heighty ’ob-nobbing with ’E-ly,
And toasting, O "Evans! his leader P-rn-ll.

Why you might have (by George) knocked me down with a
toothpick
As flat as a pancake when ’Ald-ne arose,
And I ’eard with dismay that hingenuous youth pick
The words which he used his guest’s ’ealth to perpose.

“We are proud of ’im’”—‘ proud” was the startling expres-
sion—
“Were proud of Charles Stewart P-rn-ll.”"—I declare
That the sinnical coolness of such a confession
Well—quite made me blush to the roots of my ’air.

‘Ho! proud! ho indeed! were you proud of ’im, ’Ald-ne,”
I cried, in the bitterness deep of my sole,

«When civilization’s resources were called in
To give your new pal his three months of Black ’Ole” ?

Do yer think I’ve forgotten the cheering and clapping
That greeted the Old un’s ’istoric erang

About ‘‘ marchin’ to disinte—something through rapping,’
And what a stout chorus the Heightyers sang ?
70 A MANLY PROTEST.

 

Ho! proud of ‘im, eh? What, the chap as you thrust with
His mates into prison? That’s rather too bad!

May I ask of you, gents, if the pride as you bust with
Hextends to the treatment your ’ero has ’ad?

Ugh! ’Ero? Why, ’ang it, if that is his title,
A rum sort of rank for yourselves it insures ;
The question it raises for you will be vitle—
If ’ero’s his name, what the doose must be yours ?

If ’e ’as a right to be sippin’ his claret

And chewin’ his holives as snug as you please ;
If ‘e ‘as a right to his seat in that chair, it

Is you should be fastin’ and down on your knees.

’Tis for you to fall proan and in abjick repentance
Seek parding of ’im you’ve so ojusly wronged,
And to ’umbly solicit ‘is leanient sentence,
As one to whose party you've always belonged.

Yes, it’s prostrate you should be, and, though it may ‘urt you
To hear the truth pushed so remoarselessly far,

It is thws—in the heye of political virtue,
Good faith, and good sense—that, by jingo, you har!

But never for Chawles! To the traitors and plotters
Whom once he denounced he would scorn to Ko-too ;

So, shaking the dust of your shame from his trotters,
He bids you a cold and disdaneful ajoo.

 
71

 

Ge Voice of Hactivn.

[** We are at least safe in assuming that at such a period as the present the
voice of faction will be little heard. We are convinced that this will be so.’—
“ Daily News,” writing on mid-Egyptian Difficulty.

Of course it was so; and that good old Radical game, in which Ministers
Jirst appeal to the patriotism of the Opposition to help them out of a hole
gratuitously entered, and then, when helped out, deride all proposals of inquiry
into their blunder as so much “ academic” exercitation, was once more suc-
cessfully played. ]

H, LISTEN, Whigs and Tories gay!
For and against the Grand Old Man,
Give ear unto my humble lay
Perpend the tale of Dick and Dan!

They were a simple Western pair
As ever put the mules along

By words of well-directed prayer
And moral suasion with a thong.

Two friends whose friendship’s placid sky
No cloud of strife e’er swept across,

Save this, that each would rather die
Than own his partner to be boss:
72

THE VOICE OF FACTION.

 

Nor could be brought by much debate,
And reasons, and revolvers, shown,
To think the driving of his mate
Was half a patch upon his own.

One day, upon a mountain road—
Dan, for the time the charioteer,
Reckoning the track a bit too broad,

Or running things a bit too near—

Off slipped the leader of the team!
Another, and one more, and lo!

Three mules hung struggling o’er the stream
That foamed a thousand feet below.

Then Dick, alighting in a trice,

And hanging on the waggon’s end,
Strove verbally to prejudice

The eternal future of his friend.

I think one well-known wicked word
Spared no corporeal part of Dan—
I would not, if I could, record
The language of that Western man.

‘Give up the whip!” he fiercely cried,

‘‘Give up the whip, ye derned galoot!”

“Richard,” the other meek replied,

“Ts this a moment for dispute ?
THE VOICE OF FACTION. 73

 

“Now, when one mule’s entangled leg
Keeps the whole biling from the abyss ?
Let controversy’s voice, I beg,
Be hushed at such an hour as this.

“Turn, like a loyal comrade, to
Haul up the brutes, and make them skip;
Time enough, then, for me and you
To quarrel who’s to have the whip.”

Dan’s tone was dignified and mild,
Dan’s eye looked brotherly reproof;
For very shame, however riled,
Dick couldn’t sulk, and hold aloof.

By words of power and sheer dead-lift
They got one mule upon the track,

And, cutting one poor beast adrift,
They dragged the other floundering back.

Then they jogged on; but when again
Dick raised his point, his mate’s retort
Assumed a wholly different strain ;
Dan took him up extremely short.

“Tis true,” he said, ‘my gentle son,
You helped to hoist the team in crossing
That nasty bit; but now it’s done,
And still you claim to do the bossing!
74 THE VOICE OF FACTION.

 

“The situation ain’t the same,
Nor yours a practical suggestion ;
Ye want to raise a what’s-’is-name ?
A ‘purely ackydemic question.’

‘“‘D’ ye think I can’t drive through a gorge,
Because a blamed mule tries to leap it?
Give up to you, Dick! no, by George!
I’ve got the whip, and mean to keep it.”

O ye who drive the team of State,
Ye Liberals of light and leading,
Your organ bids you imitate
This simple Western man’s proceeding,

Err bravely! Sin like men of stuff!”
The safer blunderer ’s the bolder;

So that the smash be big enough
To force your mate to lend a shoulder.

Invoke the patriotic soul

Of Englishmen; that’s how to do them.
Hush critics while you ’re in the hole,

And when you’re out again pooh-pooh them.

So shall poor Dick each chance let slip, .
Self-baulked until too late for action,

And Dan triumphant keep the whip
Secure against the ‘‘ voice of faction.”

 
75

 

An Pistoricat Parallel.

eee parallels, everyone finds,

Have a singular charm for ingenious minds
And the more when the likeness one claims to descry
Doesn’t rudely obtrude on the popular eye,
When it bashfully lurks out of average sight,
And requires to be dragged head-and-ears to the light :
Like that parallel subtle we owe to the wit
Of our good D-ly N-ws between Gladstone and Pitt.

