(Vide Pelican. Affidavits.)

The 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!

That Breeze.

The poets who write in the magazines Have pitched their tents amid sylvan scenes; Treading with joy in their lazy lay The primrose path of the woodland way, They always stop on the road to sing Of “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”

I know that breeze of the lilting line-- That breeze is a very old friend of mine; That it takes bards in, need cause no surprise-- For at throwing dust into people’s eyes, Facile princeps and also king Is “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”

It’s the “poet” that’s balmy, and not the breeze, When he sings in praise of our English “bise,” The wind that blows ’neath the cold gray sky, That stabs the chest and inflames the eye; It is death that hovers with sable wing On “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”

I’d sing the song that this breeze deserves, But, alas! I’ve “liver” and also “nerves;” Sciatica racks me day and night, And I haven’t a bronchial tube that’s right; And the fiend that all these woes doth bring Is “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”

Ballad of Old-Time Fogs.

The sky above my head is fair-- Not dark, as once it used to be-- And joy and life are in the air, And green is every budding tree That, wind-swept, makes its bough to me; And all the world is glad and gay, Which makes me cry when this I see-- “Where are the fogs of yesterday?”

My heart is light and void of care-- Though this year’s months are yet but three-- I miss the mid-day gas-lamps’ glare, I meet the folks who used to flee To Southern France and Italy; In London now they gladly stay, In London spend their £ s. d.-- Where are the fogs of yesterday?

One shirt till eve I now can wear, Which once was quite a rarity, And even folks in Bedford Square And erstwhile blackest Bloomsbury, Can from their windows gaze with glee And nod to friends across the way, And Auguste says to Stephen G., “Where are the fogs of yesterday?”

Prince, since of them at last we’re free, And London ’scapes their cruel sway, Why need we care a single D? Where are the fogs of yesterday?

Under the Clock.