At first he only said, "Oh deary! The post is late," he said; . "Of waiting I am rather weary, I would my Punch I'd read."

About the middle of the day

The postman's form its shadow cast, The door he sought with footsteps gay,

The Times and Punch are here at last. Out with them; but 'tis very strange, The envelope is open torn'Tis but the Herald of the morn; His paper they have dared to change. He only said, "The Herald's dreary, Dreary, indeed," he said;

"It's very look has made me weary; It never can be read."

Upon some stones-a hillock small,
The Londoner in exile leapt,
And over objects large and small
A telescopic watch he kept;
He saw the postman walk away,

He gazed till it was nearly dark,
Then only made this sad remark,
"Nor Times nor Punch will come to-day."
He only said, ""Tis very dreary
They do not come," he said;

"While I for want of them am weary, They're elsewhere being read."

And even when the moon was low,

And the shrill winds a game did play, Blowing the sign-boards to and fro,

As if 'twould blow them right away; He'd with the spider, as it climbs,

Hold converse-asking if 'twould tell
Whether the postman dared to sell

The weekly Punch and daily Times.
He only said, "Tis very dreary,
Dreary, indeed," he said;
"Of life I'm almost getting weary,
My Times and Punch unread."

All day within the dreamy house

His shoes had in the passage creak'd ;
The maid-of-all-work, like a mouse,
Out of her master's presence sneak'd,
Or from the kitchen peer'd about,

Or listen'd at the open doors,

To hear his footsteps tread the floors
With the short hurried pace of doubt.
She only said, "My master's weary,
And angry, too," she said;

She said, "Oh deary me! oh deary!
I wish he'd go to bed.'

The crickets chirrup on the hearth,

The slow clock ticking—and the sound

Of rain upon the gravel path

That hems the Exile's cottage round;
All these, but most of all the power
Of sleep after an anxious day,
Up-stairs had hurried him away.
He paced his chamber for an hour,
Then said he, "This, indeed, is dreary,
My Times, my Punch," he said,
"Without you I am always weary ;
I'll tumble into bed."

Punch, January 22, 1848.

LORD TOMNODDY IN THE FINAL SCHOOLS.

WITH blackest ink the books around

Were thickly blotted one and all; The very nails looked half unsound

That held the pictures to the wall. The dismal scene was wrapped in gloom, Sported was the unsocial oak:

Seedy and torn and thick with smoke The curtains hung athwart the room. He only said, "The schools are dreary: This Euclid racks my head.

Of Ethics I am very weary;

I shall be ploughed," he said.

His sighs came with the lightening heaven,
And ever through the day he sighed.
He could not play in the Eleven,
Or coach the Eight at eventide.
After the shutting of the gates,

He drew his casement curtain by,
And watched along the gleaming High
The lovers strolling with their mates.
He only said, "The schools are dreary :
This Euclid racks my head.
Ethics are the reverse of cheery;
I shall be ploughed," he said.

And half asleep he heard forlorn
The caterwauling on the roof;
The chapel bell rung out at morn

Came to him-but he held aloof.
In dreams he seemed to see the Halls,
And fatal precincts of the Schools:
To watch the crowd of ghastly fools,
Who tried in vain to pass their Smalls.
He only said, "The schools are dreary:
This Euclid racks my brain.
Of Ethics I am very weary;
I shall be ploughed again."

He sat and darkened all the air,

With smoke up-wreathing from his weed: All day, half-dreaming in his chair,

He sat and read-or seemed to read

Or from the window peered about.
His friends still hammered at his door;
He heard them on the upper floor;
Their voices called him from without.
He only said, "The schools are nearing ;
I cannot come," said he.
"Although of Ethics I am wearying,
I shall be ploughed, you'll see.

For hours he sat, without a pause,
And snored o'er Plato's sage debate
Of the Republic and the Laws:

Both these his brain did obfuscate.
But most of all he loathed the power
Of x+y, whose depths profound
Long-winded dons would oft expound,
And moralise on by the hour.
Then said he, "I am very weary,

This Euclid racks my brain.

Mansell and Mill are very dreary;

I shall be ploughed again!"

H. C. I., QUEEN's College, Oxford. College Rhymes (T. and G. Shrimpton), Oxford, 1868.

A FRAGMENT.

They lifted him with kindly care;
They took him by the heels and head;
Across the floor, and up the stair,

They bore him safely to his bed.
They wrapped the blankets warm and tight,
And round about his nose and chin

They drew the sheets, and tucked them in,
And whispered: "Poor old boy, good-night !"
He murmured, "Boys, oh, deary, deary,
That punch was strong," he said;
He said: "I am aweary, weary-
Thank heaven, I've got to bed!

