Punch: Punch (91.1886)

294 PUNCH, OE THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [Dion™ 18, 1886.

A DELICATE QUESTION.

Monsieur le Comte. "And now, Madam, zat you 'ate so kindly instruct me on ze interesting 'Istory of ze 'Ouse, dare

I permit m1self to ask how far does your propriety extend t "

THE MODERN BARBAROSSA;

Or, Like to Sink.

" At the present moment the whole of Europe is bristling in armour. If
we turn our eyes to the right or the left we find our neighbours fully armed,
and in a manner which must in time become insupportable, even to a rich
country."—Meld Marshal Von Moltke, in the Reichstag.

Arms and the man! What strange new song is sung

By him, the hero of the unhasting tongue ?

A tale of gloom and menace gathering long,

Breaking the weak and burdening the strong.

The mighty Hohenstaupen, Suabia's lord,

Arm-weighted, died at a small river's ford ;*

Heroic Babbarossa, he who swayed

Europe from Alp to Danube, and arrayed

The Teuton with the Italian, he who stood

A second Chablemagne when red with blood

The Lombard plains beneath his war-horse shook,

He the red-bearded chief of iron look,

Star of the Teuton's legendary dream,

Mail-cumbered sank in the Cilician stream!

So the new Barbarossa faints and fails

Beneath the iron plates, the brazen scales

Of War's cold pomp, and crushing panoply;

Whilst o'er the rising flood a darkening sky

Broods blackly, and the swart-winged bird of war

Hovers above his crest, and, fleeting far

-b rom the impending clash of forces blind,

ine silver-pinioned dove flies down the wind.

Arms and the man! And what seems manhood worth
By the dull weight of arms so crushed to earth ?
From held and factory its thews must fail
To waste their strength beneath the load of mail.

* Frederic advanced in a career of triumph till he was " unfortunately
drowned in a petty torrent in Cilicia" (the Calycadnus).—Gibbon.

Accursed incubus that year by year

Burdens the world with an increasing fear!

The Peoples pine beneath its loathly load,

Driven to ruin as by an iron goad,

Meshed in a hideous rivalry of wrong

Which whelms the weak and overbears the strong.

What help, what hope P

Germama's iron chief,
And her great silent Captain seek relief
From the long strain ; the strong man armed, at length
Hath found his arms too ponderous for his strength.
As Barbabdssa, by his mail dragged down,
Sank in the flood, the Teuton, like to drown
Beneath the weight that burdens brain and breath,
In the new Calycadnus sinks to death,
And from the deepening flood, the darkening sky,
For rest and rescue lifts an urgent cry.

A NEW TITLE.

At the City Conservative Club Banquet, on Wednesday last, the
two Graces—[only two of them, one before, and one after dinner, the
third Grace being, perhaps, a Liberal, and therefore omitted]—were
" sung by the Lay Vicars of Salisbury Cathedral," who also treated
the company to " several part-songs during the evening."

Excellent name for them, "the Lay Vicars!" Each Vicar
coming with his own lay, and then joining in the general harmony.
But why not improve the title ? We can suggest a great improvement.
Listen. The Daily Telegraph, in an apt and friendly article last
week, spoke of Mr. Punch as the Doyen, or " Dean of the Chapter "
—Dean of several chapters, satirical, humorous, and pathetic. Well,
if Dean Punch should ever have at his disposal a "quire," not
in twenty-four white sheets, but members of the surplice popu-
lation, he would certainly style them his " Bi-Tooral-li-Lay-Vicars."
And how proud they would be!

Maxim: tor Wall Street.—All is not (Jay) Gould that glittera.