won't do. Enough " fifty." to Her Majesty. Must get "Since our Queen assumed,"

But

Now we want some allusion in a "since." I have it, Capital. Here you are! Since our Queen assumed the globe, the sceptre. Come; that's a beginning anyhow. Three lines! they've quite dried me up. Besides, I can't go on in blank verse like this. Don't feel up to it. Must try another metre. What metre. And then what on earth am I to say in it? I haven't had such a job as this for a long time. Could weep over it. A precious Ode I shall make

of it.

For though I, know not anything,
Yet must I not my lot upbraid;
Since as the Laureate I am paid,
And, being paid, am bound to sing.

But, "a glass of sherry, will make me merry." I'll try one.,

6 P.M.-Confound the Jubilee Ode! Have now been at it all day, and am floundering worse than ever. Have got in something about illuminations, sanitary improvements, subscribing to a Hospital and Penny dinners, and given a kind of back-hander to George the Third, but who, on earth, I refer to as the "Patriot Architect," and what I mean by asking him to Shape a stately memorial, Make it regularlyregally"-gorgeous, Some Imperial Institute, I don't know. But if I arrange it in parallel lines it will look like poetry, and that'll be near enough.

no,

Feel I'm making a horrible hash of it. turn on my bicyle. May clear my head. Will.

Might go for a Might try it.

Have dined, and now, at 9 P. M., have again settled down to it over a pipe and a glass of grog. Am in a more hopeless muddle than ever. Trying to bring in everybody in a kind of wind-up appeal. But look at this,

You, the snubbed, the unfortunate
You, the Lord-Undertaker,

You, the Lord-Omnibus-Conductor,

That doesn't seem to run very well, but it's the kind of idea I want to work in. Don't seem able to manage it.

You, the Lady-Amateur Actor?

No, that won't do! Shall never get it done to-night.

He renowned for a wordiness
Rare in fable or history,
King and God of the Radicals,
Crowned with Papal diadem
Never worn by a wordier,

Now with splendid audacity

Reigns the King of Obstructionists.

Partner with Parnell, chief of Irish despots,
Stewed in his juice with Harcourt the vainglorious,
Yet is your William noble, great, and god-like.

You then noisily, all of you
Stump the towns for Disunion.
Let Misrule hold high festival;
Everywhere let the multitude,

Home Rule each to the heart of it,
Raise the standard of Anarchy;
Hail the monarch of egotism,
Quod sic volo sic jubeo.

Be as true to England as to Gordon,
Glorying in the trials of her Rulers,
Sorrowing with the griefs of the disloyal.
You that, wanting in intellect,
Spare not now to be boisterous,
Call your thousands to demonstrate,
Make it hot for your neighbourhood.

Give your gold to Invincibles,
Let the landlords be boycotted,

Let the juries be browbeaten,

Let the maimed make the best of it,
Spread the gospel of Anarchy.

Henry's ears are pricked to catch your brayings,
Gray your ravings to report is burning,

Even my Granny joins the Home Rule chorus.

You, the Paddy-American,

Shape a missile of Dynamite ;

Make it really dangerous,

Some explosive material

Like the missile of Clerkenwell,

Which may frighten the Unionists,
All the Unionists terrify,
Frighten them into anarchy.

Fifty times repeat the loud explosion,
Fifty times the midnight crime and outrage,
Till at length you rend the mighty empire.

You, the ruler, the democrat ;
You, the serf territoria!;
You, the crime-manufacturer;
You, the grimy, uproarious,
Bastard children of Albion,
You, Milesian, Hibernian,
You, the Gael and the Cambrian,
You, the Tyke and the Tynesider,
All your hearts be in harmony,
All your throats shout in unison,
Singing, Hail to the godlike

Grand Old Man, the Obstructionist !

Are there Tories raving in the distance?
Are there landlords moving in the darkness?
Trust the Grand Old Man to blind the people,
Till the Tories fall, the landlords vanish,
And the League is victor, and the darkness
Falls upon the Anarchy of Ireland.

The St. James's Gazette. April 14, 1887.

