Dagonet Ditties

HEART, my heart, that faintly flutters
And sinks within my coward breast
At every sound a demon utters—
The demon of a wild unrest—
What poison is it in you lurking
That taints the rich red stream of life,
And leaves your trembling owner shirking
The storm and stress of daily strife?

The skies are black as Night’s dark daughters,
The Haven’s far, and fierce the sea;
Ill-omened birds above the waters
Fly low and shriek with evil glee.
O, sinking heart, to hope a traitor,
If through the storm’s the peace we prize,
Bid me sail on—the risk is greater
For him who here at anchor lies.

Beat, heart, again with brave endeavour;
Beat, heart, with faith in God’s right hand,
Stretched out to those who ask it ever
To lead them to the Promised Land.
Mine eyes to earth no more inclining,
I watch the storm that clears the sky;
Who’d see the sun in splendour shining
Must boldly fix his gaze on high.

Ichabod.

RITE it up with falt’ring fingers,
Write it with a blush of shame,
Since no ray of glory lingers
’Mid the temples of our fame.
O’er a Christian Church blaspheming,
Which has dragged the name of God
Through the mire of party scheming,
Write the legend “Ichabod.”

Write it where our peers assemble,
Dullards decked in solemn state,
Though their sires made Europe tremble
In the days when we were great.
Peers to-day the land encumber,
Lazy lords no spur can prod;
O’er the House where now they slumber
Write the legend “Ichabod.”

Shrined in History’s grandest pages
Are the deeds of those who bent
Tyrant kings in kingly rages
To the will of Parliament.
Now but placemen, bores, and traitors
Tread the halls that Hampden trod;
O’er the House of idle praters
Write the legend “Ichabod.”

Once old England’s pride and glory
Was that all her sons were free;
Ah, to-day how changed the story!
Where is now our liberty?
Cranks and faddists forge our fetters,
Every day we feel the rod,
“Grandmamma” in sampler letters
Works o’er England “Ichabod.”

A Derby Ditty.

UD in my eyes, and mud on my cheek,
My hat that drips, and my boots that leak,
And a voice so hoarse that I scarce can speak—
That’s how I went to the Derby.

A fight with a man at the station-gate,
Apoplexy through being late,
A score in a carriage that seated eight—
That’s how I went to the Derby.

Never a cab for love or oof,
The dye running out of my waterproof,
Through chalk and water I pad the hoof—
That’s how I got to the Derby.

Smashed and crushed in a crowded pen,
Bruised and battered by bustling men,
A lamb in a roaring lion’s den—
That’s how I saw the Derby.

“The favourite’s beat!” the millions cry,
The next umbrella extracts my eye,
And I’ve laid two thousand to one with Fry—
That’s how I liked the Derby.

I’ve lost my temper, I’ve lost my tin;
Where is my watch—my chain—my pin?
And my boots are letting the water in—
That’s how I left the Derby.

A couple of doctors by my bed,
A block of ice on my burning head,
And somehow I wish that I was dead—
That’s what came of the Derby.

The brokers in on a bill of sale,
Pills and potions of no avail,
A jerry-built tomb with a rusty rail—
That’s what came of the Derby.

R.I.P. on a soot-grimed stone,
And under my name these words alone:
“The biggest juggins that ever was known”
Has gone where’s there no more Derby.

Shall we Remember?

H, love, my love, as hand in hand,
This glorious autumn weather,
We stroll along the golden strand,
And watch the ships together,
We murmur vows we mean to keep,
But by next year’s September,
How many made beside the deep
Shall We Remember?

Old love is dead; new love awakes,
And hearts are playthings ever;
Though change may mar, ’tis change that makes;
Time every link can sever;
Though dull love’s fire, to glowing gold
We fan the dying ember—
Yet in new love, the love of old
Shall We Remember?

The race of life is to the strong,
The pace grows fast and faster,
The leader takes the field along,
And brings the weak disaster.
The prize is won! Yet what is fame?
A rushlight in November.
In twelve short months the victor’s name
Shall We Remember?

Paradise and the Sinner.

(THE NEW VERSION.)

NE morn a sinner at the gate
Of Eden stood disconsolate,
And as he pondered on the things
In life he’d done, his wild oats sowing,
He felt the pang that conscience brings,
And both his cheeks with shame were glowing.

