No More Learning

They cry "He is so sleek and slim,
It's quite a treat to look at him! "

They vanish in tobacco smoke,
Those visionary maids--
I feel a sharp and sudden poke
Between the shoulder-blades--
"Why, Brown, my boy! Your growing stout! "
(I told you he would find me out! )

"My growth is not _your_ business, Sir! "
"No more it is, my boy!
But if it's _yours_, as I infer,
Why, Brown, I give you joy!
A man, whose business prospers so,
Is just the sort of man to know!

"It's hardly safe, though, talking here--
I'd best get out of reach:
For such a weight as yours, I fear,
Must shortly sink the beach! "--
Insult me thus because I'm stout!
I vow I'll go and call him out!

[Picture: For such a weight as yours . . . ]




ATALANTA IN CAMDEN-TOWN


Ay, 'twas here, on this spot,
In that summer of yore,
Atalanta did not
Vote my presence a bore,
Nor reply to my tenderest talk "She had
heard all that nonsense before.
"

She'd the brooch I had bought
And the necklace and sash on,
And her heart, as I thought,
Was alive to my passion;
And she'd done up her hair in the style that
the Empress had brought into fashion.

I had been to the play
With my pearl of a Peri--
But, for all I could say,
She declared she was weary,
That "the place was so crowded and hot, and
she couldn't abide that Dundreary. "

[Picture: On this spot . . . ]

Then I thought "Lucky boy!
'Tis for _you_ that she whimpers! "
And I noted with joy
Those sensational simpers:
And I said "This is scrumptious! "--a
phrase I had learned from the Devonshire shrimpers.

And I vowed "'Twill be said
I'm a fortunate fellow,
When the breakfast is spread,
When the topers are mellow,
When the foam of the bride-cake is white,
and the fierce orange-blossoms are yellow! "

O that languishing yawn!
O those eloquent eyes!
I was drunk with the dawn
Of a splendid surmise--
I was stung by a look, I was slain by a tear,
by a tempest of sighs.

Then I whispered "I see
The sweet secret thou keepest.
And the yearning for _ME_
That thou wistfully weepest!
And the question is 'License or Banns?