HE stood, a worn-out City clerk-- Who’d toil’d, and seen no holiday, For forty years from dawn to dark-- Alone beside Caermarthen Bay.
He felt the salt spray on his lips; Heard children’s voices on the sands; Up the sun’s path he saw the ships Sail on and on to other lands;
And laugh’d aloud. Each sight and sound To him was joy too deep for tears; He sat him on the beach, and bound A blue bandana round his ears;
And thought how, posted near his door, His own green door on Camden Hill, Two bands at least, most likely more, Were mingling at their own sweet will
Verdi with Vance. And at the thought He laugh’d again, and softly drew That _Morning Herald_ that he’d bought Forth from his breast, and read it through. _Charles Stuart Calverley._
IN a church which is furnish’d with mullion and gable, With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin, The penitents’ dresses are sealskin and sable, The odour of sanctity’s eau-de-Cologne.
But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades, Gaze down on this crowd with its panniers and paints, He would say, as he look’d at the lords and the ladies, “Oh, where is All-Sinners’, if this is All-Saints’?” _Edmund Yates._
Affectionately dedicated to all “original researchers” who pant for “endowment.”
BLOW, blow your trumpets till they crack, Ye little men of little souls! And bid them huddle at your back, Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals!
Fill all the air with hungry wails-- “Reward us, ere we think or write! Without your gold mere knowledge fails To sate the swinish appetite!”
And, where great Plato paced serene, Or Newton paused with wistful eye, Rush to the chase with hoofs unclean, And Babel-clamour of the sky!
Be yours the pay, be theirs the praise; We will not rob them of their due, Nor vex the ghosts of other days By naming them along with you.
They sought and found undying fame; They toiled not for reward nor thanks; Their cheeks are hot with honest shame For you, the modern mountebanks,
Who preach of justice, plead with tears That love and mercy should abound, While marking with complacent ears The moaning of some tortured hound;
Who prate of wisdom--nay, forbear, Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath, Trampling, with heel that will not spare, The vermin that beset her path!