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Till, fain of all things fady,

We faintly-disappeared! If you were wan, my lady, And I, your lover, weird.

This Parody appeared in Punch, (June 18, 1881), at the time when the Esthetic revival in art and literature was the subject of much undeserved ridicule, because of the absurd extent to which it was carried by a few senseless fanatics.

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BETWEEN THE SUNSET and the SEA.
An American Imitation.

BETWEEN the gate post and the gate
I lingered with my love till late;
And what cared I for time of night
Till wakened by the watch dogs bite,
And thud of leathering boxtoed fate
Between the gate post and the gate.
Between the seaside and the sea
I kissed my love and she kissed me ;
But rapturous day was grewsome night
And what is love but bloom and blight?
And what is kiss of mine to thee
Between the seaside and the sea.

Between the sunshine and the sun
I saw a face that hinted fun;
But what is fun and what is face
When driven at life's killing pace?
I simply say that I have none

Between the sunshade and the sun.

Between the bumble and the bee
Full many a soul has had to flee;
And what is love may I inquire
When asked to build the kitchen fire?
Or who would not leap in the sea
Between the bumble and the bee.

Between the tea store and the tea

There is a wide immensity;

A dollar twenty five a pound

And not a nickel to be found;
Then what has fate in store for thee
Between the tea store and the tea.

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R. W. ANSwell.

A SONG AFTER SUNSET.

(Being a Word from the Hanley Dog by the Cynic Poet Laureate, ALG-RN-N SW-NB-RNE.)

Lo, from my Black Country flung for thee,
Raving, red-eyed, scarred and seared;
To a bran-new sensation tune sung for thee,
With red lips, white teeth, underhung for thee,
Beauty begrimed and blood-smeared!
Vice-jawed, retractile, snub-snouted—
Tushes for fists swift to smite;
Round by round felled but not routed,
Rare of bark, bitter of bite!

If with grapplings and pluckings asunder— If with throat-thirst for worry unslakedIf with rush on growl, flash on low thunder

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In 1880, Messrs Chatto and Windus, of Piccadilly, published an anonymous volume of Poems, entitled "The Heptalogia, or the seven against sense, a cap with Seven Bells." In this there are parodies of Robert Browning, Tennyson, Coventry Patmore, and others, but it is more than doubtful whether the general public appreciated the sarcasm of these clever skits. Amongst reading men much curiosity was felt as to the author, but in answer to enquiries on the subject, the publishers replied they were not at liberty to mention the author's name. Eventually public opinion assigned the work to Mr. Swinburne, although it contains an exquisite parody on his own style, entitled Nephelidia. This is a charming specimen of rhythmical, musical nonsense. A few of the opening lines may be quoted, without injury to themselves, or to the rest of the poem, as the conclusion is perfectly irrelevant to the beginning, or to anything else :

NEPHELIDIA.

FROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,

Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,

These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat? Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,

Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,

Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,

Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error,

Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath.

Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses

Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh ;

Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses

'Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die.'

Another parody, which was generally attributed to Mr. Swinburne, appeared in The Fortnightly Review for December, 1881. It was entitled " Disgust; a Dramatic Monologue," and was a parody of Tennyson's "Despair, a Dramatic Monologue" published in The Nineteenth Century, November, 1881.

The original poem contained arguments of a most unpleasant and absurd description, these were ably ridiculed in the burlesque, which will be found on page 184, Volume 1, of this collection.

The following parody was also printed with the initials "A. C. S.," but clever as it is, few would venture to assert that it was actually written by Mr. Swinburne,

THE TOPER'S LAMENT.

Oн, my memory lovingly lingers
Around the sweet sound of thy name,
And the spell of those magical fingers
That kindled my heart into flame;
But the joy that I think on no more is,
And my throat feels an ominous lump,
As I muse o'er the wreck of thy glories,
Thou Magpie and Stump!

For day after day have I sought thee,
As flowers are sought by the gale;
And night after night have I brought thee
A lip for thine exquisite ale.
Thy portals have welcomed me ever,

Mine hostess was pleasant and plump,
And her handmaids attentive and clever,
O Magpie and Stump!

Did I rage with the thirst of a Hector (A thirst that she nimbly foresaw)

For a cup of thy ravishing nectar,

Who drew it as Nancy could draw ?

While for grilling a steak that was juicy,

Or a chop that was chopped from the chump, Had'st thou ever an equal to Lucy,

My Magpie and Stump?

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ALSO thine eyes were mild as a lowlit flame of fire, When thou wovest the web whereof wiles were the woof and the warp was my heart.

Why left'st thou the fertile field whence thou reapedst the fruit of desire?

For the change of the face of thy colour I know thee not whence thou art!

Alas for the going of swiftness, for the feet of the running of thee,

When thou wentest among the swords, and the shoutings of Captain's made shrill !

Woe is me for the pleasant places! yea, one shall say of thy glee,

"It is not," and as for delight the feet of thy dancing are still.

Translation.

Where are those eyes that were so mild
When of my heart you me beguiled?
Why did you skedaddle from me and the child?
O, Johnnie, I hardly knew you.
Where are those legs with which you run
When first you went to shoulder the gun?
Indeed, your dancing days are done-

O, Johnnie, I hardly knew you.

