No More Learning

"

They vanish in tobacco smoke,
Those visionary maids--
I feel a sharp and sudden poke
Between the shoulder-blades--
"Why, Brown, my boy! You're 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!

[Illustration]




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.

[Illustration]

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. "

Then I thought "'Tis for me
That she whines and she whimpers!
"
And it soothed me to see
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.

And I whispered "'Tis time!
Is not Love at its deepest?
Shall we squander Life's prime,
While thou waitest and weepest?
Let us settle it, License or Banns? --though undoubtedly Banns are the
cheapest. "

"Ah, my Hero," said I,
"Let me be thy Leander! "
But I lost her reply--
Something ending with "gander"--
For the omnibus rattled so loud that no mortal could quite understand
her.




THE LANG COORTIN'.


The ladye she stood at her lattice high,
Wi' her doggie at her feet;
Thorough the lattice she can spy
The passers in the street.

"There's one that standeth at the door,
And tirleth at the pin:
Now speak and say, my popinjay,
If I sall let him in.