THE GREAT SACRIFICE.
Dark lies the way before us, O my sweet!
Never again, until the final trumpet
Shall sound the Cease-fire, may our glances meet
Over the Sally Lunn or crisp brown crumpet;
Never again (the prospect makes my soul,
Unnerved by going beefless once a week, ache)
Shall you and I absorb the jammy roll
Nor yet the toasted tea-cake.
Never for us shall any fancy bread—
The food of vernal Love, and very tasty—
On lip and cheek its subtle savour shed,
Blent with the lighter forms of Gallic pasty;
Never shall any bun, for you and me,
Impart to amorous talk a fresh momentum,
Except its saccharine ingredients be
Confined to ten per centum.
The days of decorative art are done
That made the toothsome biscuit more enticing
(Even our wedding-cake when we are one
Will be denuded of its outer icing);
Yea, purest joy of all that we resign,
A ban is laid upon the luscious tartlet
By him who has for your sweet tooth and mine
No mercy in his heartlet.
And yet, if England, in her night of need,
Debauched by pastry-cook and muffin-monger,
Would have us curb our natural gift of greed
And merely mitigate the pangs of hunger,
Let us renounce life's sweetness from to-day,
And turn, for Hobson's choice, to something higher;
"Good-bye, Criterion!" let us bravely say,
And "Farewell, Rumpelmeyer!"
O.S.