MINOR WAR GAINS.
The year that is stormily ending
Has brought us full measure of grief,
And yet we must thank it for sending
At times unexpected relief;
These boons are not felt in the trenches
Or make our home burdens less hard;
They're not a bonanza, but merit a stanza
Or two from the doggerel bard.
The names of musicians and mummers
No longer are loud on our lips;
By the side of our buglers and drummers
Caruso endures an eclipse;
And the legions of freaks and of faddists
Who hailed him with rapturous awe,
O wonder of wonders, are finding out blunders,
And worse, in the writings of SHAW!
Good Begbie, no longer upraising
His plea for the "uplift" of Hodge,
Has ceased for a season from praising
Lloyd George and Sir Oliver Lodge;
And there hasn't been much in the papers
About the next novel from Caine
(No doubt he's in Flanders, the guest of commanders
Who reverence infinite brain).
John Ward has forgiven the Curragh
(The Curragh's forgotten John Ward);
No longer he cries "Wurra Wurra!"
At sight of an officer's sword;
MacDonald, the terror of tigers,
Sits silent and meek as a mouse,
And the great von Keirhardi is curiously tardy
In "voicing" his spleen in the House.
The screeds of professors and jurists
Have quite disappeared from the Press;
'Tis little we hear of Futurists,
And frankly we care even less;
Why, Trevelyan, the martyr to candour,
Who lately his office resigned,
Though waters were heaving has sunk without leaving
The tiniest ripple behind.
In fine, though there fall to our fighters
Too many hard buffets and humps,
'Tis a comfort to think that our blighters
Are down in the deadliest dumps;
And whatever the future may bring us
In profits or pleasures or pains
The ill wind that's blowing to-day is bestowing
A number of negative gains.