Part 2

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.