Glorious Apollo! This is wondrous hard!

Fancy John Bull without Official Bard!

His plight is sad as that of the great men

Who lived, unmarked by the Poetic Pen,

Before great Agamemnon. Ah, my Horace,

Britons are a Boeotian, heavy, slow race!

As for the "Statesman" who treats bards so shabbily,

'Twill serve him right if thine "illacrimabile"

Applies to him. A Premier, but no Poet?

England, you are dishonoured, and don't know it.

Void of a Sacer Vates to enshrine

In gorgeous trope and long-resounding line,

Thy Victories, and Weddings, Shows and Valour?

Parnassus shakes, the Muses pine in pallor.

When foreign princelings mate our sweet princesses,

When Rads of fleets and armies made sad messes,

And stand in need of verbal calcitration;

When—let's say Ashmead-Bartlett—saves the nation

In the great name of glorious Saint Jingo;

When Bull gives toko or delivers stingo.

To Fuzzy-Wuzzy, or such foolish savages;

When our great guns commit most gallant ravages

Among the huts of some unhappy village,

Where naughty "niggers" have gone in for pillage;

When Someone condescends to be high-born,

Or deigns to die, who now shall toot the horn,

Or twang the lyre, emitting verse divine,

For Fame and—say, about a pound per line?

I must submit. I have not been "submitted,"

But poetless John Bull is to be pitied.

Of course self-praise is no "recommendation,"

(In Gladstone's sense) or else, unhappy nation,

I, even I, could spare you natural worry at,

Your non-possession of a Poet-Laureate!