Mr. Gladstone and Pitt the historian must strike
(More especially Gladstone) as strangely alike,

For the Radical journalist tells us, you see,

That in mind and in acts the two statesmen agree.
Nay, further, and this providential appears,

The resemblance begins with their earliest years ;
For that Gladstone’s named William we all must admit,
And what other name did his sponsors give Pitt?
76

AN HISTORICAL PARALLEL.

 

Content with a likeness that dates from the font,

He might ask you with reason, What more do you want ?
But no! for his theme he proceeds to expand,

While fresh illustrations grow under his hand.

Pitt quoted his Virgil with promptitude apt,

Such quotations our Gladstone has frequently capped ;
So that skill at this kind of rhetorical hit

Is a new point of contact ’twixt Gladstone and Pitt.

Would you more? Do you still the similitude miss ?
He can carry the parallel further than this.

Mr. Gladstone’s a woodman, and early and late

His axe-strokes resound through the Hawarden estate ;
While at Holwood—two H’s observe, if you please—
Pitt went out with Wilberforce cutting down trees.
How ’s that for coincidence? Surely they fit

Like a hand and a glove, Mr. Gladstone and Pitt.

That they differ in some immaterial respects

Goes, of course, without saying to one who reflects,
All likes are unlike, omne simile est

Dissimile; so have logicians expressed

A doctrine which whoso considers unsound

Must the “like” and ‘ identical” crudely confound.
If our Gladstone, for instance, one easily sees,

Had resembled our Pitt in such matters as these—
Had he won for us glory, not sold us to shame,
And exalted, instead of abasing, our name;

Held aloft o’er all Europe, with resolute clutch,
That flag that he struck to a handful of Dutch;
AN HISTORICAL PARALLEL. 77

 

Had he faced undismayed the most dread of our foes,

Not turned our left cheek to the feeblest of blows;

Had the characteristic displays of his ‘‘ form”

Been in weathering, rather than brewing, the storm ;

Had he rallied a party, not split one in twain;

United an empire, not rent it again ;

Had he died in his prime, and laid low by a stroke

Which had reached, through his country, the heart that it
broke,

And not, as he has, left the seventies behind,

With nothing, except a lost place, on his mind—

In a word, had our two famous statesmen possessed

These features in common, as well as the rest,

The result had been awkward; for devil a bit

Could we then have distinguished ’twixt Gladstone and Pitt.

 
78

 

“Go “Hriqnblies” whout ta “Furnish.”

[Zhe troops are much pleased at the receipt of the order to withdraw from
Merawt, which has, however, excited the greatest alarm among the natives who
have been friendly to us, and who now anticipate that they will be attacked by
the tribes favourable to the Mahdi. All the British Government stores have
already been sent down in boats, but many useful articles have been presented to
the friendly natives.—Daily Paper.]

WEET sound the bugle notes that tell
Of England, home, and beauty,
To ears of soldiers who have well
Performed the soldier’s duty ;
Though wondering, now that it is done,
Why in the world it was begun.

One little cloud, however, throws
Its shade o’er our departing,
Reflected from the looks of those
Spectators of our starting,
The gloom upon whose brows denotes
The danger of their threatened throats.
“TO ‘FRIENDLIES’ ABOUT TO FURNISH.” 79

 

Yet, mourning friendlies, you may find
Of comfort just a particle

In this, that we shall leave behind
Full many a useful article

To stock your simple desert homes—

Until the dreaded Mahdi comes.

Nay, weeping still? Come dry the tear,
My little Arab mannikin,
And carry to your mother, dear,
This serviceable pannikin ;
And give her, too, this railway lamp,
Such as we soldiers use in camp.

You also would I fain console,
O too desponding fellah,
With this well-seasoned wooden bowl
And Japanese umbrella ;
And bid you these blue goggles take—
I wish them rosy for your sake.

That handsome youth who seems not yet
Inclined in life to setile,

May most appropriately get
This handy bachelor-ketile.

He may not live, I’m half afraid,

To meet his destined Arab maid.

This pocket-comb and sandwich-box
For treasures may with some pass,

As also may these carriage-clocks,
The rug-strap and the compass.
80 “TO ‘FRIENDLIES’ ABOUT TO FURNISH.”

 

And I will add to them, I think,
This little phial of marking-ink.

Yon girl’s acceptance I would ask
(How grandly health has built her! )
Of this stout wicker pocket-flask
And patent carbon-filter.
You, sir, will not reject, I hope,
This packet of carbolic soap.

With this ingenious coffee-pot
My gifts are almost told all,
But I had best complete the lot
With this—a ‘ traveller’s hold-all” ;
Since to escape the Mahdi you
May have some travelling to do.

And now farewell! and when bereft
Of our oft-vowed protection,

Let the appliances we ‘ve left
Suggest this fair reflection—

That certain things you have secured,

Whose value is, if small, assured.

For, though by you our name accurst
Ne’er save with scorn be spoken,

The word of England, flawless erst,
That we have pledged and broken,

Is, after all, you must perceive,

The only worthless thing we leave.

 
81

 

A Sad Case.

[Extract from the diary of an independent politician for December 1888.]

WENT to see an old M.P.—1 will not now delay
To give his name and party, but will call him Mr. J.—

And as, when last I met him, he was hearty, hale, and gay,
I was shocked to find him looking pale and ill, and old, and grey.
But when I asked, ‘‘ What ails you, Sir? Why look you so distrait?
Why rolls your eye so vacantly ?” conceive of my dismay
At hearing him make answer, in a sort of dreamy way,
“‘ It’s Mandeville and Mitchelstown, Kinsella and Killeagh.”

I said to his physician, that distinguished man, Sir A.,

‘* No confidence professional I ’d tempt you to betray ;

But this I fain would ask you: if you can, and if you may,
Relieve my grave anxiety about your patient, pray.”

The doctor did not hesitate my wishes to obey ;

The wits of my unhappy friend, he said, had gone astray,
In night by night assisting at the interminable fray

Re Mitchelstown and Mandeville, Kinsella and Killeagh.
82 A SAD CASE.

 

No words that Iam master of my horror will convey

At such a cause assigned to such an intellect’s decay ;

To think of the extinction of our reason’s godlike ray

Beneath T-nn-rian ribaldry and C-nyb-rian bray.

It seemed to me impossible—and yet I murmured “ Nay,”

A man must be compact indeed of more than mortal clay

To stand an endless dose, through D-ll-n, §-xt-n, and ‘‘ Tay-Pay,”
Of Mandeville and Mitchelstown, Kinsella and Killeagh.

