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DAGONET DITTIES
WORKS BY GEORGE R. SIMS.
_Post 8vo., illustrated boards_, =2s.= _each; cloth limp_, =2s. 6d.= _each_.
=ROGUES AND VAGABONDS.=
=THE RING O’ BELLS.=
=MARY JANE’S MEMOIRS.=
=MARY JANE MARRIED.=
=TALES OF TO-DAY.=
=DRAMAS OF LIFE.= With 60 Illustrations.
=TINKLETOP’S CRIME.= With a Frontispiece by MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN.
_Crown 8vo., picture cover_, =1s.= _each; cloth_, =1s. 6d.= _each_.
=HOW THE POOR LIVE=; and =HORRIBLE LONDON=.
=THE DAGONET RECITER AND READER=: being Readings and Recitations in
Prose and Verse, selected from his own Works by GEORGE R. SIMS.
THE CASE OF GEORGE CANDLEMAS.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY, W.
DAGONET DITTIES
[_FROM ‘THE REFEREE’_]
BY
GEORGE R. SIMS
AUTHOR OF ‘HOW THE POOR LIVE,’ ‘ROGUES AND VAGABONDS,’ ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
_SECOND EDITION_
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1891
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LONDON DAY BY DAY 1
FOR E’ER AND HAIR 3
THE ARTIST’S DILEMMA 5
A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY 7
THE PICK-ME-UP 9
AD COR MEUM 11
ICHABOD 12
A DERBY DITTY 14
SHALL WE REMEMBER? 15
PARADISE AND THE SINNER 16
THE INCOME TAX 19
NONSENSE 20
LE MARDI GRAS 23
TWO SUNDAYS 24
THE MAILS ABOARD 25
AT THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S 27
IN GAY JAPAN 29
THE BALACLAVA HEROES 31
A CHILD’S IDEA 32
SANITATION AT SEA 34
GUIGNOL 35
THE ENGLISH SUMMER 35
A PERFECT PARADISE 36
THAT BREEZE 38
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME FOGS 39
UNDER THE CLOCK 40
THE GIRL OF FORTY-SEVEN 41
CONVENTIONAL MALGRÉ LUI 42
HOME, SWEET HOME 44
IN PORTLAND PLACE 45
THE SHIRT BUTTONS 46
THE LONDONER TO HIS LOVE 48
THE EIFFEL BONNET 49
TO A FAIR MUSICIAN 51
A WORD FOR THE POLICE 52
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS 53
MY AMBITION 55
A WISH 56
THE SONG OF HEREDITY 57
SCOTCH’D, NOT KILT 58
THE LAST RESOURCE 59
YE BARS AND GATES 60
PORTRAIT OF A PRINCE 61
THE STRONG MEN 63
A BALLAD OF SOAP 65
THE JOKELETEER 67
BILL SIKES’S PROTEST 68
THE CLARINET 69
NO EVENING DRESS 70
ALONE IN LONDON 70
THE VOLUNTEER 71
THOSE BOOTS 73
A SUNDAY SONG 74
UP THE RIGI 75
A PLEA FOR MERCY 77
IF YOU WERE HERE 78
LE BRAV’ GÉNÉRAL 80
THE PARIS EXHIBITION 81
THE NEW LEGEND 82
A MILD DECEMBER 84
THE LAST DUKE 86
TO THE FOG 88
THE REMINISCENCES OF MR. JOHN DOBBS 89
PICKPOCKET POEMS 91
THE CIGARETTE 94
THE EARLY MILK-CART 95
THE COLLABORATORS 98
THE WEN CURE 101
THAT NEW-BORN BABE 103
THE BUTTON 106
A FAÇON DE PARLER 109
JACKSON 110
ANOTHER DANGER 112
AFTER THE ACT 114
THE RIGADOON 117
HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL 121
THE GERMAN GYM 124
TOTTIE 126
THE WELSHMAN IN LONDON 127
THE MAGISTRATE 129
THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE 131
THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 132
THE PEOPLE’S PALACE 133
A CHARADE 135
A TRUE STORY 137
THE PIRATE ’BUS 138
THE WAR-CRY 141
THE “LANCET” 143
A TALE OF A TUB 148
THE COMIC KING 150
DAGONET DITTIES.
London Day by Day.
The smoke in vaster volumes rolls,
The fever fiend takes larger tolls,
And sin a fiercer grip of souls,
In London day by day.
Still Buggins builds on swampy site,
And Eiffel houses block the light,
And make a town of dreadful night
Of London day by day.
In fashion’s long and busy street,
The outcast foreign harlots meet,
While Robert smiles upon his beat,
In London day by day.
Still modest maidens’ cheeks are stung
With foulest words from wanton’s tongue,
And oaths yelled out with leathern lung,
In London day by day.
Wealth riots in a mad excess,
While thousands, poor and penniless,
Starve in the mighty wilderness,
Of London day by day.
Wrong proudly rears its wicked head,
While Right’s sad eyes with tears are red,
And sluggard Justice lies abed,
In London day by day.
The liar triumphs, and the knave
Rides buoyant on the rolling wave,
And Liberty makes many a slave
In London day by day.
Yet Hope and Trust and Faith and Love,
And God’s fair dowers from above,
Still find a branch, like Noah’s dove,
In London day by day.
And onward still, though slow the pace,
Press pilgrims of our grand old race,
Who seek the Right with firm-set face,
And shed Truth’s light by God’s good grace
O’er London day by day.
For E’er and Hair.
I said to my sweet in the morning,
“We must start on our journey at ten”--
She was up in her bedroom adorning,
She’d been there a goodish time then;
And she answered me tenderly, “Poppet,”
As she came to the top of the stair,
“If you see a cab pass you can stop it,
For I’ve only to finish my hair.”
It was ten by the clock of St. Stephen’s
As I sat and looked glum in the hall,
And I offered to wager her evens
She would never be ready at all.
I counted the half and the quarters--
At eleven I ventured to swear;
Then she answered, like one of Eve’s daughters,
“All right, dear--I _must_ do my hair.”
I waited till daylight was waning,
I waited till darkness began,
Upbraiding myself for complaining
Like a selfish and bad-tempered man.