R. Y. TYRRell. From A Book of Jousts. London, Field and Tuer.

In The World Christmas Number, 1879, there was an exquisite satire on Mr. Burne Jones's art entitled "The God and the Damosel"; it was accompanied by the following verses, and a prose criticism (too long to quote in full) written in imitation of the intensely Esthetic jargon familiar to the frequenters of the Grosvenor Gallery. To fully appreciate the poem and the criticism, the burlesque picture by Mr. E. B. T. Burnt Bones should be seen, once seen it could never be forgotten.

THE GOD AND THE DAMOSEL.

By A. C. Sinburn.

THE GOD.

Look in my face, and know me who I am.
I smite and save; I bless, and, lo, I damn.
Incline thine head, thy browless brow incline;

I touch thee, and I tap thee, and proclaim,
For ever and for ever thou art mine!

O long as grief, and leaner than desire!

O sweet retreating breasts and amorous-kissing knees!

O grace and goodliness of strait attire!

A robe of them who sport in summer seas.

By these, and by the eyelids of thine eyes,
Ringed round with darkness, swollen weeper-wise,
By these I know thee; these are for a sign,
Surer, yea, even than thy most splendid size

Of spreaden hands: I know thee, thou art mine.

THE DAMOSEL.

Master and lord, I know thee who thou art;
Lo, and with homage of the stricken heart,
I hail thee, I adore thee, and obtest :

I am thine own, I know no better part;
Do with me, master, as thee seemeth best.

O loose as thought and bodiless as dream !
O globular grand eyes, a bane of maidenhood!
O miracle of tunic-folds, that seem

Self-balanced, firm, a glory of carven wood!

By these, and by the crown thy temples wear, Holy, a cauline flower of wondrous hair;

By thy red mouth, a bow without a chord, And shaftless, yea, but deadly, O most fair, I knew thee, and I know thee for my lord!

THE GOD.

Ay, now the flicker of a nauseate smile

Bestirs thy cheek and wan lips imbecile;

Thy pale plucked blossom droops; its day is done.

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The Criticism.- "I have judged it good and helpful to prefix to my few words in appreciation of Mr. Bones's noble picture this exquisite lyric of Mr. Sinburn's. It may serve to a better understanding of the one master's work to note in what wise it has inspired the other. The scene of Mr. Bones's picture is a garden; the time, high noon. A damosel, tall and gracious, stands before us, clad, but ' more expressed than hidden,' in a robe of subtle tissue; which, loyal through three parts of its length to the lines of her sinuous figure, breaks loose round her finely-modelled knees into a riot of enchanting curves and folds; yet, withal, an orderly revolt, and obedient to its cwn higher law of rebellious grace. At her side stands the fatal Eros, the divine, the immortal, bow in hand, a glory of great light about his head. Behind him rise his outspread wings, which, by one of those eloquently significant touches whereof this painter possesses, one must think, the exclusive secret, are made to simulate the expanded tail of the bird. of Heré. What he has here set down for us, in reporting of the lower limbs of this Immortal, he may well have noticed when he himself was last set down at his own house-door; since we see that for the knees of the young Eros of the ancients he has not disdained to study from the ancient Kab-os of the moderns. In the form of the maiden who bends towards him, quivering like a shot bird at the touch of his long lithe finger, we have another triumph of the master's unique powers. The mere volume of her frame is, let us allow it, spare to the verge of the penurious; its curves

are sudden to precipitancy, abrupt even to brusquerie; without being at all exaggerated, the charm of morbidezza is certainly insisted upon to the full limits of the admissible; but the charm is there, victorious and exultant, a voluptuousness not of the flesh, nor appealing thereto, yet a voluptuousness the more subtle and penetrating, perhaps, for that very reason. One sees that the burden of the great mystery has passed upon this woman; one sees it in the heavy-lidded eyes, in the chastened, even ascetic, lines of the face, and above all, in the thin, almost fleshless, figure consumed by inner fires, a conception only capable, perhaps, of being realised in the sympathetic imagination of a Burnt Bones. To the colour-harmonies of the whole picture I despair of doing justice. It may be remembered that I likened Mr. Bones's last work to a cantata; this one is an oratorio, full of exquisitely tuneful fancies, grand instrumental combinations, profound contrapuntal erudi. tion."

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Though landlord and agent with breathings of slaughter
Unite to assail and oppress thee again,
Secure thou shalt stand in the midst of the water,
The hate of their hearts shall be vain.
For their power shall be past and made idle,

And their pride shall be checked with a bridle,

And the height of their heads bow down

At the loss of their rents and renown. Be cherished and loved as I love thee,

Of all that to thee owe their breath; Be thy life like the stars up above theeNow, come to me, death.

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"What," he asked, addressing the lady presiding at the bureau behind the little plated saucers of sugar, "what is Swinburne? Is he," he proceeded, "a costermonger? No. What then. A sweep? You cannot be a sweep without singing a Song before Sunrise. But this Swinburne has written Chastelard. That sounds like Bacon. Is he then a philosopher? Yes, and No. Which? Never mind. But there is this remarkable thing about a philosopher: he produces fruits. Sometimes they are nuts to crack, and when Civilisation has a nut to crack it holds its jaw. This is a paradox, and suggests the question, 'Am I Civilisation ?' To this there is an answer. It is again No and Yes.' Last time it was Yes and No.' Now it is 'No and Yes.' Why? Is there a reason for this? None. And when there is no reason for anything, it becomes a subject of reference. To whom? To the Marines: and you cannot refer a subject to the Marines without asking them a riddle. And this is the riddle that posterity will ask them: What is Victor Hugo?" "

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