It was your happy lot to blend Sound brain and sympathetic heart; The loyal service of a friend, With worldly wisdom keen and tart. Shrewd advocate and councillor keen, You knew the world, yet pitied it; Compassion mild, not cynic spleen Tempered the edge of caustic wit. Farewell! It dims much pomp and state, _Your_ title--"Poor Man's Magistrate!" * * * * * AN IDYLL OF THE CROWD. (_A Tip (after Tennyson) to Tory Topsawyers._) Come down, O Scribe, from yonder sniffy height; What pleasure lives in "sniff" (the Councillor sang), In sniff and scorn, the weakness of the "swells"? But cease to move so near the clouds, and cease To sit a votary of the "Great Pooh-Pooh"; And come, for Labour's in the valley, come, For Toil dwells in the valley, come thou down And watch him; by the dim slum threshold, he, Or hand in hand with poverty in the docks, Or black with stithy-swartness by the forge, Or troll-like in the mine; nor cares to walk With Wealth and Fashion in the parks and squares; But _follow!_ Come thou down, and let the cold Cramp-headed cynics yelp alone, and leave The mugwump scoffers there to shape and sleek Their thousand paragraphs of acrid joke That like a squirting fountain waste in air: So waste thou not; but come; for hunger pale Awaits thee; haggard pillars of the hearth Appeal to thee; slum children call, and now The Crowd's astir, with every man a Vote To give him voice, and in that voice you'll hear Myriads of "movements" hurrying into "laws," The moan of men at immemorial ills, And murmuring of innumerable shes. * * * * * MY LANDSCAPE. Calm sea, the mirror of a cloudless sky, Blue mountains, in the purple distance fading, Tall, dark-hued pines, through which faint zephyrs sigh, A garden shading. A view that might inspire a poet's voice, Or minstrel's lute to sweetest music waken-- I came to paint this subject of my choice; My place was taken! I muttered angry words between my teeth; I could not see the features of _la bella_, I only saw a dress and cloak beneath A great umbrella. Perhaps some girl, her hair a touzled mop, Plain-featured, round in shoulder, unpoetic, With hygienic boots that flatly flop-- Old style æsthetic. I came a little closer, just to see. Ye gods, her looks and form were not alarming! A graceful, sweet-faced, dainty maiden she, Completely charming. The landscape that I loved was what she drew. I felt my coolness towards her quickly thawing; I also stayed to sketch that charming view-- Here is my drawing. Illustration: MY LANDSCAPE. * * * * * Illustration: "SIC ITUR." *** "SIC ITUR."