Till Forster (who pelted the people like crooks,

  The Irish with buckshot, the English with books).

  Established the great educational scheme

  Of compulsory schooling, that glorious theme.

  Some learnt how to read, and the others forgot,

  And the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

  O Genius of Business! O marvellous brain,

  Come in place of the priests and the warriors to reign!

  O Will to Get On that makes everything go -

  O Hustle! O Pep! O Publicity! O!

  Shall I spend three-and-sixpence to purchase the book,

  Which we all can pick up on the bookstall and look?

  Well, it may appear strange, but I think I shall not,

  For the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

  Human Nature: or Marconi Memories

  From our ‘Simplified Psychology for Statesmen’ series

  Human nature is a bird

  Whose complaint is often heard,

  And will make demands of any legislature;

  And you need not claim to be

  Giving seven pence for three;

  It exceeds the wildest hopes of Human Nature.

  Human Nature is a thing

  It is difficult to sing,

  And very much more difficult to deal with:

  But you need not call it ‘function’ -

  You can own without compunction

  That your brother is a man you take a meal with.

  Human Nature it prefers

  To be told of what occurs

  Without suppressing any vital feature;

  And when statesmen hold their peace

  Until searched by the police,

  It rasps the finer edge of Human Nature.

  Human Nature, it is said,

  Thinks investment should be made

  By someone who has cash enough to pay it;

  And that one who pouched the pay,

  And had nothing more to say.

  Need not go to South America to say it.

  Human Nature is not keen

  On the words ‘corrupt’ or ‘clean’

  Or any other shades of nomenclature;

  But, when what the Party cost

  Is discovered when its lost,

  A shade of doubt is merely Human Nature.

  Human Nature it is prone

  To be soft about the Throne,

  And even make the Peerage paramounter;

  But it startles it to drop

  Into Mr Pearson’s shop,

  And find a Scottish Lord behind the counter.

  So till all men learn the truth

  (And not only Handel Booth)

  And the Gospel has been preached to every creature,

  Even rotten things may fail,

  Even thieves may go to gaol,

  And all through not observing Human Nature.

  The Peace of Petrol

  To be sung to the air of ‘Kabul River’ on the conclusion of

  an English peace brought about by American intervention.

  He has many a car and chuffer

  (Still the bugle, sheathe the sword),

  So I left my mates to suffer

  All because of Mr Ford.

  Ford, Ford, Ford of many millions,

  Ford of many motors in the Park;

  And our lord will laugh like thunder at the Good Cause

  going under

  When we stab it, to oblige him, in the dark.

  We’ll give up the blasted place

  (Drop the bugle, break the sword)

  For one smile upon his face,

  O, the shiny face of Ford!

  Ford, Ford, Ford; the French are falling,

  And the Serbians on the mountains lying stark.

  All their eyes on us, disdaining, and it ain’t no use

  explaining

  That a millionaire has bought us for a lark.

  O the motors he can make!

  (Sell the bugle, pawn the sword)

  We’ll be humbled for his sake,

  Break our faith and keep our Ford.

  Ford, Ford, Ford - till death remove him

  To a place on which it’s needless to remark,

  And the rich whose minds are muddy, who consider

  honour bloody,

  Go down to their damnation in the dark.

  To a Holy Roller

  The sect of the holy rollers demonstrated

  against evolution at Dayton.

  ‘Roll on,’ said Gilbert to the earth:

  ‘Roll on,’ said Byron to the sea:

  Accepting natural features thus,

  Freely I say ‘Roll on’ to thee.

  Time like an ever rolling stream

  Bears his most rolling sons away

  Bryanite saint, Darwinian sage,

  And even Dayton has its day.

  Earth changes; sings another bard,

  ‘There rolls the deep where grew the tree’;

  Convulsions viewed with equal calm

  By Tennyson and Tennessee.

  But ere you roll down history’s slope,

  A moment you may set us thinking

  How Prohibition suits their mood,

  Who get so drunk by never drinking.

  What rows of bottles, blends of liquor,

  We need to reach in one wild leap

  Those reels and rolls you get for nothing.

  Great Bacchic Maenads on the cheap!

  I blame you not that, writhing prone,

  You flout the grave Darwinian’s view,

  Of his extremely Missing Link,

  For he is quite amusing too.

  Marking the human ape evolve

  (He puts his rolling into Latin),

  Through epochs barely large enough

  To swing an old Egyptian cat in.

  Since you believe Man truly tilled

  The Garden for the great Controller,

  You back your Garden party up,

  Like a consistent Garden Roller.

