That excellent last line.) I ask you, Sir,
What would you? Ill content with mortal praise,
And haply somewhat overbold, I sought
To be as gods be; sought, in fact, to filch
Apollo's bays!                    Ah me! Dear me! I fain
Would use a stronger phrase, but hardly dare,
Being, whatever else, respectable.
I say I tired of vulgar homage, gift
Of ignorance. 'High failure overleaps
The bounds of low successes' (there, again,
The harp that twanged was Welsh, but with an echo
Of Browning). Godlike it must be, I thought,
To climb the giddy brink; to pen, for instance,
An Ode to the Imperial Institute,
And fall, if bound to, from a decent height.      I did and missed the laurel; still I go
On writing; what you hear just now is blank,
Distinctly blank, and might be measured by
The kilomètre; yet I rhyme as well
A little; but it takes a lot of time,
And checks the lapse of my pellucid stream
Not all conveniently."                          Thereat he paused,
And wrung the moisture from his pipe; but I,
As one that was intolerably bored,
Took even this occasion to be gone;
And, going, marked him how he took his stile,
Polished the waxen tablets, and began
To make a Royal Pæan _by request_,
Or so he said.
THE RHYME OF THE KIPPERLING.(AFTER R. K.)[N.B.--No nautical terms or statements guaranteed.]  Away by the haunts of the Yang-tse-boo,
  Where the Yuletide runs cold gin,
And the rollicking sign of the _Lord Knows Who_
  Sees mariners drink like sin;
Where the _Jolly Roger_ tips his quart
  To the luck of the _Union Jack_;
And some are screwed on the foreign port,
  And some on the starboard tack;--
Ever they tell the tale anew
  Of the chase for the kipperling swag;
How the smack _Tommy This_ and the smack _Tommy That_
They broached each other like a whiskey-vat,

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