But when midnight rang out from the steeple
I ventured to whisper a prayer,
And she answered, “I hate surly people;
You _must_ let me finish my hair!”
I paid for the cab and dismissed it,
I took off my coat and my hat,
I held her fair hand and I kissed it,
And I curled myself up on the mat.
And when I awoke on the morrow,
I cried, “Oh, where art thou, my fair?”
And she answered, “Oh, run out and borrow
A hairpin or two for my hair.”
The summers have faded to winters,
The winters have melted to springs;
My patience is shivered to splinters,
And still, as she “puts on her things,”
My sweet, though I’m weary of waiting,
And groan in my bitter despair,
Contents herself simply by stating
“She’s just got to finish her hair.”
If she’s here when the world’s at its finish,
And lists to the last crack of doom,
She will watch our poor planet diminish
From the window upstairs in her room.
And when the last trumpet is blowing,
And the angel says, “Hurry up, there!”
She will answer, “All right, sir, I’m going,
But you _must_ let me finish my hair!”
The Artist’s Dilemma.
The artist was out on the stormy seas,
When his vessel turned upside down,
And his body was blown by the autumn breeze
To the shores of a seaside town.
The fisher-folk spied him miles away,
And, raising a hearty cheer,
They rowed the lifeboat across the bay,
And shouted that help was near.
The artist had sunk for the second time,
He’d a shark on his starboard tack,
But he looked on the boat with a look sublime,
And he told them to take it back.
“My bones may bleach in the mermaid’s cave,
But to art will I e’er be true,
And never a man my life shall save
In a boat of that vulgar blue.”
They found his body at break of day,
It lay on the briny beach,
But he soon got better and stole away
To the house of a local leech.
He took a draught, and he went to bed
In a garret that was to spare;
And when he awoke his host had fled,
For the place had begun to flare.
He was up in a garret against the sky,
And a fire had broken out,
The flames about him were broad and high,
And he heard the people shout.
“Oh, come to the window!” the people cried,
As they bellowed a mighty cheer;
“You’d better come down before you’re fried,
For the fire-escape is here.”
He opened the casement wide, and reeled
Back through the flame and smoke--
For the fire-escape the light revealed--
And then to the crowd he spoke:
“I’ll leap in the jaws of the flames that gape,
For I’d rather be picked up dead
Than save my life in a fire-escape
That is painted a vulgar red.”
They gathered him up with a broom and pan
From the pavement where he fell,
And they sent for the undertaker’s man,
And they toll’d him a passing bell.
They gave him a funeral plain but good,
And out of the local purse
They bought him a coffin of polished wood,
Which they put in a pair-horse hearse.
But the artist-spirit in death was strong,
And it lifted the coffin-lid
While the horses lazily jogged along,
And out of the hearse it slid.
It raised its body and yelled a curse,
And it shouted and cried “Alack!
I’m blest if I ride in a beastly hearse
That is painted a vulgar black.”
A Domestic Tragedy.
She was a housemaid, tall and slim,
A well-conducted, modest girl;
Her dress was always neat and trim,
She never sported fringe or curl.
She did her work, and kept her mind
Intent upon her household cares;
One fault alone there was to find--
She left her dustpan on the stairs.
She loved her mistress very much,
She held her master in respect;
Her grief the hardest heart would touch
When they’d occasion to correct;
But still, in spite of all they said--
In spite of scolding and of prayers--
Ah, me! to what at last it led!--
She left her dustpan on the stairs.
One morn while breakfasting below,
And glancing at the _Morning Post_,
She heard a wild and sudden “Oh!”
That made her drop her buttered toast.
She heard a heavy fall--and groans;
The master, taken unawares,
Had slipped and broken sev’ral bones--
She’d left the dustpan on the stairs.
They sent for doctors by the score,
They fetched in haste Sir Andrew Clark;
But master’s sufferings soon were o’er--
That night he sat in Charon’s barque.
Now in a cell at Colney Hatch
A gibbering housemaid groans and glares,
And tries with trembling hands to snatch
A ghostly dustpan from the stairs.
MORAL.
Ye housemaids who this tale may read,
Remember, backs are hard to mend,
And injured noses freely bleed,
And falls may cause untimely end;
Your masters are but mortal men,
A neck once broken naught repairs.
Oh! think of this, ye housemaids, when
You leave the dustpan on the stairs.
The Pick-me-up.
(WRITTEN AFTER ONE BOTTLE.)
In the market-place or forum,
If you’re dull, my cockalorum,
Never heed the censor morum,
But just brew yourself a jorum,
In a beaker or a cup,
Of this stimulating liquor,
Which, when life begins to flicker,
And your soul grows slowly sicker,
And you feel a bucket-kicker,
Is a patent pick-me-up.
It was near the Yorkshire Stingo
That in modern London lingo,
With a face like a flamingo,
Said a friend of mine, “By Jingo!
What a wretched wreck you are!”
I replied, “I’m melancholic,
And my pains are diabolic.
I, who once was frisk and frolic,
Now am glum and vitriolic--
Every nerve is on the jar!”
Then a smile that was sardonic
Beamed about his brow Byronic,
And he said, “This is masonic,
But I think you want a tonic--
Try the famous (something) wine.”
And he further said with unction
That I need have no compunction
In obeying his injunction,
’Twould renew each vital function,
And just suit a case like mine.
I have drunk and I’m a giant
Quite refreshed and grown defiant;
All my limbs are free and pliant,
And now neither May nor Bryant
Can supply a match to me.
Now my pen again grows graphic,
And my verse is strictly sapphic,
And my tricycle in traffic
I can ride with smile seraphic,
From all nervous tremors free.
I can laugh at Punch and Judy,
And enjoy a book from Mudie;
I am spick and span and dudey,
And I freely spend my scudi,
And I feel that I could fly.
I’ve a bearing that is regal,
All my acts are strictly legal,
And I’ll wager that an eagle,
Though he’d taken Mother Seigel,
Couldn’t show as clear an eye.
So in market-place or forum,
If you’re dull, my cockalorum,
Never heed the censor morum,
But just brew yourself a jorum,
In a beaker or a cup,
Of this stimulating liquor,
Which, when life begins to flicker,
And your soul grows slowly sicker,
And you feel a bucket-kicker,
Is a patent pick-me-up.
