Ballade Of Neglected Merit. {78}

I HAVE scribbled in verse and in prose, I have painted “arrangements in greens,” And my name is familiar to those Who take in the high class magazines; I compose; I’ve invented machines; I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”; For my county I played, in my teens, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows; I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens; I have climbed the Caucasian snows; I abstain, like the ancients, from beans,— I’ve a guess what Pythagoras means, When he says that to eat them’s a crime,— I have lectured upon the Essenes, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s, I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,” I have breasted the river that flows Through the land of the wild Gadarenes; I can gossip with Burton on skenes, I can imitate Irving (the Mime), And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

ENVOY.

So the tower of mine eminence leans Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime; I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS.

LET others praise analysis And revel in a “cultured” style, And follow the subjective Miss From Boston to the banks of Nile, Rejoice in anti-British bile, And weep for fickle hero’s woe, These twain have shortened many a mile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.

These damsels of “Democracy’s,” How long they stop at every stile! They smile, and we are told, I wis, Ten subtle reasons why they smile. Give me your villains deeply vile, Give me Lecoq, Jottrat, and Co., Great artists of the ruse and wile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!

Oh, novel readers, tell me this, Can prose that’s polished by the file, Like great Boisgobey’s mysteries, Wet days and weary ways beguile, And man to living reconcile, Like these whose every trick we know? The agony how high they pile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!

ENVOY.

Ah, friend, how many and many a while They’ve made the slow time fleetly flow, And solaced pain and charmed exile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.

THE CLOUD CHORUS.