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They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

And the music! The songs and the dances?

The tunes that time may not restore?
And the tomes where Divinity prances?
And the pamphlets where heretics roar?
They have ceased to be even a bore,—
The Divine, and the Sceptic who mocks,—
They are “cropped,” they are “foxed” to the core,
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

Envoy
Suns beat on them; tempests downpour,
On the chest without cover or locks,
Where they lie by the Bookseller’s door,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

William Schwenck Gilbert began as a youth his humorous

contributions to magazines, which included the immortal Bab
Ballads.
Ten years later he joined forces with the composer, Arthur
Sullivan, and the result of this collaboration was the well known
series of operas of which Trial By Jury was the first.
Gilbert is second to none in humorous paradoxical thought and
sprightly and clever versification. His themes, subtle and fantastic,
are worked out with a serious absurdity as truly witty as it is
charming.
THE MIGHTY MUST
Come mighty Must!
Inevitable Shall!
In thee I trust.
Time weaves my coronal!
Go mocking Is!
Go disappointing Was!
That I am this
Ye are the cursed cause!
Yet humble second shall be first,
I ween;
And dead and buried be the curst
 Has Been!

Of weak Might Be!

Oh, May, Might, Could, Would, Should!
How powerless ye
For evil or for good!
In every sense
Your moods I cheerless call,
Whate’er your tense
Ye are imperfect, all!
Ye have deceived the trust I’ve shown
In ye!
Away! The Mighty Must alone
Shall be!

TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE

By a Miserable Wretch.
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of Space
Roll on!
What though I’m in a sorry case?
What though I cannot meet my bills?
What though I suffer toothache’s ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
Never you mind!
Roll on!

Roll on, thou ball, roll on!

Through seas of inky air,
Roll on!
It’s true I have no shirts to wear;
It’s true my butcher’s bill is due;
It’s true my prospects all look blue—
But don’t let that unsettle you:
Never you mind!
Roll on!
(It rolls on).

GENTLE ALICE BROWN

It was a robber’s daughter, and her name was Alice Brown,
Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;
Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;
But it isn’t of her parents that I’m going for to sing.

As Alice was a-sitting at her window-sill one day

A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,
That she thought, “I could be happy with a gentleman like you!”

And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen;

She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten,
A sorter in the Custom House it was his daily road
(The Custom House was fifteen minutes’ walk from her abode).

But Alice was a pious girl and knew it was not wise
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes,
So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed—
The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.

“Oh holy father,” Alice said, “’twould grieve you, would it not?
To discover that I was a most disreputable lot!
Of all unhappy sinners I’m the most unhappy one!”
The padre said “Whatever have you been and gone and done?”

“I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,

I’ve assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad.
I’ve planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque,
And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!”

The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear—

And said “You mustn’t judge yourself too heavily, my dear—
It’s wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;
But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.

“Girls will be girls—you’re very young and flighty in your mind;

Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:
We mustn’t be too hard upon these little girlish tricks—
Let’s see—five crimes at half a crown—exactly twelve-and six.”

“Oh father,” little Alice cried, “your kindness makes me weep,

You do these little things for me so singularly cheap—
Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;
But, oh, there is another crime I haven’t mentioned yet!

“A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,—

I’ve noticed at my window, as I’ve sat a-catching flies;
He passes by it every day as certain as can be—
I blush to say I’ve winked at him, and he has winked at me!”

“For shame,” said Father Paul, “my erring daughter! On my word

This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.
Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand
To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!

“This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!
They are the most remunerative customers I know;
For many, many years they’ve kept starvation from my doors,
I never knew so criminal a family as yours!

“The common country folk in this insipid neighbourhood

Have nothing to confess, they’re so ridiculously good;
And if you marry anyone respectable at all,
Why, you’ll reform, and what will then become of Father Paul?”

The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,
And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown;
To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,
Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.

Good Robber Brown he muffled up his anger pretty well,

He said, “I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;
I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,
And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.

“I’ve studied human nature, and I know a thing or two;

Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do,
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small.”

He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;

He watched his opportunity and seized him unaware;
He took a life preserver and he hit him on the head,
And Mrs. Brown dissected him before she went to bed.