  We, too, may deem on Adam’s birth

  Some more mysterious splendour shone,

  Than prigs can pick off monkey’s bones,

  Never you mind! Roll on! Roll on!

  Grovel and gambol on all fours

  Till you have proved beyond dispute,

  That human dignity is freed

  From all connection with the brute.

  The New Fiction

  ‘Leave them alone, ‘ we seem to hear Mr

  Galsworthy say of his young people.

  FROM A REVIEW BY MR BETTANY

  Little Blue-Fits has lost his wits,

  And doesn’t know where to find them;

  Leave them alone and they’ll come home,

  And leave their tales behind them.

  The remarkable tales, with remarkable sales,

  And Bonnets and Bees in disorder;

  For the Bonnets we view are exceedingly Blue,

  And decidedly over the Border.

  Answers to the Poets

  THE SKYLARK REPLIES TO WORDSWORTH

  As is might have appeared to Byron

  Ephemeral minstrel, staring at the sky,

  Dost thou despise the earth where wrongs abound,

  Or, eyeing me, hast thou the other eye

  Still on the Court, with pay-day coming round,

  That pension that could bring thee down at will

  Those rebel wings composed, that protest still?

  Past the last trace of meaning and beyond

  Mount, daring babbler, that pay-prompted strain

  ‘Twixt thee and Kings a never-failing bond

  Swells not the less their carnage o’er the plain.

  Type of the wise, who drill but never fight,

  True to the kindred points of Might and Right.

  THE SEA REPLIES TO BYRON

  As it might have appeared to Wordsworth

  Stroll on, thou dark not deep ‘blue’ dandy, stroll,

  Ten thousand duns call after thee in vain.

  The tailor’s marked with ruin; his control

  Stops with my shore; beyond he doth retain

  No shadow of a chance of what’s his own,

  But sinks above his bills with bubbling groan,

  ‘Absconded; gone; abroad; address unknown.’

  Thy songs are speeches, void of all save Thee,

  Childe Harold, Lara, Manfred, what care I?

  My water washed them down - you got it free,

  And many a wine-cup since when you were dry,

  Till nature blows the man-hater sky-high,

  Howling against his gods in stark D.T.,

  And dashes him against the Truth. There let him lie.

  THE FAT WHITE WOMAN SPEAKS

  Why do you rush through the field in trains,

  Guessing so much and so much.

  Why do you flash through the flowery meads,

  Fat-head poet that nobody reads;

  And why do you know such a frightful lot

  About people in gloves as such?

  And how the devil can you be sure,

  Guessing so much and so much,

  How do you know but what someone who loves

  Always to see me in nice white gloves

  At the end of the field you are rushing by,

  Is waiting for his Old Dutch?

  LUCASTA REPLIES TO LOVELACE

  Tell me not, friend, you are unkind,

  If ink and books laid by,

  You turn up in a uniform

  Looking all smart and spry.

  I thought your ink one horrid smudge,

  Your books one pile of trash,

  And with less fear of smear embrace

  A sword, a belt, a sash.

  Yet this inconstancy forgive,

  Though gold lace I adore,

  I could not love the lace so much

  Loved I not Lovelace more.

  BY A CAPTAIN, OR PERHAPS A COLONEL, OR POSSIBLY A KNIGHT-AT-ARMS

  Poet or pamphleteer, or what you please,

  Who chance behind this space of wall to dwell,

  Upon my soul I cannot very well

  Correct my fire for arguments like these,

  The great Emathian conqueror be blowed!

  I have not got a spear or you a bower.

  London is packed with poets; temple and tower

  Swarm with them; where the devil should we be

  Storming a town, if the repeated plea

  Of Puritanic poets had the power

  To stop a piece of ordnance with an ode?

  *

  FROM THE SPANISH CLOISTER

  Grrrr - what’s that? A dog? A poet?

  Uttering his damnations thus -

  If hate killed things, Brother Browning,

  God’s Word, would not hate kill us?

  If we’d ever meet together,

  Salve tibi! I might hear

  How you know poor monks are really

  So much worse than they appear.

  There’s a great text in Corinthians

  Hinting that our faith entails

  Something else, that never faileth,

  Yet in you, perhaps, it fails.

  But if plena gratia chokes you,

  You at least can teach us how

  To converse in wordless noises,

  Hy, zi; hullo! - Grrrr - Bow-wow!

  DOLORES REPLIES TO SWINBURNE

  Cold passions, and perfectly cruel,

  Long odes that go on for an hour,

  With a most economical jewel

  And a quite metaphorical flower.

  I implore you to stop it and stow it,

  I adjure you, relent and refrain,

  Oh, pagan Priapean poet,

  You give me a pain.