It seems that when my poor friend’s mind first happened to display
Its earliest indication of internal disarray,

The first sad proof that Sanity was parting with its sway
Occurred when—Mr. Speaker having said ea cathedrd,

“The clerk will now proceed to read the Orders of the Day ’—
My friend upstarted wildly, and as wildly shouted “Eh!”

And declared that at the table he had heard the official say,

‘«« They are Mitchelstown and Mandeville, Kinsella and Killeagh.”’

Since then his anxious friends have tried his mania to stay
By many new expedients, but none are found to pay ;

For every noise, indoors or out—the clatter of a tray,

The rattle of an omnibus, the rumble of a dray,

The creaking of a waggon with its load of winter hay,
The piping of a bullfinch, or the screeching of a jay,—
They one and all recall the sound of B-lf-r brought to bay,
Re Mandeville and Mitchelstown, Kinsella and Killeagh.

 
83

 

Our Ghoicg of Hercules.

[Suggested by a scene in the House of Commons on Monday, December 3,
1888.]

HEARD an ancient sage
Denounce with senile rage
One who, with half-closed eyes, sat mute beside him,
And answered not nor stirred
For any fiery word
Of the irate accuser who decried him.

But, while around him played
Fierce lightnings of tirade,
I saw down-drawn across his profile frontal
His tilted hat repose
Upon his bridgéd nose,
In changeless angle to the horizontal.

I saw upon his breast
His beard luxuriant rest,
Unsinged of those vituperative rockets,
Wild noun and furious verb
All powerless to disturb
The hands deep-buried in the trouser-pockets.

6 *
84,

OUR CHOICE OF HERCULES.

 

I noted most of all
How that a line let fall
In vertical descent before the oration
Met the extended toes
On its impassioned close
At the self-same degree of inclination.

And while behind the man
The rhetorician’s clan
Acclaimed their leader,: shouting “ Gl-dst-ne, go it!”
Why, then, methought I read,
Under a light new shed,
A certain passage in a Latin poet.

The ardor that has stung
That loud-declaiming tongue,
The frenzy of those factious heats that blind him,
Runs it not through and through
(I said) the apostate crew,
Jubentium prava civium behind him ?

And that impassive form,
Unmoved beneath the storm,
Who doubts—who questions how to judge and place him ?
What patriot’s eye so dim
As not to see in him
The justum et propositi tenacem ?

Ah, yes! here waits for us
That myth of Prodicus,
That once takes shape in act for every nation;
OUR CHOICE OF HERCULES. 85

 

The types foreshadowed there,
In that contrasted pair,
Stand to all realms for Ruin and Salvation.

And in the book of fate
For every earthly State,
Even as for Rome and Athens so for Britain—
As she her fateful choice
Shall make ’twixt empty Voice
And solid Character—her lot is written.

 
86

 

A Vuotty Question.

[At the Autumn Revision of the registers in 1885, a vote was claimed by a
certain occupier in St. James's Parish. The Parliamentary boundary, following
that of the parish, cut, it appeared, right through the claimant's house, so that his
shop was in the Strand Division, his bedroom in St. George’s.]

Air—“* Tue Revisinc Barrister.”

I.

Y hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men’s has done through sudden fears.
No instantaneous mental shocks
Have silvered these ambrosial locks,
And if they now no longer are
The envy of the utter Bar,
If now they shame the white horsehair
Of the forensic wig I wear,
It is that I have vainly wandered
In mazes of bewildered thought
And long and desperately pondered
A point with hopeless puzzles fraught.
A KNOTTY QUESTION. 87

 

For of all tough conundrums yet

(Or should it be conundra) set
Revising Barristers to solve,
The riddle that I now revolve

Has ne’er, I think, its equal met.

Il.

"Twas strange indeed, and passing strange,
That Fors should thus
With Terminus
The Parliamentary bound arrange
Which separates on either hand
Our fair St. George’s from the Strand ;
Strange that that line should take its way
Right through the house of Mr. A,
And that while B, and C, and D,
With cases clear as that of E,
At once a plain allegiance own
To one or other, A alone
Between the Strand and fair St. G.’s
Stands like a choosing Hercules.

Il.

Nay more; the limit that divides

Th’ electoral areas coincides

With the mysterious bounds that keep
That road of strife,
Our waking life,

From the forgetful fields of sleep.
88

A KNOTTY QUESTION.

 

The Strand A’s busy day employs,

St. George’s rules his leisured joys;

To the loud Strand the hours are given
When blazes Sol in midmost heaven,
But when the shades of evening close,
St. George’s wooes him to repose.

In short (this style of thing to drop),
The Strand division holds his shop.
Tis there his till its gains engorges ;
His little bedroom ’s in St. George’s.

Iv.

But which of these should qualify,
Counter or couch, I know not, I.
My way unable to discern,
The knotty question I adjourn.
And while my slow decision pends,
Doubt everywhere distracts his friends.
No canvasser of either name
Dares to neglect his double claim ;
The Strand’s election agents stray
Into his shop, and day by day

Quite casually trade ;
While nightly, ‘neath his window, choirs

_Of those who pull St. George’s wires

Pour forth the serenade.

Vv.

Yet which of these should qualify,
Counter or couch, I know not, I.
A KNOTTY QUESTION. 89

 

For was it in the toils of day
This privilege accrued to A?
And did it into being start
Amid the clamours of the mart ?
Or was it in those softer hours
When man resigns his waning powers
To Sleep, the universal friend—
Was ’t then that the electoral right
Had birth, and in the sacred night
Did Fitness, like a balm, descend ?

VI.

I know not, I, but when I read
Some demagogue’s distracted screed
Fulfilled of phantasies, meseems
That truth to tell
A man may well
Vote for the place in which he dreams.
But yet, again, when round about
The hucksters of the Caucus shout,
And party leaders pass me by
In eager traffic for a cry,
Why then, indeed, I feel with shame
That if by trade
The member ’s made,
The shop should found the voter’s claim.

 
 

Gly Arbitration on the Bultic.

[The following piece has been reprinted, not so much on its own merits as to
remind the King of Denmark of a fact which seems to have entirely escaped his
memory—to wit, that he has never yet taken any proceedings in the cause of
“ England v. Russia re Penjdeh,” so solemnly referred to his arbitration by Mr,
Gladstone in July 1885. Surely it is time to “wake him up,” tf the colloquialism
may be pardoned, and ask when we may expect the award.]