II.

Last night I saw the sunset, he looked both wroth and red, As if he knew when dawning came I'd still be lay-a-bed. From crag and scaur and heather I hear the popping shot, And not a single bird, Willie, has fallen to my lot.

III.

What say you? "Tis a soft day, the roads are runnin' burns,

"The heather's a' wet blankets, ye might droon ye in the ferns;

Ye canna see a hand forenent, the mist's sae white and chill, Ye'd sune be bogged amang the muirs, and lost upon the hill."

IV.

There's not a sportsman on the hills, the rain is on the pane, I only wish to sleep until the sunshine comes again.

I wish the mist would lift, and the light break out once more, I long to kill a grouse, Willie, ere the Twelfth of August's o'er.

V.

I have been stiff and lazy, but I'll up and dress me now, You'll fetch my breakfast, Willie, and my plaid before I go. Nay, nay, you must not brush so hard, my very teeth you jolt,

You should not rub me down, Willie, as if I were a colt,

VI.

I'll bring back dinner, if I can, in a brace of cock and hen, But if you do not see me, you will know I've dined with Ben. If I cannot speak a sober word when I come back from the toddy,

Just tuck me into bed, Willie, like a canny Hicland body.

VII.

Good-bye, you rascal, Willie; call me earlier in the morn,
Or I'll thrash you into next week, as sure as you were born;
For I must get my money back from grouse and hare and
deer,
So wake, and call me early--call me early, Willie Weir.

Will-o'-the-Wisp, August, 1869.

MALA-FIDE TRAVELLERS.

(Unlicensed by the Laureate.)

LATE, late, past ten, so dark the night and chill.
Late, late, eleven, but we can enter still.
Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now!

No thought had we the night was so far spent,
And, hearing this, the Bobby will relent.

Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now!

No beer, though late, and dark, and chill the night.
O let us in, and we will not get tight!
Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now!

A glass of gin to-night would be so sweet.
O let us in, that we may have it neat!
Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now!

Punch, November 16, 1872.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (continued.)

The following imitation of Tennyson is of interest as having appeared forty years ago, when the poet was comparatively unknown:

A FRAGMENT-COMPOSED IN A DREAM.

BY A. TENNYSON.

In Hungerford, did some wise man
A stately bridge of wire decree,
Where Thames, the muddy river, ran,
Down to a muddier sea.

Above the people rose its piers,

Their shadows on the waters fell; Year after year, for many years,

All unapproachable!

And filmy wires through æther spread,
From such proud piers' unfinished head,
Kept up a mild communication,
Worthy of their exalted station;
And many gazers far below,

Wafted by the waveless tide,

Which 'neath those slender wires did flow, Upturned their eyes, and sighed— ̧ "If that air bridge," they whispered low, "Vos broad enough to let us pass, Ve'd not av so much round to go, As now ve av-alas !"

THE M.P. ON THE RAILWAY COMMITTEE.

(Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson).

With shareholders in anxious lots,

The rooms were crowded, one and all,
The Barristers stood round in knots,-
And quite forsook Westminster Hall.
Sections and plans looked odd and strange ;
And the M.P. at each new batch,
Weary and worn, looked at his watch,
In hopes the Counsel to derange.
He only said, "It's very dreary:
He'll never stop !" he said;
He said, "I'm a-weary-a-weary,
I would I were in bed !"

The speech began before eleven,
And might go on till eventide ;
He must be in the House at seven,
Upon a motion to divide.
The Barristers in white cravats
Unto each other gave the lie;
The M.P. sadly shut his eye

And thought of the Kilkenny cats.
He only said, "It's very dreary,
They'll never stop!" he said;
He said, "I'm a-weary-a-weary,
And must not go to bed."

Until the middle of the night,

He'd heard the Irish Members crow; The House broke up in broad daylight, Heavily he to bed did go,

CIRCUMSTANCE.

(After Tennyson).

Two children on Twelfth Night, all mirth and laughter,
Obliged to take two powders the day after.
Two strangers meeting at a morning call.
Two lovers waltzing at a country ball.
Two mouths to feed upon an income small.
Two "lists to be retained" of various things
Wash'd out of town to save home's direst curse.
Two babies quite too much for one young nurse;
So flies the time of life on rapid wings.

The Man in the Moon, Volume 4, 1848.

