I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.
(Carefully imitated from the best models, except that it has somehow got into metre and rhyme.)
Four-and-ninety English winters
Having flecked my hair with snows,
I am ready for the printers,
And my publishers suppose
That these random recollections
Of a mid-Victorian male,
Owing to my high connections,
Ought to have a fairish sale.
Comrades of my giddy zenith,
Gazing back in retrospect,
I should say Lord Brixton (Kenneth)
Had the brightest intellect;
Though of course no age enfeebles
James Kircudbright's mental vim
(Now the seventh Duke of Peebles)—
I have lots of tales of Jim.
We were gilded youths together
In our Foreign Office days;
Used to fish and tramp the heather
At his uncle's castle, "Braes;"
I recall our wild elation
One day when we stole the hat,
At the Honduras Legation,
Of a Danish diplomat.
James had scarcely any vices,
His career was made almost
When the Guatemalan crisis
Caused him to resign his post;
He possessed a Gordon setter
On whose treatment by a vet
I once wrote The Times a letter
Which has not been published yet.
Politics were dry and dusty,
Still they had their moods of fun,
As, for instance, when the crusty
Yet delightful Viscount Bunn
Broke into the Second Reading
Of a Church Endowment Bill
With a snore of perfect breeding
Which convulsed the Earl of Brill.
Through my kinship with the Gortons
I was much at Widnes Square;
People of the first importance
Often came to luncheon there;
Gladstone, Dizzy, even older
Statesmen used to throng the hall;
Palmerston once touched my shoulder—
Which one I do not recall.
Then I went to routs and dances,
Ah, how fine they were, and how
Different from the dubious prances
That the young indulge in now;
There I first encountered Kitty,
Told the girl I was a dunce,
But implored her to have pity,
And she said she would, at once.
Eh, well, well! I must not linger
On those glorious halcyon days;
Time with his relentless finger
Brings me to the second phase;
Politics were always creeping
Like a ghost across my view—
I contested Market Sleeping
In the Spring of Seventy-Two.
Gladstone—[No, please not. Ed.]
Evoe.
"Brighton.—The ——. One minute sea, West Pier, Lawns. Gas fires in beds."—Advt. in Daily Paper.
Thanks, but we prefer a hot-water bottle.
