  TO MR. BALFOUR ON HIS RETURNOur hearts go out with all our ships that plough the deadly sea, But the ship that brought us safely back the only Arthur B. Was freighted with good wishes in a very high degree. There are heaps of politicians who can hustle and can shriek, And some, though very strong in lung, in brains are very weak, But A. J. B.’s equipment is admittedly unique. His manners are delightful, and the workings of his mind Have never shown the slightest trace of self-esteem behind; Nor has he had at any time a private axe to grind. For forty years and upwards he has graced the public scene Without becoming sterilized or stiffened by routine; He still retains his freshness and his brain is just as keen. His credit was not shipwrecked on the fatal Irish reef; He has always been a loyal and a sympathetic chief; And he has also written The Foundations of Belief. As leader of the Mission to our cousins and Allies, We learn with satisfaction, but without the least surprise, That he proved the very cynosure of Transatlantic eyes. For the special brand of statesman plus aristocratic sage, Like the model king-philosopher described in Plato’s page, Is uncommonly attractive in a democratic age. “Balfour Must Go!” was once the cry of those who deemed him slack, But now there’s not a single scribe of that unruly pack Who is not glad in every sense that Balfour has come back. June 20, 1917. THE SUBMERGED LEADER(February, 1917) What is Master Winston doing? What new paths is he pursuing? What strange broth can he be brewing? Is he painting, by commission, Portraits of the Coalition For the R.A. exhibition? Is he Jacky-obin or anti? Is he likely to “go Fanti,” Or becoming shrewd and canty? Is he in disguise at Kovel, Living in a moujik’s hovel, Penning a tremendous novel? Does he run a photo-play show? Or in sÆva indignatio Is he writing for Horatio? Fired by the divine afflatus Does he weekly lacerate us, Like a Juvenal renatus? As the great financial purist, Will he smite the sinecurist Or emerge as a Futurist? Is he regularly sending Haig and Beatty screeds unending, Good advice with censure blending? Is he ploughing, is he hoeing? Is he planting beet, or going In for early ’tato-growing? Is he writing verse or prosing, Or intent upon disclosing Gifts for musical composing? Is he lecturing to flappers? Is he tunnelling with sappers? Has he joined the U-boat trappers? Or, to petrify recorders Of events within our borders, Has he taken Holy Orders? Is he well or ill or middling? Is he fighting, is he fiddling?— He can’t only be thumb-twiddling. These are merely dim surmises, But experience advises Us to look for weird surprises. * * * * * Thus we summed the situation When Sir Hedworth Meux’ oration Brought about a transformation. Lo! the Blenheim Boanerges On a sudden re-emerges And, to calm the naval gurges, Fisher’s restoration urges. A MINISTERIAL WAIL[“The most trenchant critics of the Government since its formation have been Mr. Pringle and Mr. Hogge.”—British Weekly.] The gipsy camping in a dingle I reckon as a lucky dog; He doesn’t hear the voice of Pringle, He doesn’t hear the snorts of Hogge. The moujik crouching in his ingle Somewhere near Tomsk or Taganrog I envy; he is far from Pringle And equally remote from Hogge. I find them deadly when they’re single, But deadlier in the duologue, When the insufferable Pringle Backs the intolerable Hogge. I’d rather walk for miles on shingle Or flounder knee-deep in a bog Than listen to a speech from Pringle Or hearken to the howls of Hogge. Their tyrannous exactions mingle The vices of Kings Stork and Log; One day I give the palm to Pringle, The next I offer it to Hogge. The style of Mr. Alfred Jingle Was jumpy, but he did not clog His sense with woolly words, like Pringle, With priggish petulance, like Hogge. I’d love to see the Bing Boys bingle, To go to music-halls incog., Instead of being posed by Pringle And heckled by the hateful Hogge. My appetite is gone; I “pingle” (As Norfolk puts it) with my prog; My meals are marred by thoughts of Pringle, My sleep is massacred by Hogge. O patriots, with your nerves a-tingle, With all your righteous souls agog, Will none of you demolish Pringle And utterly extinguish Hogge? THE FLAPPER[Dr. Arthur Shadwell, in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1917, in his article on “Ordeal by Fire,” after denouncing idlers and loafers and shirkers, falls foul “above all” of the young girls called flappers, “with high heels, skirts up to their knees and blouses open to the diaphragm, painted, powdered, self-conscious, ogling: ‘Allus adallacked and dizened oot and a ’unting arter the men.’”] Good Dr. Arthur Shadwell, who lends lustre to a name Which Dryden in his satires oft endeavoured to defame, Has lately been discussing in a high-class magazine The trials that confront us in the year Nineteen Seventeen. He is not a smooth-tongued prophet; no, he takes a serious view; We must make tremendous efforts if we’re going to win through; And though he’s not unhopeful of the issue of the fray He finds abundant causes for misgiving and dismay. Our optimistic journals his exasperation fire, And the idlers and the loafers stimulate his righteous ire; But it is the flapper chiefly that in his gizzard sticks, And