ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA

On the offer of help from the Australians after the fall of Khartoum

Sons of the giant Ocean isle

In sport our friendly foes for long,
Well England loves you, and we smile,
When you outmarch us many a while,
So fleet you are, so keen and strong.

You, like that fairy people set

Of old in their enchanted sea
Far off from men, might well forget
An elder nation's toil and fret,

Might heed not aught but game and glee.

But what your fathers were you are
In lands the fathers never knew,

'Neath skies of alien sign and star
You rally to the English war;

Your hearts are English, kind and true.

And now, when first on England falls
The shadow of a darkening fate,
You hear the Mother ere she calls,
You leave your ocean-girdled walls,
And face her foemen in the gate.

BALLADE OF THE BOOK-HUNTER

In torrid heats of late July,
In March, beneath the bitter bise,
He book-hunts while the loungers fly,—
He book-hunts, though December freeze;
In breeches baggy at the knees,

And heedless of the public jeers,

For these, for these, he hoards his fees,—
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

No dismal stall escapes the eye,

He turns o'er tomes of low degrees,
There soiled romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies;

Each tract that flutters in the breeze

For him is charged with hopes and fears,
In mouldy novels fancy sees

Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

With restless eyes that peer and spy,
Sad eyes that heed not skies or trees,
In dismal nooks he loves to pry,
Whose motto evermore is Spes!
But ah! the fabled treasure flees;
Grown rarer with the fleeting years,

In rich men's shelves they take their ease,-
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!

ENVOY

Prince, all the things that tease and please,— Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers and tears, What are they but such toys as these— Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?

THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW

How oft I've watched her footstep glide
Across the enamelled plain,

And deemed she was the fairest bride

And I the fondest swain!

How oft with her I've cast me down

Beneath the odorous limes,

How often twined her daisy crown,
In the glad careless times! ·

By that old wicket ne'er we meet
Where still we met of yore,
But I have found another sweet
Beside the salt sea-shore:

With sea-daisies her locks I wreathe,
With sea-grass bind her hands,
And salt and sharp's the air we breathe
Beside the long sea-sands!

Mine old true love had eyes of blue,
And Willow! was her song;
Sea-green her eyes, my lady new,
And of the East her tongue.
And she that's worsted in the strife,
A southland lass is she;

But she that's won-the Neuk o' Fife,
It is her ain countrie!

"Over!" "Hard in!" "Leg-bye!" "No ball!” Ah now we say "Two more;

And of the "Like" and "Odd" we shout,

Till swains and maidens scoff;

"The fact is, Cricket's been bowled out By that eternal Golf!"

THE LAST CHANCE

Within the streams, Pausanias saith,
That down Cocytus valley flow,
Girding the grey domain of Death,
The spectral fishes come and go;
The ghosts of trout flit to and fro.
Persephone, fulfil my wish,

And grant that in the shades below

My ghost may land the ghosts of fish.

HUMOROUS VERSE

By C. L. GRAVES

THE world is supposed to grow more serious if not sadder with its increasing burden of years, but certainly England in the nineteenth century showed considerable skill in dissembling its sadness in song. No century has been richer in verse written in a mood of conscious levity. It began joyously with the Rejected Addresses, with the Anti-Jacobin, with the brilliant fooling of Hook, Barham's ingenious medley of the comic and the macabre, and the patrician grace and gaiety of Praed. Though light verse became sentimental in the Keepsake period, the torch was never dropped, but was handed on from Lamb to Hood, from Praed to Locker, and, in the domain of the new parody, from the brothers Smith to Martin and Aytoun, and from them to Calverley. As for occasional verse, Frederick Locker laid down the rules of the game as he conceived it should be played, and as he certainly played it, in words which cannot be bettered:

"Occasional verse should be short, graceful, refined, and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be terse and idiomatic, and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for, however trivial the subject-matter may be, indeed, rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition, and perfection of execution, are of the utmost importance."

But a great deal of the best light or humorous poetry written in the last half of the nineteenth century stands outside Locker's definition of occasional verse. Praed's influence was very considerable. He had many imitators, and to this day there are very few writers of light verse who at one time or another have not made him their model. It has, however, been almost always a mere passing phase of discipleship. Locker himself was almost

the last of his successful followers. Vers de société have been dethroned from the exalted position they once held in the domain of light verse, and parody has long been raised from crude verbal mimicry to a high art and an instrument of literary criticism. The successors of Canning, the Smiths, and Bon Gaultier have maintained and improved on the high level of achievement reached in this branch, and it is impossible to render justice to modern humorous verse without taking parody into special account. Indeed, the work of the best living parodists goes a long way to justify the contention of one of their number-that the finest parody is based not on derision but on admiration, on the principle that "faithful are the wounds of a friend." But the borders of this domain were enlarged in other ways. Scholarship was allied to high spirits and irresponsibility, and the charm of exhilarating nonsense appealed to readers of all ages.

Apart from the contributions of light-hearted scholars, artistic parodists, and writers of romantic nonsense, there remains the sphere of comic topical verse, burlesque, and extravaganza. Here, too, it may be fairly contended that in the period under review the example of Barham and Hook has been bettered by their followers, certainly in respect of technique. Hood in his own line remains unsurpassed: we can point to no sustained humorous or satirical narrative equal to Miss Kilmansegg. But in W. S. Gilbert we had a writer who achieved for burlesque what Calverley did for parody, who had a wider appeal than any other composer of light verse in his day, and who by his wit and technical dexterity raised the literary quality of the libretti of comic opera to a level never reached before.