  I am sorry, old dear, if I hurt you,

  No doubt it is all very nice

  With the lilies and languors of virtue

  And the raptures and roses of vice.

  But the notion impels me to anger,

  That vice is all rapture for me,

  And if you think virtue is languor

  Just try it and see.

  We shall know what the critics discover

  If your poems were shallow or deep,

  Who read you from cover to cover,

  Will know if they sleep not or sleep.

  But you say I’ve endured through the ages

  (Which is rude) as Our Lady of Pain,

  You have said it for several pages,

  So say it again.

  TO A MODERN POET

  Well,

  What

  about it?

  I am sorry

  if you have

  a green pain

  gnawing your brain away.

  I suppose

  quite a lot of it is

  gnawed away

  by this time.

  I did not give you

  a green pain

  or even

  a grey powder.

  It is rather you, so winged, so vortical,

  Who give me a pain.

  When I have a pain

  I never notice

  the colour.

  But I am very unobservant.

  I cannot say

  I ever noticed that the pillar-box

  was like a baby

  skinned alive and screaming.

  I have not

  a Poet’s

  Eye

  which can see Beauty

  everywhere.

  Now you mention it,

  Of course, the sky

  is like a large mouth

  shown to a dentist,

  and I never noticed

  a little thing

  like that.

  But I can’t help wishing

  You got more fun out of it;

  you seem to have taken

  quite a dislike

  to things

  They seem to make you jump

  And double up unexpectedly —

  And when you write

  like other poets,

  on subjects

  not entirely

  novel,

  such as, for instance,

  the Sea,

  it is mostly about

  Sea-sickness.

  As you say -

  It is the New Movement,

  The Emetic Ecstacy.

  POST-RE CESSION AL

  God of your fathers, known of old,

  For patience with man’s swaggering line,

  He did not answer you when told

  About you and your palm and pine,

  Though you deployed your far-flung host

  And boasted that you did not boast.

  Though drunk with sight of power and blind,

  Even as you bowed your head in awe,

  You kicked up both your heels behind

  At lesser breeds without the law;

  Lest they forget, lest they forget,

  That yours was the exclusive set.

  We fancied heaven preferring much,

  Your rowdiest song, your slangiest sentence,

  Your honest banjo banged to such

  Very recessional repentance;

  Now if your native land be dear,

  Whisper (or shout) and we shall hear.

  Cut down, our navies melt away.

  From ode and war-song fades the fire,

  We are a jolly sight today

  Too near to Sidon and to Tyre

  To make it sound so very nice

  To offer ancient sacrifice.

  Rise up and bid the trumpets blow

  When it is gallant to be gay,

  Tell the wide world it shall not know

  Our face until we turn to bay.

  Bless you, you shall be blameless yet,

  For God forgives and men forget.

  Variations on an Air: Composed on Having to

  Appear in a Pageant as Old King Cole

  Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

  And a merry old soul was he;

  He called for his pipe,

  He called for his bowl,

  And he called for his fiddlers three.

  After Lord Tennyson.

  Cole, that unwearied prince of Colchester,

  Growing more gay with age and with long days

  Deeper in laughter and desire of life,

  As that Virginian climber on our walls

  Flames scarlet with the fading of the year;

  Called for his wassail and that other weed

  Virginian also, from the western woods

  Where English Raleigh checked the boast of Spain,

  And lighting joy with joy, and piling up

  Pleasure as crown for pleasure, bade men bring

  Those three, the minstrels whose emblazoned coats

  Shone with the oyster-shells of Colchester;

  And these three played, and playing grew more fain

  Of mirth and music; till the heathen came,

  And the King slept beside the northern sea.

  After W. B. Yeats.

  Of an old King in a story

  From the grey sea-folk I have heard,

  Whose heart was no more broken

  Than the wings of a bird.

  As soon as the moon was silver

  And the thin stars began,

  He took his pipe and his tankard,

  Like an old peasant man.

  And three tall shadows were with him

  And came at his command;

  And played before him for ever

  The fiddles of fairyland.

  And he died in the young summer

  Of the world’s desire;

  Before our hearts were broken

  Like sticks in a fire.

  After Robert Browning.

  Who smoke-snorts toasts o’ My Lady Nicotine,

  Kicks stuffing out of Pussyfoot, bids his trio

  Stick up their Stradivarii (that’s the plural

  Or near enough, my fatheads; nimium

  Vicina Cremonce; that’s a bit too near.)

  Is there some stockfish fails to understand?

  Catch hold o’ the notion, bellow and blurt back ‘Cole’?