From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days,
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise,
Is the Ivy’s food at last.
Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
Charles Dickens.
This song first appeared in Chapter VI. of The Pickwick Papers, which were originally published in monthly parts, commencing in April, 1836. Ten years later Dickens started The Daily News, the first number of which was published in London on January 21, 1846. For many years the paper had but a struggling existence. Although Dickens only edited it for a few months, it was well known that he was interested in its success, so that the author of the following poem, whilst sneering at The Daily News, had a motive in choosing Dickens’s poem as the model for his parody.
The Daily News.