Punch: Punch (91.1886)

iv

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [December 25, 1886.

" Yours is such, a Christmas Present as no man save you could give!
When our ' tonguesters ' all are silent, LocJesley Hall, my Lord, shall live ;

" Sweet with all your springtide's sweetness, strong with all your summer's force,
Minstrel, a mellifluous marvel, crowning well your royal course !

" Yet an undertone too hopeless mars the music's golden chimes,
And a ' nohle rage' o'erhasty rings along its rolling rhymes.

"Keep up your postic pecker! What we want is patient pluck.
Punch, though often shocked and saddened, is not down upon his luck.

"'Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.'
I'm not given wholly up to rhapsodies of wild regret.

" Still ' I doubt not through the ages one unceasing purpose runs,'
Still, though 3'ou have turned it up, I hold we 're better than the Huns.

" They had not a ' Punch,' my Poet, nor a Laureate like you.
Bara, your latest lay, though lovely, is a bit too black and blue.

" Hopeless, because placemen babble, and some men are merely brutes ?
Bah! The Corybantes' clangour should not drown Arcadia's flutes.

"Amy maddened you when young, Demos distracts your riper age.
Must you grip the scourge of Ruskin, ape Caklyle's dyspeptic rage?

"' Oast the poison from your bo3om, cast the madness from your brain,'
Piead your Punch and puff your pipe; Alfbed will be himself again.

" Take the tip from this plump Faster ! Pure Punch-Essence is enough.
It will quicken life and purge the bosom from all perilous stuff.

"With its sweetness wet your whistle. And, lest short of it you run,
Take, and both your stores replenish, Punch's