F Christian styled the Ninth
Sing the much enhanced renown,

As a potentate who twin’th
Sprigs of olive in his crown.
We can never thank that Prince half enough
For his willingness to bear
All an arbitrator’s care
In adjusting the ‘ Affair
Komaroff.”

Like “leviathans” who float

Som unprofitable mine,

Gladstone pressed the credit-vote,

With an eloquence divine,

On Committee of the House deeply moved.
It was April 27,

And the millions were eleven,

And the member for North Devon

Quite approved.
THE ARBITRATION ON THE BALTIC. 91

 

And none in England blushed

To anticipate the sell

When, the vote of credit ‘ rushed,”

"Twas another tale to tell.

“Arts of hoax!’ the Tories cried, but in vain;
For once more our standard dips,

And from disappointed lips

The indignant murmur slips,

“Sold again!”

“Again! again! again !

On the old surrender tack

To go sneaking to the Dane

With an England at your back!

Is this to be the end of the ‘ boom’ ?
Is the flag we saw you nail

In the dust again to trail ?

Tell us why you’re turning tail,

And to whom!”

Out spake our Premier then :

“Tig demands, not flags, we wave,

And we’ve asked the King of Den-

Mark appearances to save ;

Greatly daring, arbitrate—that’s the thing!
Though ‘twould wound two nations’ pride
If on our or Russia’s side

Gallant officers were tried

By the King.”
92

THE ARBITRATION ON THE BALTIC.

 

Then Denmark blessed our chief,

Who could such a plan propose ;

But observed with some relief

That the incident must close,
Anyhow, without appeal to the sword:
Since the parties to the suit

Had no actual dispute,

Nor could either execute

The award.

So joy, Old England, raise !

For the thing is settled quite,

And long will be their days

Who are careful not to fight.

Their empire they perhaps may survive:
Though I fear they rang the knell

Of the Afghan troops that fell,

And who really might as well

Be alive.

‘‘ Brave hearts! we’re on your side!’’

(That is what, you know, we said),

So they went and fought and died,

Very possibly misled.

Lightly wheel the desert vultures o’er their grave,
While the Khushk all mournful rolls,

And the mountain wind condoles

With those unsuspecting souls

Of the brave.

 
93

 

A Frost Consolation.

[Zhe testimony of those who know Ireland best is that in the most disturbed
districts, such as that part of Kerry where poor Tangney (the man recently
murdered) resided, the people are not in sympathy with crime, but in antipathy to
“+ foreign ” law.—* Daily News.”]

H™ true! and with what solace fraught!
But ah! to think that none was near
To whisper this consoling thought
In Patrick Tangney’s dying ear!

What dark suspicions held, who knows,
O’er that dim consciousness control ?
The very error you expose
May well have vexed that parting soul.

Dragged from his bed to meet the doom
That his imprudence had drawn down,

And done to death by men on whom
Their neighbours do not seem to frown,
94

A LOST CONSOLATION.

 

Tangney, one almost fears, believed,
At this most agitating time,

That County Kerry had conceived
A certain “sympathy with crime.”

And he, who might have passed in peace,
Died soured by just such sad mistake
As, in the hurry of decease,
A murdered man is apt to make.

Would, then, that you had been but by,
Sweet casuist of the London press,

To purge from mists that closing eye
To soothe that stricken wife’s distress!

In what a mood of holy calm
Might the poor victim have been sped,
Could you have poured the blesséd balm
Of your distinguo on his head.

As thus :—‘ No hasty judgment pass,
No sympathy with crime, I pray,
Impute to county or to class
That hides your murderers away.

‘« Reasoning constricted on these grounds

Must stand convicted of a flaw,
And with such sympathy confounds
A meie antipathy to law.
A LOST CONSOLATION. 95

 

«Think not that Kerry men aré fain
Your murder laudable to vote
No! ’tis not that they love the bane ;
They merely hate the antidote.

“Nay, slight not the distinction, friend,
In every Irish heart ’tis felt,
When antidote and bane contend,
As Saxon wages war with Celt.

“* And—though our souls, we don’t deny,
May from its abstract guilt recoil,—
At least the crime by which you die
Is racy of your Irish soil.

“With you a common birth it shares ;
Whereas the law which vainly tries
To check its perpetration wears
The Decalogue’s outlandish guise.

« That law’s sound principle I own ;
I challenge not its motive; still—
Knowing no Irishman brought down
That word to men, Thou shalt not kill,

‘©T cannot blame those Irish who
Will take the fact into account
That Moses was an alien Jew,
And Sinai a foreign Mount.”

 
96

 

Railways and Rickets.

[A fuller report of Mr. Gladstone's memorable speech at Connah's Quay.]

OULD you know what I think the chief reason has been
Which commends this new railway to me
That ‘“‘ The Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire’ mean
To throw over the waters of Dee?
I recked not at first of the wealth that is brought
In the track of the mineral car—
Not at all!—’twas a simpler and homelier thought,
A more sweetly domestic by far.
I rejoiced when I heard of the new line- of rails,
For it instantly struck me how quick its
Consignments of milk ’twould bring over from Wales
With a blessed effect upon rickets.

For ’tis milk I’m assured by a medical sage
Who has carefully studied such points—
It is milk which we need at the tenderest age
To avert this disease of the joints.
And inquiry pursued with a vigilant eye
In the suburbs of Glasgow revealed
That where’er there was lack—or no lac—in supply
There Rachitis was holding the field.
RAILWAYS AND RICKETS. 97

 

While, wherever the milk was abundant aud pure,
There the children were merry as crickets.

Who knows, then, but what the new railway may cure
That deplorable malady, rickets ?

You may smile at the thought, but I humbly submit
That the work I have named will afford
A beneficent object essentially fit
To enlist the concern of the Board.
On an errand of mercy I bid them go forth,
And would most deferentially urge
That they labour to rescue the homes of the North
From a genuine infantile scourge.
"Tis of them that our civilization should boast
As her pioneers, outposts, and pickets;
And they surely will shine-in that character most
When distributing milk for the rickets.

