And, as on his failures he sadly reflected,
He took out his pen and a nib he selected,
Then wrote (and his verses Were studded with curses)
This poem, the Lay of the Author (Rejected).

The rejected Author's cup
Comes from out a bitter bin,
Constable won't 'take him up,'
Chambers will not 'take him in.'

Publishers, when interviewed,
Each alas! in turn looks Black;
De la Rue is De-la-rude,
Nutt is far too hard to crack.

Author, humble as a vassal
(He is feeling Low as well),
Sadly waits without the Cassell,
Vainly tries to press the Bell.

Author, hourly growing leaner,
Finds each day his jokes more rare,
Asks the Longman if he's Green, or
Spottiswoode to take the Eyre.

Author, blithe as lark each morning,
Finds each night his tale unheard,
And, when Fred'rick gives him Warn(e)ing,
Is not Gay as any Bird.

Author, to his writings partial,
Musters their array en bloc,
Which the Simpkins will not Marshall,
And the Elliot will not Stock.

Tho' for little he be yearning,
Yet that little Long he'll want,
When the Lane has got no turning,
And the Richards will not Grant.
Now when Anthony's life it grew harder and harder;
Less coal in the cellar, less meat in the larder;
He thought for a while, And at last (with a smile)
He determined to sacrifice even his style.
So he wrote just whatever came into his head,
Without any regard for the living or dead,
Or for what his friends thought or his enemies said.
From his style he effaced, As incentives to waste,
All the canons of grammar and even good taste;
And so book after book after book he brought out,
Which you've probably read, and you know all about;
For the publishers bought them, And ev'ry one thought them
So splendidly vulgar, that no one had ever
Read anything quite so improperly clever.

He tried ev'ry style, from the fashion of Ouida's
(His characters being Society Leaders;
The Heroine, suited to middle-class readers, —
A governess she, who might well have been humbler;
The Hero a Duke, an inveterate grumbler;
And a Guardsman who drank crême-de-menthe from a tumbler)
To that of another more popular lady,
And wrote about aristocrats who were shady,
And showed that the persons you happen to meet
In the Very Best Houses are always effete;
That they gamble all night, in particular sets,
And (Oh, hasn't she said it, Tho' can it be credit-
Ed?) have no intention of paying their debts!

His best, which the Critics said 'teemed with expression,'
Was the one-volume novel 'A Drunkard's Confession';
The next, 'My Good Woman. A Love Tale'; another,
Most popular this, 'The Flirtations of Mother';
And lastly, the crowning success of his life,
'How the Other Half Lives. By a Baronet's Wife.'
And the Publishers now are all down on their knees,
As they offer what fees He may happen to please;
And success he discerns As with rapture he learns
The amount that he earns From his roy'lty returns.
(N.B. – I omit the last 'a' here in Royalty,
For reasons of scansion and not from disloyalty.)

The moral of this is quite easy to see;
If a popular author you're anxious to be,
You won't care a digamma For truth or for grammar,
Be far from straitlaced Upon questions of taste,
And don't trouble to polish your style or to bevel,
But always write down to the popular level;
Be vulgar and smart, And you'll get to the heart
Of the persons directing the lit'rary mart,
And your writings must reach (It's a figure of speech)
The – (well, what shall we call it – compositor's) devil!

THE MOTRIOT

(After Robert Browning)

'It was chickens, chickens, all the way,
With children crossing the road like mad;
Police disguised in the hedgerows lay,
Stop-watches and large white flags they had,
At nine o'clock o' this very day.

'I broke the record to Tunbridge Wells,
And I shouted aloud, to all concerned,
"Give room, good folk, do you hear my bells?"
But my motor skidded and overturned;
Then exploded – and afterwards, what smells!

'Alack! it was I rode over the son
Of a butcher; rolled him all of a heap!
Nought man could do did I leave undone;
And I thought that butcher's boys were cheap, —
But this, poor man, 'twas his only one.

