Punch (88.1885)

April 18, 1885.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE ivCGOSCHEN IN HIS CELEBRATED SWORD DANCE.

“ Mr. Goschen has been adopted by a majority as Liberal Candidate for the North-East Division of the City of Edinburgh.”—flatly Paper.

“ BLACKTHORN WINTER.”

All Tools’ Day has surely passed,

So that April should have come;
Yet still blows the keen March blast.
O’er the moon is glamonr cast,

Or the Calendar a hum ?

Lark has no man seen of late
Soaring as he sings on high.

There a cheerless, desolate,

Doleful, dreary cloud of slate
Colour, all o'erspreads the sky.

Ne’er a throstle pipes a note;

No, nor e’en the missel-thrush,

“ Storm-cock” mute ; a tuneless throat
Ii the blackbird's, dove in cote
Cjos not—quite too cold to gush.

All the juicy slugs and snails,

Which supply the songsters’ food,
Lie benumbed with bitter gales;
Hushed are birds whose banquet
fails,

Now in no melodious mood.

Swallow's, by migration due,

Should be hither on the way,

And the Times’s cuckoo, too.

Their arrival they may rue ;

Where they are had better stay :

Lest pneumonia lay them low,

Or bronchitis, and in head
They catch cold ; their noses, so,

If they had, but they have no
ltegular noses, would be red.

Turn, East Wind, to right about;

Nip no more our opening flowers.
Cease, Catarrh, to ail the snout:
Time it is, ye clouds, to spout
Mild and genial April showers.