So spake the Shadow, with the covert sneer
That struck so coldly on the listening ear.
Soft was his speech, as muffled
By some chill atmosphere surcharged with snow,
In unemphatic accents, level, low,
Unhasting and unruffled.

"Mrs. MÆcenas, then, no Horace finds
In all her muster of superior minds,
Her host of instant heroes?
That's hard!" I said. "She does not greatly care,"
My guide rejoined. "Behold her seated there!
Her court's as full as Nero's.

"Seneca stands beside her. He's a prim,
Sententious sage. If she is bored by him,
The lady doth not show it.
But there's a furtive glancing of her eye
Toward the entry. There comes Marx M'Kay,
The Socialistic Poet.

"His lyric theories mean utter smash
To all his hostess cares for. Crude and rash,
But musically 'precious.'
His passionate philippics against Wealth
Mammon's own daughters read, 'tis said, by stealth,
And vote them 'quite delicious!'

"All that makes life worth living to the throng
Of worshippers who mob this Son of Song,
Money, Monopoly, Merriment,
He bans and blazes at in 'DirÆ' dread;
But then they know his Muse is merely Red
In metrical experiment.

"Well-dressed and well-to-do, the flaming Bard
Finds life in theory only harsh and hard.
His chevelure looks shaggy,
But his black broad-cloth's glossy and well-brushed,
And he'd feel wretched if his tie were crushed,
His trousers slightly baggy.

"Karl Marx in metre or Lassalle in verse,
The vampire-horde of Capital he'll curse,
And praise the Proletariat;
But having thus delivered his bard-soul,
He finds it, practically, nice to loll
With Dives in his chariot.

"Lyrical Communism will not fright
Those 'Molochs of the Mart' this Son of Light
Keeps his poetic eye on.
'Who takes a Singer au grand sÉrieux?'
Mrs. MÆcenas asks. So he's on view,
Her Season's latest lion.

"But not alone," I said. "If all this host
Are right authentic Leos, she must boast
As potent charm as Circe's.
What is her wand? Is't wit, or wealth, or both?"
"Listen! That's Mumps the mimic, nothing loth,
Rolling out Vamper's verses!

"Vamper looks on and smiles with veiled delight.
Boredom's best friends are fellows who recite.
None like, not many listen,
But all must make believe to stand about
And watch a man gesticulate and shout,
With eyes that glare and glisten.

"'Tis hard indeed to hold in high esteem
The man who mouths out Eugene Aram's Dream
In guttural tones and raucous.
All these have heard a hundred times before
Young Vox, the vain and ventriloquial bore
They'd fain despatch to Orcus.

"So have they listened many and many a time
To little Jinks, the jerky comic mime,
And his facetious chatter.
But ill would fare Town's guest if he refused
For the five hundredth time to be 'amused'
By gush, or cockney patter.

"Horace's Piso were a pleasant chum
Compared with slangy laureates of the slum.
Hist! There's a tenor twitter,
A tremulous twangle of the minor strings.
'Tis Seraphin, sleek Amateur, who sings,
'Glide where the moonbeams glitter!'

"'To puling girls that listen and adore
Your love-lorn chants and woful wailings pour!'
Sang Horace to Hermogenes.
Seraphin's a Tigellius, and his style
Would bring the bland Venusian's scornful smile
The scowl of sour Diogenes.

"'Twere 'breaking butterflies upon the wheel'
To let such fribbles feel the critic steel
With scalpel-like severity?
Granted! But will no pangs the victims urge
To abate that plague of bores, which is the scourge
Of social insincerity?

"Wisdom is here, and Wit, Talent and Taste:
The latest wanderer from the Tropic Waste,
Sun-bronzed and care-lined, saunters
In cheery chat with mild-faced Mirabel,
Who with Romance's wildest weirdest spell
Has witched your Mudie-haunters.

"Colossal Bayard, beau-sabreur, whose blade
A dozen desert spearmen faced and stayed,
Stoops his high-shoulder'd stature
To hear the twittering tones of Tiny Tim,
A midget, but the soul of whit and whim,
The genius of good-nature.

"Boy-faced, but virile, vigorous, and a peer,
Lord Mossmore talks with Violet de Vere,
The latest light of Fiction;
Steadily-rising statesman, season's star!
Calmly he hears, though Caste's keen instincts jar,
Her strained self-conscious diction.

"Meldrum, the modish medico, laughs low
At ruddy Rasper's keenly-whispered mot—
Rasper, a soul all strictures,
Holds the great world a field for sketchy chaff.
Many love not the man, but how they laugh
At his swift, scathing pictures!

"Wits of all grades, and Talents of all sorts,
With rival beauties holding separate courts,
Find here parade, employment.
And yet, and yet, they all look cross, or tired;
Your cultured city has not yet acquired
The art of true enjoyment.

"Strange! London's poor find pleasure far too dear,
But here, with wealth, and wit, and charm, and cheer,
All should go so delightfully.
Time gay as in the Golden Age should fleet,
But the most brilliant stars in Babylon meet,
And—bore each other frightfully."