He thought of all the vows he’d broken,
He thought of falsehoods lightly told,
Of all the hasty words he’d spoken,
And all the tricks he’d played for gold.
“Ah me!” he cried, “I own my sin,
So, pitying angel, let me in!”

The angel heard the sinner’s tale,
He blushed not, neither turned he pale,
But “Think you then,” in wrath he cried,
“For crimes like these to pass inside?
Your life’s not been so badly spent;
You must do something worse by far.
Come back with something to repent,
And then I’ll raise the crystal bar.”

The sinner he flew from the spot sublime
Away to the earth below,
“I wonder,” he thought, “what kind of crime
Is reckoned the worst en haut.”
He picked a pocket and stole a purse;
He plotted against the Crown;
He changed two babies put out to nurse,
And he left a dog to drown.

“Good,” said the angel as he heard
A list of the sinner’s sins;
“But this is only about a third
Of the crime that entrance wins.
Your record, I trow, must be blacker far
Before I can raise the crystal bar.”

The sinner flew back to the earth once more,
And he steeped his hands in his brother’s gore;
He poisoned his wife by slow degrees,
And hanged his twins on a couple of trees;
And then with a broken and rusty saw
He cut off the head of his mother-in-law;
And he cried, as a shuddering world turned sick,
“If the chaplain’s right I have done the trick.”

Once more he stood before the gate
And told his tale and asked his fate.
The angel smiled—said, “Right you are,”
And swiftly raised the crystal bar.
But oh, when the sinner was once inside,
“There is some mistake!” he in terror cried,
As down in the bottomless pit he fell,
And found he had knocked at the gate of hell.

“It was your mistake,” the angel said,
“To think that because your hands were red
You could pass at once to the realms above,
The beautiful realms of peace and love.
The clerical gents may tell you so,
But this is the place to which murderers go.”

The Income Tax.

H, Goschen, hear us groan,
Relieve our burdened backs;
We weep and wail and moan,
“Reduce the income tax!”

It is a wicked plan,
And decency it lacks;
It makes a Christian man
Say, “Hang the income tax!”

Poor Job, he had to bear
Some very nasty smacks,
But nothing to compare
With this infernal tax.

Not all his pains and aches
Could put him in a wax;
But he’d have shouted, “Snakes!”
If asked for income tax.

Oh, take the curse away,
The cruel curse that racks:
Why should free Britons pay
This most un-British tax?

For years has raged the fight,
Be yours the cry of “Pax,”
And, Britain’s wrongs to right,
Remove the income tax.

On earth that deed shall dwell
Till all creation cracks,
And Fame’s last trumpet tell
How Goschen killed the tax.

Do this, and you will forge
A deathless battle-axe
For England’s new St. George
Who slew the income tax.

Nonsense.

HE Strand was in a dreadful state,
And so was Mary Ann
They’d gone and raised the postal rate
’Twixt her and her young man.

She might have sent by parcels post
Her lover’s Christmas card,
But gales were raging round the coast,
And it was freezing hard.

What was a poor distracted maid
To do in such a case,
When only half the odds were laid
An hour before the race?

She had a right to see the rules,
According to the law;
But as the staff were mostly fools,
The time was all she saw.

So, losing heart, she gave a groan
And, taking off her socks,
She dropped them (they were not her own)
Inside the pillar-box.

(Her socks, as you may shrewdly guess,
Were stockings, truth to tell;
For as to-day young ladies dress
Socks would not look so well.)

She left her boots to mark the place,
And went to Drury Lane;
But there was that in Gus’s face
Which filled her heart with pain.

He would not pass her to the pit;
She said, “I’m on the Press.”
She thought he would have had a fit,
And burst his evening dress.

“If you are on the Press,” he cried,
“You ought to wear your shoes
But, as there’s room for one inside,
I cannot well refuse.”

He put her in a private box,
Which hid her to the knees;
And sent to Alias for some frocks,
And whispered, “Choose from these.”

She chose a page’s trunks and hose,
A fairy’s skirt of gauze,
And while she dressed Augustus rose
And left amid applause.

Then back she went a fairy queen
Into the G.P.O.;
She passed the rows of clerks between,
And all were bowing low.

They weighed her card with smirk and smile,
The stamps with care imposed;
The postage was a pound a mile,
Because the ends were closed.

