“ In the colors shaded off thee, the suggestions of a soul.
"Yea," the poet said, "I smell thee by some passive divination,
I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house;
What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion,
Had the æons thought of making thee a man and me a louse.
"The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion,
Food and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test,
Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question,
And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best. ”

“ AFTER KIPLING FUZZY WUZZY LEAVES US
WE'VE been visited by men across the seas,
And some of them could write, and some could not;
The English, French, and German—whom you please,
But Kipling was the finest of the lot.
In sooth, we're loath to lose him from our list;
Though he's not been wholly kind in all his dealings;
Indeed from first to last I must insist,
He has played the cat and banjo with our feelings.
But here's to you, Mr. Kipling, with your comments and your slurs;
You're a poor, benighted Briton, but the Prince of Raconteurs! ”

“ Rudyard Kipling.
[277]
QUAERITUR
DAWN that disheartens the desolate dunes,
Dulness of day as it bursts on the beach,
Sea-wind that shrillest the thinnest of tunes,
What is the wisdom thy wailings would teach?
Far, far away, down the foam-frescoed reach,
Where ravening rocks cleave the crest of the seas,
Sigheth the sound of thy sonorous speech,
As gray gull and guillemot gather their fees;
Taking toll of the beasts that are bred in the seas.
Foam-flakes fly farther than faint eyes can follow—
Drop down the desolate dunes and are done ”

“ On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate."
"Notwithstanding which, O poet," spake the woodlouse, very blandly,
"I am likewise the created,—I the equipoise of thee;
I the particle, the atom, I behold on either hand lie
The inane of measured ages that were embryos of me.
"I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences,
And the air I breathe is colored with apocalyptic blush;
Ripest-budded odors blossom out of dim chaotic stenches,
And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues of human slush. ”

“ Phœbe Cary.
[103]
AFTER ALFRED BUNN A YULE-TIDE PARODY
WHEN other wits and other bards,
Their tales at Christmas tell,
Or praise on cheap and colored cards
The time they love so well,
Secure from scorn and ridicule
I hope my verse may be,
If I can still remember Yule,
And Yule remember me.
The days are dark, the days are drear,
When dull December dies;
But, while we mourn an ended year,
Another's star will rise. ”

“ So he flung in the river his cane to swim with his wig and his hat.
Cool reflection at last came across, while this elderly gentleman sat;
So he thought he would follow the stream, and look for his cane, wig, and hat.
His head, being thicker than common, o'erbalanced the rest of his fat,
And in plumpt this son of a woman, to follow his wig, cane, and hat. ”

“ Here is a piece of lace. A babe is born.
The father is happy, the mother is happy.
Next black crêpe. A beldame "shuffles off this mortal coil."
Now brocaded satin with orange blossoms,
Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," an old shoe missile,
A broken carriage window, the bride in the Bellevue sleeping.
Here's a large piece of black cloth!
"Have you any last words to say?"
"No."
"Sheriff, do your work!"
Thus it is: from "grave to gay, from lively to severe."
I mourn the downfall of my Jack and Jill.
I see them descending, obstacles not heeding. ”

“ AFTER A. C. SWINBURNE GILLIAN
JACK and Jille
I have made me an end of the moods of maidens,
I have loosed me, and leapt from the links of love;
From the kiss that cloys and desire that deadens,
The woes that madden, the words that move.
In the dim last days of a spent September,
When fruits are fallen, and flies are fain ”

“ Bless your soul! it was the salmon,—salmon always makes him so.
Take him to thy dainty chamber—soothe him with thy lightest fancies;
[168] He will understand thee, won't he?—pay thee with a lover's glances?
Louder than the loudest trumpet, harsh as harshest ophicleide,
Nasal respirations answer the endearments of his bride.
Sweet repose, delightful music! Gaze upon thy noble charge,
Till the spirit fill thy bosom that inspired the meek Laffarge.
Better thou wert dead before me,—better, better that I stood,
Looking on thy murdered body, like the injured Daniel Good! ”

“ They have taken the bucket and filled it up—yea, filled it up to the brim;
But Jack he sneered at his sister Jill, and Jill she jeered at him:
"What, blown already!" Jack cried out (and his was a biting mirth!)
"You boast indeed of your wonderful speed—but what is the boasting worth?
Now, if you can run as the antelope runs, and if you can turn like a hare,
Come, race me, Jill, to the foot of the hill—and prove your boasting fair!" ”

“ You may lay me in my bed, mother—my head is throbbing sore;
[163] And, mother, prithee, let the sheets be duly aired before;
And, if you'd please, my mother dear, your poor desponding child,
Draw me a pot of beer, mother, and mother, draw it mild!
William Aytoun. THE LAUREATE
WHO would not be
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket his gold?
'Tis I would be the Laureate bold!
When the days are hot, and the sun is strong,
I'd lounge in the gateway all the day long
With her Majesty's footmen in crimson and gold. ”

“ Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer who flattereth not;
Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldest not dream, but do.
Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler than he of old,
Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime and Beautiful;
Likewise study the "creations" of "the Prince of modern Romance;"
Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham the puppy;
Learn how "love is the dram-drinking of existence;"
And how we "invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets,
The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand of the pen." ”

