AFTER AUSTIN DOBSON

THE PRODIGALS

(Dedicated to Mr. Chaplin, M.P., and Mr. Rich ard Power, M.P., and 223 who followed him)

Μ'

INISTERS! you, most serious,

Critics and statesmen of all degrees,
Hearken awhile to the motion of us
Senators keen for the Epsom breeze!
Nothing we ask of poets or fees;
Worry us not with objections, pray!

Lo, for the speaker's wig we seize—
Give us, ah! give us the Derby Day.

Scots most prudent, penurious!
Irishmen busy as bumblebees !
Hearken awhile to the motion of us

Senators keen for the Epsom breeze!

For Sir Joseph's sake, and his owner's, please! (Solomon raced like fun, they say.)

Lo, for we beg on our bended knees Give us, ah! give us the Derby Day.

Campbell Asheton be generous !

(But they voted such things were not the cheese.) Sullivan, hear us, magnanimous !

(But Sullivan thought with their enemies.)

And shortly they got both of help and ease, For a mad majority crowded to say,

"Debate we've drunk to the dregs and lees: Give us, ah! give us the Derby Day."

ENVOI:

Prince, most just was the motion of these,
And many were seen by the dusty way,
Shouting glad to the Epsom breeze
Give us, ah! give us the Derby Day.

Anonymous.

AFTER ANDREW LANG

U

BO-PEEP

NHAPPY is Bo-Peep,

Her tears profusely flow,
Because her precious sheep
Have wandered to and fro,
Have chosen far to go,
For "pastures new" inclined,
(See Lycidas) - and lo!
Their tails are still behind!

How catch them while asleep?
(I think Gaboriau

For machinations deep

Beats Conan Doyle and Co.)

But none a hint bestow
Save this, on how to find

The flocks she misses so

"Their tails are still behind!”

This simple faith to keep

Will mitigate her woe,

She is not Joan, to leap

To arms against the foe
Or conjugate τύπτω ;

Nay, peacefully resigned

She waits, till time shall show
Their tails are still behind!

Bo-Peep, rejoice! Although
Your sheep appear unkind,
Rejoice at last to know

Their tails are still behind!

Anthony C. Deane.

C

AFTER W. E. HENLEY

IMITATION

ALM and implacable,

Eying disdainfully the world beneath, Sat Humpty-Dumpty on his mural eminence In solemn state :

And I relate his story

In verse unfettered by the bothering restrictions of rhyme or metre,

In verse (or "rhythm," as I prefer to call it) Which, consequently, is far from difficult to write.

The world passed on the surging crowd

Of men and women, passionate, turgid, dense,
Keenly alert, lethargic, or obese.
(Those two lines scan!)

Among the rest

He noted Jones; Jones with his Roman nose,
His eyebrows the left one streaked with a dash

of gray

And yellow boots.

Not that Jones

Has anything in particular to do with the story;