ODE ON SACRIFICE.
Amid the glowing pageant of the year
There comes too soon th' inevitable shock,
That token of the season sere,
To the unthinking fair so cheaply dear,
Who, like to shipwreck'd seamen, do it hail,
And cry, "A Sale! a Sale!
A Sale! a Summer Sale of Surplus Stock!"
See, how, like busy-humming bees
Around the ineffable fragrance of the lime,
Woman, unsparing of the salesman's time,
Reviews the stock, and chaffers at her ease,
Nor yet, for all her talking, purchases,
But takes away, with copper-bulgèd purse,
The textile harvest of a quiet eye,
Great bargains still unbought, and power to buy.
Or she, her daylong, garrulous labour done,
Some victory o'er reluctant remnants won,
Fresh from the trophies of her skill,
Things that she needed not, nor ever will,
She takes the well-earned bun;
Ambrosial food, Demeter erst design'd
As the appropriate food of womankind,
Plain, or with comfits deck'd and spice;
Or, daintier, dallies with an ice.
Nor feels in heart the worse
Because the haberdashers thus disperse
Their surplus stock at an astounding sacrifice!
Yet Contemplation pauses to review
The destinies that meet the silkworm's care,
The fate of fabrics whose materials grew
In the same fields of cotton or of flax,
Or waved on fellow-flockmen's fleecy backs,
And the same mill, loom, case, emporium, shelf, did share.
"ADDING INSULT," &c.
Scene—Hunters cantering round Show Ring.
Youth on hard-mouthed Grey (having just cannoned against old Twentystun). "'Scuse me, Sir,—'bliged to do it. Nothing less than a Haystack stops him!"