Ad Cor Meum.
O heart, my heart, that faintly flutters
And sinks within my coward breast
At every sound a demon utters--
The demon of a wild unrest--
What poison is it in you lurking
That taints the rich red stream of life,
And leaves your trembling owner shirking
The storm and stress of daily strife?
The skies are black as Night’s dark daughters,
The Haven’s far, and fierce the sea;
Ill-omened birds above the waters
Fly low and shriek with evil glee.
O, sinking heart, to hope a traitor,
If through the storm’s the peace we prize,
Bid me sail on--the risk is greater
For him who here at anchor lies.
Beat, heart, again with brave endeavour;
Beat, heart, with faith in God’s right hand,
Stretched out to those who ask it ever
To lead them to the Promised Land.
Mine eyes to earth no more inclining,
I watch the storm that clears the sky;
Who’d see the sun in splendour shining
Must boldly fix his gaze on high.
Ichabod.
Write it up with falt’ring fingers,
Write it with a blush of shame,
Since no ray of glory lingers
’Mid the temples of our fame.
O’er a Christian Church blaspheming,
Which has dragged the name of God
Through the mire of party scheming,
Write the legend “Ichabod.”
Write it where our peers assemble,
Dullards decked in solemn state,
Though their sires made Europe tremble
In the days when we were great.
Peers to-day the land encumber,
Lazy lords no spur can prod;
O’er the House where now they slumber
Write the legend “Ichabod.”
Shrined in History’s grandest pages
Are the deeds of those who bent
Tyrant kings in kingly rages
To the will of Parliament.
Now but placemen, bores, and traitors
Tread the halls that Hampden trod;
O’er the House of idle praters
Write the legend “Ichabod.”
Once old England’s pride and glory
Was that all her sons were free;
Ah, to-day how changed the story!
Where is now our liberty?
Cranks and faddists forge our fetters,
Every day we feel the rod,
“Grandmamma” in sampler letters
Works o’er England “Ichabod.”
A Derby Ditty.
Mud in my eyes, and mud on my cheek,
My hat that drips, and my boots that leak,
And a voice so hoarse that I scarce can speak--
That’s how I went to the Derby.
A fight with a man at the station-gate,
Apoplexy through being late,
A score in a carriage that seated eight--
That’s how I went to the Derby.
Never a cab for love or oof,
The dye running out of my waterproof,
Through chalk and water I pad the hoof--
That’s how I got to the Derby.
Smashed and crushed in a crowded pen,
Bruised and battered by bustling men,
A lamb in a roaring lion’s den--
That’s how I saw the Derby.
“The favourite’s beat!” the millions cry,
The next umbrella extracts my eye,
And I’ve laid two thousand to one with Fry--
That’s how I liked the Derby.
I’ve lost my temper, I’ve lost my tin;
Where is my watch--my chain--my pin?
And my boots are letting the water in--
That’s how I left the Derby.
A couple of doctors by my bed,
A block of ice on my burning head,
And somehow I wish that I was dead--
That’s what came of the Derby.
The brokers in on a bill of sale,
Pills and potions of no avail,
A jerry-built tomb with a rusty rail--
That’s what came of the Derby.
R.I.P. on a soot-grimed stone,
And under my name these words alone:
“The biggest juggins that ever was known”
Has gone where’s there no more Derby.
Shall we Remember?
Ah, love, my love, as hand in hand,
This glorious autumn weather,
We stroll along the golden strand,
And watch the ships together,
We murmur vows we mean to keep,
But by next year’s September,
How many made beside the deep
Shall We Remember?
Old love is dead; new love awakes,
And hearts are playthings ever;
Though change may mar, ’tis change that makes;
Time every link can sever;
Though dull love’s fire, to glowing gold
We fan the dying ember--
Yet in new love, the love of old
Shall We Remember?
The race of life is to the strong,
The pace grows fast and faster,
The leader takes the field along,
And brings the weak disaster.
The prize is won! Yet what is fame?
A rushlight in November.
In twelve short months the victor’s name
Shall We Remember?
Paradise and the Sinner.
(THE NEW VERSION.)
One morn a sinner at the gate
Of Eden stood disconsolate,
And as he pondered on the things
In life he’d done, his wild oats sowing,
He felt the pang that conscience brings,
And both his cheeks with shame were glowing.
He thought of all the vows he’d broken,
He thought of falsehoods lightly told,
Of all the hasty words he’d spoken,
And all the tricks he’d played for gold.
“Ah me!” he cried, “I own my sin,
So, pitying angel, let me in!”
The angel heard the sinner’s tale,
He blushed not, neither turned he pale,
But “Think you then,” in wrath he cried,
“For crimes like these to pass inside?
Your life’s not been so badly spent;
You must do something worse by far.
Come back with something to repent,
And then I’ll raise the crystal bar.”
The sinner he flew from the spot sublime
Away to the earth below,
“I wonder,” he thought, “what kind of crime
Is reckoned the worst _en haut_.”
He picked a pocket and stole a purse;
He plotted against the Crown;
He changed two babies put out to nurse,
And he left a dog to drown.
“Good,” said the angel as he heard
A list of the sinner’s sins;
“But this is only about a third
Of the crime that entrance wins.
Your record, I trow, must be blacker far
Before I can raise the crystal bar.”
The sinner flew back to the earth once more,
And he steeped his hands in his brother’s gore;
He poisoned his wife by slow degrees,
And hanged his twins on a couple of trees;
And then with a broken and rusty saw
He cut off the head of his mother-in-law;
And he cried, as a shuddering world turned sick,
“If the chaplain’s right I have done the trick.”
Once more he stood before the gate
And told his tale and asked his fate.
The angel smiled--said, “Right you are,”
And swiftly raised the crystal bar.
But oh, when the sinner was once inside,
“There is some mistake!” he in terror cried,
As down in the bottomless pit he fell,
And found he had knocked at the gate of hell.
“It was your mistake,” the angel said,
“To think that because your hands were red
You could pass at once to the realms above,
The beautiful realms of peace and love.
The clerical gents may tell you so,
_But this is the place to which murderers go_.”