And pretty little Alice grew more settled in her mind,

She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind,
Until at length good Robber Brown bestowed her pretty hand
On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
 Francis C. Burnand, writer of many comedies and burlesques,
was a long time editor of Punch and wrote much of his best work for
that paper.
One of his most delightful songs, so successfully sung by the
Vokes family is:
 TRUE TO POLL
I’ll sing you a song, not very long,
But the story somewhat new
Of William Kidd, who, whatever he did,
To his Poll was always true.
He sailed away in a galliant ship
From the port of old Bristol,
And the last words he uttered,
As his hankercher he fluttered,
Were, “My heart is true to Poll.”

His heart was true to Poll,

His heart was true to Poll.
It’s no matter what you do
If your heart be only true:
And his heart was true to Poll.

’Twas a wreck. William, on shore he swam,

And looked about for an inn;
When a noble savage lady, of a colour rather shady,
Came up with a kind of grin:
“Oh, marry me, and a king you’ll be,
And in a palace loll;
Or we’ll eat you willy-nilly.”
So he gave his hand, did Billy,
But his heart was true to Poll.

Away a twelvemonth sped, and a happy life he led

As the King of the Kikeryboos;
His paint was red and yellar, and he used a big umbrella,
And he wore a pair of over-shoes!
He’d corals and knives, and twenty-six wives,
Whose beauties I cannot here extol;
One day they all revolted,
So he back to Bristol bolted,
For his heart was true to Poll.

His heart was true to Poll,

His heart was true to Poll.
It’s no matter what you do,
If your heart be only true:
And his heart was true to Poll.
 William Ernest Henley, though better known for his serious work,
waxed humorous, especially when making excursions into the
artificial verse forms.
VILLANELLE
Now ain’t they utterly too-too
(She ses, my Missus mine, ses she)
Them flymy little bits of Blue.

Joe, just you kool ’em—nice and skew

Upon our old meogginee,
Now ain’t they utterly too-too?

They’re better than a pot’n’ a screw,

They’re equal to a Sunday spree,
Them flymy little bits of Blue!

Suppose I put ’em up the flue,

And booze the profits, Joe? Not me.
Now ain’t they utterly too-too?

I do the ’Igh Art fake, I do.

Joe, I’m consummate; and I see
Them flymy little bits of Blue.

Which, Joe, is why I ses to you—

Æsthetic-like, and limp, and free—
Now ain’t they utterly too-too,
Them flymy little bits of Blue?

Robert Louis Stevenson’s humor consists in an extravagance and

whimsicality of thought and expression and is usually subservient to
a greater intent.
His delightful Child’s Verses show quiet roguery and humorous
conceits.
The lovely cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart;
She gives me milk with all her might
To eat on apple tart.

The world is so full of a number of things,

 I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

This original style of Juvenile verse, often imitated, has rarely

been successful in the hands of lesser artists.
James Matthew Barrie, one of the finest English humorists, may
not be quoted successfully because his work is only found in
sustained stories or plays, and few brief extracts will bear separation
from their contexts.
A short passage from A Window in Thrums will hint at the
delightfulness of Barrie’s humor.

A HUMOURIST ON HIS CALLING

Tammas put his foot on the pail.

