“Weave the warp and weave the woof, Lord Beaconsfield to bury in; Give ample room and verge enough To trace the Treaty of Berlin. Mark the year and mark the night When Westminster reëchoes with affright; Shrieks of defeat from every poll that ring, And fagot votes in anguish sputtering. O Torydom, with unrelenting fangs, Thou tear’st the bowels of this mangled State; A Turnerelli wreath above thee hangs, And Cyprian flowers; but; O, what terrors wait! Afghanistan, with massacre combined, And Cetewayo’s form, and all the Boers behind. Fill high the loving bowl, The turtle-soup prepare; Reft of majority, he shares the feast: Close by the Lord Mayor’s chair The civic magnates scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. A voice as of a financier Gales from blooming Budgets bear; And distant surpluses thrill on my ear, And lost in long futurity expire. Fond impious man, think’st thou thy sanguine cloud Has blurred the Liberal programme from the skies? To-morrow rises its resistless flood Round fleet and army, church and colonies. Enough for me; with joy I see The different doom our fates assign―― Be thine Despair and Gartered care; To translate and to hew are mine.” Thus spake the Bard; and, from the mountain’s brow, Swinging his axe, he vanished in the snow. ETONESIS. (The Rev. J. S. VAUGHAN.) ―――― SECOND PRIZE. “Ruin seize thee, reckless guide, All nations’ scourge, thy country’s shame, Though folly, greed, and senseless pride Combine to glorify thy name: Hedging speech, nor specious phrase, Nor all thy followers’ boasts and fulsome praise, Shall shield thy whitening locks from vengeance dire: From Erin’s curse, from Albion’s ire.” Such were the sounds that through the serried ranks Of Jingo’s henchmen, winged with hatred, thrilled; Rolled the harsh words on Lothian’s braes and banks, Spread as they rolled, and Britain’s boundaries filled. Sly Beaconsfield looked on with pitying smile; “Revenge!” wild Cranbrook cried, and conned a speech the while. On a stump, whose leafy crown Had erst Dalmeny’s wood adorned, Wrapt in an agèd Ulster brown, Tireless the statesman stood and mourned. Plaudits replied, and from the distant shore Mingled the wild wind’s sighs and sorrowing ocean’s roar.