In offering this fourth example of the New Poetry to his readers, _Mr. Punch_ wishes it to be distinctly understood, that he is in no way responsible, personally, for the curious mixture of divinities and semi-divinities who figure in it. It is one of the distinguishing marks of this particular sort of New Poetry to pile up a confusion of more or less mythological names in a series of swinging and resonant lines. In one line the reader may imagine himself to be embarked in the River Cocytus. In the next, he will be surprised to find himself in Eden. Blood, battle, bumptiousness, and an aggressive violence, are special characteristics of this style of writing. Some of the lines apparently mean nothing at all, others are calculated to make timid people tremble; and the effect of the whole is generally picturesque, lurid, and uncomfortable. One of the great advantages of a poem like this, is that it may be used for all kinds of purposes. For example, if it was originally written as an invective against an opponent, it may afterwards, with the utmost ease, be made to serve as a threnody. Here then without further preface is:-- THE SUNDERED FLEA. BY MR. R*DY*RD K*PL*NG. Out on the path of the blazing ball that has hurtled a million years, Where the uttermost light glows red by night in the clash of the angry spheres, Where never a tear-drop dims the eye, and sorrows are stifled young, And the Anglo-Indians snigger and sneer with the jest of a bitter tongue. Where the tribesmen mock at the Bengalee and shiver their spears in vain, And officers steep their souls chin-deep in brandy and dry champagne; Where the Rudyard river runs, flecked with foam, far forth to the Kipling seas, And the maker of man takes walks abroad with Pagan deities. Where AZRAEL talks to the Graces Three, and the Muses Nine stand by, And ask Greek riddles of BUDDHA, who never makes reply. (Gentlemen all and ladies too as smart as a brand-new pin), And nobody wonders how on earth so mixed a lot got in-- Here in the track of a thunderbolt from the nethernmost smithy hurled, With the groan of an ancient passion rent from the wreck of a shattered world, In the white-hot pincers of BAAL borne through cycles of agony, Lit by the Pit's red wrath there came the Soul of a Sundered Flea. And all that company started back; first AZRAEL grimly smiled, The smile that an East-End Coster smiles, by a stout policeman riled; And BUDDHA made no remark at all, but nodded his heavy head, Like a boy who has eaten too much dessert, and wants to be put to bed.