The Income Tax.
Oh, Goschen, hear us groan,
Relieve our burdened backs;
We weep and wail and moan,
“Reduce the income tax!”
It is a wicked plan,
And decency it lacks;
It makes a Christian man
Say, “Hang the income tax!”
Poor Job, he had to bear
Some very nasty smacks,
But nothing to compare
With this infernal tax.
Not all his pains and aches
Could put him in a wax;
But he’d have shouted, “Snakes!”
If asked for income tax.
Oh, take the curse away,
The cruel curse that racks:
Why should free Britons pay
This most un-British tax?
For years has raged the fight,
Be yours the cry of “Pax,”
And, Britain’s wrongs to right,
Remove the income tax.
On earth that deed shall dwell
Till all creation cracks,
And Fame’s last trumpet tell
How Goschen killed the tax.
Do this, and you will forge
A deathless battle-axe
For England’s new St. George
Who slew the income tax.
Nonsense.
The Strand was in a dreadful state,
And so was Mary Ann
They’d gone and raised the postal rate
’Twixt her and her young man.
She might have sent by parcels post
Her lover’s Christmas card,
But gales were raging round the coast,
And it was freezing hard.
What was a poor distracted maid
To do in such a case,
When only half the odds were laid
An hour before the race?
She had a right to see the rules,
According to the law;
But as the staff were mostly fools,
The time was all she saw.
So, losing heart, she gave a groan
And, taking off her socks,
She dropped them (they were not her own)
Inside the pillar-box.
(Her socks, as you may shrewdly guess,
Were stockings, truth to tell;
For as to-day young ladies dress
Socks would not look so well.)
She left her boots to mark the place,
And went to Drury Lane;
But there was that in Gus’s face
Which filled her heart with pain.
He would not pass her to the pit;
She said, “I’m on the Press.”
She thought he would have had a fit,
And burst his evening dress.
“If you are on the Press,” he cried,
“You ought to wear your shoes
But, as there’s room for one inside,
I cannot well refuse.”
He put her in a private box,
Which hid her to the knees;
And sent to Alias for some frocks,
And whispered, “Choose from these.”
She chose a page’s trunks and hose,
A fairy’s skirt of gauze,
And while she dressed Augustus rose
And left amid applause.
Then back she went a fairy queen
Into the G.P.O.;
She passed the rows of clerks between,
And all were bowing low.
They weighed her card with smirk and smile,
The stamps with care imposed;
The postage was a pound a mile,
Because the ends were closed.
But in her fairy garment she
Did look so sweet a gal,
“O.H.M.S.” was put by the
Postmaster-General.
And ere her card her love unclosed
Another knot was tied:
The P.M.G. himself proposed,
And now she is his bride.
MORAL.
If information you would ask,
When P.O. clerks are pressed,
You’ll find it aid you in your task
If you go nicely dressed!
Le Mardi Gras.
The Feast of Folly is spread,
Let us eat and drink and be merry;
While the fountains are running red
With the juice of the glorious berry.
Let us carry the forts of Joy
With a series of madcap dashes,
Ere the Feast of Flesh, my boy,
Gives way to the Fast of Ashes.
We have but a breath of life,
A whiff off the world’s wide pleasure;
A year of its strain and strife,
For a day of its dancing measure.
So, hey for the fatted calf,
While the carnival music crashes!
At the Feast of Flesh we’ll laugh,
Ere we weep at the Fast of Ashes.
O, sage with the grim gray face,
With our quips is there cause to quarrel?
We know ere we run our race
We shall master the Mardi’s moral.
We shall be as the monks who scourge
Their skins with a hundred lashes:
Youth’s Feast of the Flesh we must purge
With our manhood’s Fast of Ashes.
Two Sundays.
The bigot, with his narrow mind,
Can ill in every pleasure find;
He makes his God a god of gloom,
The pulsing world a living tomb,
A curse in every blessing sees,
And, thinking Heaven to appease,
He cuts--Religion is his knife--
The blossom from the Tree of Life.
From fogs, that gave that bigot birth,
Far off, in many a land of mirth
Hearts full of faith in God above
Look on Him as a God of Love--
A God who bids His children play,
And smiles to see His loved ones gay:
As earthly fathers smile to see
Their children sing and dance with glee.
Oh, British Sabbath, bigot bred,
Our youth’s despair, our childhood’s dread!
God does not scowl in solemn state
Behind a gloomy prison gate;
He smiles enthroned in sunny skies,
Where only joyous songs arise.
To make God’s day, then, ’twere as well,
Seem more like heaven and less like hell.
The Mails Aboard.
The captain of the _Cuckoo_ took
His glasses from the starboard hook;
He gazed across the raging main,
Then put his glasses back again.
The _Cuckoo’s_ mate remarked, “I guess
You saw a signal of distress?”
“I did, but it must be ignored;
You see, we’ve got the mails aboard.”
This was the captain’s curt reply;
The first mate heard it with a sigh.
But all the _Cuckoo’s_ captain said
Was “Steady!” then “Full steam ahead!”
He crossed the sinking vessel’s bows,
As close as seamanship allows.
“Can’t stop!” he through his trumpet roared,
“Because I have the mails aboard.”
The passengers and all the crew
Replied, “Oh, please to save us--do!”
And, plunging in the raging sea,
Declined the captain’s R.I.P.
They followed in the _Cuckoo’s_ wake,
Till swimming made their stomachs ache;
Their lot the captain much deplored,
But waved them off with “Mails aboard!”
The storm to fiercest tempest grew,
But straight ahead the _Cuckoo_ flew;
Till once again the captain took
His glasses from the starboard hook;
“Hullo!” he cried; “if I am not
Mistaken, there’s the royal yacht;
A hidden rock her side has bored,
She signals! Answer, ‘Mails aboard!’”
The yacht replied with haughty mien,
“Stop, by the order of the Queen,
Who, braving equinoctial gales,
Now in this sinking vessel sails.”
“Alas!” the _Cuckoo’s_ captain cried,
“To save my Queen would be my pride”
(Here he saluted with his sword),
“But tell her I’ve the mails aboard.”
