On the painted bridge at Mottisfont above the Test I’ve stood Where the dab-chick from a rushy raft directs her little brood, Where fringed with sedge and willow-weed the waters spread about And linger in pellucid glooms the sleepy spotted trout.
I’ve seen the tawny tumult of the headlong Highland spate, And the ebb round Hair-brush Island (which the map calls Chiswick Ait) Where the withy bristles shimmer and the purple mud-banks gleam And the lights come out by Thornycroft’s and glisten in the stream.
’Twere good to be at Abergeirch: the little brook again Greets the brine among the shingle on the beetling coast of Lleyn,— O the shallows on the sand-banks where the dozing flat-fish lie And the heather surging inland till it breaks against the sky!
But the chalky scaurs of Compton hold the shadows; and between Lie the water-meads of Mottisfont enamelled with such green As discolours all I’ve looked upon in valleys far apart— For the water-meads of Mottisfont lie nearest to my heart.
THE SENIOR MISTRESS OF BLYTH
[“Blyth Secondary School.—The Governors of the above School invite applications for the post of Senior Mistress. Candidates must be Graduates in Honours of a British University and must be well qualified in Mathematics, Latin, and English. Ability to teach Art will be a recommendation.”—Advertisement in The Spectator.]
It is told of the painter Da Vinci, Being once unemployed for a span, At the menace of poverty’s pinch he Sought work at the Court of Milan. Having shown himself willing and able To perform on the curious lyre, He presented the Duke with a table Of the talents he proffered for hire.
“I can raze you a fortress,” it ran on, “Quell castles, drain ditches and moats, Make shapely and competent cannon, Build aqueducts, bridges and boats; In peace I can mould for your Courts a Few models in marble or clay And paint the illustrious Sforza With anyone living to-day.”
Leonardo is dead, they asseverate, He has left no successor behind, For the days of the specialist never rate At its value the versatile mind. Is Lord Brougham, then, our latest example? No, Time, the old churl with his scythe, Shall spare us a notable sample In the Senior Mistress of Blyth.