It is good, I admit, that the pale artisan
Into Wales in his thousands should pour ;
It is good to indulge the Welsh labouring man
With a brief Liverpudlian tour.
It is good that the mineral wealth that is hid
In the heart of the Cambrian hills
Should more freely exchange than it formerly did
With the fabrics of Lancashire mills.
But what are your limestone, your slate, and your coal,
Or your tourists with circular tickets,
Compared with pure milk in the nursery bowl,
And the family shielded from rickets ?
98 RAILWAYS AND RICKETS.

 

And now—your applause, ere the subject I change,
For the statesman as simple as great
Who can thus, o’er the humblest of subjects to range,
Condescend from high matters of State.
For to you, my dear friends, I will frankly impart
The conviction that grows with my days,
That I strengthen my hold on the popular heart
By these dear old grandmotherly ways.
No political question my steps shall confine
To its jungles, morasses, and thickets ;
I'll stroll through the meadows, and gaze at the kine,
And discourse—as you hear me—of rickets.

Yet, alas! I must own that I frequently find,
When I talk of the lacteal juice,
That distressing reflections occur to my mind
Of the word’s metaphorical use.
I recall the Seceders—that mutinous lot
(Whom, however, I do not condemn)—
And the terribly scanty supply that I got
Of thy milk, Human Kindness, from them.
And I think how, while Life and Death held for him still
Open wide their alternative wickets,
One drop might have rescued my poor little Bill
Who succumbed to political rickets.

 
99

 

Seu without Goust.

[On the occasion of the visit of two distinguished Gladstonian statesmen to
Dublin in the early part of 1888, a conversazione was substituted for the originally
proposed complimentary dinner. In pretended explanation of this change the
tongue of political scandal invented—as what will rt not invent ?—the malicious
rumour denounced as false in the impassioned lines that follow. ]

I ASSURE ye, Mr. Clancy, ‘tis a mere malicious fancy
This report about a banquet having been
Set afoot, and dropped by stealth lest we’d have to drink the
health,
After dinner, of Her Majesty the Queen.
Tis a slander diabolic that we ever meant to rollick
With our two distinguished visitors at all,
Or so frivolously féte any statesmen so sedate—
Ye might just as well propose a fancy ball.
I’ m unable to make out how the story got about ;
Give a dinner? How unlikely! how absurd !
Though my feelings I would smother, may I never eat another
If a soul in Dublin ever said the word.
But when Tim Maloney asked if my brains I hadn’t tasked
How to give our hospitality its fling,
Then said I to Tim Maloney, ‘‘ Hold a conversazione,”
And said Tim to me, ‘‘ Bedad! the very thing.”
100 TEA WITHOUT TOAST.

 

Both the jaynius of the race and the spirit of the place
Such a function better suits, we all agree,
And no patriot of desert ’ll prefer champagne and turtle
To a muffin and a simple cup of tea.
Yes, that that was all that passed on the subject, first and last,
That no dinner was proposed of any sort,
And that, save prefixed by “buttered,” the word “ toast’ was
never uttered,
I would readily make oath in any court.
It appeared to us a feast wouldn't help the cause the least,
And we settled that to give a ‘‘ crush” at nine
Would be greatly more effectual, and far more intellectual,
Than at six o’clock to, greatly daring, dine.
And we liked, we all confessed, such an entertainment best
As permitted us our wives to it to bring,
And, in fact, the verdict ran of the ladies to a man
That a conversazione was the thing.

They have never held the creed that to see their husbands feed
Is among the sights that elevating are,

And they want to know the heroes who denounce our modern Neros,
And whom now they only worship from afar.

Since to pay their homage, then, to these most distinguished men
Is a thing that they have set their hearts upon,

They will never be contented till they all have been presented
To the Marquess and Right Honourable John.

*T will be surely understood that all these are reasons good
Why no banquet in our programme finds a place,

For that such a formal function as a dinner or a lunction
Would have altogether failed to meet the case.
THEA WITHOUT TOAST. 101

 

But, be that, Sorr, as it may, I emphatically say,
And most firmly to the statement I will cling,
Our Committee, undivided and unanimous, decided

That a conversazione was the thing.

So ’t is monstrous to pretend, as they say you do, my friend,
That a banquet, never thought about, has been
Dropped—burked — suppressed by stealth, because we daren’t
propose the health,
After dinner, of Her Majesty the Queen.
Such suspicions trouble sorely the repose of Mr. M-rl-y,
As distinctly from his protest you may see,
While the worshipful Lord R-p-n has at once upon his lip an
Exclamation of offended loyaltee.
There are some who may be sorry that, although we give a
swarry,
We must leave the “leg of mutton ”’ biled alone
(And Sir G-rge Tr-v-ly-n wished, when the dinner should be
dished,
To supply the joint with trimmings of his own).
_ Yet I still protest and vow, you know all our reasons now,
*T is a matter of convenience at most,
Not because we view the mention of the Queen with apprehension
That we mean to give the tea without the toast.

 
102

 

rong Ayan!

[Mr. O'Brien will partake of no food which is not shared by his fellow-
prisoners ; mutton chops and white bread are discarded, and brown bread and
skilly are demanded. . . . He is, however, willing to compromise matters with
those who, as he complains, persecute him by forcing dainty viands upon a
hungry man, by consenting to partake of them providing Dr. Kenny, M.P., is
allowed to visit him, and certify that such victuals are necessary to his health and
comfort.—Daily Paper.]

ESIDE the untasted chop he sat,
With eye averse and visage stern
(T was delicately rimmed with fat,
And done—he knew. .it—to a turn.
But vainly lured its savoury whiff ;
His patriot nostril scorned to sniff).

A manchet of the finest flour
Gleamed purely white beside his plate
(And this was near the dinner-hour,
When sulks and hunger most debate) ;
But vainly, too, did this invite
That prisoner’s stoic appetite,
WRONG AGAIN! 103

 

The very warder shrank in awe

Beneath his lightning-glance of pride,
When that foul minion of the law

His rude persuasions would have tried ;
Though timidly he ventured still
To tempt the martyr with the grill.

“* Come, sir,” he said, ‘‘ take heart and eat;
"T is no neck-chop, but from the loin ”—
But, heedless of the smoking meat,
Still sat, with far-off look, O’Broin,
Gazing as though he read in dream
His country’s future through its steam.

“ Nay, pick a bit,” the warder urged,
‘‘No other prisoner fares like you.”
But there the hero’s wrath up-surged,
And fiercely forth his protest flew.
‘‘ Villain!” he cried in tones of pain,
“ Tt is of that that I complain.

