* * * * *

THE CONQUERED “WORTH.”

(SOME WAY AFTER POE’S “CONQUEROR WORM.”)

[Illustration]

["When women no longer interest themselves in silks and satins, ribbons and furbelows, it will be an infallible sign that the great drama of humanity is at length played out, and that the lights are to be turned down, and the house left to silence and the dark.”—­Daily Chronicle.]

I.

  Lo! ’tis a gala night
    Within the “Rational” latter years! 
  A female throng, dowdy, bedight
    In veils, and drowned in tears,
  Sits in a theatre, to see
    A play of hopes and fears,
  Whilst the orchestra breathes fitfully
    The music of the spheres.

II.

  Mimes, dressed in fashion now gone by,
    Mutter and mumble low,
  And hither and thither fly: 
    Mere puppets they who come and go
  At the bidding of a huge formless Thing
    That shifts the scenery to and fro,
  Ruling the World from flat and wing—­
    Paris and Pimlico!

III.

  That motley drama—­oh, be sure
    It shall not be forgot! 
  With its Phantom chased for evermore
    By a crowd that seize it not,
  Through a circle that ever returneth in
    To the self-same spot;
  With much of Folly, and waste of Tin,
    And Vanity soul of the plot.

IV.

  But see, amid the mimic rout
    A mystic shape intrude! 
  A formless thing that writhes from out
    The scenic solitude! 
  It writhes! it squirms!—­with mortal pangs,
    Mocked at by laughter rude;
  There’s no more snap in its sharp fangs,
    Which once that crowd subdued.

V.

  Out—­out are the lights—­out all! 
    And over each pallid form,
  The curtain, Mode’s funeral pall,
    Comes down amidst hisses in storm;
  And the audience, dowdy, but human,
    Uprising proclaim, with wild mirth,
  That the play is the Comedy “Woman,”
    And the hero the conquered “WORTH.”

* * * * *

EXTREMES MEET.

  It is a noticeable thing
    That when Kent bines produce their crop,
  Swelldom is always “on the wing,”
    And Slumdom “on the Hop”!

* * * * *

THE LATEST WEATHER-WISE DOGGEREL.

BY A SCIENTIFIC RAIN-MAKER.

    [It is stated that rain may be brought down by the explosion
    of dynamite and blasting-powder attached to oxyhydrogen
    balloons and kite-tails.]

  Evening red and morning grey
  Will send the traveller on his way;
  But—­blasting-powder on kites’ tails spread,
  Will bring down rain upon his head.