Kept whispering words of dark doom

In my ear, “You’ll resume! You’ll resume!

In two months from to-day, you’ll resume!”

“We are off!” Pussy cried. “This is pleasant!

How jolly! From Westminster far!”

“Ah, precisely,” said I, “for the present!”

Cried he, “What a croaker you are!

What a—well Grand old Croaker you are!

Let us think of the grouse and the pheasant,

And not of St. Stephen’s war,