Abundantly ample.
LESSONS FROM NATURE.
To an Autumn Primrose.
| "If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?" Wordsworth. Symbol of innocence, to Tories dear, Whom I detect beside the silvan path Doing your second time on earth this year That I may cull a generous aftermath, Let me divine your reason For thus repullulating out of season. Associated with the vernal prime And widely known as "rathe," why bloom so late? Was it the lure of so-called "Summer-time," Extended well beyond the usual date? Our thanks for which reprieve Are Smillie's, though they didn't ask his leave. Rather I think you have some lofty plan, Such as your old friend Wordsworth loved to sing; That for a fair ensample set to Man You duplicate your output of the Spring; That in your heart there lodges Dimly the hope of shaming Mr. Hodges. Ah! gentle primrose by the river's brim! Like Peter Bell (unversed in woodland lore), He'll miss your meaning; you will be to him A yellow primrose—that and nothing more; He'll read in you no sign Of Nature's views about the datum-line. |
O.S.
THE MINERS' OPERA.
About a week ago, when they took Titterby away to the large red-brick establishment which he now adorns, certain papers which were left lying in his study passed into my hands, for I was almost his only friend. It had long been Titterby's belief that a great future lay before the librettist who should produce topical light operas on the Gilbert and Sullivan model, dealing with our present-day economic crises. The thing became an idée fixe, as the French say, or, as we lamely put it in English, a fixed idea. There can be no doubt that he was engaged in the terrible task of fitting the current coal dispute to fantastic verse when a brain-cell unhappily buckled, and he was found destroying the works of his grand piano with a coal-scoop.