But still not quite incognito I mark the moving scene, In a tepid zone where (like my own) The palms are ever green, And find myself reported as A herald of the Queen. Here where aloft the heavens are blue, And blue the seas below, I roll my eye and fondly try To get the rhymes to go, As I pace _The Garden that I love_, Composing all I know. But when my poet-pinions droop, And all the air is wan, I enter in to the courts of sin And put a louis on, And hold my heart and look again, And lo! the thing is gone! Wrong? is it wrong? To baser crafts Has England's Alfred pandered, Who once to the sign of Phœbus' shrine With awesome gait meandered, And ever wrote in the cause of right According to his _Standard_? Nay! this is life! to take a turn On Fortune's captious crust; To pluck the day in a human way Like men of common dust; But O! if England's only bard Should absolutely bust! A laureate never borrows on His coming quarter's pay; And I mean to stop or ever I pop My crown of peerless bay; So I'll take the next _rapide_ to Nice, And the 'bus to Cimiez. _MENTONE, Feb., 1896._ IV. LILITH LIBIFERA. Exhumed from out the inner cirque of Hell By kind permission of the Evil One, Behold her devilish presentment, done By Master Aubrey's weird unearthly spell! This is that Lady known as Jezebel, Or Lilith, Eden's woman-scorpion, Libifera, that is, that takes the bun, Borgia, Vivien, Cussed Damosel. Hers are the bulging lips that fairly break The pumpkin's heart; and hers the eyes that shame The wanton ape that culls the cocoa-nuts. Even such the yellow-bellied toads that slake Nocturnally their amorous-ardent flame In the wan waste of weary water-butts. V. ARS POSTERA. [On an advertisement of _A Comedy of Sighs_.] Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers, You're getting quite a high renown; Your Comedy of Leers, you know, Is posted all about the town; This sort of stuff I cannot puff, As Boston says, it makes me 'tired'; Your Japanee-Rossetti girl Is not a thing to be desired. Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers, New English Art (excuse the chaff) Is like the Newest Humour style, It's not a thing at which to laugh; But all the same, you need not maim A beauty reared on Nature's rules; A simple maid _au naturel_ Is worth a dozen spotted ghouls. Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers, You put strange phantoms on our walls, If not so daring as _To-day's_, Nor quite so Hardy as _St. Paul's_; Her sidelong eyes, her giddy guise,-- _Grande Dame Sans Merci_ she may be; But there is that about her throat Which I myself don't care to see.