Oh, and the burglar’s head
    Often hath felt me,
    Hard, undesirable
    Cracker of craniums. 
  I have drunk of the blood,
  The red blood, the life-blood
    Of the wife of the drunkard. 
  Hoh! then, the glory. 
    The joyous, ineffable
    Cup of fulfilment,
    When the policeman,
    Tall with a bull’s-eye,
    Took me and shook me,
    Produced me in evidence,
    There in the dim
    Unappeasable grisliness
    Of the Police-Court. 
  Women to shrink at me,
  Men to be cursed with me,
  Bloodstained, contemptuous,
    Laid on the table. 
    I am the Minister,
      Azrael’s Minister. 
      I am the Poker.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  VENUS (ANNO DOMINI 1892) RISES FROM THE SEA!!]

* * * * *

OPERATIC NOTES.

Wednesday.—­Great German Night.  Third Part of the Festival Play for Four Nights by RICHARD WAGNER, with (thank goodness just to lighten it) an English translation by the Messrs. CORDER.

“Sursum Corder!” A light and airy work as everyone knows is Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Nibelung’s Ring, requiring all the power of lungs to get the true ring out of the work.  Hard work for singers, more so for orchestra, and most so for audience.  As for the “Ring,” there are a lot of animals in the Opera, but no horse, so the Circus entertainment is not complete until Bruennhilde shall appear in the next part of the tetralogy, with her highly-trained steed.  Odd!  Throughout two long (and, ahem! somewhat weary, eh?) Acts, not a female singer visible on stage (though one sings “like a bird” off it,—­that is, quite appropriately, “at the wings"), and not until the Third Act, does Erda the witch “rise from below,” and we all saw her and ’Erd ’er.  Then, later on, appears Bruennhilde, asleep, “in a complete suit of gleaming plate-armour, with helmet on her head and long shield over her body,” a style of free-and-easy costume which, as everyone knows, is highly conducive to sleeping in perfect comfort.  No wonder Siegfried mistakes her for a man-in-armour out of the Lord Mayor’s Show, and exclaims,

[Illustration:  Scenes in the Ring.  Sir Alvary Siegfried, with Nothung on, as Master of “the Ring,” gives a Special Entertainment.]

  “Ha, a Warrior, sure! 
  I scan with wonder his form!”

(I was scanning with wonder the verses,—­but passons!)—­he continues:—­

  “His haughty head
  Is pressed by the helm!”