SUSPIRIA.
(By a Fogey.)
I would I were a boy!
Not for the tarts we once were fain to eat,
The penny ice, the jumble sticky-sweet,
The tip's deciduous joy—
Not; for the keen delight
Of break-neck 'scapes, the charm of getting wet,
The joy of battle (strongest when you get
Two other chaps to fight).
No! times have changed since then.
The social whirlpool has engulfed the boys;
Robb'd of their simple, hardy, rowdy joys,
They start from scratch as men.
The winners in the race!
Secure of worship, each his triumphs tells,
Weighing with faintly-praising syllables
The fairest form and face.
Once, in the mazy crush,
Ingenuous youth, half timid, and half proud,
By girlhood's pity had its claims allow'd,
And worshipp'd with a blush.
Time was when tender years
Would hug sweet sorrow to the heart, and blur
The cross-barr'd bliss of the confectioner
With crushed affection's tears.
That humbleness is sped,
The vivid blazon of self-conscious youth,
The unwilling witness to whole-hearted truth,
Ne'er troubles boyhood's head.
Now with a solemn pride,
Lord of the future's limitless expanse,
The Stoic stripling tolerates the dance
Weary, yet dignified.
Propping the mirror'd wall,
No joy of motion, no desire to please,
Thaws those high-collar'd Caryatides,
Inane, imperial.
Girls, with their collars too,
Their mannish maskings, and their unveil'd eyes,
Would feel, if girls can be surprised, surprise
Should courteous worship woo.
From their exalted place
The boys their favours dole, as seems them well,
Woman's calm tyrants, showing, truth to tell,
More tolerance than grace.
Double Riddle.—Why is a whist-player, fast asleep after his fifth game, like one of the latest-patented cabs? Because he can be briefly alluded to as "Rubber Tires." (Riddle adaptable also to exhausted manipulator in Turkish Bath after a hard day's work.)