“I tak no credit,” he said modestly, on the evening, I remember, of
Willie Pyatt’s funeral, “in bein’ able to speak wi’ a sort o’ faceelity on
topics ’at I’ve made my ain.”
“Aye,” said T’nowhead, “but it’s no faceelity o’ speakin’ ’at taks
me. There’s Davit Lunan ’at can speak like as if he had learned if aff
a paper, an’ yet I canna thole ’im.”
“Davit,” said Hendry, “doesna speak in a wy ’at a body can follow
’im. He doesna gae even on. Jess says he’s juist like a man aye at
the cross-roads, an’ no sure o’ his way. But the stock has words, an’
no ilka body has that.”
“If I was bidden to put Tammas’s gift in a word,” said T’nowhead, “I
would say ’at he had a wy. That’s what I would say.”
“Weel, I suppose I have,” Tammas admitted, “but, wy or no wy, I
couldna put a point on my words if it wasna for my sense o’ humour.
Lads, humour’s what gies the nip to speakin’.”
“It’s what maks ye a sarcesticist, Tammas,” said Hendry; “but what
I wonder at is yer sayin’ the humorous things sae aisy-like. Some
says ye mak them up aforehand, but I ken that’s no true.”
“No, only is’t no true,” said Tammas, “but it couldna be true. Them
’at says sic things, an’ weel I ken you’re meanin’ Davit Lunan, hasna
nae idea o’ what humour is. It’s a thing ’at spouts oot o’ its ain
accord. Some o’ the maist humorous things I’ve ever said cam oot,
as a body may say, by themselves.”
“I suppose that’s the case,” said T’nowhead; “an’ yet it maun be
you ’at brings them up?”
“There’s no nae doubt about its bein’ the case,” said Tammas; “for
I’ve watched mysel’ often. There was a vera guid instance occurred
sune after I married Easie. The earl’s son met me one day, aboot
that time, i’ the Tenements, an’ he didna ken ’at Chirsty was deid, an’
I’d married again. ‘Well, Haggart,’ he says, in his frank wy, ‘and how
is your wife?’ ‘She’s vera weel, sir,’ I maks answer, ‘but she’s no the
ane you mean.’”
“Na, he meant Chirsty,” said Hendry.
“Is that a’ the story?” asked T’nowhead
Tammas had been looking at us queerly.
“There’s no nane o’ ye lauchin’,” he said, “but I can assure ye the
earl’s son gaed east the toon lauchin’ like onything.”
“But what was’t he lauched at?”
“Ou,” said Tammas, “a humourist doesna tell whaur the humour
comes in.”
“No, but when you said that, did ye mean it to be humourous?”
“Am no sayin’ I did, but as I’ve been tellin’ ye humour spouts oot
by itsel’.”
“Aye, but do ye ken noo what the earl’s son gaed awa lauchin’
at?”
Tammas hesitated.
“I dinna exactly see’t,” he confessed, “but that’s no an oncommon
thing. A humourist would often no ken ’at he was are if it wasna by
the wy he maks other fowk lauch. A body canna be expeckit baith to
mak the joke an’ to see’t. Na, that would be doin’ twa fowks’ wark.”
 “Weel, that’s reasonable enough, but I’ve often seen ye lauchin’,”
said Hendry, “lang afore other fowk lauched.”
“Nae doubt,” Tammas explained, “an’ that’s because humour has
twa sides, juist like a penny piece. When I say a humorous thing
mysel’ I’m dependent on other fowk to tak note o’ the humour o’t,
bein’ mysel’ taen up wi’ the makkin’ o’t. Aye, but there’s things I see
an’ hear at’ maks me laucht, an’ that’s the other side o’ humour.”
“I never heard it put sae plain afore,” said T’nowhead, “an’, sal,
am no nane sure but what am a humourist too.”
“Na, na, no you, T’nowhead,” said Tammas hotly.

Sir Owen Seaman, present editor of Punch, is also one of the

finest parodists of all time. His humorous verse of all varieties is in
the first rank.
A NOCTURNE AT DANIELI’S
(Suggested by Browning’s A Toccata of Galuppi’s.)
Caro mio, Pulcinello, kindly hear my wail of woe
Lifted from a noble structure—late Palazzo Dandolo.

This is Venice, you will gather, which is full of precious “stones,”

Tintorettos, picture-postcards, and remains of Doges’ bones.

Not of these am I complaining; they are mostly seen by day,

And they only try your patience in an inoffensive way.

But at night, when over Lido rises Dian (that’s the moon),
And the vicious vaporetti cease to vex the still lagoon;

When the final trovatore, singing something old and cheap,

Hurls his tremolo crescendo full against my beauty sleep;

When I hear the Riva’s loungers in debate beneath my bower

Summing up (about 1.30) certain questions of the hour;

Then across my nervous system falls the shrill mosquito’s boom,

And it’s “O, to be in England,” where the may is on the bloom.
I admit the power of Music to inflate the savage breast—
There are songs devoid of language which are quite among the best;

But the present orchestration, with its poignant oboe part,

Is, in my obscure opinion, barely fit to rank as Art.

Will it solace me to-morrow, being hit in either eye,

To be told that this is nothing to the season in July?

Shall I go for help to Ruskin? Would it ease my pimply brow

If I found the doges suffered much as I am suffering now?

If identical probosces pinked the lovers who were bored

By the sentimental tinkling of Galuppi’s clavichord?

That’s from Browning (Robert Browning)—I have left his works at home,
And the poem I allude to isn’t in the Tauchnitz tome;

But, if memory serves me rightly, he was very much concerned

At the thought that in the sequel Venice reaped what Venice earned.