THE PALACE of Art.

(A Parody, which it is requested may not occur to anybody during the Inauguration of the Exhibition, 1862).

I BUILT my Cole a lordly pleasure house,
Wherein to walk like any Swell:

I said, "O Cole, make merry and carouse,
Dear Cole, for all is well.

(Here follows an exquisite description of the said pleasurehouse, also known as the International Exhibition. After four hundred and ninety-seven verses comes the last).

But Cole, C. B., replied, "'Tis long, your story,
And here's a Rummy Start;

Dilke walks in glory with a Hand that's Gory,
While I am not a Bart."

SHIRLEY BROOKS.

The following parody graphically describes that singular phase of modern English art, known as the Esthetic School, originated by the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, namely, Dante G. Rossetti, Holman Hunt, J. E. Millais, and Thomas Woolner. The works of the disciples of this school have recently found a home in the Grosvenor Gallery, founded by Sir Coutts Lindsay :

THE PALACE OF ART.

(New Version).

PART I.

I BUILT myself a lordly picture-place
Wherein to play a Leo's part.

I said, "Let others cricket, row, or race,

I will go in for Art!"

Full of great rooms and small my Palace stood,
With porphyry columns faced,

Hung round with pictures such as I thought good,
Being a man of taste.

The pictures-for the most part they were such
As more behold than buy-

The quaint, the queer, the mystic over-much,
The dismal, and the dry.

One seemed all black and grey-a tract of mud,
One gas-jet glimmering there alone;
Above, all fog; below, all inky flood;
For subject-it had none.

One showed blue chaos flecked with falling gold.
Like Danae's tower in dark;

A painter's splash-board might more meaning hold
Than this æsthetic lark.

And one, a phantom form with limbs most lank,
Adumbrated in ink and soot ;

The Genius of Smudge, with spectral shank
And unsubstantial boot.

Nor these alone, but many a canvas bare,

Fit for each vacuous mood of mind,

The gray and gravelike, vague and void, were there Most dismally designed.

Or two wan lovers in a curious fix,

Wreathed in one scarf by some queer charm, Upon the margin of a caverned Styx

Stood shivering arm-in-arm.

Or by a garden-prop, posed all askew
'Neath apples bronze, with brazen hair,

A chalk-limb'd Eve and snake of porcelain blue
Exchanged a stony stare.

Nor these alone, but all such legends fair
As the vagarious Wagner mind

Would pick from Mythus' shadowy realm, were there,

With ample space assigned.

To women weird and wondrous, long of jaw,
And lank of limb, and greenish as with mould,
And full-red lips and shocks of fulvous hair,
And raiments strange of fold.

No raven so delighteth in its song,
Of sad and sullen monotone,
As I to watch those ladies lean and long,
And angular of bone.

And to myself I said, "All these are mine.
Let the dull world take Nature's part,
'Tis one to me; I hold no thing divine
Save this Brown-Jonesian Art,
"Wherein no ROBINSON shall dare to plant
His Philistinish hoof,

Who feels no mystic mediæval want,
But paints in truth's behoof!

"O Medieval Mystery, be it mine
To clasp thee, faint and fain;
Sniffing serene at low souls that decline,
On sense and meanings plain."

Then my eyes filled, my talk waxed large and dim
Of BOTTICELLI'S deathless fame :

"Quaint immaturity to reach with him,"

I cried, "is Art's true aim.

"To plunge, self-blinded, in the mystic past,
That makes the present small :

If eyes artistic be not backward cast,
Why have we eyes at all?"

Punch, July 7, 1877.

PART II.

YET oft the riddle of Art's real drift
Flashed through me as I sat and gazed.
But not the less some season I made shift
To keep my wits undazed.

And so I mused and mooned; for three long weeks
I stood it on the fourth I fell.

· All trace of natural colour fled my cheeks, And I felt-far from well.

*

Hollow-cheeked, hectic, rufus-headed dames,
With opiate eyes, and foreheads all

As wan as corpses', but with wings like flames,
Glared on me from each wall.

Those fixed orbs haunted me; I grew to hate
Those square and skinny jaws, those high-cheek bones.
Nocturnes in soot and symphonies in slate

Moved me to sighs and groans.

Queer convolutions of dim drapery
Inwrapt me like a Nessus-snare.

I seemed enmeshed in tangles hot and dry
Of copper-coloured hair.

I loathed the pallid Venuses and Eves,
Nymph-nudity, and Sorceress and Thrall ;
The Wings prismatic, the metallic Leaves-
I loathed them one and all.

