"WHITTINGTON REDIVIVUS;"
Or, The Burden of the Bells.
The new Progressive Dick Whittington, would-be Lord Mayor of London, sitteth on Saturday, March 2, 1895, and meditateth on the probable meaning of the L. C. C. Election Bells:—
Hear the loud Election bells—
Noisy bells!
What a world of wonderment their clatter-clash compels!
How they jangle, jangle, jangle,
On the air of coming night!
Like committee-men a-wrangle,
And my thoughts are in a tangle
Of mixed doldrums and delight.
How they chime, chime, chime!
In my head there runs a rhyme,
And I wish I were but certain what their shindying foretells,
What a future I may gather from the voices of the bells—
The jangling and the wrangling of the bells!
Now they sound like wedding bells,
Golden bells!
Meaning mischief in their music to the Moderates and the swells!
Their vibrations there's a vox in
Which to me sounds like a tocsin.
From their molten golden notes,
All in tune,
What a pleasant sound there floats
Like a promise of Progressive Party Votes,
Blessed boon!
Oh, from Bow to Sadler's Wells,
What a gush of Unity voluminously swells.
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the Progress that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells.
From the Brixtons, Claphams, Southwarks, Islingtons and Clerkenwells,
To the rhyming and the chiming of those bells!
Hear the Rate-Alarum bells—
Brazen bells!—
What base tarradiddles their loud turbulency tells!
In men's startled ears in spite,
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak
They can only shriek, shriek,
Through the fog,
In a clamorous appealing to the voters to retire
That much Progressive Party, which—much like the Rates, or fire—
Climbeth higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a bullying endeavour
Now—now to sit, or never
In the seat of Gog-Magog!
Oh, those bells, bells, bells,
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
What reactionary roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the City and Mayfair.
Yet the ear it fully knows
By their twanging
And their clanging
How the voting ebbs and flows.
Yet the ear distinctly tells
In the jangling and the wrangling
How Monopoly sinks or swells
By the sinking or the swelling in the clangour of those bells—
Beastly bells!—
is Landlordism, Ground-rents, Dirty Slums, and Drinking Hells
In the clamour of those horrid Moderate bells!
Hear the rolling of the bells,—
Polling bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels.
So Dick Whittington—poor wight!—
Heard them ringing, with delight
At the fair prophetic promise of their tone!
For every sound that floats
May I too hope my votes
Will have grown?
And the People—ah, the People!—
Is their verdict, from each steeple,
All mine own?
Does that tolling, tolling, tolling,
Mean "Return again my Dick!"
Or do they as they're rolling
Mean "turn out" or "cut your stick!"?
Shall I be "Lord Mayor of London"?
Or are we Progressives undone
At the Polls?
Pussy, what is it that tolls
From each belfry, as it rolls,
Rolls?
A pæan from the bells
To the Party of the Swells?
Or a message from the bells
That Reaction howls and yells?
Does that tintinnabulation
Mean false Joe's "Tenification"
Or our own "Unification"?
Sounds dear "Betterment" this time
In the rolling Runic rhyme
Of the bells?
Does their throbbing mean that jobbing,
And the London Landlord's robbing,
Find their finish in these bells?
That Monopoly is sobbing
To the sobbing of those bells?
That their knells, knells, knells,
Ring out in Runic rhyme?
Does the rolling of those bells
Mean that I turn out this time?
Can they possibly mean that,
Faithful, purring, Pussy-Cat,
After all your sweet mol-rowing?
Sounds the verdict "Dick is going"
In the tolling of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,
In the moaning and the groaning of the bells?
