Outlook Odes

by T. W. H. Crosland

TO SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

My dear Sir William Harcourt,—
(I have not time to get up your other distinguished names,
So that you must please excuse the plain Sir William),
My dear Sir William, do you ever survey the Liberal party,
From China to Peru,
And from Rosebery to Lloyd-George as it were?
Do you, my dear Sir William? O do you?
I do sometimes.
I do, Sir William, I do indeed.
O, I do!
And what is the conclusion I come to, my dear Sir William,
Ah, what?
O, what?
What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?
Shall I tell you, my dear Sir William?
You are sure you won't be offended if I do?
And it will be strictly between ourselves, now, won't it?
Well then, come hither, coz,
Put your sweet hand in mine and trust in me,
And do not construe my kindness into cruelty;
Harken, my dear Sir William, harken,
Harken, harken, harken, harken har——court:—
The Liberal party is an unweeded garden
Choked with a myriad strange growths,
And a sad, fierce, baffled, careless-ordered thing to look upon,
And in its midst there sits down perennially
A huge and ponderous and unwieldy ruminant,
Whom, merely for the sake of talking, my dear Sir William,
We will call the Harcourt.
Here, when it is not at its lordly pleasure-house,
Which men call Malwood,
The Harcourt, as I say, sits down.
Goodman Bannerman cometh to his Liberal Garden
To gather him a posy and do a little weeding;
The Harcourt is there heavily chewing the cud,
And it takes the heart out of goodman Bannerman
To behold him.
Goodman Asquith had fain pick a bit of dinner in the precincts;
The Harcourt watcheth him with rolling eye,
And goodman Asquith shivereth.
And by and by cometh the simple, rural Rosebery,
Armed cap-à-pie with a muck-fork;
Being rural he understands gardening;
He looks over the wall and sayeth,
"Gadzooks, when folk tell me that I am the man to put this garden to rights
They speak a mortal deal o' truth.
I will e'en go in and delve a bit."
And then he beholdeth the Harcourt
Luxuriating with his back against the biggest fig tree,
And he sayeth "No;
That powerful big animal be there still,
And I know'un, I do, I know'un!"
And who shall blame him?
What jobbing gardener of any self-respect
Would undertake to do up my genariums and fuchers
If I had a wild rhinoceros gambolling upon them
Day in and day out?
I should have great difficulty
In finding such a jobbing gardener, my dear Sir William;
And, to come at once to the plain poetry so belovèd of this age,
Let me tell you, my dear Sir William,
That, in my opinion, you (and no other) are at the present juncture
The real trouble and incubus of the party you love.
If you would only go home and crown yourself with a laurel or two,
And read history books, and take tea with bishops
And not come back again,
I believe the Liberal party
Would begin to get along like a house afire.
Will you not try it, my dear Sir William; oh, will you not try it?
For who would fardels bear and flounder round,
When he might sit with Lulu on the lawn
And leave his party for his party's good?

TO THE KING'S BULLDOG

Dear Brindle,—
Possibly your name is not Brindle,
But that is of no consequence;
The great point, my dear Brindle, being
That when his Majesty Edward VII.
Landed at Flushing the other day
He was accompanied
By
You.
At least so I gather from the halfpenny papers,
And I am free to admit
That when I read the paragraph
Descriptive of your landing at Flushing
My bosom swelled with honest pride.
I am not a doggy man myself,
Dear Brindle,
And no judge of points.
Also,
When I see a dog coming towards me
I invariably
Whisper
"Bite,"
And consequently
My hair
Is apt to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine
At pretty well every canine approach.
Bulldogs especially
Affright me,
So that I can well understand
How the little foreign boy,
Assembled at Flushing
To scoff in his sleeve at the English King,
Remained to flee as it were
At the sight of you.
That, in a nutshell,
Is why my bosom swelled
When I read the paragraph
To which previous reference has been made.
It was a picturesque circumstance, my dear Brindle.
And may be taken
As one more illustration
Of his Majesty's determination
(Pray excuse the rhyme)
To do things as a king of England should.
To have alighted at Flushing
Accompanied by a Lion
Would have been a little outré,
And Unicorns, we know,
Are not obtainable—
What does his Majesty do?
Why he takes, as he always has taken,
The middle and dignified course:
He disjects himself on Flushing
With You by his side.
Next to the Lion and the Unicorn
The Bulldog may be reckoned
The truest
Exemplar and symbol
Of our great nation.
It is like this:
The Bulldog is not too beautiful,
Neither is our great nation;
But he frightens people—
So do we;
He is tenacious
And magnanimous—
Which is just our game;
He fears no foe in shining armour,
Or any other sort of armour—
That is precisely our case;
And he is kept by Lord Charles Beresford,
The Duke of Manchester,
And Mr. G. R. Sims—
Three eminently typical Britons.
In short,
The genius of the British nation,
My dear Brindle,
Is not a policeman
But a Bulldog.

TO THE DAILY MAIL

(Aug. 3, 1901)

My dear "Daily Mail,"—
To-day you attain
Your 1,650th number,
Which, for the sake of talking,
We will call your Jubilee.
Congratulations,
My dear Daily Mail,
Congratulations!
There are people in the world
Who,
In the time of your infancy,
Gave you the usual three months.
Most new papers
Get three months on the day of their birth.
For at the sight of a new sheet,
Your wise man invariably taps his nose,
Looks even wiser than is his wont,
And says,
"My dear Sir,
I give it
Three months."
Well,
My dear Daily Mail,
You have survived the sentence of the wise,
And I am given to understand
That you have long been a tremendous property.
Once again
Congratulations!
BUT
(These buts are fearful things,
Are they not?)—
But
(Pray excuse me if I appear to say "but" again)—
But—
Well, you know what I mean, don't you?
Let me put it this way.
When I come to town of a morning,
Per 'bus or Potromelitan Railway,
As the case may be,
What do I see?
Not to put too fine a point upon it,
I see a row of silk or straw hats
(According to the state of the weather),
And I see a row
Of choice trouserings,
And between the hats and the trouserings
There is spread
A row of rustling morning papers.
I can tell you the names of those papers
With my eyes shut:
Five out of six of them is called
The Daily Mail.
This upsets me.
It is all right for you, of course,
But it distresses me,
And I do not like being distressed.
Now, why does it distress me?
Shall I tell you?
Are you sure that you could bear the blow?
Can you pull yourself together for a moment?
Very well, then,
You distress me
Because
The price of you is one halfpenny.
I am of opinion
That in the present condition of the general purse,
Things which are sold for a halfpenny
Are really too cheap.
I will give you my reasons some other day.
Meanwhile
(To take your own case)
When I look into your pages,
Which is seldom,
What do I find?
I will be frank for the second time,
And tell you:
I find,
My dear Daily Mail,
Ha'pennyness
Writ in every line of you,
From the front page, "Personal Column,"
With its "Massa, me nebber leab you
While you keep So-and-So's toffee about,"
To the last line
Of your astonishing Magazine page,
You are
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness
All the time.
Of course there is no harm in that,
Especially
As you get the ha'pennies,
And far be it from me
To contemn you for it.
On the other hand,
As I have remarked previously,
I do not like it.
I have no advice to offer you,
Inasmuch
As I do not see how you can help yourself.
But I shall ask you kindly to note
That the congratulations
Expressed at the beginning of this poem
Bear reference to your attainment of your 1,650th number
And not
To another matter,
Which,
While you certainly have the right upon your side,
You appear to me to be conducting
IN
AN
UNMITIGATED
HA'PENNY
WAY.