Are there thunders moaning in the distance? Are there spectres moving in the darkness? Trust the Lord of Light to guide her people. Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish, And the Light is Victor, and the darkness Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages. ―――― _The Globe_ remarked:―― “It is to be feared that the Laureate’s Jubilee Ode will sadly disappoint all his admirers. It has a certain rhetorical neatness, no doubt; but it cannot be regarded as adequate to the occasion. The poet has chosen, for the most part, very prosaic rhythms, and the Ode, trite and even common in ideas, is not even endowed with occasional felicities of expression, On the contrary, it is sometimes positively unlucky in its phraseology, as when the world is most unnecessarily assured that Her Majesty has about her―― ‘Nothing of the lawless, of the Despot, Nothing of the vulgar, or vain-glorious.’ “By no means happy are the references to those who ‘wanton in affluence’ (why ‘wanton?’) to the ‘Lord manufacturers,’ and to the ‘Imperial Institute,’ which latter surely savours a little of bathos? The six concluding lines have more inspiration, perhaps, than most; but they do not harmonise very well in their allusion to ‘thunders moaning in the distance,’ with the Laureate’s allusion elsewhere to the ‘prosperous auguries’ of the Jubilee. On the whole, Lord Rosslyn, Mr. Morris, and Lord Tennyson having all spoken, it must be confessed that the Jubilee still lacks a _vates sacer_.” ANOTHER ODE. Fifty times the Laureate sharpened his pencil: Fifty times he turned over the Rhyming Dictionary: Then he decided to give up rhymes altogether. HE, the Patriot Laureate, He, the Lord-manufacturer, Shaped a stately memorial, Made it regally gorgeous After Walt Whitman’s pattern, Rich in blackness, in dullness, Which might speak to the centuries Through the _Magazine Macmillan_, Of this year of our Jubilee. * * * * * Fifty lines at last completed! Fifty more at least to make a century; Where the dickens shall the other fifty come from? But―― Is that the printer’s boy moaning in the passage? Is that the ――――? ――――! There goes my lead pencil. Trust the public to make out the glory of these verses. _The Globe._ March 29, 1887. ―――― VERY HARD LINES. HOW THEY WERE WRITTEN TO ORDER. (_Leaf from a Laureate’s Diary._)