By Shakespere’s Soul! if this goes on,
From every face of man and woman
The gift of gladness will be gone,
And laughter will be thought inhuman!
The only beast who smiles is Man!
That marks him out from meaner creatures!
Confound the Dismal Throng, who plan
To take God’s birth-mark from our features!
Manfreds who walk the hospitals.
Laras and Giaours grown scientific,
They wear the clothes and bear the palls
Of Stormy Ones once thought terrific;
They play the same old funeral tune,
And posture with the same dejection,
But turn from howling at the moon
To literary vivisection!
oscar wilde.
And while they loom before our view,
Dark’ning the air that should be sunny,
Here’s Oscar,[8] growing dismal too,
Our Oscar, who was once so funny!
Blue china ceases to delight
The dear curl’d darling of society,
Changed are his breeches, once so bright,
For foreign breaches of propriety!
george moore.
I like my Oscar, tolerate
My Archer[9] of the Dauntless Grammar,
Nay, e’en my Moore[10] I estimate
Not too unkindly, ’spite his clamour;
But I prefer my roses still
To all the garlic in their garden—
Let Hedda gabble as she will,
I’ll stay with Rosalind, in Arden!
O for one laugh of Rabelais,
To rout these moralising croakers!
(The cowls were mightier far than they,
Yet fled before that King of Jokers)
O for a slash of Fielding’s pen
To bleed these pimps of Melancholy!
O for a Boz, born once again
To play the Dickens with such folly!