Was he thinking of mosquitoes? Did he mean their poisoned crop?

Was it through ammonia tincture that “the kissing had to stop”?

As for later loves—for Venice never quite mislaid her spell—

Madame Sand and dear De Musset occupied my own hotel!

On the very floor below me, I have heard the patron say,
They were put in No. 13 (No. 36, to-day).

But they parted—“elle et lui” did—and it now occurs to me

That mosquitoes came between them in this “kingdom by the sea.”

Poor dead lovers, and such brains, too! What am I that I should swear
When the creatures munch my forehead, taking more than I can spare?

Should I live to meet the morning, should the climate readjust

Any reparable fragments left upon my outer crust,

Why, at least I still am extant, and a dog that sees the sun
Has the pull of Danieli’s den of “lions,” dead and done.

Courage! I will keep my vigil on the balcony till day

Like a knight in full pyjamas who would rather run away.
Courage! let me ope the casement, let the shutters be withdrawn;
Let scirocco, breathing on me, check a tendency to yawn;
There’s the sea! and—Ecco l’alba! Ha! (in other words) the Dawn!

TO JULIA UNDER LOCK AND KEY

(A form of betrothal gift in America is an anklet secured by a

padlock, of which the other party keeps the key.)
When like a bud my Julia blows
In lattice-work of silken hose,
Pleasant I deem it is to note
How, ’neath the nimble petticoat,
Above her fairy shoe is set
The circumvolving zonulet.
And soothly for the lover’s ear
A perfect bliss it is to hear
About her limb so lithe and lank
My Julia’s ankle-bangle clank.
Not rudely tight, for ’twere a sin
To corrugate her dainty skin;
Nor yet so large that it might fare
Over her foot at unaware;
But fashioned nicely with a view
To let her airy stocking through:
So as, when Julia goes to bed,
Of all her gear disburdenèd,
This ring at least she shall not doff
Because she cannot take it off.
And since thereof I hold the key,
She may not taste of liberty,
Not though she suffer from the gout,
Unless I choose to let her out.

AT THE SIGN OF THE COCK

(FRENCH STYLE, 1898)
(Being an Ode in further “Contribution to the Song of French
History,” dedicated, without malice or permission, to Mr. George
Meredith)
I
Rooster her sign,
Rooster her pugnant note, she struts
Evocative, amazon spurs aprick at heel;
Nid-nod the authentic stump
Of the once ensanguined comb vermeil as wine;
With conspuent doodle-doo
Hails breach o’ the hectic dawn of yon New Year,
Last issue up to date
Of quiverful Fate
Evolved spontaneous; hails with tonant trump
The spiriting prime o’ the clashed carillon-peal;
Ruffling her caudal plumes derisive of scuts;
Inconscient how she stalks an immarcessibly absurd
Bird.

II
Mark where her Equatorial Pioneer
Delirant on the tramp goes littoralwise.
His Flag at furl, portmanteaued; drains to the dregs
The penultimate brandy-bottle, coal-on-the-head-piece gift
Of who avenged the Old Sea-Rover’s smirch.
Marchant he treads the all-along of inarable drift
On dubiously connivent legs,
The facile prey of predatory flies;
Panting for further; sworn to lurch
Empirical on to the Menelik-buffered, enhavened blue,
Rhyming—see Cantique I.—with doodle-doo.

III
Infuriate she kicked against Imperial fact;
Vulnant she felt
What pin-stab should have stained Another’s pelt
Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon,
Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed,
The perjured Scythian she lacked
At need’s pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed
Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour
When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke
Amid the unhallowed wedlock’s vodka-shower,
She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked
Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower;
Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon
She woke,
A nuptial-knotted derelict;
Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined
By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace
In guise of heavy-armed Gospeller to men,
Tyrannical unto fraternal equal liberal, her. Not she;
Not till Alsace her consanguineous find
What red deteutonising artillery
Shall shatter her beer-reek alien police
The just-now pluripollent; not till then.

