The front rank, hands down, have the big fence’s measure;
    The faint-hearts are craning to left and to right;
  The Master goes through with a crash on “The Treasure;”
    The grey takes the lot like a gull in his flight;
  There’s a brown crumpled up, lying still as a dead one;
    There’s a roan mare refusing, as stubborn as sin;
  While the breaker flogs up on a green underbred one
    And smashes the far-away rail with a grin.

  The chase carries on over hilltop and hollow,
    The life of Old England, the pluck and the fun;
  And who would ask more than a stiff line to follow
    With hounds running hard in the Opening Run?

  W. H. O.

* * * * *

IN PRAISE OF THE PELICANS.

  The pelicans in St. James’s Park
  On every day from dawn to dark
  Pursue, inscrutable of mien,
  A fixed unvarying routine. 
  Whatever be the wind or weather
  They spend their time in peace together,
  And plainly nothing can upset
  The harmony of their quartet.

  Most punctually by the clock
  They roost upon or quit their rock,
  Or swim ashore and hold their levee,
  Lords of the mixed lacustrine bevy;
  Or with their slow unwieldy gait
  Their green domain perambulate,
  Or with prodigious flaps and prances
  Indulge in their peculiar dances,
  Returning to their feeding-ground
  What time the keeper goes his round
  With fish and scraps for their nutrition
  After laborious deglutition.

  Calm, self-sufficing, self-possessed,
  They never mingle with the rest,
  Watching with not unfriendly eye
  The antics of the lesser fry,
  Save when bold sparrows draw too near
  Their mighty beaks—­and disappear.

  Outlandish birds, at times grotesque,
  And yet superbly picturesque,
  Although resignedly we mourn
  A Park dismantled and forlorn,
  Long may it be ere you forsake
  Your quarters on the minished Lake;
  For there, with splendid plumes and hues
  And ways that startle and amuse,
  You constantly refresh the eye
  And cheer the heart of passers-by,
  Untouched by years of shock and strain,
  Undeviatingly urbane,
  And lending London’s commonplace
  A touch of true heraldic grace.

* * * * *

RING IN THE OLD.

There is a shabby-looking man who (I read it in The Times) rings the bell of London hospitals, asks to see the secretary, presumes (as is always a safe thing to do) that the establishment is grievously in need of funds, and without any further parley hands to the startled but gratified official bank-notes to the tune of five hundred pounds.  He then vanishes without giving name or address.  This unknown benefactor is dressed in top-boots, riding breeches of honourable antiquity, a black coat green with age and a “Cup Final” cap.  At the same time (this too on The Times’ authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby.  She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and hands him two thousand pounds.