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O statue, us Philistines loathing,
Of Phoebus !-our tailors we fear,
Come down, and redeem us from clothing,
O nude Belvidere !

We are wise--and we make ourselves hazy,
We are foolish-and, so, go to church;
While Sambo but laughs, and is lazy,

(Vile Discipline! lend me thy birch); He dreams of no life save the present, His virtue is but when it suits; Sometimes, which is not quite so pleasant, I miss coat or boots.

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The low light trembled on languid lashes,
The haze of your hair on my mouth was blown,
Our love flashed fierce from its fading ashes,
As night's dim net on the day was thrown.
What was it meant for, or made for, that minute,
But that our lives in delight should be dipt?
Was it yours, or my fault, or fate's, that in it
Our frail feet faltered, our steep steps slipt?

And brake his crowne, and Jille came tumblynge after.
Our linked hands loosened and lapsed in sunder,
Love from our limbs as a shift was shed,

But paused a moment, to watch with wonder
The pale pained body, the bursten head.
While our sad souls still with regrets are riven,

While the blood burns bright on our bruised brows,

I have set you free, and I stand forgiven-
And now I had better go and call my cows.

From a scarce little pamphlet entitled "Poems and Parodies, by Two Undergrads." Oxford. B. H. Blackwell, 1880. Price one shilling.

HOW JACK HARRIS BECAME ÆSTHETIC.
YE MUSES nine that in Arcadia dwell,
Quit Pindus and the cold Castalian well,
And me your lowliest follower inspire
With such clear flame as long ago did fire
The mighty lips of Blackstone; so may I,
A feeble trump of truth that cannot die,
Clearly proclaim and on the roll of fame
Inscribe, however humbly, my poor name.
Jack Harris before his Conversion.

COME down to me, cling to me, lay thy red lips on me, love, Let me drown in thy bountiful beauty, O glorious consecrate dove,

Made fit for the vigil of Venus, made fair by the Cyprian dame,

Made fair in the form of a maiden, a medley of music and flame;

For the world grows giddy around us, and swoons, and the pale souls preach

Poor fables of sorrow and virtue, and all that the grey gods teach,

But we clasp and we bite and we madden, and I worship your throat and your hair.

We have strayed in the cold sea places, we have laughed on the altar stair,

We have eaten and drunken of love, and the lesson of living is this,

That the high sky bends above us, and life is a curse and a kiss.

Make me glad, O thou rare hand-maiden, with the sound of thy passionate sighs,

While I sing of thy body's white beauty and live in the light of thine eyes,

For save me there's no man living made worthy to utter thy praise,

Who art come as new moon to our night-tide, new sun to our days. Jack Harris after his Conversion.

From an article by Mr. Justin H. McCarthy, which appeared in Belgravia (London). March, 1880.

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THE LAY OF MACARONI.

As a wave that steals when the winds are stormy
From creek to cove of the curving shore,
Buffeted, blown, and broken before me,

Scattered and spread to its sunlit core:
As a dove that dips in the dark of maples
To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade,
I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples,

I bathe in thine beauty, by thee embayed.

What is it ails me that I should sing of her?

The queen of the flashes and flames that were !
Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her,

The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her!
I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters,
I have danced her dances of dizzy delight,

I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars,
Between the nightingale's song and the night!
What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee?
What is it now I should ask at thine hands?

Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee?
Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands?

Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni,

And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold,

She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni,

The choice of her children when cheeses are old!

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I wait in vain for the charm that encloses

The green land of dreams in sleep's mystical chart,
For the fruit of its trees and the breath of its roses,
More sweet than are sold in the merchants' mart.
So close to its border, why fails my heart?
What holdeth it back, tho' my dim brain rock?
Without, the noise of the nightman's cart,
Within, the tick of an eight-day clock.
Envoi.

Erewhile in hope I had chosen my part,
To sleep for a season as sound as a block,
With never a thought of a nightman's cart,
Or the hateful tick of an eight-day clock.

A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND.

THE sorest stress of the Season's over;
Out of it's crush I am lying alone,

My face to the sky, and my back in the clover.
Hark to that lark! Its jubilant tone

Is a cheery change from St. Stephen's drone; And ah! that whiff from the wind-swept brine! With nought to do but absorb ozoneShould there be ballad more blythe than mine?