“Ha!” cried the Queen, “for this I will
Cut off his head on Tower Hill,
The knave shall see the House of Guelph
Respected still can make itself.”
She sent a man to ev’ry gun,
And, just to stop the captain’s fun,
Into his ship a broadside poured,
Although he had the mails aboard.
The _Cuckoo’s_ captain cried, “The deuce!”
And straight ran up a flag of truce;
And then he sent a boat to save
His sovereign from a watery grave.
The Queen stepped nimbly on the deck,
And left the royal yacht a wreck;
But flung, though mercy he implored,
The _Cuckoo’s_ captain overboard.
When he recovered from the shock,
He lay upon a lonely rock;
And there ships’ captains as they pass
Survey him sternly through the glass,
And by Victoria’s orders scoff
At all his cries of “Take me off!”
And say, “By us your fate’s deplored,
_But we can’t stop--we’ve mails aboard_.”
At The Photographer’s.
(A BALLAD OF BROADMOOR.)
They coaxed me up a hundred stairs,
They lured me to their den,
For me they laid their artful snares--
Those photographing men.
They dragged me to a room of glass
Beneath a blazing sun,
I thought I should have died. Alas!
I’m nearly fourteen stone!
They saw their victim pant and blow,
They heard him cry, “I melt!”
But ne’er a one for all my woe
One grain of pity felt.
They seized my head and screwed it round,
And fixed it in a vice,
And simpered when they had me bound,
“That pose is very nice!
“Look up--look up, and wear a smile;
Look pleasant, if you please.
You must keep still a little while;
Just straighten up your knees.”
’Tis thus they jeer and jibe at me
As, faint and hot, I try
An inch before my nose to see
With sunstroke in my eye.
I think of all the bitter wrongs
My later life has known;
I writhe beneath Fate’s cruel thongs,
I knit my brow and groan.
And still with many a smile and smirk
The artist trips about,
And gives my chin a little jerk
And sticks my elbows out.
Ye gods, am I a grinning ape
To pose and posture thus?
Am I a man in human shape
Or turkey that they truss?
My head is free; with fiendish mirth
I raise a vengeful hand,
And dash the camera to earth,
And fell the iron stand.
I take the artist by the throat
And pin him to the wall,
And jerk his chin and tear his coat,
And hold his head in thrall.
I bid the trembling victim smile,
I cry, “Be gay and laugh,
And in the very latest style
_I’ll_ take _your_ photograph!”
I twisted till I broke his neck,
I baked him in the sun;
I left the room an awful wreck,
And then the deed was done.
They held an inquest on the bits;
Ye photographing crew,
Before to you the writer sits
Just read that inquest through.
In Gay Japan.
BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.
Mr. Lawson, if you please,
Just a little line to say
I’m a-taking of my ease
In a Japaneasy way.
Here I write “By Lands and Seas”
For your “London Day by Day,”
’Neath the blossom-laden trees
Of Japan, the glad and gay.
Here I watch the pretty shes
As they don their night array;
And they ask me to their teas,
And they sing to me and play.
’Tis ’mid pleasures such as these
That I hope you’ll let me stay--
’Tis a climate that agrees
With your faithful Edwin A.
Now no more I have to seize
Editorial pen to flay
Home Rule freaks of Mr. G.’s
Or to keep the Rads at bay.
Mona’s “Marriage,” Lubbock’s bees,
Mr. Stanley, Tottie Fay,
Water rates, and School Board fees
On my mind no longer prey.
Glad Japan my spirit frees
From its tenement of clay,
And, my note-book on my knees,
With the muses I can stray.
So, dear Lawson, if you please,
I will stop here if I may,
Sending “Over Lands and Seas”
From Japan, the glad and gay.
The Balaclava Heroes.
(JULY 2, 1890.)
Open the workhouse doors to-day
To the men who fought in that fearful fray;
Weary and worn and scant of breath
Are the men who rode through the valley of Death;
But, clad in the pauper’s garb of shame,
They are getting the meed of their deathless fame.
These are the heroes our poet sang
When over the world their story rang;
These are the heroes, gnarled and bent,
With the tale of whose deeds the skies were rent;
These are the soldiers whose fame’s writ large
On the glorious page of that deathless charge.
Open the workhouse doors to-day
To the penniless heroes old and gray;
In each wrinkled face is a soldier’s pride,
They have won the guerdon so long denied,
And we honour their deed with--what do you think?--
_A benefit at a skating rink_!
A Child’s Idea.
Lightly holding her mother’s hand,
A little girl tripped o’er her father’s land;
Squire of all the acres he,
As far as the little one’s eyes could see,
And his wife and his daughter, his “Baby May,”
Were “seeing the folks” this Christmas Day.
Six years old was the baby girl,
And her brain was all in a dreamy whirl
With the puddings and pies and the Christmas-trees
And the bells and carols, and, if you please,
The night before had St. Nicholas been
With the loveliest dolly that ever was seen.
“How good of the saint, mamma, to leave
Such beautiful things upon Christmas Eve!”
She had cried, as against her baby breast
She hushed her dear little doll to rest.
And then the wonders of Christmas Day
Had almost taken her breath away.
And now through the village she gaily trips,
As the greeting comes from a score of lips:
“A Merry Christmas and bright New Year!”
And the air is heavy with Christmas cheer--
Goose and pudding and beef galore--
And the fires glow bright through each open door
There’s a happy smile upon ev’ry face,
The village is quite a fairy place;
And in every cottage at which they call
The green and holly are on the wall;
And all the family gathered there
Are seated around the Christmas fare.
“How happy they are!” says Baby May,
As she looks at the feast and the feasters gay;
And then there comes to her childish mind
A scene or two of a different kind--
Of weeping women and frowning men,
And nobody seems so happy then!
She had grasped the fact in her childish way
That the poor had “troubles” and “rents” to pay--
That children ailed, and that some men’s wives
Were “nearly worried out of their lives.”
She had heard the gossip, as children do,
And to-day it came back to her mind anew.
She thought of the village of then and now,
And there came a cloud on her baby brow;
She knew there was sorrow where now was mirth,
And she whispered, “Mamma, when He made the earth,
What a pity it was God did not say,
‘Let it be _always_ Christmas Day’!”
Sanitation at Sea.
