But when a-weary of the hunt for mirth Thro’ comic journals, with a doleful sigh, You feel unkindly unto all the earth, And grudge the pennies that they cost to buy These “weakly comics,” lingering like to die, Remember, then, a little while, I pray, The clever singers of a former day. The pomp and power and grand majestic air That marches thro’ their poems’ stately tread, These idle verses may catch unaware, And by burlesque call back remembered Some rhymes “that living not can ne’er be dead,” Though what is meant by that I cannot say―― But Mr. Morris wrote it one fine day. Here grouped are strains of parody in rhyme, Now classified and placed in order straight, Let it suffice it for the present time That some be old, while some are born but late, A careful choice, from all the crowd that wait, Of those that in forgotten serials stay, Or are, in passing journals, tossed away. Folks say a wizard to a common King, One April-tide such wondrous jest did show That in a mirror men beheld each thing, Like, yet unlike, and saw the pale nose glow, While rosy face looked white as fallen snow, Each visage altered in such comic way That those who came to court, remain’d to play. So with these many Parodies it is, If you will read aright and carefully, Not scathing satire, nor malicious hiss For lack of beauty in the themes to see; Nor jeerings coarse, at what men prize, as we But jest to make some little changeling play Its pranks in classic robes, all crowned with bay. GLEESON WHITE. [Illustration] OSCAR WILDE. It would be useless to attempt to give any parodies on the poems of Mr. Oscar Wilde without prefacing them with some account, however brief, of his career. In a few of the skits the allusions are already out of date, and in a short time the reasons will be quite forgotten that led to the silly ridicule and misrepresentations of which Mr. Oscar Wilde, as the Apostle of Æstheticism, was formerly the object. Mr. Oscar O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on October 15, 1856. His father, Sir William R. Wilde, was an eminent surgeon, and a man of literary tastes and great archæological learning. In 1851 Sir William (then Mr.) Wilde married a granddaughter of Archdeacon Elgee, of Wexford, a lady well known in literary circles in Dublin as having written many poems which were published in the _Nation_ newspaper at the time of the political excitement in 1848. They appeared over the _nom de plume_ “Speranza,” and were afterwards published in a collected form, entitled “Poems by Speranza.”