Song of a haven-welcoming lover!

Rare rose-scents from our garden blown Reach me here, and my eyes discover,

Shimmering there, in a tangle thrown, Sunny locks. "She is coming, my own!" The green bowers sever, her blue eyes shine. Sweet love nearing, sore labour flown,Should there be ballad more blythe than mine?

What to me though weariness hover

Still o'er Town where the toilers groan? Lazy lounger, leisurely lover,

What care I for the Members' moan At the Irish incubus, heavy as stone? For Biggar's bullying, Whalley's whine? Peace unchequered, and care unknown, Should there be ballad more blithe than mine?

ENVOI.

Eh! What! Drowsing? A dream? Ochone!
St. Patrick's curse on those Irish swine,
Who have burst the bubble by slumber blown,
And broken a ballad so blithe as mine!

Punch. August 11, 1877.

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The following parody appeared in The Tomahawk (London) on the occasion of a visit paid by Ada Isaacs Menken to M. Alexandre Dumas, in Paris. "Miss Menken," who was really the wife of John C. Heenan the pugilist, will be best remembered for her appearance (in very scanty attire) as "Mazeppa," at Astley's Theatre. She had a fine stage appearance, but was a very indifferent actress. She published small volume of poems, entitled Infelicia, which is now eagerly sought after by collectors, because it contains an introduction written by Charles Dickens.

TO ADA.

So must the sinewy Centaur snort and rear, As some sweet maiden-mare trots wickedly

Across his pagan path, burning his very heart;
Flicking the flies from off her heaving flanks,
The amorous flies who fill their lips with blood;
And while his life-blood riots in his hocks,

She spreads her cunning heels and whisks her tail;
Then kicks the bitter sand into his eyes,
Still gazing smarting on the supple form-
For I have felt a joy new-born to pain!
For I have seen that silken syren glide
Across the desert, hight old Astley's Fane.
My breast could hardly flutter as she came
Bare-backed before my timorous sight; my nails
Curved inward to my palms, and such a sweet
Soft tremor crept around my nervous knees.
I swooned but for the kindly guardian of the box,
Who brought me welcome water at my wish,
And damped my throbbing temples.

On my bed

I rolled and rioted in frenzied fret,
For turn howe'er I would, upon the walls,
Across the sheets, the beauteous Ada rode,
Scenting the air with black-head clustering hair,
Loading the senses with soft-thrilling sighs;
While through the rosy lips pale pearls of teeth
Flashed hungrily. Strapped to her showy steed,
She bites her charger in the side, till lips
Run red with the brave beast's blood; and as the sting
Of her small fangs urges his wild career,
So this hot flame that chars me to the bones,
Spreads out the fire of jealousy, and cries,
Mazeppa flies across the sea to greet
Great Athos-Porthos-Aramis.

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Why, the younger.

For the topic-as 'tis tropic
Heat at present-perhaps 'twere pleasant
If each Paladin
His ballad in
Put salad in.

But there must be no single metre, please
That's not allowed by Dr. Guest, of Caius.
BROW. (Swinburne.)

"O COOL in the summer is salad,
And warm in the winter is love;
And a poet shall sing you a ballad
Delicious thereon and thereof.
A singer am I, if no sinner,

My Muse has a marvellous wing,
And I willingly worship at dinner
The Sirens of Spring.

Take endive-like love it is bitter;
Take beet-for like love it is red;
Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter,
And cress from the rivulet's bed:
Anchovies foam-born, like the lady
Whose beauty has maddened this bard,
And olives, from groves that are shady;
And eggs-boil 'em hard.

BEARD. (Browning.)

