BALLADE OF THE TIMID BARD.
(To Angelica, who bids him publish.)
In Memory’s mystical hazes
I see a vast Gander and grey,
I see the small boy that he chases
At the head of a hissing array:
How I wept when they brought me to bay,
How I pleaded in vain for a truce!
Too frightened to shoo them away,
I could never say Boh to a Goose!
I have lived through a number of phases,
I have rhymed of the grave and the gay,
But the clatter of critical phrases,
But the moralist armed for the fray,
I have fled in unseemly dismay,
Since the Gander—’tis all my excuse—
For, in brief, since that terrible day—
I could never say Boh to a Goose!
It was fabled of old that in places
Grow goose-bearing trees by the way,
Where bough within bough interlaces
Green geese flutter down from the spray;
In reviews, at first nights of the play,
These shrubs are in general use,
And I would not encounter them, nay,
I could never say Boh to a Goose!
Envoy.
Angelica! bid me essay
The deeds of a Wallace or Bruce,
But talk not of publishing, pray—
I could never say Boh to a Goose!
Irish Appointment Extraordinary (subject to the kind permission of Sir Bernard Burke, C.B., LL.D.).—The Right Hon. Joseph O’Chamberlain, M.P., to be Ulster-King-of-Arms.
Note by Augustus Druriolanus, after the Granting of the Licence to the Empire Theatre.—“L’Empire c’est la pay 46 per cent.—like the Alhambra.”