“‘ How dared that thrice-accursed brood,
That execrable Castle set,
Insult me with superior food
To what the other prisoners get ?
Their insolence at nothing stops—
How dared they give me mutton chops ?

“And when as Irish unicorn
I with the British Lion close,
Know that my bitterest hate and scorn,
My malediction waits on those
Who, while I’m fighting with the Crown,
Give me white bread instead of brown,”
104 WRONG AGAIN!

 

The warder stared, and, puzzled sore,
Began to mutter words like these—
“ Political’ and ‘‘ Tullamore,”’’
And “ prison dress ’’ and “ sandwiches ”’ ;
Whereat—for saints are still but flesh—
The martyr’s anger blazed afresh.

“Dull tool of my dull tyrants thou !
Dost thou,” he wildly cried, ‘‘ not know
That what was then my right is now
The vilest wrong I undergo ?
I claim, and they concede me not,
The common malefactor’s lot.

“Take, then, that loaf and chop away,
And place brown bread and skilly there ;
Unless, indeed—as p’r’aps he may—
My doctor orders better fare ;
Out of his learning’s well-known wealth
He may prescribe it for my health.

«Tis Dr. Kenny, he alone
Who, I have vowed, shall doctor me ;
And even now, so time has flown,
He may be here—go, slave, and see!
But stay a moment ; while you ’re gone—
Yes—you may put the cover on.”

 
105

 

According to Guintg.

[‘‘ Their crime was to have given their constituents advice on a question of
rent.”—Mr, FREDERIC HARRISON on the imprisoned promoters of the Plan
of Campaign. ]

] HEN a gentleman whispers to Thady or Tim,
‘¢ You ’ve your rent in your hand ready counted, I see ;
But your landlord? You surely won’t pay it to him?
Impossible! No! hand it over to me!
Or drop me two-thirds of it into this hat,
And I'll do, I assure you, my utmost and best
To put off your tyrannical landlord with that,
And make the oppressor remit you the rest ;”’
When that ’s what a gentleman does—now, what—
Yes, what does that gentleman do ?
Does he aim at despoiling his neighbour or not ?
It looks so, to me and to you.
But the virtuous Comtist who seems to dissent
Calls it ‘‘ giving advice on a question of rent.”

And when upon Thady or Tim asking why
Shouldn’t tenants pay rent when they easily can,
Such gentleman hesitates not to reply
To the question of that unsophisticate man,
106

ACCORDING TO COMTE.

 

That the tenants who like being honest must place
Some restraint on that weak and improvident wont,
For fear that their acts should embarrass the case
Of that larger proportion of tenants who don’t ;—
When that’s what a gentleman does—well, what—
Pray, what does that gentleman do ?
Does he teach the upright to be swindlers or not ?
We should say that he does, I and you.
But the high-minded Comtist who seems to dissent
Calls it ‘‘ giving advice on a question of rent.”

And when he’s got Thady or Tim to annul
Obligations and duties they once held in awe,
And to run a misguided unfortunate skull
Against the stone wall of inflexible law,
And our gentleman sees them turned out on the road,
‘Whole gangs of his victims, his dupes in the lump,
But with never a thought on their sufferings bestowed,
Save as so many “horrors” to serve for the stump—
When that ‘s what a gentleman does—now, what—
Come, what does that gentleman do ?
Does he act like a heartless intriguer or not ?
Well, we think that he does, I and you.
But benevolent Comtists, who seem to dissent,
Call it “giving advice on a question of rent.”

Or when, that advice having failed of effect
On a Tim or a Thady to honesty wed,
Our gentleman bids that poor peasant reflect
That the curse of ‘the leper” hangs over his head ;
ACCORDING TO COMTE. 107

 

That none will accost him, and none take his hand ;
That, wherever his fellows for fellowship meet,
He will move in the midst of them scouted and banned,
At the fair and the chapel, in tavern and street;
When that’s what a gentleman does, then what—
Pray, what does that gentleman do ?
Is he playing the cowardly tyrant or not ?
Well, I should say Yes. Wouldn’t you?
But the Comtists, those foes to coercion, dissent ;
He’s ‘‘ advising,” say they, ‘‘on a question of rent.”

O philosopher, moralist, jurisconsult !
By whiche’er of those names we should name you aright.
Do you think you did well the Gladstonian cult
With philosophy, morals, and law to unite ?
I protest that I feel at an absolute loss
Our austere Mr. H-rr-s-n’s line to explain,
When he puts his exceedingly elegant gloss
On the tactics pursued in the Plan of Campaign.
Is he speaking as moralist, jurist, or what,
In expounding his singular view ?
For it can’t be philosophy. Is it, or not?
I don’t think it can be, do you ?
No! I know but one science with skill to present
Oppression and fraud as ‘advice about rent.”

 
108

A Degradgd Aytisan.

[‘« The English Workmen are degraded by the pipe, the Bible, beer, and ad-

miration for the upper classes."—Mr, CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM at the Marxist
Congress in Paris.]

ELL! blow me, if that ain’t a pretty story
For to pitch before a lot of Parley-voos—
Why, I’m bothered if there ’s any bloomin’ Tory
Who would care to be a-standin’ in his shoes.

The millenny—what d’ ye call it, ’s at a distance
So it seems, for any British working-man,

For I never in the course of my existence
Can have met an ‘‘ undegraded ”’ artisan.

I could say per’aps without the risk of libel
That I did once ’ave a mate of sech a type

As were not a-reading daily of his Bible—
But he was rather partial to his pipe.

I have known a few who ‘ates the upper classes
And who generally holds with Labbycheer,

But then, again, they ‘re used to take their glasses,
And have never got to ‘ate a drop of beer,
A DEGRADED ARTISAN. 109

 

Though you cut the ’bacca-shop where once there was tick,
It ain’t enough to drop your bit of smoke;

You must slate the bloated nobs and turn a Nostic
To satisfy this harbitrary bloke.

And there ain’t a bit of virtue in denouncin’
Of the classes in the parlour of a pub;

You must raise yourself by givin’ ’em a trouncin’
Over lemonide and corfy at the club.

Anti-bacca and teetotaller persuaded,
And a cove as lets the uppers ‘ave it ‘ot,
And a infidel a-top; and you ’re ‘‘ degraded ”’
Unless you somehow answer to the lot.