But in her fairy garment she
Did look so sweet a gal,
“O.H.M.S.” was put by the
Postmaster-General.

And ere her card her love unclosed
Another knot was tied:
The P.M.G. himself proposed,
And now she is his bride.

MORAL.

If information you would ask,
When P.O. clerks are pressed,
You’ll find it aid you in your task
If you go nicely dressed!

Le Mardi Gras.

HE Feast of Folly is spread,
Let us eat and drink and be merry;
While the fountains are running red
With the juice of the glorious berry.
Let us carry the forts of Joy
With a series of madcap dashes,
Ere the Feast of Flesh, my boy,
Gives way to the Fast of Ashes.

We have but a breath of life,
A whiff off the world’s wide pleasure;
A year of its strain and strife,
For a day of its dancing measure.
So, hey for the fatted calf,
While the carnival music crashes!
At the Feast of Flesh we’ll laugh,
Ere we weep at the Fast of Ashes.

O, sage with the grim gray face,
With our quips is there cause to quarrel?
We know ere we run our race
We shall master the Mardi’s moral.
We shall be as the monks who scourge
Their skins with a hundred lashes:
Youth’s Feast of the Flesh we must purge
With our manhood’s Fast of Ashes.

Two Sundays.

HE bigot, with his narrow mind,
Can ill in every pleasure find;
He makes his God a god of gloom,
The pulsing world a living tomb,
A curse in every blessing sees,
And, thinking Heaven to appease,
He cuts—Religion is his knife—
The blossom from the Tree of Life.

From fogs, that gave that bigot birth,
Far off, in many a land of mirth
Hearts full of faith in God above
Look on Him as a God of Love—
A God who bids His children play,
And smiles to see His loved ones gay:
As earthly fathers smile to see
Their children sing and dance with glee.

Oh, British Sabbath, bigot bred,
Our youth’s despair, our childhood’s dread!
God does not scowl in solemn state
Behind a gloomy prison gate;
He smiles enthroned in sunny skies,
Where only joyous songs arise.
To make God’s day, then, ’twere as well,
Seem more like heaven and less like hell.

The Mails Aboard.

HE captain of the Cuckoo took
His glasses from the starboard hook;
He gazed across the raging main,
Then put his glasses back again.
The Cuckoo’s mate remarked, “I guess
You saw a signal of distress?”
“I did, but it must be ignored;
You see, we’ve got the mails aboard.”

This was the captain’s curt reply;
The first mate heard it with a sigh.
But all the Cuckoo’s captain said
Was “Steady!” then “Full steam ahead!”
He crossed the sinking vessel’s bows,
As close as seamanship allows.
“Can’t stop!” he through his trumpet roared,
“Because I have the mails aboard.”

The passengers and all the crew
Replied, “Oh, please to save us—do!”
And, plunging in the raging sea,
Declined the captain’s R.I.P.
They followed in the Cuckoo’s wake,
Till swimming made their stomachs ache;
Their lot the captain much deplored,
But waved them off with “Mails aboard!”

The storm to fiercest tempest grew,
But straight ahead the Cuckoo flew;
Till once again the captain took
His glasses from the starboard hook;
“Hullo!” he cried; “if I am not
Mistaken, there’s the royal yacht;
A hidden rock her side has bored,
She signals! Answer, ‘Mails aboard!’”

The yacht replied with haughty mien,
“Stop, by the order of the Queen,
Who, braving equinoctial gales,
Now in this sinking vessel sails.”
“Alas!” the Cuckoo’s captain cried,
“To save my Queen would be my pride”
(Here he saluted with his sword),
“But tell her I’ve the mails aboard.”

“Ha!” cried the Queen, “for this I will
Cut off his head on Tower Hill,
The knave shall see the House of Guelph
Respected still can make itself.”
She sent a man to ev’ry gun,
And, just to stop the captain’s fun,
Into his ship a broadside poured,
Although he had the mails aboard.

The Cuckoo’s captain cried, “The deuce!”
And straight ran up a flag of truce;
And then he sent a boat to save
His sovereign from a watery grave.
The Queen stepped nimbly on the deck,
And left the royal yacht a wreck;
But flung, though mercy he implored,
The Cuckoo’s captain overboard.

When he recovered from the shock,
He lay upon a lonely rock;
And there ships’ captains as they pass
Survey him sternly through the glass,
And by Victoria’s orders scoff
At all his cries of “Take me off!”
And say, “By us your fate’s deplored,
But we can’t stop—we’ve mails aboard.”