IV
More pungent yet the esoteric pain
Squeezing her pliable vitals nourishes feud
Insanely grumous, grumously insane.
For lo!
Past common balmly on the Bordereau,
Churns she the skim o’ the gutter’s crust
With Anti-Judaic various carmagnole,
Whooped praise of the Anti-just;
Her boulevard brood
Gyratory in convolvements militant-mad;
Theatrical of faith in the Belliform,
Her Og,
Her Monstrous. Fled what force she had
To buckle the jaw-gape, wide agog
For the Preconcerted One,
The Anticipated, ripe to clinch the whole;
Queen-bee to hive the hither and thither volant swarm.
Bides she his coming; adumbrates the new
Expurgatorial Divine,
Her final effulgent Avatar,
Postured outside a trampling mastodon
Black as her Baker’s charger; towering; visibly gorged
With blood of traitors. Knee-grip stiff,
Spine straightened, on he rides;
Embossed the Patriot’s brow with hieroglyph
Of martial dossiers, nothing forged
About him save his armour. So she bides
Voicing his advent indeterminably far,
Rooster her sign,
Rooster her conspuent doodle-doo.

V
Behold her, pranked with spurs for bloody sport,
How she acclaims,
A crapulous chanticleer,
Breach of the hectic dawn of yon New Year.
Not yet her fill of rumours sucked;
Inebriate of honour; blushfully wroth;
Tireless to play her old primeval games;
Her plumage preened the yet unplucked
Like sails of a galleon, rudder hard amort
With crepitant mast
Fronting the hazard to dare of a dual blast
The intern and the extern, blizzards both.

Anthony C. Deane is also among the best of the modern

parodists.
HERE IS THE TALE
(AFTER RUDYARD KIPLING)

Here is the tale—and you must make the most of it:

Here is the rhyme—ah, listen and attend:
Backwards—forwards—read it all and boast of it
If you are anything the wiser at the end!

Now Jack looked up—it was time to sup, and the bucket was yet to fill,
And Jack looked round for a space and frowned, then beckoned his sister Jill,
And twice he pulled his sister’s hair, and thrice he smote her side;
“Ha’ done, ha’ done with your impudent fun—ha’ done with your games!” she
cried;
“You have made mud-pies of a marvellous size—finger and face are black,
You have trodden the Way of the Mire and Clay—now up and wash you, Jack!
Or else, or ever we reach our home, there waiteth an angry dame—
Well you know the weight of her blow—the supperless open shame!
Wash, if you will, on yonder hill—wash, if you will, at the spring,—
Or keep your dirt, to your certain hurt, and an imminent walloping!”

“You must wash—you must scrub—you must scrape!” growled Jack, “you must
traffic with cans and pails,
Nor keep the spoil of the good brown soil in the rim of your finger-nails!
The morning path you must tread to your bath—you must wash ere the night
descends,
And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmakers’ dividends!
But if ’tis sooth that our meal in truth depends on our washing, Jill,
By the sacred right of our appetite—haste—haste to the top of the hill!”
They have trodden the Way of the Mire and Clay, they have toiled and travelled far,
They have climbed to the brow of the hill-top now, where the bubbling fountains
are,
They have taken the bucket and filled it up—yea, filled it up to the brim;
But Jack he sneered at his sister Jill, and Jill she jeered at him:
“What, blown already!” Jack cried out (and his was a biting mirth!)
“You boast indeed of your wonderful speed—but what is the boasting worth?
Now, if you can run as the antelope runs and if you can turn like a hare,
Come, race me, Jill, to the foot of the hill—and prove your boasting fair!”
“Race? What is a race” (and a mocking face had Jill as she spake the word)
“Unless for a prize the runner tries? The truth indeed ye heard,
For I can run as the antelope runs, and I can turn like a hare:—
The first one down wins half-a-crown—and I will race you there!”
“Yea, if for the lesson that you will learn (the lesson of humbled pride)
The price you fix at two-and-six, it shall not be denied;
Come, take your stand at my right hand, for here is the mark we toe:
Now, are you ready, and are you steady? Gird up your petticoats! Go!”

And Jill she ran like a winging bolt, a bolt from the bow released,
But Jack like a stream of the lightning gleam, with its pathway duly greased;
He ran down hill in front of Jill like a summer-lightning flash—
Till he suddenly tripped on a stone, or slipped, and fell to the earth with a crash.
Then straight did rise on his wondering eyes the constellations fair,
Arcturus and the Pleiades, the Greater and Lesser Bear,
The swirling rain of a comet’s train he saw, as he swiftly fell—
And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud triumphant yell:
“You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the wager laid—
You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown debt is paid!”