Well, thank yer, Mr. Cunninghame McGraham,
In the name of British workmen not a few,

And I ll tell yer, now you ’ve told us how you weigh ’em,
What a certain British workman thinks of you.

Self-improvement ’s all the go; I wouldn’t shirk it,
I should like to undegrade myself, I say,

And to teach my fellow-workmen how to work it,
But I’m blowed if I can say I see my way.

I could bring myself to do with nothin’ stronger
Than a cup of tea, and drop my pint of “four”;
I could cease to read my Bible any longer,
And I wouldn’t blow my ’bacca any more.
110 A DEGRADED ARTISAN.

 

But I couldn’t—no, I couldn’t—never ask me—
Make the other change you seem to recommend;
Such a heffort would completely overtask me,
So I’ll have to go degraded to the end.

For whatever other games they have to show you,
There will always be one workman who admires

Upper classes as can manage for to grow you
Such a lovely thing in silly Scottish squires.

 
il

 

[No one, it is true, is likely to forget why the projected National Banquet to Mr.
Parnell fell through—namely, because it was found impossible to hire a building
large enough to hold all those who wished to be present. Still, it has been thought
advisable to put that Real Reason on Record.]

FOR a Kubla Khan, who might
Some stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where we could idolize aright
The god of our idolatry ;
Some fitting fane wherein to swell
The praise of the Divine P-rn-ll!

London has many a spacious room
To lecture dedicate or song ;

But none will suit our monstrous ‘‘ boom ”’
And its participating throng ;

That multitude would find too small

Even the Agricultural Hall.

How could we undertake to dine
His worshippers’ unnumbered crowd ?
What should we charge per head for wine?
Or “grub,” if wine were not allowed?
What waiters find to draw the corks ?
What maids to wash the knives and forks?
112

THE REAL REASON.

 

How cater for the land at large,
And its Imperial gastric needs ?
Who would the functions dare discharge
Of carver, when a nation feeds ?
None its indictment can prepare,
Then how compile its bill of fare?

Or, were the banquet put aside,
And we content to merely ‘“ meet,”
Again we say, what hall so wide?
What room so spacious, we repeat,
As to contain (for that’s the case)
A gathering of the English race ?

Could we but roof the island o’er
From east to west, from north to south,
From Caithness to the Cornish shore,
From Holyhead to Humber mouth,
Sufficient room perhaps might be
In that commodious marquee.

But short of this we see not how
England can have her wishes met,
England all eagerness to bow
To him, of hostile purpose set,
And kiss the hand, in homage low,
Of her declared inveterate foe.

And this was why—and not because
Of any loyal doubting qualm

Lest our ‘‘God Save” should miss the applause
That greets its rebel rival-psalm ;

Nor yet because the Gr-nd Old M-n

Fought shy of it—we dropped our plan.
THE REAL REASON. 113

 

Nor yet was it because we feared
That, if that plan were carried out,
England might somehow have appeared

Not so entirely free from doubt;
Not quite so ready as were meet
To kiss the brand-new idol’s feet.

No, it was only—thrice we swear,

And what we swear three times is true—
The hopeless size of the affair

That caused the project to fall through.
Thrice, thrice we swear, it only fell
Because too many wished it well.

 
114

 

Juttl, Biller,

[An ‘Imperial Dream. The result of His Imperial Majesty's amusing him-
self with a volume of Thackeray’s Ballads on the eve of his recent auspicious
visit to this country. ]

- ee were three sailors of Bristol City ’—
He tried it again, but sleep made free,
And dreams of his own getting mixed with the story,
The ballad worked out like this, d’ ye see ?

“There was Gorging Jack from Central Asia,
Chockful of Turkoman bones was he,
And Puzzling Jimmy from over the Channel ;
And the youngest he was Little Billee.

“Says Gorging Jack to Puzzling Jimmy,
‘I feel extremely earth-hungaree’ :
To Gorging Jack says Puzzling Jimmy,
‘And a thirst for revenge has come over me.’

“Says Gorging Jack to Puzzling Jimmy,
‘Why shouldn’t we two chaps agree
For me to devour the Balkan Kingdoms
While you make a meal off Little Billee ?’
LITTLE BILLEE. 115

 

““«O Billy! we're going to kill and eat you,
So undo the button of your chemiie ’—
But just at this point the Imperial sleeper
Turned in his bunk uneasilee.

“«« First let me pay a complimentary visit,
Which my dear grandmamma expects from me ’—
‘Make haste, make haste,’ says Jack the Gorging,
As he whetted a Muscovite snickersnee.

‘“‘So Billy he called for an ironclad war-ship,
And with beef and biscuit he victualled she,
And off he set with his colours flying
All from the coast of Germanee.

«But he hadn’t got to the mouth of the Solent
When he cried out: ‘Ho! a friend I see;
And he’ll stand by me against Jack and Jimmy,
For there’s his fleet on the larboard lee.

“<¢Tt’s known from Jerusalem to Madagascar,
And to North and South Amerikee,
That there British flag a-riding at anchor
With Admiral Commerell, K.C.B.’

“So his friend fired guns, as he came aboard him,
To warn fat Jack and rebuke Jimmee;
But as for little Bill, they made him
An Admiral in the Queen’s Navee.,”’

 
116

 

Owe Bullides of Progress.

[ALr. Gladstone, moreover, during his youthful visit to the West Indies, initiated
reforms in another direction. One old man had the privilege of beholding Mr.
Gladstone in déshabillé, and saw with great delight and envy a buckle and strap
at the back of his trowsers. The craze for imitation is strong in the negro race,
and this ambitious slave never rested until he was possessed of a like mode of
keeping his nether garments in suspension. It is now the great solace of his
declining years that he was the first black man to take advantage of this com-
paratively insignificant comfort of civilisation. ]

“VT EMBER him, Massa?” A senile chuckle
Wrinkles a moment the time-worn cheeks ;
“Member him, Sah ?”—and the gnarled black knuckle
Screws out a tear ere the old man speaks;
‘“«’Pears like, Sah, I could count de weeks
Since I welcomed dat fine young chap,
Since I ’sclaimed, as I looked at his breeks,
‘He fasten dem up wif a buckle and strap.’ ”

Then did he tell how the strap and its buckle
Played in his sleep that night strange freaks ;
How he beheld in dreams, on his truckle,
“ Cibilization’s’’ dawning streaks ;
How that at last the truth outleaks,
Startling the land like a thunder-clap,
Till the old wife croons and the urchin squeaks,
‘‘ He fasten dem up wif a buckle and strap.”
TWO BALLADES OF PROGRESS. 117

 

Freely doth Civilization suckle
Tiniest child for her breast who seeks;

Straps may be “littles”’ that go to the ‘‘ muckle,”’
(Trowsers themselves were unknown to the Greeks),
First the old man, then his friends, then cliques,

Summon up courage to stand in the gap;

Last, the whole race triumphant shrieks,

“We fasten dem up wif a buckle and strap.”