I howled aloud, "I would no more behold

A witch, an angel, or a saint.

Aught mediæval-mystic, classic-cold,

Or cinque-cento quaint.

"It may be that my taste has come to grief, But if the spectral, dismal, dry,

Do constitute High Art,' 'tis

my 99

belief

High Art is all my eye.'

So when four weeks were wholly finished,

I from my gallery turned away.

"Give me green leaves and flesh and blood" I said, "Fresh air and light of day.

"I pine for Nature, sickened to my heart Of the affected, strained, and queer.

What was to me Ambrosia of Art

Hath grown as drugged small-beer.

"Yet pull not down my galleries rich and rare : When Art abjures the crude and dim, I yet may house the High Ideal there,

Purged from preposterous Whim!"

Punch, July 14, 1877.

The following poem appeared in The Times for May 9, 1859, and although not included in the collected works of the Poet Laureate, it has been generally ascribed to his pen. In its warlike promptings, and cheap national bunkum, it resembles the other so-called patriotic songs of this author, of whom nobody ever heard that he took up a rifle for his country, or assisted the Volunteer movement in any way whatever :— THE WAR.

THERE is a sound of thunder afar,

Storm in the South that darkens the day,
Storm of battle and thunder of war,
Well, if it do not roll our way.

Form! form! Riflemen, form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen, form!

Be not deaf to the sound that warns!
Be not gull'd by a despot's plea !
Are figs of thistles, or grapes of thorns?
How should a despot set men free?

Form! form! Riflemen, form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen, form!

Let your Reforms for a moment go,
Look to your butts, and take good aims.
Better a rotten borough or so,

Than a rotten fleet or a city in flames!
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen, form!

Form, be ready to do or die!

Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's!
True, that we have a faithful ally,*

But only the devil knows what he means.
Form! form! Riflemen, form!

Ready, be ready to meet the storm!

Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen, form!

T.

INTO THEM GOWN.**

A Wicked Parody on

RIFLEMEN FORM.

THERE was a sound of "Town" from afar,
Town in the High that threaten'd a mill,

Storm of town, and thunder of gown,

And town have got with them " Brummagem Bill."
Gown! Gown! into the Town,

Ready, be ready to meet the clown,
Into them; into them; into them, Gown.

* Alluding to Napoleon III.

Suggested by a paragraph in The Times, November, 1859.

Be not afraid of the peelers' staves,
Be not gulled by a proctor's plea,
Velvetty arms are for flunkies, my braves,
Why should a proctor stop our spree?
Gown! Gown! into the Town,

Ready, be ready to meet the clown,
Into them; into them; into them, Gown.

Leave your wines for a moment or so.
Double your fists for the State and the Church,
Better the purple claret should flow,

Than "La Belle Science" be left in the lurch.
Gown! Gown! into the Town,

Ready, be ready to meet the clown,

Into them; into them; into them Gown.

Sweep! march ahead, look about, take care,
Deal black eyes and the bloody nose;
True that we have an excellent mayor,
Butt him again, and down he goes.

Gown! Gown! into the Town,
Ready, be ready to meet the clown,
Into them; into them; into them, Gown.
College Rhymes, 1861.

The Poet Laureate has been subjected to much ridicule for the change which has of late years been apparent in the tone of his writings, and his poem, "Lady Clara Vere de Vere," has especially been seized on as the vehicle for many malicious parodies directed against the fulsome adulation of Royalty, contained in his later poems.

It must be remembered that "Lady Clara Vere de Vere' was written more than fifty years ago, when Alfred Tennyson was young, unknown, and unpensioned. Like many of his early poems, it contains uncomplimentary allusions to our hereditary aristocracy, into whose ranks he has only recently procured admission.

The heartless coquette, Lady Clara, is "the daughter of a hundred Earls," and in her name the poet actually selected one of the oldest in the English nobility on which to vent his indignation. The Vere (or De Vere) family is of great antiquity, once holding the ancient Earldom of Oxford, and as far back as 1387 one of these Earls of Oxford was created Duke of Ireland, and Marquis of Dublin. It is certain the De Veres were noble in the time of William I., and their pedigree has even been traced to a much earlier period. "De Vere" still survives as one of the family names of the Duke of St. Albans. The first Duke of St. Albans (illegitimate son of Charles II. and Nell Gwynn, the orange girl), married Diana de Vere, eldest daughter and heiress of Aubrey de Vere, the20th and last Earl of Oxford.