At The Photographer’s.

(A BALLAD OF BROADMOOR.)

HEY coaxed me up a hundred stairs,
They lured me to their den,
For me they laid their artful snares—
Those photographing men.
They dragged me to a room of glass
Beneath a blazing sun,
I thought I should have died. Alas!
I’m nearly fourteen stone!

They saw their victim pant and blow,
They heard him cry, “I melt!”
But ne’er a one for all my woe
One grain of pity felt.
They seized my head and screwed it round,
And fixed it in a vice,
And simpered when they had me bound,
“That pose is very nice!

“Look up—look up, and wear a smile;
Look pleasant, if you please.
You must keep still a little while;
Just straighten up your knees.”
’Tis thus they jeer and jibe at me
As, faint and hot, I try
An inch before my nose to see
With sunstroke in my eye.

I think of all the bitter wrongs
My later life has known;
I writhe beneath Fate’s cruel thongs,
I knit my brow and groan.
And still with many a smile and smirk
The artist trips about,
And gives my chin a little jerk
And sticks my elbows out.

Ye gods, am I a grinning ape
To pose and posture thus?
Am I a man in human shape
Or turkey that they truss?

My head is free; with fiendish mirth
I raise a vengeful hand,
And dash the camera to earth,
And fell the iron stand.

I take the artist by the throat
And pin him to the wall,
And jerk his chin and tear his coat,
And hold his head in thrall.
I bid the trembling victim smile,
I cry, “Be gay and laugh,
And in the very latest style
I’ll take your photograph!”

I twisted till I broke his neck,
I baked him in the sun;
I left the room an awful wreck,
And then the deed was done.
They held an inquest on the bits;
Ye photographing crew,
Before to you the writer sits
Just read that inquest through.

In Gay Japan.

BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

R. Lawson, if you please,
Just a little line to say
I’m a-taking of my ease
In a Japaneasy way.

Here I write “By Lands and Seas”
For your “London Day by Day,”
’Neath the blossom-laden trees
Of Japan, the glad and gay.

Here I watch the pretty shes
As they don their night array;
And they ask me to their teas,
And they sing to me and play.

’Tis ’mid pleasures such as these
That I hope you’ll let me stay—
’Tis a climate that agrees
With your faithful Edwin A.

Now no more I have to seize
Editorial pen to flay
Home Rule freaks of Mr. G.’s
Or to keep the Rads at bay.

Mona’s “Marriage,” Lubbock’s bees,
Mr. Stanley, Tottie Fay,
Water rates, and School Board fees
On my mind no longer prey.

Glad Japan my spirit frees
From its tenement of clay,
And, my note-book on my knees,
With the muses I can stray.

So, dear Lawson, if you please,
I will stop here if I may,
Sending “Over Lands and Seas”
From Japan, the glad and gay.

The Balaclava Heroes.

(JULY 2, 1890.)

PEN the workhouse doors to-day
To the men who fought in that fearful fray;
Weary and worn and scant of breath
Are the men who rode through the valley of Death;
But, clad in the pauper’s garb of shame,
They are getting the meed of their deathless fame.

These are the heroes our poet sang
When over the world their story rang;
These are the heroes, gnarled and bent,
With the tale of whose deeds the skies were rent;
These are the soldiers whose fame’s writ large
On the glorious page of that deathless charge.

Open the workhouse doors to-day
To the penniless heroes old and gray;
In each wrinkled face is a soldier’s pride,
They have won the guerdon so long denied,
And we honour their deed with—what do you think?—
A benefit at a skating rink!

A Child’s Idea.

IGHTLY holding her mother’s hand,
A little girl tripped o’er her father’s land;
Squire of all the acres he,
As far as the little one’s eyes could see,
And his wife and his daughter, his “Baby May,”
Were “seeing the folks” this Christmas Day.

Six years old was the baby girl,
And her brain was all in a dreamy whirl
With the puddings and pies and the Christmas-trees
And the bells and carols, and, if you please,
The night before had St. Nicholas been
With the loveliest dolly that ever was seen.

“How good of the saint, mamma, to leave
Such beautiful things upon Christmas Eve!”
She had cried, as against her baby breast
She hushed her dear little doll to rest.
And then the wonders of Christmas Day
Had almost taken her breath away.