Grand old nigger! Oblivion wreaks
Vainly her spite upon one whose hap
’Tis to have graven on Fame’s high peaks,
‘He fastened dem first wif a buckle and strap.”

Il.
Simplest of all most innocent races,
Youngest of Civilization’s chicks,
Happy are ye if, parting with braces,
Only a buckle the finger pricks.

Not so they, who in Highty and Six
Followed their chief when he burned his boats ;
You have but learnt your trowsers to fix,

Those white niggers have turned their coats.

You have but mimicked his harmless graces,
You have but caught his innocuous tricks ;

Pity those slaves who, with downcast faces,
Toil at the tale of the strawless bricks.
Spiritless items! faggoted sticks!

Hark to the sneer, as they range their votes
Under the Whip’s remorseless flicks,

«Those white niggers have turned their coats.”
118

TWO BALLADES OF PROGRESS.

 

‘‘ Snug,” mutters Scorn, ‘“ your driver’s place is,
He who his seat in the chariot picks ;
What about those who pant in the traces,
Look for no halfpence, live upon kicks
(Fittest return from the boot one licks),
Strain till they burst their bawling throats,
Get in their bent necks permanent ‘ cricks ’—
Those white niggers who turned their coats?”

Grand old ganger! to their politics
Tell us what parallel History quotes,
Wretchedest Toms and Harrys and Dicks!
Poor white niggers who turned their coats!

 
119

A Hltyht of the Flying Ong.

[“* The introduction of the battering-ram reminded him of the Siege of Jeru-
salem.” —Mr. CHILDERS at Edinburgh. ]

E were wondering rather what precedents father
The scenes late enacting, where brave C-nybore—

That agreeable rattle—is fighting the battle

Of tenants with tyranny down at Gweedore.
But our history’s page you might scan till the age

Of the patriarch vulgarly known as ‘“‘ Methusalem ”’ ;
Ch-ld-rs has hit on the parallel fit—

They “remind him,” he says, ‘‘of the Siege of Jerusalem.”

No saying so deuced instructive and lucid
Has ever ere this our discussions enlightened.
You’ve only to lay it to heart and to weigh it
To find your perceptions perceptibly brightened.
Or take it on trust (as the ignorant must,
Feeling sure Mr. Ch-ld-rs would never bamboozle ’em) ;
Everything’s plain, and no doubt can remain,
If you only remember the Siege of Jerusalem.
120 A FLIGHT OF THE FLYING ONE.

 

But Analogy’s highly retiring, and shyly
Declines to appear save on certain invitings,
And stones may be flying without their supplying
A text from the learned Josephus his writings.
No, it is not till then when emergency men,
If unbroken of pate and still able to use a limb,
(Cowardly pack!), have the ‘cheek’ to hit back,
That the struggle reminds of the Siege of Jerusalem.

It is not till the foiling of stirabout boiling

Has kindled the sheriff’s vile passions to fury,
And—cruelly eager in pushing the leaguer

By deeds that will damn him from Galway to Newry—
He, daring to strive from their homesteads to drive

Whosoe’er have incensed by their gallant refusal him
Bangs the door-jamb with a battering-ram,

That the incident smacks of the Siege of Jerusalem.

The use of these engines of landowners’ vengeance
May fairly awaken historic reflection,
And show, as they batter, a view of the matter
Which else might succeed in escaping detection.
But though through the air, I expect, here and there
Still the stones of the tenants, like those of the Jews, ‘ll hum,
Ch-ld-rs will find they recall to his mind
No suggestions at all of the Siege of Jerusalem.

If Gl-dst-ne were Titus, that fact might invite us
To look on the siege as another affair,

And for aiding the garrison young Mr. H-rr-son
Censure severe from Gladstonians would bear.
A FLIGAT OF THE FLYING ONE. 121

 

But bound as with cords to those Parnellite lords
Before whom they are daily performing a new salaam,
Certain I am that the battering-ram
Will be all they recall of the Siege of Jerusalem.

 
122

 

“Q Say Dot So!”

[« My utterances have of late been multiplied beyond what is desirable.” —
Mr. GLADSTONE. ]

SAY not so! Recall that word,
Conceived amiss and launched in haste,
In it your mood alone is heard—
Your mood, and not the public taste.

Desirable? ’T were little good
That word’s strict import to inquire ;
Men’s use and wont, men’s daily food,
That grows to be what men desire.

The wind that o’er the mountain blows
For lullaby the shepherd takes ;
Waves sing the seaman to repose,
When stops the mill the miller wakes.

And know that to our senses bears

That well-known voice you fain would save
The same relation as to theirs

The wind, the mill-wheel, and the wave.
“QO SAY NOT SO!” 123

 

Know that the post-cards that you pen,
The words you scatter by the way,
Are felt by all your countrymen
As part and parcel of their day.

Should you those “utterances” withhold
Wherewith you vainly think us cloyed,
Our breakfast-tables would be cold,
Our morning papers would be void.

The citizen would hie him thence
To plunge into the city’s strife,
Disturbed, and restless with a sense

Of something wanting in his life.

We do not ask what views you hold,
We need not know, we do not care;
All, all we need is to unfold
Our daily sheet and find you there.

You have become a habit—such

That we, its slaves, have ceased at last
To put it to our reason’s touch,

But only feel it binds us fast.

Ah! break it not, we pray you—don’t!
Respect our deep dislike to range,

Unmoored from this one rock of Wont,
The pathless, shoreless sea of Change.
124

“O SAY NuT SO!”

 

Nay, more than this—a debt you owe
To our conceptions of the fit;

Gl-dst-ne to wed with Silence? No!
Fancy declines to picture it!

And when you tell us that your mind
A union so unnatural plans,

‘he common conscience of mankind
Arises and forbids the banns.

 
ornell University Libra

Saturday songs.
PRUE

Senn

sald
cinta

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