Rail away, my budding bardlets! This hysteric day Shrieking lives so shrieking answers,――Journals say not nay; Long enough has reason held you: up and rail away! Slang and slate, revile and bludgeon with assurance bold! Tongue of gentle, style of scholar, now are far too cold Go it like an angry fishwife when upon the scold. Now that chivalry’s forgotten, knightly steel all rust Quenched the pride old poets lived by, dead their grace as dust, Shall their mild example bind _us_? Not a whit, I trust! _Blow_ the grace of Gentle Spenser, courtesy’s soft sway! _Hang_ the grace of Wordsworth, leaving nothing to unsay! Let the Poet’s shriek go forth _falsetto_――Rail away! By the grace of trust in reason dolts have lived and died By the fear of noisy folly tongues have oft been tied, By the strength of rabid ranting reason’s now defied. Lest perchance your reckoning, with good manners mar your verse Halt and hearken lords of language, who would plump your purse Be not tied by taste’s restrictions; learn to howl and curse! Where we stand of slang to come, scarce falls a sprinkling spray But the wave of Billingsgate that’s coming who shall stay? Spread your sails my budding bardlets,――up and rail away! _Punch_, August 30, 1884. It was formerly a frequent theme of Mr. Swinburne’s political verse, this violent abuse of the House of Lords:―― “They are worthy to reign o’er their brothers, To contemn them as clods and as carles, Who are Graces by grace of such mothers As brightened the bed of King Charles.” Have the dukes of Buccleugh, Grafton, Richmond, and St. Albans forgotten and forgiven this humorous and playful allusion to their ancestresses, Lucy Waters, Lady Castlemaine, Louise de Querouaille, and Nell Gwynne, to whom they owe their dignities and estates? ―――― A WORD FOR THE POET. (_The Rebuke Parodic._) [Mr. Swinburne’s latest effusion, which has been eagerly quoted by Conservative journals, appears in “Sea Song and River Rhyme,” and is entitled “A Word for the Navy.”] The lords of thy fate and thy keepers, O Swinburne, should padlock thy lips; It leaves us for genius weepers To hear thy Macdermottish tips. Such crowing and blowing, Such blatant British “side,” Will scatter and shatter Full soon thy poet’s pride. “Smooth France, as a serpent for rancour”―― Fie! fie! what an insolent style! Pray slip the Conservative anchor, And be thy old self for awhile. Men deem thee, or dream thee, Less living now than dead; The news is, thy Muse is A little off her head.