When meat and fruit were still uncanned;
When good CHARLES DICKENS still was writing;
And SWINBURNE'S poetry was banned
As rather too exciting.
No murmurs of impending strife
Were heard, no dark suggestions hinted;
Our novelists still looked on life
Through spectacles rose-tinted;
And Paris, in those giddy years,
Still laughed at OFFENBACH and SCHNEIDER,