POETRY.
TILE wretched world has had enough Of snow and ice, and "quantum suff.," Altogether, Of floundering over field and park, And shivering through the light and dark, And vain petitions to the clerk Of the weather.
I try to keep the cold at bay, By storing brandy night and day In my cupboard ; And every pretty girl I meet Wants to avoid me in the street, Because her nose is red, and feet India-rubbered.
Man likes his skating for a bit, But grows a little tired of it ; Si sic semper, Although both amiable and mild, And very gentle from a child, It strikes me that I may get riled In my temper.
Next must the times return again, When on the wooden heads of men Down there fell huge Torrents of rain—the largest out, As Yankees say—in fact, about The worst recorded waterspout, Called the Deluge ?
Then did the globe, they say, become A sort of large Aquarium, And their senses The finned and feathered tribes forsook ; The thrushes swam by hook or crook, And all the little fishes took All the fences.
If Father Thames should overflow His banks for just a month or so ? And unsparing Of Beauty's self, upset the King- ston Waterworks, that lovely thing, Or the fair bridge to ruin bring Down at Charing !
Whom shall we call on to assuage The Winter-God's resistless rage, Even while foemen Of savage race destroy the flower Of England's youth, and all the power Of Evil round us seems to lower ?
Absit omen ! The good Sir Walter's moral ran, How swift and sure from Folly man Into Sin goes ; Kind Heaven, the cup of Reason mix, And save us from the conjuring tricks, And blood-and-thunder politics Of the Jingoes !
Come, Peace and Spring, come Joy and Mirth, Smile, Plenty, on the starving Earth ; We imbeciles Have surely frozen enough to please Sidonias of all degrees, And even in Hades to appease All the Cecils.
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