Our Peerage we’ve remodelled on an intellectual basis,
Which certainly is rough on our hereditary races—
(They are going to remodel it in England.)
The Brewers and the Cotton Lords no longer seek admission,
And Literary Merit meets with proper recognition—
(As Literary Merit does in England!)
Who knows but we may count among our intellectual chickens
Like them an Earl of Thackeray and p’raps a Duke of Dickens—
Lord Fildes and Viscount Millais (when they come) we’ll welcome sweetly—
And then, this happy country will be Anglicised completely!
It really is surprising
What a thorough Anglicising
We’ve brought about—Utopia’s quite another land;
In her enterprising movements,
She is England—with improvements,
Which we dutifully offer to our mother-land!
AN ENGLISH GIRL
A wonderful joy our eyes to bless,
In her magnificent comeliness,
Is an English girl of eleven stone two,
And five foot ten in her dancing shoe!
She follows the hounds, and on she pounds—
The “field” tails off and the muffs diminish—
Over the hedges and brooks she bounds—
Straight as a crow, from find to finish.
At cricket, her kin will lose or win—
She and her maids, on grass and clover,
Eleven maids out—eleven maids in—
(And perhaps an occasional “maiden over”).
Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There’s no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!
With a ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs,
She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims—
She plays, she sings, she dances, too,
From ten or eleven till all is blue!
At ball or drum, till small hours come
(Chaperon’s fan conceals her yawning),
She’ll waltz away like a teetotum,
And never go home till daylight’s dawning.
Lawn tennis may share her favours fair—
Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing—
Down comes her hair, but what does she care?
It’s all her own and it’s worth the showing!
Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There’s no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!
Her soul is sweet as the ocean air,
For prudery knows no haven there;
To find mock-modesty, please apply
To the conscious blush and the downcast eye.
Rich in the things contentment brings,
In every pure enjoyment wealthy,
Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings,
For body and mind are hale and healthy.
Her eyes they thrill with right goodwill—
Her heart is light as a floating feather—
As pure and bright as the mountain rill
That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather!
Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There’s no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!
A MANAGER’S PERPLEXITIES
Were I a king in very truth,
And had a son—a guileless youth—
In probable succession;
To teach him patience, teach him tact,
How promptly in a fix to act,
He should adopt, in point of fact,
A manager’s profession.
To that condition he should stoop
(Despite a too fond mother),
With eight or ten “stars” in his troupe,
All jealous of each other!
Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,
Each member a genius (and some of them two),
And manage to humour them, little and great,
Can govern a tuppenny-ha’penny State!
Both A and B rehearsal slight—
They say they’ll be “all right at night”
(They’ve both to go to school yet);
C in each act must change her dress,
D will attempt to “square the press”;
E won’t play Romeo unless
His grandmother plays Juliet;
F claims all hoydens as her rights
(She’s played them thirty seasons);
And G must show herself in tights
For two convincing reasons—
Two very well-shaped reasons!
Oh, the man who can drive a theatrical team,
With wheelers and leaders in order supreme,
Can govern and rule, with a wave of his fin,
All Europe and Asia—with Ireland thrown in!
OUT OF SORTS
When you find you’re a broken-down critter,
Who is all of a trimmle and twitter,
With your palate unpleasantly bitter,
As if you’d just bitten a pill—
When your legs are as thin as dividers,
And you’re plagued with unruly insiders,
And your spine is all creepy with spiders,
And you’re highly gamboge in the gill—
When you’ve got a beehive in your head,
And a sewing machine in each ear,
And you feel that you’ve eaten your bed,
And you’ve got a bad headache down here—
When such facts are about,
And these symptoms you find
In your body or crown—
Well, it’s time to look out,
You may make up your mind
You had better lie down!