MORAL.

I am, I think I have remarked,

Terrifically old,

(The second Ice-age was a farce,

The first was rather cold.)

A friend of mine, a trilobite

Had gathered in his youth,

When trilobites were trilobites,

This all-important truth.

We aged ones play solemn parts—

Sire—guardian—uncle—king.

Affection is the salt of life,

Kindness a noble thing.

The old alone may comprehend

A sense in my decree;

But—if you find a fish on land,

Oh throw it in the sea.

ON THE DISASTROUS SPREAD
OF ÆSTHETICISM IN ALL
CLASSES.

Impetuously I sprang from bed,

Long before lunch was up,

That I might drain the dizzy dew

From day's first golden cup.

In swift devouring ecstacy

Each toil in turn was done;

I had done lying on the lawn

Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,

The duties shine like stars;

I formed my uncle's character,

Decreasing his cigars.

But could my kind engross me? No!

Stern Art—what sons escape her?

Soon I was drawing Gladstone's nose

On scraps of blotting paper.

Then on—to play one-fingered tunes

Upon my aunt's piano.

In short, I have a headlong soul,

I much resemble Hanno.

(Forgive the entrance of the not

Too cogent Carthaginian.

It may have been to make a rhyme;

I lean to that opinion).

Then my great work of book research

Till dusk I took in hand—

The forming of a final, sound

Opinion on The Strand.

But when I quenched the midnight oil,

And closed The Referee,

Whose thirty volumes folio

I take to bed with me,

I had a rather funny dream,

Intense, that is, and mystic;

I dreamed that, with one leap and yell,

The world became artistic.

The Shopmen, when their souls were still,

Declined to open shops—

And Cooks recorded frames of mind

In sad and subtle chops.

The stars were weary of routine:

The trees in the plantation

Were growing every fruit at once,

In search of a sensation.

The moon went for a moonlight stroll,

And tried to be a bard,

And gazed enraptured at itself:

I left it trying hard.

The sea had nothing but a mood

Of 'vague ironic gloom,'

With which t'explain its presence in

My upstairs drawing-room.

The sun had read a little book

That struck him with a notion:

He drowned himself and all his fires

Deep in the hissing ocean.

Then all was dark, lawless, and lost:

I heard great devilish wings:

I knew that Art had won, and snapt

The Covenant of Things.

I cried aloud, and I awoke,

New labours in my head.

I set my teeth, and manfully

Began to lie in bed.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,

So I my life conduct.

Each morning see some task begun,

Each evening see it chucked.

But still, in sudden moods of dusk,

I hear those great weird wings,

Feel vaguely thankful to the vast

Stupidity of things.