I have sailed o’er the ocean to spots far away,
I’ve also done “Margate and back” in the day;
I have spent the long nights upon deck in a storm,
And stood by the funnel to keep myself warm;
And when I’ve been poorly as poorly can be,
I have sighed for some slight “sanitation at sea.”
I have been in the cabin where sufferers lay
In an atmosphere fitted a nigger to slay,
I have slept in a bunk where the air was so foul
That I woke in the morn with an agonized howl,
And I’ve staggered upstairs crying, “Oh, dearie me!
Why will they ignore ‘sanitation at sea’?”
By the smell of the engine, the dirt on the deck,
By the stairs you descend at the risk of your neck,
By the cabin whose odour is stuffy and stale,
By the dirty old tub which is known as “the Mail,”
By the horrors from which scarce a vessel is free,
We’d welcome the least “sanitation at sea.”
Guignol.
I pay two sous and take my chair
Among the little girls and boys;
The nurses turn their heads and stare,
For puppet-shows are children’s joys.
And yet, though Time has hit me hard,
And life I’m given to revile,
From every joy I’m not debarred,
For Guignol still can make me smile.
Dear Guignol of my golden youth!
How oft in these Elysian fields
I’ve listened to his words of truth,
And watched the baton that he wields!
And still in autumn’s pleasant glow
A happy hour away I while,
And with the babies “see the show,”
For Guignol still can make me smile!
The English Summer.
On Monday the weather was fine and bright,
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
On Tuesday the floods had reached their height,
And a hurricane blew on Wednesday night,
And the land was a swamp and a dismal sight--
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
On Thursday the dogs all panting lay,
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
And sunstroke settled two boys at play.
On Friday the winter had come to stay--
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
On Saturday snow was a good foot high,
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
On Sunday there fell from the jet-black sky
A deluge that covered the mountains high;
And to-day in a tropical sun we fry--
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
A Perfect Paradise.
(VIDE PELICAN. AFFIDAVITS.)
The quiet of the woodland way
Bird-broken is by night and day,
But ne’er a song-bird trills its lay
In Gerrard Street, Soho.
No breeze here bears the babel roar--
Life’s ocean, tideless evermore,
Lies dead upon the silent shore
Of Gerrard Street, Soho.
The hermit seeking holy calm
May soothe his soul with Gilead balm
Beneath the desert’s one green palm
In Gerrard Street, Soho.
But ’twas, oh, ’twas not always thus
Men flying from life’s fume and fuss
In urbe found a peaceful rus
In Gerrard Street, Soho.
There was a time when shout and shriek
And song and oath and drunken freak
Made matters lively all the week
In Gerrard Street, Soho.
Then, too, alas! the Sabbath eve
Heard sounds to make the pious grieve,
And quiet tenants thought they’d leave
In Gerrard Street, Soho.
When came the change from noise to peace,
When did the clattering hansom cease,
When rose the value of a lease
In Gerrard Street, Soho?
When came that sense of perfect rest
Which makes the region doubly blest?
’Twas when, as members’ oaths attest,
The Pelicans first built their nest
In Gerrard Street, Soho!
That Breeze.
The poets who write in the magazines
Have pitched their tents amid sylvan scenes;
Treading with joy in their lazy lay
The primrose path of the woodland way,
They always stop on the road to sing
Of “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
I know that breeze of the lilting line--
That breeze is a very old friend of mine;
That it takes bards in, need cause no surprise--
For at throwing dust into people’s eyes,
Facile princeps and also king
Is “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
It’s the “poet” that’s balmy, and not the breeze,
When he sings in praise of our English “bise,”
The wind that blows ’neath the cold gray sky,
That stabs the chest and inflames the eye;
It is death that hovers with sable wing
On “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
_I’d_ sing the song that this breeze deserves,
But, alas! I’ve “liver” and also “nerves;”
Sciatica racks me day and night,
And I haven’t a bronchial tube that’s right;
And the fiend that all these woes doth bring
Is “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
Ballad of Old-Time Fogs.
The sky above my head is fair--
Not dark, as once it used to be--
And joy and life are in the air,
And green is every budding tree
That, wind-swept, makes its bough to me;
And all the world is glad and gay,
Which makes me cry when this I see--
“Where are the fogs of yesterday?”
My heart is light and void of care--
Though this year’s months are yet but three--
I miss the mid-day gas-lamps’ glare,
I meet the folks who used to flee
To Southern France and Italy;
In London now they gladly stay,
In London spend their £ s. d.--
Where are the fogs of yesterday?
One shirt till eve I now can wear,
Which once was quite a rarity,
And even folks in Bedford Square
And erstwhile blackest Bloomsbury,
Can from their windows gaze with glee
And nod to friends across the way,
And Auguste says to Stephen G.,
“Where are the fogs of yesterday?”
Prince, since of them at last we’re free,
And London ’scapes their cruel sway,
Why need we care a single D?
Where are the fogs of yesterday?
Under the Clock.
(AN ACTOR’S SONG.)
[“_For the remainder of cast see Under the Clock._”--_Theatrical
advertisement._]
“Under the Clock,” with the rank and file,
That’s where you have to look for me;
That is the End of the Century style--
Vide the “ads.” in the great _D. T._
Well, I suppose we can’t all be starred,
So the special “ad.” ’s for the finer flock,
And the common sheep, though it’s rather hard,
Are huddled together “Beneath the Clock.”
I do my best in my humble way
When I’m cast for a part that is known as “small”;
For the minor parts in a high-class play
May help in its “making,” after all.
And so when I’m placed below the salt,
It gives my pride just a passing shock,
And I own some day I should like to vault
Up to the “stars” from “Beneath the Clock.”
Actors’ vanity! Yes, you’re right!
Though I’d rather you called it artists’ pride--
It’s the battle of life in the mimic fight
On the boards where so many have fought and died--
On the world’s great stage, where they’re players all,
And they feel the pains that we only mock;
To a favoured few must the “star” “ads.” fall,
The rest are only “Beneath the Clock.”
The Girl of Forty-seven.
Fond lover, when you come to woo,
And whisper nothings tender,
And try to span, as lovers do,
A waist that once was slender,
Be not upset if curt rebuff
Your amorous joy should leaven;
That sort of thing is apt to huff
The girl of forty-seven.
