I am a Queen of Paradise,
And who shall look on me, I wis,
His spirit shall find grace.
Whoso dwells with me walks along
In gardens glad with small birds’ song,
A flowered and grassy place,
Therein the souls of blessèd men
Wait each, till comes his love again,
To look upon her face!
SANCTUS PAULUS.
Thou, Sir Diabolus, art shent,
I wot that well ye might repent,
But till Midsummer fall in Lent,
Ye will not cease to sin.
Get thee to dungeon underground
And sit beside thy man, Mahound.
I wot I would ye twain were bound
For evermore therein.
Fugiat Diabolus ad locum suum.
STOKER BILL.
A BALLAD OF THE SCHOOL-BOARD FLEET.
Which my name is Stoker Bill,
And a pleasant berth I fill,
And the care the ladies take of me is clipping;
They have made me pretty snug,
With a blooming Persian rug,
In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.
There’s my Whistler pastels, there,
As are quite beyond compare,
And a portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist skipping;
From such art we all expect
Quite a softening effect,
In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.
And my beer comes in a mug—
Such a rare old Rhodian jug!
And here I sits æsthetically sipping;
And I drinks my grog or ale
On a chair by Chippendale—
We’ve no others in our modern training shipping.
There’s our first Liftenant, too,
Is a rare old (China) Blue,
And you do not very often catch him tripping
At a monogram or mark,
But no more than Noah’s ark,
Does he know the way to manage this here shipping.