'There's nobody in my motor now, —
Just a tangled car in the ditch upset;
For the fun of the fair is, all allow,
At the County Court, or, better yet,
By the very foot of the dock, I trow.

…

'Thus I entered, and thus I go;
In Court the magistrate sternly said,
"Five guineas fine, and the costs you owe!"
I might not question, so promptly paid.
Henceforth I walk; I am safer so.'

THE BALLAD OF THE ARTIST

Archibald Ames is an artist,
And a widely renowned R.A.,
For albeit his pictures are thoroughly bad,
The greatest success he has always had,
And he makes his profession pay.

He has no idea of proportion,
No notion of colour or line,
But perhaps for such there is little need,
Since everybody is fully agreed
That his subjects are quite divine.

His pictures are sweetly simple;
The ingredients all must know, —
Just a fair-haired child and a dog or two,
A very old man, and a baby's shoe,
And some bunches of mistletoe.

In some, an angelic infant
Is helping a kitten to play,
Or dressing a cat in Grandpapa's hat
(Which is equally hard on the hat and the cat),
Or teaching a 'dolly' to pray.

Or else there's a runaway couple,
With a distant view of papa,
An elderly party with rich man's gout,
Who swears himself rapidly inside out,
In a broken-down motor-car.

Or it may be a scene in the Workhouse,
Where a widow of high degree,
With almost suspiciously puce-coloured hair,
Has arrived in a gorgeous carriage-and-pair,
To distribute a pound of tea.

Sometimes he portrays a battle,
With a 'square' like a Rugby scrum,
Where a bugler, the colours grasped in his hand,
And making a final determined stand,
Plays 'God Save the King' on a drum.

This is the kind of subject
That he gives to us day by day;
You may jeer at the absence of all technique,
But these are the pictures the people seek
From this justly renowned R.A.

In distant suburban boudoirs
You will find them, in gilded frames,
'The Prodigal Calf' (a homely scene)
'Grandmamma's Boots,' or 'To Gretna Green,'
The Works of Archibald Ames.

And, if they appeal to the public,
In the usual course of events,
Some enterprising manager comes,
And buys them up for enormous sums,
And they serve as advertisements.

Where the child is painting the kitten
With Potter's Indelible Dye,
While Grandpapa shows to the reckless cat
McBride's Indestructible Gibus Hat,
(Which Ev'ry one ought to buy).

And the Gretna Green arrangement
An interest new acquires,
By depicting how great the advantages are
Of the Patented Spoofenhauss Auto-car,
With unpuncturable tyres.

And the widow (Try Kay's for mourning),
As black as Stevenson's Ink,
Is curing the paupers of sundry ills
By the gift of a box of the Palest Pills
For persons who may be Pink.

And the bugler-boy in the battle,
With trousers of Blackett's Blue,
Unshrinking as Simpson's Serge, and free
As Winkleson's Patent Ear-drum he,
And steadfast as Holdhard's Glue.

This is the modern fashion
In the popular art of the day,
And this is the reason that Archibald Ames
Ranks high among other familiar names
As a very well-known R.A.

THE BALLAD OF PING-PONG

(After Swinburne)

The murmurous moments of May-time,
What bountiful blessings they bring!
As dew to the dawn of the day-time,
Suspicions of Summer to Spring!

Let others imagine the time light,
With maidens or books on their knee,
Or live in the languorous limelight
That tinges the trunk of the Tree.

Let the timorous turn to their tennis,
Or the bowls to which bumpkins belong,
But the thing for grown women and men is
The pastime of ping and of pong.

The game of the glorious glamour!
The feeling to fight till you fall!
The hurricane hail and the hammer!
The batter and bruise of the ball!

The glory of getting behind it!
The brief but bewildering bliss!
The fear of the failure to find it!
The madness at making a miss!

The sound of the sphere as you smack it,
Derisive, decisive, divine!
The riotous rush of your racket,
To mix and to mingle with mine!