They have taken Jack to the room at the back where the family medicines are,
And he lies in bed with a broken head in a halo of vinegar;
While, in that Jill had laughed her fill as her brother fell to earth,
She had felt the sting of a walloping—she hath paid the price of her mirth!

Here is the tale—and now you have the whole of it,

Here is the story, well and wisely-planned,
Beauty—Duty—these make up the soul of it—
But, ah, my little readers, will you mark and understand?

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, writing often over the pseudonym

of Q, is most versatile and talented. He, too, loved to dally with the
muse of Imitation.
 DE TEA FABULA
Plain Language from Truthful James

Do I sleep? Do I dream?
Am I hoaxed by a scout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our το τι ηυ ειναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

Which expressions like these

May be fairly applied
By a party who sees
A Society skied
Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.

’Twas November the third,

And I says to Bill Nye,
“Which it’s true what I’ve heard:
If you’re, so to speak, fly,
There’s a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High.”

Which I mentioned its name,

And he ups and remarks:
“If dress-coats is the game
And pow-wow in the Parks,
Then I’m nuts on Sordello and Hohenstiel-Schwangau and similar Snarks.”

Now the pride of Bill Nye

Cannot well be express’d;
For he wore a white tie
And a cut-away vest:
Says I, “Solomon’s lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well dress’d.”

But not far did we wend,

When we saw Pippa pass
On the arm of a friend
—Dr. Furnivall ’t was,
And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.

“Well,” I thought, “this is odd.”

But we came pretty quick
To a sort of a quad
That was all of red brick,
And I says to the porter,—“R. Browning: free passes; and kindly look slick.”
But says he, dripping tears
In his check handkerchief,
“That symposium’s career’s
Been regrettably brief,
For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder leaf!”

Then we tucked up the sleeves

Of our shirts (that were biled),
Which the reader perceives
That our feelings were riled,
And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her child.

Which emotions like these

Must be freely indulged
By a party who sees
A Society bulged
On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.

But I ask,—Do I dream?

Has it gone up the spout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our τὸ τι ἦυ εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

James Kenneth Stephen, like so many of the English minor poets,

expresses his humorous vein best in parody.
Stephen’s light verse belongs mostly to his undergraduate days.
A SONNET
Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud’s thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony.
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times—good Lord! I’d rather be
Quite unacquainted with the A B C
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

A THOUGHT
If all the harm that women have done
Were put in a bundle and rolled into one,
Earth would not hold it,
The sky could not enfold it,
It could not be lighted nor warmed by the sun;
Such masses of evil
Would puzzle the devil,
And keep him in fuel while Time’s wheels run.

But if all the harm that’s been done by men

Were doubled, and doubled, and doubled again,
And melted and fused into vapour, and then
Were squared and raised to the power of ten,
There wouldn’t be nearly enough, not near,
To keep a small girl for the tenth of a year.

THE MILLENNIUM
TO R. K.

As long I dwell on some stupendous

And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrendous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman’s latest piece of graphic.
Robert Browning.

Will there never come a season

Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose which knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse:
When the world shall cease to wonder
At the genius of an Ass,
And a boy’s eccentric blunder
Shall not bring success to pass:

When mankind shall be delivered

From the clash of magazines,
And the inkstand shall be shivered
Into countless smithereens:
When there stands a muzzled stripling,
Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more?

SCHOOL
If there is a vile, pernicious,
Wicked and degraded rule,
Tending to debase the vicious,
And corrupt the harmless fool;
If there is a hateful habit
Making man a senseless tool,
With the feelings of a rabbit
And the wisdom of a mule;
It’s the rule which inculcates,
It’s the habit which dictates
The wrong and sinful practice of going into school.

If there’s anything improving

To an erring sinner’s state,
Which is useful in removing
All the ills of human fate;
If there’s any glorious custom
Which our faults can dissipate,
And can casually thrust ’em
Out of sight and make us great;
It’s the plan by which we shirk
Half our matu-ti-nal work,
The glorious institution of always being late.

Barry Pain, journalist and author, following the trend of the hour,
produced this amusing set of parodies.
THE POETS AT TEA
1—(Macaulay, who made it)
Pour, varlet, pour the water,
The water steaming hot!
A spoonful for each man of us,
Another for the pot!
We shall not drink from amber,
Nor Capuan slave shall mix
For us the snows of Athos
With port at thirty-six;
Whiter than snow the crystals,