Lady, the best and brightest of the sex, Whose smile we value, and whose frown we fear, Let me proclaim the miseries that vex The numerous throng who all esteem you dear; 'Tis not that you habitually appear Serenely contemplating the Atlantic In raiment which, if fashionable here, Would greatly shock the properly pedantic, Make Glasgow green with rage, and Mrs. GRUNDY frantic; Your classical costume a true delight is To all who study you from day to day, And even if it hastens on bronchitis It serves your graceful figure to display: But now your thousand fond admirers pray Amid the tumult of the London traffic And in each rural unfrequented way-- "O weather-goddess, look with smile seraphic And prophesy 'Set Fair' within the _Daily Graphic_!" Too long, too long, each worshipper relates, You've told of woe with melancholy glance, Predicted new "depressions" from the States, Or "V-shaped cyclones" nearing us from France; Our summer flies, oh, herald the advance Of decent weather ere its course be ended, Put your umbrella down, and if by chance PISCATOR grumble, let him go unfriended, Heed not his selfish moan, but give us sunshine splendid! Our confidence towards you never flinches, Let others be unceasingly employed In working out the barometric inches, Or tapping at the fickle aneroid, Wet bulb and dry we equally avoid, In you, and you alone, our hopes remain, Then be not by our forwardness annoyed, Nor let our supplications rise in vain,-- Oh, _Daily Graphic_ maid, smile, smile on us again! * * * * * THE YELLOW RIDING-HABIT. Chang, he had a yellow jacket Fitting rather nice and slick; When the garment got the sack, it Made him simply deathly sick; And he swore, with objurgations, It was due--or he'd be hung-- To the fiendish machinations Of a man who rhymed with Bung. But his lord in mild, celestial, Manner moralised and said-- "There are other really bestial Things I might have done instead; Might, in point of fact, have tied you To a poplar with a splice, And explicitly denied you Every claim to Paradise. Nay, I even wondered whether I should play another card, And reduce your dorsal tether By a matter of a yard; Or curtail your nether raiment, (This I waived as rather coarse,) Or appropriate your payment As a marshal of the force. But I gave you just a gentle, If humiliating, shock, Much as any Occidental Castigates the erring jock, Who in place of freely plugging At a reasonable rate, By irregularly lugging Lets a rival take the plate.