THE LIBERAL BREACH.
(As viewed dispassionately by a looker-on.)
When dog with dog elects to fight
I take no hand in such disputes,
Knowing how hard they both would bite
Should I attempt to part the brutes.
So in the case of man and wife
My rooted habit it has been,
When they engage in privy strife,
Never to go and barge between.
Nor do I join the fighting front
When Liberal sections disagree,
One on the Coalition stunt
And one on that of Freedom (Wee).
Though tempted, when I see them tear
Each other’s eyes, to say, “Be good!”
As an outsider I forbear,
Fearing to be misunderstood.
Fain would I use my gift of tact
And take a mediatorial line,
But shrewdly recognise the fact
That this is no affair of mine.
Yet may I venture to deplore
A great tradition cheaply prized,
And yonder, on the Elysian shore,
The ghost of Gladstone scandalised.
But most for him I mourn in vain
Whom Fate has dealt so poor a fist
(Recalling Shakspeare’s gloomy Dane,
That solid-fleshed soliloquist)—
O curséd spite that he was born
(Asquith, I mean) to close the breach
And save a party all forlorn
By mere rotundity of speech.
O. S.