on the other hand a bard is not Supposed to run the risk of being shot. Then since your courage lacks a crucial test, And politics were never your profession, Dear Mr. Watson, won't you find it best To temper valor with a due discretion? That so, despite the fond Spectator's booming, Above your brow the bays may yet be blooming.

Wrong? are they wrong? Of course they are, I venture to reply; For I bore 'my first' (and, I hope, my worst) A month or so gone by; And I can't repeat it under this Or any other sky. What! has the public never heard In these benighted climes That nascent note of my Laureate throat, That fluty fit of rhymes Which occupied about a half A column of the Times? They little know what they have lost, Nor what a carnal beano They might have spent in the thick of Lent If only Daniel Leno Had sung them Jameson's Ride and knocked The Monaco Casino. Some day the croupiers' furtive eyes Will all be wringing wet; Even the Prince will hardly mince The language of regret At entertaining unawares The famed Alhambra Pet. But still not quite incognito I mark the moving scene, In a tepid zone where (like my own) The palms are ever green, And find myself reported as A herald of the Queen. Here where aloft the heavens are blue, And blue the seas below, I roll my eye and fondly try To get the rhymes to go, As I pace The Garden that I love, Composing all I know. But when my poet-pinions droop, And all the air is wan, I enter in to the courts of sin And put a louis on, And hold my heart and look again, And lo! the thing is gone! Wrong? is it wrong? To baser crafts Has England's Alfred pandered, Who once to the sign of Phoebus' shrine With awesome gait meandered, And ever wrote in the cause of right According to his Standard? Nay! this is life! to take a turn On Fortune's captious crust; To pluck the day in a human way Like men of common dust; But O! if England's only bard Should absolutely bust! A laureate never borrows on His coming quarter's pay; And I mean to stop or ever I pop My crown of peerless bay; So I'll take the next rapide to Nice, And the 'bus to Cimiez. MENTONE, Feb., 1896.

Exhumed from out the inner cirque of Hell By kind permission of the Evil One, Behold her devilish presentment, done By Master Aubrey's weird unearthly spell! This is that Lady known as Jezebel, Or Lilith, Eden's woman-scorpion, Libifera, that is, that takes the bun, Borgia, Vivien, Cussed Damosel. Hers are the bulging lips that fairly break The pumpkin's heart; and hers the eyes that shame The wanton ape that culls the cocoa-nuts. Even such the yellow-bellied toads that slake Nocturnally their amorous-ardent flame In the wan waste of weary water-butts.

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