That girl, who’s up to every game,
Knows more than you can teach her;
With Cupid’s bow it’s vain to aim,
His arrows rarely reach her.
The only words to touch her heart
Are “Coutts” or “Barclay Bevan;”
Gold-tipped must be the Blind God’s dart
For girls of forty-seven.
Don’t think by gazing in her eyes
With simulated rapture,
Don’t think by sentimental sighs
Her seasoned heart to capture;
Just show your banker’s book, my son,
And if the will of Heaven
Has blessed your balance, you have won
The girl of forty-seven.
Conventional Malgré Lui.
Convention is a thing I hate,
Convention is a thing I scorn;
And yet, alas! I grieve to state
I was conventionally born.
My father and my mother were
(A curse be on Convention’s head!)
Two sweethearts--youth and maiden--ere
They were conventionally wed.
Then came my vaccination, and,
Convention though I cannot brook,
I’m given now to understand
It quite conventionally “took.”
I cut my teeth--convention! Bah!
A tear stood in my baby eye;
Oh, why did I not learn from ma
That teething babies always cry?
I was an infant, then a child,
And then a boy, and then a youth;
Ah! even now it makes me wild--
But I must tell the bitter truth.
And then I came to man’s estate;
You see that I no single jot
Did from convention deviate,
And yet I think convention “rot.”
I fell in love! Ah, he who sits
In judgment on the modern stage
And tears the common play to bits
Will understand my frenzied rage.
I fell in love! Convention’s slave
To dull convention bowed the knee;
And in return the maiden gave
Her love (conventional) to me.
And now I have some girls and boys
Who grow, and play, and go to school;
Conventional are all my joys--
I’m just like any other fool.
I give off Ibsen to my wife,
And quote the notes of W. A.;
But still I lead a common life--
Convention _won’t_ be kept at bay.
The end, of course, will come at last.
Oh, may I, like Elijah, rise
In something safe upon the blast,
And living pass beyond the skies!
When quitting earth I’d keep my breath--
I hope sincerely that I shall--
I loathe the bare idea of death,
It is so damn’d conventional.
Home, Sweet Home.
(A WINTER’S TALE.)
Through every chink there roars the blast,
My stock of coals is falling fast;
I have a cold that’s come to last,
I’m booked until the blizzard’s past--
For home, sweet home.
The fog has filled the house with gloom,
The blacks lie thick in every room;
Dim through the mist the gas-jets loom,
And not unlike a living tomb
Is home, sweet home.
To devils blue I fall a prey,
And sit and think the livelong day
Of happier times when I was gay,
In winter Edens, far away
From home, sweet home.
A prisoner I in climes accurst,
Where fog and frost are at their worst;
Hullo! What’s that? the pipes have burst!
A plumber, quick! but save me first
From home, sweet home!
Fling wide the door and bring a light.
Hi, cabman! ’Tis an awful night;
Put down the glass and I’ll sit tight,
But drive me from the dreadful sight
Of home, sweet home.
Poor horse, poor horse! Oh, spare the lash!
His quivering carcass cease to thrash.
He’s down! the cab has come to smash;
The snow falls fast, I’ll make a dash
For home, sweet home.
In Portland Place.
The world and wife are out of town,
The blast sweeps down the empty street;
The bobby in a study brown
Thinks of the sea upon his beat.
The cab-horse dozes on the rank,
The empty ’buses cease to race;
The hungry cat roams, lean and lank--
The blinds are down in Portland Place.
The birds still sing in Regent’s Park,
The ducks emit their bronchial quack;
But all day long from dawn to dark
The crossing-sweeper’s trade is slack.
The Langham porter’s wand’ring eye
Encounters ne’er a human face;
No smoke curls upward to the sky--
The blinds are down in Portland Place.
The thoroughfare is broad and wide,
The vestry keeps the roadway clean,
And I can walk on either side,
Or ’gainst each separate lamp-post lean.
I’m king of all that I survey--
As sad as Selkirk’s is my case--
Oh, soon, to save my reason, may
The blinds go up in Portland Place!
The Shirt Buttons.
(AFTER SWINBURNE.)
Off! at the neck and wristband!
Off!--and laid on the bed!
And she of the sweet white kist band
Is the one whom I chose to wed.
Off! the two pearl-white buttons!
And yet it is laid out there
(To return, as it were, to our muttons),
The shirt I am going to wear.
I list to the bells’ sweet chiming,
In the still of the Sabbath morn,
And I ask myself, in rhyming,
How a buttonless shirt is worn.
Shall I put myself in a passion,
And curse the unwifely act,
Or--which isn’t a poet’s fashion--
Behave with a little tact?
Shall I show her the shirt and scold her,
My scarcely a month-wed wife,
Or wait till our union’s older,
For the frown and the wordy strife?
Ah! soul of my soul, my darling,
No buttonless shirt shall rise
To set the old Adam snarling
At his Eve in their Paradise.
Are we twain made one to wrangle,
That the wifely way’s unlearnt,
That a shirt has gone wrong in the mangle
Or a handkerchief’s badly burnt?
No; never shall wrath be blighting
The beautiful bliss that buds,
And I’ll fasten--your love requiting--
My buttonless shirt with studs.
The Londoner to His Love.
(SONG AND DANCE.)
(_N.B.--This American song and dance can only be performed on the
production of a certificate of lunacy signed by three members of
the London County Council._)
Oh, come, my love, where the fog lies thick,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow;
We shall catch Na Nonna if we’re only quick,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow;
For our bower is built on London clay,
Where the gray mist hangs from the dawn of day,
And the gay young germs of neuralgia play
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow.
Oh, come, my love, where the sun ne’er smirks,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow;
To the wild wet waste where consumption lurks--
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow.
Where the cough makes music, and the bronchial wheeze
Replies to the echo of the sniff and sneeze,
And asthma flirts with the cut-throat breeze,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow.
Oh, come, my love, and abide with me,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow;
Where the weathercock always points N.E.,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow;
Where the damp drips dank down the dismal wall,
And the fungi flourish in the mildewed hall,
And the undertaker is the lord of all,
Down in the shadow where the microbes grow.
