"'Ah! mon brave, arrête-toi. Je suis ton unique choix; La fille du sergent sans peur! Pour mon trousseau, c'est modeste, Vous le voyez! Pour le reste, Je t'épouse dans une demi-heure!' "Mais le jeune homme épouvanté Sur son cheval vite remontait, La liberté lui était trop chère! Et la pauvre fille dégoûtée N'avait qu'à reprendre sa route, et Son adresse est encore Leycesster Sqvare." The chiefs of the Permanent Civil Service are not usually, as Swift said, "blasted with poetic fire," but this delightful ditty is from the pen of Mr. Henry Graham, the Clerk of the Parliaments. Of the metrical parodists of the present hour two are extremely good. Mr. Owen Seaman is, beyond and before all his rivals, "up to date," and pokes his lyrical fun at such songsters as Mr. Alfred Austin, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne. But "Q." is content to try his hand on poets of more ancient standing; and he is not only of the school but of the lineage of "C.S.C." I have said before that I forbear, as a rule, to quote from books as easily accessible as _Green Bays;_ but is there a branch of the famous "Omar Khayyám Club" in Manchester? If there be, to it I offer this delicious morsel, only apologizing to the uninitiated reader for the pregnant allusiveness, which none but a sworn Khayyámite can perfectly apprehend:-- MEASURE FOR MEASURE. Wake! for the closed Pavilion doors have kept Their silence while the white-eyed Kaffir slept, And wailed the Nightingale with "Jug, jug, jug!" Whereat, for empty cup, the White Rose wept. Enter with me where yonder door hangs out Its Red Triangle to a world of drought, Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn, Where death, Aladdin, waits as Chuckeroût. Methought, last night, that one in suit of woe Stood by the Tavern-door and whispered, "Lo! The Pledge departed, what avails the Cup? Then take the Pledge and let the Wine-cup go." But I: "For every thirsty soul that drains This Anodyne of Thought its rim contains-- Freewill the _can_, Necessity the _must;_ Pour off the _must_, and see, the _can_ remains. "Then, pot or glass, why label it '_With care?'_ Or why your Sheepskin with my Gourd compare? Lo! here the Bar and I the only Judge:-- O Dog that bit me, I exact an hair!" No versifier of the present day lends himself so readily to parody as Mr. Kipling. His "Story of Ung" is an excellent satire on certain methods of contemporary literature:-- "Once on a glittering icefield, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. Fashioned the form of a tribesman; gaily he whistled and sung, Working the snow with his fingers, '_Read ye the story of Ung!_' * * * * *