And now through the village she gaily trips,
As the greeting comes from a score of lips:
“A Merry Christmas and bright New Year!”
And the air is heavy with Christmas cheer—
Goose and pudding and beef galore—
And the fires glow bright through each open door
There’s a happy smile upon ev’ry face,
The village is quite a fairy place;
And in every cottage at which they call
The green and holly are on the wall;
And all the family gathered there
Are seated around the Christmas fare.

“How happy they are!” says Baby May,
As she looks at the feast and the feasters gay;
And then there comes to her childish mind
A scene or two of a different kind—
Of weeping women and frowning men,
And nobody seems so happy then!

She had grasped the fact in her childish way
That the poor had “troubles” and “rents” to pay—
That children ailed, and that some men’s wives
Were “nearly worried out of their lives.”
She had heard the gossip, as children do,
And to-day it came back to her mind anew.

She thought of the village of then and now,
And there came a cloud on her baby brow;
She knew there was sorrow where now was mirth,
And she whispered, “Mamma, when He made the earth,
What a pity it was God did not say,
‘Let it be always Christmas Day’!”

Sanitation at Sea.

HAVE sailed o’er the ocean to spots far away,
I’ve also done “Margate and back” in the day;
I have spent the long nights upon deck in a storm,
And stood by the funnel to keep myself warm;
And when I’ve been poorly as poorly can be,
I have sighed for some slight “sanitation at sea.”

I have been in the cabin where sufferers lay
In an atmosphere fitted a nigger to slay,
I have slept in a bunk where the air was so foul
That I woke in the morn with an agonized howl,
And I’ve staggered upstairs crying, “Oh, dearie me!
Why will they ignore ‘sanitation at sea’?”

By the smell of the engine, the dirt on the deck,
By the stairs you descend at the risk of your neck,
By the cabin whose odour is stuffy and stale,
By the dirty old tub which is known as “the Mail,”
By the horrors from which scarce a vessel is free,
We’d welcome the least “sanitation at sea.”

Guignol.

PAY two sous and take my chair
Among the little girls and boys;
The nurses turn their heads and stare,
For puppet-shows are children’s joys.
And yet, though Time has hit me hard,
And life I’m given to revile,
From every joy I’m not debarred,
For Guignol still can make me smile.

Dear Guignol of my golden youth!
How oft in these Elysian fields
I’ve listened to his words of truth,
And watched the baton that he wields!
And still in autumn’s pleasant glow
A happy hour away I while,
And with the babies “see the show,”
For Guignol still can make me smile!

The English Summer.

N Monday the weather was fine and bright,
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
On Tuesday the floods had reached their height,
And a hurricane blew on Wednesday night,
And the land was a swamp and a dismal sight—
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!

On Thursday the dogs all panting lay,
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
And sunstroke settled two boys at play.
On Friday the winter had come to stay—
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!

On Saturday snow was a good foot high,
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!
On Sunday there fell from the jet-black sky
A deluge that covered the mountains high;
And to-day in a tropical sun we fry—
Three fine days and a thunderstorm!

A Perfect Paradise.

(VIDE PELICAN. AFFIDAVITS.)

HE quiet of the woodland way
Bird-broken is by night and day,
But ne’er a song-bird trills its lay
In Gerrard Street, Soho.

No breeze here bears the babel roar—
Life’s ocean, tideless evermore,
Lies dead upon the silent shore
Of Gerrard Street, Soho.

The hermit seeking holy calm
May soothe his soul with Gilead balm
Beneath the desert’s one green palm
In Gerrard Street, Soho.

But ’twas, oh, ’twas not always thus
Men flying from life’s fume and fuss
In urbe found a peaceful rus
In Gerrard Street, Soho.

There was a time when shout and shriek
And song and oath and drunken freak
Made matters lively all the week
In Gerrard Street, Soho.

Then, too, alas! the Sabbath eve
Heard sounds to make the pious grieve,
And quiet tenants thought they’d leave
In Gerrard Street, Soho.

When came the change from noise to peace,
When did the clattering hansom cease,
When rose the value of a lease
In Gerrard Street, Soho?

When came that sense of perfect rest
Which makes the region doubly blest?
’Twas when, as members’ oaths attest,
The Pelicans first built their nest
In Gerrard Street, Soho!

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