The Eiffel Bonnet.
Behind an Eiffel bonnet
I sat one matinée,
And, oh, the feathers on it
Completely hid the play,
Because that Eiffel bonnet
Kept bobbing in my way.
That awful Eiffel bonnet,
It blotted out the scene
And all the people on it
Just like a giant screen:
It was the sort of bonnet
You couldn’t see between.
The wearer of that bonnet
Between two friends she sat,
And swayed (and hence this sonnet)
Now this way and now that,
And bent her head and bonnet
With either side to chat.
To left she moved her bonnet,
I bent my head to right
The stage to look upon it;
But ere I had a sight,
Back came that Eiffel bonnet
And blotted out the light.
O awful Eiffel bonnet
That towers to the sky!
If ladies still will don it,
’Twill happen by-and-by,
“Down with that Eiffel bonnet!”
Poor playgoers will cry.
To see a swaying bonnet
We don’t go to the play,
’Tis not to gaze upon it
Our ten-and-six we pay--
So d---- the Eiffel bonnet
That damns the matinée!
To a Fair Musician.
O lady next door, could your glance on me fall,
There are times when my lot you would pity,
And shut the piano that stands by the wall,
And spare me your favourite ditty.
That music hath charms I’m the last to deny,
But music from eight to eleven
Is apt the weak nerves of a poet to try,
And to hasten his journey to heaven.
In vain in my study on work I’ve in hand
I endeavour to fix my attention--
That moment you sit yourself down to your “grand,”
And I use a nice word I won’t mention.
O lady, I know you are gentle and fair,
And I grant that you play very nicely;
But if you are anxious my reason to spare,
Don’t start, ma’am, at eight _so precisely_.
I wait for that moment, each nerve on the strain--
I tremble with wild agitation;
A thousand sharp needles seem pricking my brain
And I’m bathed in a cold perspiration.
For I know you’ll commence on the last stroke of eight
To perform all the morceaux that you know,
From “ Dorothy,” “Doris,” and “Faust up to Date,”
From Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Gounod.
O lady next door, could your glance but once fall
On the eye in which madness is lurking,
You would move your piano away from the wall,
And you’d play when the Bard wasn’t working.
A Word for the Police.
The soldiers of our “City Guard,”
Through winter snows and summer heats,
From all the soldiers’ joys debarred,
Keep watch and ward in London streets.
For them no martial trumpets sound,
For them there waits no victor’s bay,
But on the lonely midnight round,
Unarmed, they face the fiercest fray.
Alone, they brave the brawler’s blows,
The burglar’s shot, the ruffian’s knife;
Undaunted, dare a hundred foes,
And risk, unflinching, limb and life
What heroes, then, have more than they
To London’s love and honour right,
These quiet guardians of the day,
These lonely soldiers of the night?
The Old Clock on the Stairs.
(A Ballad of Broadmoor.)
There standeth in my entrance-hall
A grim grandfather’s clock,
That holds my inmost heart in thrall,
And gives it many a shock.
It has a cruel, cunning face,
And two long hands that glide
Like demon fates who run a race
For ever by my side.
So day by day, and year by year,
It strikes a ceaseless knell,
For all that to my heart was dear,
For all I loved so well.
It tolls for youth and love and trust,
For joys and pleasures fled,
For dreams long gathered to the dust,
For hopes long cold and dead.
In mournful beats it ticks away
The moments of my span,
And makes me, when I would be gay,
A miserable man.
No other sound the silence breaks,
Save when with hollow boom
Its sad sepulchral voice awakes
The echoes of the tomb.
It shall not tick my life away--
Its raven croak no more
Shall tell me that I’m old and gray
And all my dreams are o’er!
My fist is through its gloomy face,
I wring its iron neck--
Thus! thus! I smash its heartless case,
And dance upon the wreck.
Hurrah, hurrah! for hope returns,
The mocking voice is still;
Within my breast ambition burns,
And all my pulses thrill.
That fateful tongue, thank God, I miss,
I know not how time flies;
And oh, where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise.
My Ambition.
The hedges are green with the spring,
The sun is on meadow and lea,
The little birds merrily sing,
And the blossom is sweet on the tree.
I have wandered for many a mile--
All around is a feast for the eye;
So I’ll whittle a stick on this stile,
And I’ll grin as the girls go by.
I am far from the turmoil of town;
Here is rest in this Devonshire lane--
Here is rest from the world’s cruel frown,
Here is rest from the passion and pain.
Here, forgetting my woes for awhile,
I will sit ’neath the blue southern sky,
And whittle a stick on the stile,
And grin as the girls go by.
Sing on, little bird on the tree;
Little sunbeam, dance on and be gay;
Oh, the future is nothing to me!
And, Memory, please go and play.
Here, with nothing my temper to rile,
I would like to remain till I die;
And whittle a stick on the stile,
And grin as the girls go by.
A Wish.
When London’s wrapped in filthy fogs,
When seized are my unmuzzled dogs,
When full and fierce the east winds blow,
I wish myself in Jericho!
When all night long the howling cad
Disturbs my sleep and drives me mad,
And milk-carts rattle to and fro,
I wish myself in Jericho.
When snow and slush block up the street,
And “slides” send skyward both my feet,
And bang upon my back I go,
I wish myself in Jericho.
When County Council cranks disgust,
When schemes that drew my coin go bust,
When bigots harass every show,
I wish myself in Jericho.
When frost gives way to sudden thaw,
And all my pipes have got a flaw,
And through my house the waters flow,
I wish myself in Jericho.
When for next Sunday’s _Referee_
I have to do my M. and C.
While in dyspepsia’s direst throe,
I wish myself in Jericho.
The Song of Heredity.
My father was a madman, do you wonder I’m insane?
My mother wasn’t pretty, do you wonder I am plain?
My father was consumptive, and my hollow cheeks you see;
Can you wonder I’m a drunkard when my mother had d.t.?
Science speaks out pretty plainly on “hereditary taint,”
And the sinner breeds a sinner, as the saint begets a saint;
Then why call me Ananias, and reproach me, since, forsooth,
My papa was such a liar that I _cannot_ tell the truth?