Poet-professor! Now my brain thou kindlest:
I am become a most determined Tyndallist.
If it is known a fellow can make skies,
Why not make bright blue eyes?

This to deny, the folly of a dunce it is:
Surely a girl as easy as a sunset is.
If you can make a halo or eclipse,
Why not two laughing lips?

The creed of Archimedes, erst of Sicily,
And of D'Israeli . . . forti nil difficile,

...

Is likewise mine. Pygmalion was a fool
Who should have gone to school.

Why should an author scribble rhymes or articles? Bring me a dozen tiny Tyndall particles;

Therefrom I'll coin a dinner, Nash's wine,

And a nice girl to dine.

Mortimer Collins

MRS. SMITH

Last year I trod these fields with Di,
Fields fresh with clover and with rye;
They now seem arid!

Then Di was fair and single; how
Unfair it seems on me, for now

Di's fair and married!

A blissful swain - I scorn'd the song
Which says that though young Love is strong,
The Fates are stronger;

Breezes then blew a boon to men,
The buttercups were bright, and then
This grass was longer.

That day I saw and much esteem'd
Di's ankles, which the clover seem'd
Inclined to smother;

It twitch'd, and soon untied (for fun)
The ribbon of her shoes, first one,
And then the other.

I'm told that virgins augur some
Misfortune if their shoe-strings come
To grief on Friday:

And so did Di, and then her pride
Decreed that shoe-strings so untied
Are so untidy!"

66

Of course I knelt; with fingers deft
I tied the right, and then the left;
Says Di, "The stubble

Is very stupid! -
- as I live,

I'm quite ashamed! - I'm shock'd to give
You so much trouble!"

For answer I was fain to sink

To what we all would say and think
Were Beauty present:

"Don't mention such a simple act
A trouble? not the least! in fact
It's rather pleasant!"

Heigh-ho! Although no moral clings
To Di's blue eyes, and sandal strings,
We've had our quarrels !

I think that Smith is thought an ass;
I know that when they walk in grass
She wears balmorals.

Frederick Locker-Lampson

THE LOST HEIR

One day, as I was going by

That part of Holborn christened High,
I heard a loud and sudden cry

That chilled my very blood;

And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,
I saw a crazy woman sally,

Bedaubed with grease and mud.

She turned her East, she turned her West,
Staring like Pythoness possest,

With streaming hair and heaving breast
As one stark mad with grief.

This way and that she wildly ran,
Jostling with woman and with man
Her right hand held a frying-pan,
The left a lump of beef.

At last her frenzy seemed to reach
A point just capable of speech,
And with a tone almost a screech,
As wild as ocean birds,

Or female Ranter moved to preach,
She gave her “ sorrow words."

"O Lord! O dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring wild!

Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like a crying lost-looking child?

Lawk help me, I don't know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way

A Child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay.

I am all in a quiver — get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M'Nab!

You promised to have half an eye on him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab.

The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes,

Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies.

I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys,

With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys.

When his Father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock strikes one,

He'll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns not done!

La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don't be making a mob in the street;

O Sergeant M'Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you, in your beat?

Do, good people, move on! don't stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid stuck pigs;

Saints forbid! but he's p'r'aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake of his clothes by the prigs;

He'd a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one day in Rag Fair;

And his trousers considering not very much patched, and red plush, they was once his Father's best pair.

His shirt, it's very lucky I'd got washing in the tub, or that might have gone with the rest;

But he'd got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast.

He'd a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sewed in, and not quite so much jagg'd at the brim.

With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you'll know by that if it's him.

Except being so well dressed, my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want of an orphan,

Had borrowed the child to go a-begging with, but I'd rather see him laid out in his coffin!

Do, good people, move on, such a rabble of boys! I'll break every bone of 'em I come near,

Go home - you're spilling the porter-go home
Jones, go along home with your beer.

Tommy

This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan,

Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a Monkey and an Organ.

O my Billy - my head will turn right round — if he's got kiddynapped with them Italians,

They'll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish tatterdemalions.

Billy where are you, Billy? I'm as hoarse as a crow, with screaming for ye, you young sorrow!

And sha'n't have half a voice, no more I sha'n't, for crying fresh herrings to-morrow.

O Billy, you're bursting my heart in two, and my life won't be of no more vally,

If I'm to see other folk's darlin's, and none of mine, playing

like angels in our alley,

And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair

As Billy used to make coach and horses of, and there a'n't no Billy there!

I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only know'd where to run;

Little Murphy, now I remember, was once lost for a month through stealing a penny bun,

The Lord forbid of any child of mine! I think it would kill me raily,

To find my Bill holdin' up his little innocent hand at the Old Bailey.

For though I say it as oughtn't, yet I will say, you may search for miles and mileses

And not find one better brought up, and more pretty behaved, from one end to t'other of St. Giles's.

And if I called him a beauty, it's no lie, but only as a Mother ought to speak;

You never set eyes on a more handsomer face, only it hasn't been washed for a week;

As for hair, tho' it's red, it's the most nicest hair when I've time to just show it the comb;

I'll owe 'em five pounds, and a blessing besides, as will only bring him safe and sound home.

He's blue eyes, and not to be called a squint, though a little cast he's certainly got;

And his nose is still a good un, tho' the bridge is broke, by his falling on a pewter pint pot;

He's got the most elegant wide mouth in the world, and very large teeth for his age;

And quite as fit as Mrs. Murdockson's child to play Cupid on the Drury Lane Stage.

And then he has got such dear winning ways — but O I never, never shall see him no more!

O dear! to think of losing him just after nussing him back from death's door!

Only the very last month when the windfalls, hang 'em, was at twenty a penny!

And the threepence he'd got by grottoing was spent in plums, and sixty for a child is too many.

And the Cholera man came and whitewashed us all and, drat him, made a seize of our hog.

It's no use to send the Crier to cry him about, he's such a

blunderin' drunken old dog;