Grand helmsman of the clamorous crew,

The good grey recreant quakes and weeps, To think that crime no longer creeps Safe toward its end: that murderers too, May die when mercy sleeps.

While all the lives were innocent

That slaughter drank, and laughed with rage, Bland virtue sighed, "A former age Taught murder: souls long discontent Can aught save blood assuage?

"You blame not Russian hands that smite

By fierce and secret ways the power, That leaves not life one chainless hour; Have these than they less natural right To claim life's natural dower?

"The dower that freedom brings the slave
She weds, is vengeance: why should we,
Whom equal laws acclaim as free,
Think shame, if men too blindly brave
Steal, murder, skulk, and flee?

"At kings they strike in Russia: there
Men take their life in hand who slay
Kings: these, that have not heart to lay
Hands save on girls whose ravaged hair
Is made the patriot's prey.

"These, whom the sight of old men slain
Makes bold to bid their children die,
Starved, if they hold not peace, nor lie,
Claim loftier praise could others deign
To stand in shame so high?

"Could others deign to dare such deeds
As holiest Ireland hallows? Nay,
But justice then makes plain our way:
Be laws burnt up like burning weeds
That vex the face of day.

"Shall bloodmongers be held of us
Blood-guilty? Hands reached out for gold
Whereon blood rusts not yet we hold
Bloodless and blameless: ever thus
Have good men held of old.

"Fair Freedom, fledged and imped with lies,
Takes flight by night where murder lurks,
And broods on murderous ways and works,
Yet seems not hideous in our eyes
As Austrians or as Turks.

"Be it ours to undo a woful past,

To bid the bells of concord chime,
To break the bonds of suffering crime,

Slack now, that some would make more fast;
Such teaching comes of time."

So pleads the gentlest heart that lives,
Whose pity, pitiless for all

Whom darkling terror holds in thrall,

Toward none save miscreants yearns, and gives Alms of warm tears-and gall.

Hear, England, and obey; for he

Who claims thy trust again to-day,
Is he who left thy sons a prey
To shame whence only death sets free;
Hear, England, and obey.

Great shrieker of the shrieking crew,
The lyric recreant raves and rails
At Justice, who adjusts her scales,
At last, at last, for Erin too,
His fire of freedom fails.

When Italy was militant

For liberty, his muse could rage In rolling rhetoric page on page, His poet bosom swell and pant

With wrath-which songs assuage.

But blame not British hands that smite
Their brethren in fierce pride of power,
Leave Ireland not one chainless hour.

Is ruling not our native right,

Our Heaven-appointed dower?

"The dower that freedom brings the slave
She weds, is vengeance.
Aye, the free
In other lands may strike; but we
Are sacrosanct; the fools who brave
Our wrath, must cease to be.

At kings they strike in Russia; there
Tis duty, bliss, to stab, to slay
Kings; but the Landlord, whose harsh sway
Drives pillaged thralls to mad despair,

He is no patriot's prey.

Those whom the thought of fathers slain,
Of roofless children doomed to die
Starved, maddens by its memory-
These poets pardon not, nor deign
To lift a lyric sigh.

A sigh of pity for such deeds

As hapless Ireland harass? Nay, Justice shall not make straight our way Till ruthless Law hath crushed like weeds All who dare disobey.

Shall soulmongers be held of us

Blood-guilty? Hands that grab the gold, Whereon blood rests, from the weak hold Of poor men homeless? Nay, not thus, Lest British Mammon scold.

Dear Mammon, fledged and fed with lies,
The tale of suffering blurs and burkes,
Hides his own murderous ways and works.
Great Heaven, such shame would shock our eyes-
In Russians, or in Turks.

What, prate about a shameful past?

Ask who began the tale of crime?

Smirch England's robes with tyrant slime? The patriot poet in full blast

Shall brand you to all time.

So raves the fieriest bard that lives,
Whose pity for the tyrant's thrall,
Set to rich music's rise and fall,
So nobly rang one half forgives
This recreant mud and gall.

Hear, England, and be sad; for he
Who peals this palinode to-day,

The oppressor once could scathe and flay. Shame that his muse no more is free

When England blocks the way.