“ Laid to rest among the ghostly, like a broken toy somehow;
All my lovely songs and ballads vanished with your "Purple Cow."
But I will return some morning, though I know it will be hard,
To Cornhill among the bookstalls, and surprise some minor bard;
Turning over their old rubbish for the treasures we discard.
I shall warn him like a critic, creeping when his back is turned:
"Ink and paper, dead and done with; Doxey spent what Doxey earned;
Poems doubtless are immortal where a poem can be discerned!" ”

“ AFTER MRS. BROWNING IN THE GLOAMING
IN the gloaming to be roaming, where the crested waves are foaming,
And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet;
When the gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavor
To discover—but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet.
"To their feet," I say, for Leech's sketch indisputably teaches
That the mermaids of our beaches do not end in ugly tails,
Nor have homes among the corals; but are shod with neat balmorals,
An arrangement no one quarrels with, as many might with scales. ”

“ As sweeps the blast against the mast when blows the furious squall,
So started at the trumpet's sound the terrible Fitzball;
His lance he bore his breast before,—Saint George protect the just!
Or Wordsworth's hoary head must roll along the shameful dust!
"Who threw that calthrop? Seize the knave!" Alas! the deed is done;
Down went the steed, and o'er his head flew bright Apollo's son.
"Undo his helmet! cut the lace! pour water on his head!"
"It ain't no use at all, my lord; 'cos vy? the covey's dead!"
Above him stood the Rydal bard—his face was full of woe. ”

“ The swirling rain of a comet's train he saw, as he swiftly fell—
And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud, triumphant yell:
"You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the wager laid—
You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown debt is paid!"
They have taken Jack to the room at the back where the family medicines are,
And he lies in bed with a broken head in a halo of vinegar;
While, in that Jill had laughed her fill as her brother fell to earth
[313] She had felt the sting of a walloping—she hath paid the price of her mirth! ”

“ I am but as other men;
What is time, time, time,
To my rare and runic rhyme,
To my random, reeling rhyme,
By the sands along the shore,
Where the tempest whispers, "Pay him!" and I answer, "Nevermore!"
Bayard Taylor. ”

“ To secure a little corner for The Bells!
To look ghastly pale and shudder, every man and "every brudder"
Feels that nothing can be equal to The Bells!
Bells! Bells! Bells! Bells!
Too horrified to cheer,
[149] Folk will testify by fear
How appalled they are by Irving in The Bells;
While great beads of perspiration will appear,
For in conscience-stricken terrors he excels!
Gloomy Bells!
Pit and gallery will glory in the weird and frightful story,
Which may even thrill the bosom of the swells,
For every Yankee "dude"
Unquestionably should
Have nightmare after witnessing The Bells! ”

“ More difficult than the parody of a particular poem is the imitation or burlesque of the literary style of an author. To accomplish this, the parodist must be himself a master of style, a student of language, and possessed of a power of mimicry with an instant appreciation of opportunities. ”

“ A PARODY ANTHOLOGY
AFTER OMAR KHAYYAM THE GOLFER'S RUBAIYAT
WAKE! for the sun has driven in equal flight
The stars before him from the Tee of Night,
And holed them every one without a Miss,
Swinging at ease his gold-shod Shaft of Light. ”

“ He would hear the Raven croaking from the dusk above the door,
"Never, never, nevermore!"
And, too angry to be civil, "Raven," Poe would cry "or devil,
Tell me why you will persist in haunting Death's Plutonian shore?"
Then would croak the Raven gladly, "I will tell you why so sadly,
I so mournfully and madly, haunt you, taunt you, o'er and o'er,
Why eternally I haunt you, daunt you, taunt you, o'er and o'er—
Only this, and nothing more.
"Forty-eight long years I've pondered, forty-eight long years I've wondered,
[140] How a poet ever blundered into a mistake so sore. ”

“ This glorious scene will rouse my heart,
Oh, who would lie in bed?
I cannot stop, but jump and hop,
Going like needle and thread."
With buoyant spirit upborne,
With cheeks both healthy and red,
The same man ran up the Malvern Crags,
Pitying those in bed.
Trip, trip, trip,
Oh, life with health is sweet;
And still in a voice both strong and quick,
Would that its tones could reach the sick,
He sang the Song of the Sheet.
Anonymous. I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER
I REMEMBER, I remember,
The house where I was wed,
And the little room from which that night
My smiling bride was led. ”

“ The foam and the fangs and the flowers,
The raving and ravenous rage
Of a poet as pinion'd in powers
As condor confined in a cage!
My heart in a haystack I've hidden,
As loving and longing I lie,
Kiss open thine eyelids unbidden—
I gaze and I die! ”

“ Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song.
"Eyes once purged from homebred vapors through humanitarian passion
See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;
Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration,
Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism.
"Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode,
Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;
All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collapsèd,
While he makes his mundane music—and He will not stop, I think." ”

“ The requirements of the best parody are in a general way simply the requirements of the best literature of any sort; but, specifically, the true parodist requires an exact mental balance, a fine sense of proportion and relative values, good-humor, refinement, and unerring taste. Self-control and self-restraint are also needed; a parodist may go to the very edge, but he must not fall over. ”