"

WAITRESS, with eyes so marvellous black, And the blackest possible lustrous gay tress, This is the month of the Zodiac

When I want a pretty deft-handed waitress. Bring a china-bowl, you merry young soul; Bring anything green, from worsted to celery; Bring pure olive-oil from Italy's soil

Then your china-bowl we'll well array. When the time arrives chip choicest chives, And administer quietly chili and capsicum

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KING Arthur, growing very tired indeed
Of wild Tintagel, now that Launcelot
Had gone to Jersey or to Jericho,
And there was nobody to make a rhyme,
And Cornish girls were christened Jennifer,
And the Round Table had grown rickety,
Said unto Merlin (who had been asleep
For a few centuries in Broceliande,

But woke, and had a bath, and felt refreshed) :
"What shall I do to pull myself together?
Quoth Merlin, "Salad is the very thing,
And you can get it at the Cheshire Cheese."
King Arthur went there; verily, I believe
That he has dined there every day since then.
Have you not marked the portly gentleman
In his cool corner, with his plate of greens?
The great knight Launcelot prefers the Cock,
Where port is excellent (in pints), and waiters
Are portlier than kings, and steaks are tender,
And poets have been known to meditate-
Ox-fed orating ominous ostasticks.

་་

The first edition of The British Birds soon went out of print, and became very scarce. But in December, 1885, Mrs. Mortimer Collins wrote a letter to the editor of Parodies, which has now a melancholy interest :-"I believe copies of British Birds can still be had at Mr. Bentley's, as I brought out a second edition there some eight years ago. Yes, there are some parodies of Swinburne, Tennyson and Browning. But the best known bits of the book are not parodies, unless you call the whole book a parody of Aristophanes.

"The Positivists' is the most famous piece in the book, containing the lines :

"There was an APE in the days that were earlier ;
Centuries passed, and his hair became curlier ;
Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist-
Then he was MAN, and a Positivist."

"and Skymaking' is another oft quoted bit. I thought, perhaps, that you had written parodies on these; though it seemed unlikely, because satiric verse does not lend itself to parody. I am always interested in anything connected with my husband's works, because I truly believe in his genius. I may perhaps be somewhat partial in my judgment, for Mortimer was a more brilliant talker than writer. Day after day I enjoyed his wit, and I used to be so sorry there were not more to hear it: but he was quite content with his audience of one.

66

My husband has written many parodies. If you would like to quote them I can refer you to them."

But this kind offer of assistance was not to be fulfilled, for Mrs. Collins complained at the end of the letter of her failing strength, and in less than three months she passed

away.

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A MATCH.

(Matched.)

IF I were Anglo-Saxon,

And you were Japanese,

We'd study storks together,

Pluck out the peacock's feather
And lean our lanquid backs on
The stiffest of settees;
If I were Anglo-Saxon,
And you were Japanese.

If you were Della-Cruscan,
And I were A.-Mooresque,
We'd make our limbs look less in
Artistic folds, and dress in
What once were tunics Tuscan
In DANTE's days grotesque;
If you were Della-Cruscan,
And I were A.-Mooresque.

If I were mock Pompeian,

And you Belgravian Greek, We'd glide 'mid gaping Vandals In shapeless sheets and sandals, Like shades in Tartarean

Dim ways remote and bleak; If I were mock Pompeian,

And you Belgravian Greek.

If you were Culture's scarecrow,
And I the guy of Art
I'd learn in latest phrases
Of either's quaintest crazes
To lisp, and let my hair grow,
While yours you'd cease to part;
If you were Culture's scarecrow,
And I the guy of Art.

If I'd a Botticelli,

And you'd a new Burne-Jones,
We'd doat for days and days on
Their mystic hues, and gaze on
With lowering looks that felly
We'd fix upon their tones;
If I'd a Botticelli,

And you'd a new Burne-Jones.
If you were skilled at crewels,
And I, a dab at rhymes,
I'd write delirious "ballads,"
While you your bilious salads
Where stitching upon two ells

Of coarsest crass, at times; If you were skilled at crewels, And I, a dab at rhymes.

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If I were what's "consummate," And you were quite "too too,' 'Twould be our Eldorado

To have a yellow dado,
Our happiness to hum at

A teapot tinted blue;

If I were what's "consummate,"
And you were quite "too too."

If you were what "intense " is,
And I were like "decay,"
We'd mutely muse or mutter
In terms distinctly utter,
And find out what the sense is
Of this Esthetic lay;
If you were what "intense"
is,
And I were like "decay."

If you were wan, my lady,

And I, your lover, weird, We'd sit and wink for hours At languid lily-flowers.

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