he’s down upon her failings like a waggon-load of bricks. She’s ubiquitous in theatres, in rail and ’bus and tram, She wears her “blouses open down to the diaphragm,” And, instead of realizing what our men are fighting for, She’s an orgiastic nuisance who in fact enjoys the War. It’s a strenuous indictment of our petticoated youth And contains a large substratum of unpalatable truth; Our women have been splendid, but the Sun himself has specks, And the flapper can’t be reckoned as a credit to her sex. Still it needs to be remembered, to extenuate her crimes, That these flappers have not always had the very best of times; And the life that now she’s leading, with no Mentors to restrain, Is decidedly unhinging to an undeveloped brain. Then again we only see her when she’s out for play or meals, And distresses the fastidious by her gestures and her squeals, But she is not always idle or a decorative drone, And if she wastes her wages, well, she wastes what is her own. Still to say that she’s heroic, as some scribes of late have said, Is unkind as well as foolish, for it only swells her head; She oughtn’t to be flattered, she requires to be repressed, Or she’ll grow into a portent and a peril and a pest. Dr. Shadwell to the Premier makes an eloquent appeal In firm and drastic fashion with this element to deal; And ’twould be a real feather in our gifted Cambrian’s cap If he taught the peccant flapper less flamboyantly to flap. But, in our way of thinking, ’tis for women, kind and wise, These neglected scattered units to enrol and mobilize, Their vagabond activities to curb and concentrate, And turn the skittish hoyden to a servant of the State. She’s young; her eyes are dazzled by the glamour of the streets; She has to learn that life is not all cinemas and sweets; But given wholesome guidance she may rise to self-control And earn the right of entry on the Nation’s golden Roll. THE FEMININE FACTOTUM[The Daily Chronicle, writing on women farmers, quotes the tribute of Hutton, the historian, to a Derbyshire lady who died at Matlock in 1854: “She undertakes any kind of manual labour, as holding the plough, driving the team, thatching the barn, using the flail; but her chief avocation is breaking horses at a guinea per week. She is fond of Pope and Shakespeare, is a self-taught and capable instrumentalist, and supports the bass viol in Matlock Church.”] Though in the good old-fashioned days The feminine factotum rarely Was honoured with a crown of bays When she had won it fairly; She did emerge at times, like one For manual work a perfect glutton, Blue-stocking half, half Amazon, As chronicled by Hutton. But now you’ll find her counterpart In almost every English village— A mistress of the arduous art Of scientific tillage, Who cheerfully resigns the quest Of all that makes a woman charming, And shows an even greater zest For gardening and farming. She used to petrify her dons; She was a most efficient bowler; But now she’s baking barley scones To help the Food Controller; Good Mrs. Beeton she devours, And not the dialogues of Plato, And sets above the Cult of Flowers The cult of the Potato. The studious maid whose classic brow Was high with conscious pride of learning Now grooms the pony, milks the cow, And takes a hand at churning; And one I know, whose music had Done credit to her educators, Has sold her well-beloved “Strad” To purchase incubators! The object of this humble lay Is not to minimize the glory Of women of an earlier day Whose deeds are shrined in story; ’Tis only to extol the grit Of clever girls—and none work harder— Who daily do their toilsome “bit” To stock the nation’s larder. TO A NEW KNIGHTMomentous sage of Mona’s Isle, Pride of your fellow-Manx, Renowned alike upon the Nile And by the Tiber’s banks— What though sour critics, whom it irks To watch your widening reign, And elders of illiberal kirks Affect a harsh disdain; What though fastidious souls declare Your style distinction lacks Or sacrilegiously dare To mimic it, like “Max”; So long as countless myriads hold Your lucubrations dear, And, side by side, the copies sold Would circumvent the sphere? Let pert reviewers carp and jibe, Let jealous pens deride, The interviewers, noble tribe, Are solid on your side. Have you not shown in all its bloom Rome’s grandeur to mankind, And, culling “copy” at Khartoum, Laid bare the Arab mind? Did not your heroine, Glory Quayle Our views of life transform; Did not all modern heroes pale Beside the great John Storm? As long as char-À-banc or ’bus Brings trippers to your shrine, Shall the new star Cainiculus High in the welkin shine. Loud booms the wave in Bradda’s cave, Yet with a muffled tone Matched with the sound, immense, profound, From your great trumpet blown. THE TENTH MUSEShe tells us all we needn’t know; She always draws the longest bow; She dramatizes guilt and crime; Exalts the mummer and the mime; Worships success, however won; Confounds vulgarity with fun; Lends credence to each passing craze, Fans party rancour to a blaze, Till people of a sober mind Grow envious of the deaf and blind. O what are all the other Nine, The Muses fondly deemed divine Matched with the Tenth, the modern Muse, That now manipulates our news. |
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