TO THE SAME

[With a Memoir of HORACE WALPOLE]

HADI but WALPOLE's wit, I'd write

quatrain here to-day

Should turn the wig of PRIOR white,
And make e'en HORACE gray;

Or had I STANHOPE's pen (the same
That once he lent to YOUNG),
I would as neat a couplet frame
As e'er was said or sung;

But since I've not, I can't, you know;

The page must go without it; This is my latest gift; and so And so, that's all about it!

-And yet, in Fairy-land, I'm told

Dead leaves as these-will turn to gold.
Take them, Sir Alchemist, and see!
Nothing transmutes like sympathy.

TO THE SAME

[With VINCENT BOURNE's Poetical Works]

GOSSIP, may we live as now,

Brothers ever, I and thou;

Us may never Envy's mesh hold, Anger never cross our threshold; Let our modest Lares be Friendship and Urbanity.

TO THE SAME

[With Eight Volumes of the Author's Works]

66 Exegi monumentum.

EIGHT volumes!—all well-polished prose

Or better verse (as some suppose);

In style more playful than severe;
Moral in tone (pour qui sait lire);
All written by my single pen,

And praised by some distinguished men,
But else not widely read, I fear :-

Crown me, MELPOMENE, my Dear!

FOR LOCKER'S "LONDON LYRICS"

1881

APOLLO made, one April day,

A new thing in the rhyming way;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear,
Then MOMUS gave a touch satiric,
And it became a "London Lyric."