But the days of your reign are departed, And our fathers that fed on your looks Have begotten a folk feeble-hearted, That seek not your name in their books; And against you is risen a new foeman, To storm with strange engines your home, We wax pale at the name of him Roman, His coming from Rome. * * * * * Yet I pour you this drink of my verses, Of learning made lovely with lays, Song bitter and sweet that rehearses The deeds of your eminent days; Yea, in these evil days from their reading Some profit a student shall draw, Though some points are of obsolete pleading, And some are not law. Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle To divers Divisions of one, And no fire from your face may rekindle The light of old learning undone; We have suitors and briefs for our payment, While so long as a Court shall hold pleas, We talk moonshine, with wigs for our raiment, Not sinking the fees. This “J. S.” was a mythical person introduced for the purposes of illustration, and constantly met with in old law books and reports. His devotion to Rome is shown by his desperate attempts to get there in three days: “If J. S. shall go to Rome in three days,” was then a standing example of an impossible condition, which modern science has robbed of most of its point. ――――:o:―――― THE BALLAD OF BURDENS. This poem will be found on page 144 of Mr. Swinburne’s _Poems and Ballads_ (first series). It is one of his best known ballads, and in 1879 it was chosen by the editor of _The World_ as the model on which to found parodies describing the wet and gloomy summer of that year. The successful poems in the competition were printed in _The World_, July 16, 1879. The first prize was won by a well known London Architect, the second by a Dublin gentleman who has since published several amusing Volumes of light poems. FIRST PRIZE. A burden of foul weathers. Dim daylight And summer slain in some sad sloppy way, And pitiless downpour that comes by night, And watery gleam that has no heart by day, And change from gray to black, from black to gray, And weariness that doth at each repine; Grief in all work, and pleasure in no play―― Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine. The burden of vain blossoms. This is sore A burden of false hope in fruit-bearing: Upon thy strawberry-bed, behold, threescore―― Threescore dead blooms for one that’s ripening; And if that one to fulness thou dost bring, Thy shuddering lips the scanty feast decline, For ’tis a pallid and insipid thing―― Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.