"This babbler! is he not to blame? Or will he, in the cycled course Of Time, with circumstance and force Invest this nothing of a name?" And one his thought would thus declare, "Our fooling makes this fellow blithe, He joys to see conjecture writhe And flutter in the wordy snare." Thereat one wiselier--"Watch and see (When Time be ripe, which now is rathe) His Titan-touch unfold the swathe That darkly wraps the great 'To be.'" Shine forth yet undiscovered star! Shed largess of all precious balms! We dimly grope with vacant palms And wondering wait thy Avatar. Thou cam'st by Prejudice withstood In vain, and lulling doubt to sleep: But one--yet two in one--the cheap Divinely wedded to the good. A thing of beauty, form combined With soul phlogistic, sent to cloy Our Æon, with Promethean joy:-- A joy from central darkness mined. Of regions haunted by the Hun; Thence baled with cost of countless gold To Lambeth's marish, and in mould Of seeming-waxen tapers run: Whose radiance is as that of moons Innumerous, making day of night; With most intensity of light, Emblazing fashion's gay saloons. When sound of midnight morrice rings On floor and roof, and all is noise, Of jubilant Ophicleids, hautboys, Clear twanging harp, and fiddle strings. And shapes of silver-bosomed girls, In bacchant revel wheeling, trace The waltz with sweet disordered grace Of twinkling feet and flashing curls. * * * * * IN MEMORIAM TECHNICAM. I count it true which sages teach-- That passion sways not with repose, That love, confounding these with those, Is ever welding each with each. And so when time has ebbed away, Like childish wreaths too lightly held, The song of immemorial eld Shall moan about the belted bay, Where slant Orion slopes his star, To swelter in the rolling seas, Till slowly widening by degrees, The grey climbs upward from afar, And golden youth and passion stray Along the ridges of the strand-- Not far apart, but hand in hand-- With all the darkness danced away! _Vere Vereker's Vengeance._ By Thomas Hood, the younger, 1865. * * * * * A NEW CHRISTMAS SONG. (Adapted to the Times from In Memoriam). _Apropos of the wet winter of_ 1872. Wring out the clouds in that damp sky, Which all this year so drear have made, If, for the weather's clerk, her trade A weather-washerwoman ply. Wring out the old, wring in the new, Wring, weather-washerwoman, so, That wet shod if the Old Year must go The New may damps and dumps eschew.