THE CITY MONTENEGRO.
(One More Sonnet for the Laureate's New Book).
(Apropos of the hideous obstruction which marks the site of old Temple Bar, and remarkable as being a very close parody of Tennyson's sonnet on "Montenegro," which appeared in the Nineteenth Century, May, 1877).
I ROSE to show them a half-sovran tail,
To turn to chaff their "freedom" on this height,
Grim, comic, savage; worse by day and night
Than any Turk: yet here, all over scale,
I watch the passer as his footsteps fail,
With dauntless hundreds struggling main and might
To cross,—the one policeman out of sight,—
And reach this haven where the strongest quail.
O, smallest among steeples! Precious throne
Of Freedom! Why, I merely swell the swarm
That surge and seethe in curses and in tears!
Great Gog and Magog! Never since thine own
Odd dodges drew the cloud and brake the storm,
Have you produced a mightier crop of jeers!
Punch, December 11, 1880.