THE JOURNALIST ABROAD

  When Parson, Doctor, Don,—­
    In short, when all the nation
  Goes gaily off upon
    Its annual vacation,
  Their cares professional
    No more avail to bind them: 
  They go at Pleasure’s call
    And leave their trades behind them.

  Like them, departs afar
    From England’s fogs and vapours
  The literary star,
    The writer for the papers: 
  But not, like them, at home
    Leaves he his calling’s fetters: 
  Nought can release him from
    The tyranny of Letters!

  When classic scenes amid
    For rest and peace he hankers,
  Amari aliquid
    His joys aesthetic cankers: 
  Whate’er he sees, he knows
    He has to write upon it
  A paragraph of prose
    Or possibly a sonnet: 

  By mountain lakelets blue,
    ’Mid wild romantic heath, he’s
  A martyr always to
    Scribendi cacoethes: 
  The Naiad-haunted stream
    Or lonely mountain-top he
  Considers as a theme
    Available for “copy.”

  If on the sunlit main
    With ardour rapt he gazes,
  He’s torturing his brain
    For neat pictorial phrases: 
  When in a ship or boat
    He navigates the briny
  (And here ’tis his to quote
    Examples set by Heine)

  While fellow-passengers
    Lie stretched in mere prostration,
  He duly registers
    Each horrible sensation—­
  He notes his qualms with care,
    And bids the public know ’em
  In “Thoughts on Mal de Mer,”
    Or “Nausea:  a Poem.”

* * * *

  Such is his earthly lot: 
    Nor is it wholly certain
  If Death for him or not
    Rings down the final curtain,
  Or if, when hence he’s fled
    To worlds or worse or better,
  He’ll send per Mr St—­d
    A crisp descriptive letter!

VERNAL VERSES

  When early worms began to crawl, and early birds to sing,
  And frost, and mud, and snow, and rain proclaimed the jocund spring,
  Its all-pervading influence the Poet’s soul obeyed—­
  He made a song to greet the Spring, and this is what he made:—­

  They sadly lacked enlightenment, our ancestors of old,
  Who used to suffer simply from an ordinary cold: 
  But we, of Science’ mysteries less ignorant by far,
  Have nothing less distinguished than a Bronchial Catarrh!

  O when your head’s a lump of lead and nought can do but sneeze: 
  Whene’er in turn you freeze and burn, and then you burn and freeze:—­
  It does not mean you’re going to die, although you think you are—­
  These are the primal symptoms of a Bronchial Catarrh.

  And when you’ve taken drugs and pills, and stayed indoors a week,
  Yet still your chest with pain opprest will hardly let you speak: 
  Amid your darksome miseries be this your guiding star—­
  ’Tis simply the remainder of a Bronchial Catarrh.