TO A FRIEND OF MINE.
Ah, cherubic little curate, in your surplice spick and span,
Who has struck that happy medium 'twixt an angel and a man,
Would it bore you much to tell me how you managed to attain
To that turret of perfection which in time I hope to gain?
For I see you in the pulpit, and I dote upon your word,
And I listen to such eloquence as rarely I have heard;
But at times there comes a whisper, like the flutter on the wind,
Were you always, little curate, such a pattern of your kind?
When a schoolboy, young and noisy, did you never tell a fib,
Or use a Kelly's literal "key" (ah, call it not a crib!)?
Did you never, at a season when your age was hardly ripe,
Encircle with your rosy lips a surreptitious pipe?
And when you went to Cambridge was your 'Varsity career
As spotless as your surplice, and as uniformly clear
From a vestige of a blemish? Oh, you properest of men,
Were you never, never proctored—were you always in at ten?
The New Lord Mayor Elect.—A congratulatory chorus to the New Lord Mayor elect, Sir Walter Wilkin, should be at once written, composed, and rehearsed in order to be sung on November 9, to the accompaniment of the "trained bands." The words may be selected from Shakspeare and Milton; the solos, consisting of a verse apiece, may
"Amaze the Wilkin with their broken staves."
While some military poet could be fitly employed to celebrate the glorious deeds of the New Lord Mayor, Sir Walter Wilkin, Wictorious Wolunteer, telling how
"With feats o arms
From either end of London the Wilkin burns!"