The diadem dear to the King is,
How sweet to the singer his song;
To me so the plea of the ping is,
And the passionate plaint of the pong.

I live for it, love for it, like it;
Delight of my dearest of dreams!
To stand and to strive and to strike it, —
So certain, so simple it seems!

Then give me the game of the gay time,
The ball on its wandering wing,
The pastime for night or for day-time,
The Pong, not to mention the Ping!

THE PESSIMIST

(After Maeterlinck)

Life's bed is full of crumbs and rice,
No roses float on my lagoon;
There are no fingers, white and nice,
To rub my head with scented ice,
Or feed me with a spoon.

I think of all the days gone by,
Replete with black and blue regret;
No comets light my glaucous sky,
My tears are hardly ever dry,
I never can forget!

I see the yellow dog, Desire,
That strains against the lead of Hope,
With lilac eyes and lips of fire,
As all in vain he strives to tire
The hand that holds the rope.

I see the kisses of the past,
Like lambkins dying in the snow,
The honeymoon that did not last,
The tinted youth that flew so fast,
And all this vale of woe.

So, raising high my raucous cry,
I ask (and Fates no answer give),
Why am I pre-ordained to die?
O cruel Fortune, tell me, why
Am I allowed to live?

THE PLACE WHERE THE OLD CLEEK BROKE

(After Whyte-Melville)

Life is hollow to the golfer, of however high his rank,
If the dock-leaf and the nettle grow too free,
If a bramble bar his progress, if he's bunkered by a bank,
If his golf-ball jerks and wobbles off the tee.
There's a ditch I never pass, full of stones and broken glass,
And I'd sooner lift my ball and count a stroke,
For the tears my vision blot when I see the fatal spot,
'Tis the place where my old cleek broke.

There's his haft upon the table, there's his head upon a chair;
And a better never felt the summer rain;
I may curse and I may swear, my umbrella-stand is bare,
I shall never use my gallant cleek again!
With what unaccustomed speed would he strike the Golf-ball teed!
How it sounded on his metal at each stroke!
Not a flyer in the game such parabolas could claim,
At the place where the old cleek broke!

Was he cracked? I hardly think it. Did he slip? I do not know.
He had struck the ball for forty yards or more;
He was driving smooth and even, just as hard as he could go,
I had never seen him striking so before.
But I hardly can complain, for there must have been a strain
I had forced beyond the compass of a joke —
And no club, however strong, could have lasted over long
At the place where the old cleek broke!

There are men, both staid and sound, who hold it happiness unique,
At which only the irreverent can scoff,
That is reached by means of brassey, driver, niblick, spoon, or cleek,
And that life is not worth living without Golf.
Well, I hope it may be so; for myself I only know
That I never more shall try another stroke;
Yes, I've wearied of the sport, since a lesson I was taught,
At the place where the old cleek broke.

THE HOMES OF LONDON

(After Mrs. Hemans)

The happy homes of London,
How beautiful they stand!
The crowded human rookeries
That mar this Christian land.
Where cats in hordes upon the roof
For nightly music meet,
And the horse, with non-adhesive hoof,
Skates slowly down the street.

The merry homes of London!
Around bare hearths at night,
With hungry looks and sickly mien,
The children wail and fight.
There woman's voice is only heard
In shrill, abusive key,
And men can hardly speak a word
That is not blasphemy.

The healthy homes of London!
With weekly wifely wage,
The hopeless husbands, out of work,
Their daily thirst assuage.
The overcrowded tenement
Is comfortless and bare,
The atmosphere is redolent
Of hunger and despair.

The blessed homes of London!
By thousands, on her stones,
The helpless, homeless, destitute,
Do nightly rest their bones.
On pavements Piccadilly way,
In slumber like the dead,

Their wan pathetic forms they lay,
And make their humble bed.
The free, fair homes of London!
From all the thinking throng,
Who mourn a nation's apathy,
The cry goes up, 'How long!'
And those who love old England's name,
Her welfare and renown,
Can only contemplate with shame
The homes of London town.