LOCKSLEY'S famous--yes, and married, notwithstanding his fierce curse, To a dame with lots of gold and very little taste for verse. Nice to be a Lion's Lady in Society, no doubt! Not so nice to smooth his mane at home when Leo is put out. Talk of tantrums! Read these lines he published after--well, the jilt, Pitching into poor Mamma, and charging me with nameless guilt! Dear Mamma! _I_ thought her hard--but I'm a mother now myself, And, I know what utter nonsense is the poet's scorn of pelf. * * * * * "Woman is the lesser man!" I hold that false as it is hard. The most womanish of creatures surely is an angry bard. Yet, sometimes, when, as at present, Spring is brightening all the land, Comes that longing for the fields, SIR RUFUS _cannot_ understand; Comes a ghostly sort of doubt if e'en Society can give All, quite all, for which a _well-loved_ woman might desire to live; Comes a memory of his voice, a recollection of his glance, Thoughts of things which then had power to make my maiden pulses dance; Comes,--but I'm extremely stupid. Well, I know if our dear FAN Took a fancy for a poet, I should soon dismiss the man. Here she comes! She'll wed, I hope, rich Viscount VIVIAN ere the fall. She ne'er had had _that_ chance, had I espoused the Lord of Locksley Hall! _Punch_, June 1, 1878. * * * * * In a magazine entitled _The Train_, published in 1856, there was a poem called _The Three Voices_, written by Mr. Lewis Carroll, who has since become famous for his quaintly humorous works. This was a parody of the obvious truisms, the muddled metaphor, and vague reasonings contained in Tennyson's _Two Voices_, and Mr. Carroll has wisely inserted it in his last collection of poems (_Rhyme? and Reason?_ Macmillan and Co.), it is somewhat altered from its original form, and is much heightened in its effect by the intensely comic, and ably drawn, illustrations of Mr. Arthur B. Frost. Unfortunately, this clever parody is too long to quote entire, and an extract gives but a faint idea of its terribly grotesque sorrows, and its whimsical burlesque of the Laureate's reasoning in _The Two Voices:_-- THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach, Her tongue was very apt to teach, And now and then he did beseech, She would abate her dulcet tone, Because the talk was all her own, And he was dull as any drone. She urged "No cheese is made of chalk;" And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk, Tuned to the footfall of a walk. Her voice was very full and rich, And when at length she asked him "Which?" It mounted to its highest pitch. He a bewildered answer gave, Drowned in the sullen moaning wave, Lost in the echoes of the cave.