THE COMING MANNIKIN.
Mr. Punch, having heard that many Conservatives looked upon Lord Randolph Churchill as the "Coming Man" of their party, expressed himself as follows:—
Ring out fools'-bells to limbo's dome,
Which copes the neo-Tory clique!
The man is coming whom they seek!
Ring out fools'-bells, and let him come!
Ring out the old, ring in the new.
Ring jangling bells a Bedlam chime;
'Tis the true Simon Pure this time;
Ring in the chief of Gnatdom's crew!
* * * *
Ring out old pride in race and blood,
That kept the fierce old fighters right;
Ring in crude slander and small spite,
The urchin love of flinging mud.
Ring out the gentleman! Ring in
The narrow heart, the rowdy hand.
Ring out the brave, the wise, the grand!
Ring in the Coming Mannikin!
Punch, November 19, 1881.
The parody of In Memoriam, mentioned on Page 61 as having appeared in the St. James's Gazette of June 18, 1881, was written by Mr. H. D. Traill, and has since been re-published, by Messrs. Blackwood and Sons, in a volume entitled Recaptured Rhymes. Parodies of D. G. Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, and Robert Browning are contained in the same volume, and will be quoted when the works of these authors are reached.
Detached portions of Tennyson's Maud, have frequently been parodied, but the only case in which any attempt appears to have been made to imitate all its varying styles, and phases of thought, occurs in a small volume published in 1859, entitled Rival Rhymes in Honour of Burns.
Unfortunately, the mere trick of imitating the metre only does not constitute a good parody, and this one lacks both in interest and humour. It is, besides, very long. The following are some of its best verses:—
THE POET'S BIRTH:
A MYSTERY.
By the P—t L—te.
I.
I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the dirty town,
At the corner of its lips are oozing a foul ferruginous slime,
Like the toothless tobacco-cramm'd mouth of a hag who enriches the crown
By consuming th 'excised weed,—parent of smuggling crime!
II.
'Tis night; the shivering stars, wrapt in their cloud-blankets dreaming,
Forget to light an old crone, who to cross the hollow would try;
But watchful Aldebaran, in Taurus's head swift gleaming,
Like a policeman, to help her, turns on his bull's-eye.
III.
There's a hovel of mud, and the crone, mudded and muddled,
Knocks, and an oxidized hinge creaks a rusty "Come in."
There are now in the hovel,—a woman in bed-gear huddled,
A careworn man, and a midwife, her functional fee to win.
IV.
Midwives are hard as millstones: Expectant father's emotions
Are dragg'd by the heart's wild tide, like seashore shingle,
Shrieking complaint, when the fierce assaults of the ocean
Beat them all round, without an exception single.
1. DARKNESS! Darkness! Darkness!
Ebon carved idol of wickedness!
Guilty deeds do love thee,
Innocent childhood fears thee;
Therefore these do prove thee
An unbless'd thing!—Who hears thee,
Grisly, gaunt, and lonely,—
Darkness! Darkness! Darkness!
Thy brother Silence only!
2. Lightness! Lightness! Lightness!
Great quality in small things,
A pudding, above all things!
Great quality in great things,
And, not to understate things,
Thou art the essence of sunshine,
Lightness! Lightness! Lightness!
Whose brightness—
And whiteness—
Are but lackness
Of blackness.
Therefore, Darkness! Darkness!
Ebon-carved idol of wickedness!
Let those who love you
And Silence, prove you
And seek!
Not I!
For why?—for why?—for why?
I'll speak!
* * * *
Falling is the snow,
Every frosty flake
Making the round world
Like a wedding-cake.
What is't makes the snow?
Is it frost? No, no!
Petals of the rose
That in the heaven grows,
Thrown by angels down,
In Elysian play,
Make the snow, I say,
To produce a crown
For the bridal day.
* * * *
Rival Rhymes, in Honour of Burns, 1859.
MAUD,
AND OTHER POEMS.
By A. T. (D.C.L.)
SONG.
CHIRRUP, chirp, chirp, chirp twitter,
Warble, flutter, and fly away;
Dicky birds, chickey birds—quick, ye bird,
Shut it up, cut it up, die away.
Maud is going to sing!
Maud with the voice like lute strings,
(To which the sole species of string
I know of that rhymes is boot-strings).
Still, you may stop, if you please;
Roar as a chorus sonorous,
Robin, bob in at ease;
Tom-tit, prompt it for us.
Rose or thistle in, whistlin',
(What a beast is her brother!)
Maud has sung from her tongue rung;
Echo it out,
From each shoot shout,
From each root rout—
"She'll oblige us with another."
Midsummer Madness,
A SOLILOQUY.
I am a hearthrug—
Yes, a rug—
Though I cannot describe myself as snug;
Yet I know that for me they paid a price
For a Turkey carpet that would suffice
(But we live in an age of rascal vice).
Why was I ever woven,
For a clumsy lout, with a wooden leg,
To come with his endless Peg! Peg!
Peg! Peg!
With a wooden leg,
Till countless holes I'm drove in.
("Drove," I have said, and it should be "driven"
A hearthrug's blunders should be forgiven,
For wretched scribblers have exercised
Such endless bosh and clamour,
So improvidently have improvised,
That they've utterly ungrammaticised
Our ungrammatical grammar).
And the coals
Burn holes,
Or make spots like moles,
And my lily-white tints, as black as your hat turn,
And the housemaid (a matricide, will-forging slattern),
Rolls
The rolls
From the plate, in shoals,
When they're put to warm in front of the coals;
And no one with me condoles,
For the butter stains on my beautiful pattern.
But the coals and rolls, and sometimes soles,
Dropp'd from the frying-pan out of the fire,
Are nothing to raise my indignant ire,
Like the Peg! Peg!
Of that horrible man with the wooden leg.
This moral spread from me,
Sing it, ring it, yelp it—
Never a hearth-rug be,
That is if you can help it.