That awful Eiffel bonnet, It blotted out the scene And all the people on it Just like a giant screen: It was the sort of bonnet You couldn’t see between. The wearer of that bonnet Between two friends she sat, And swayed (and hence this sonnet) Now this way and now that, And bent her head and bonnet With either side to chat. To left she moved her bonnet, I bent my head to right The stage to look upon it; But ere I had a sight, Back came that Eiffel bonnet And blotted out the light. O awful Eiffel bonnet That towers to the sky! If ladies still will don it, ’Twill happen by-and-by, “Down with that Eiffel bonnet!” Poor playgoers will cry. To see a swaying bonnet We don’t go to the play, ’Tis not to gaze upon it Our ten-and-six we pay-- So d---- the Eiffel bonnet That damns the matinée! To a Fair Musician. O lady next door, could your glance on me fall, There are times when my lot you would pity, And shut the piano that stands by the wall, And spare me your favourite ditty. That music hath charms I’m the last to deny, But music from eight to eleven Is apt the weak nerves of a poet to try, And to hasten his journey to heaven. In vain in my study on work I’ve in hand I endeavour to fix my attention-- That moment you sit yourself down to your “grand,” And I use a nice word I won’t mention. O lady, I know you are gentle and fair, And I grant that you play very nicely; But if you are anxious my reason to spare, Don’t start, ma’am, at eight _so precisely_. I wait for that moment, each nerve on the strain-- I tremble with wild agitation; A thousand sharp needles seem pricking my brain And I’m bathed in a cold perspiration. For I know you’ll commence on the last stroke of eight To perform all the morceaux that you know, From “ Dorothy,” “Doris,” and “Faust up to Date,” From Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Gounod. O lady next door, could your glance but once fall On the eye in which madness is lurking, You would move your piano away from the wall, And you’d play when the Bard wasn’t working. A Word for the Police. The soldiers of our “City Guard,” Through winter snows and summer heats, From all the soldiers’ joys debarred, Keep watch and ward in London streets. For them no martial trumpets sound, For them there waits no victor’s bay, But on the lonely midnight round, Unarmed, they face the fiercest fray.