CLUB CANTOS

Dignified, austere, infestive,

Stands the stately Athenaeum,

With an atmosphere suggestive

Of a mausoleum.

Freezing silence reigns within

( You can hear the falling pin! )

And the punster points with pride

To the frieze you get outside!

Here the Bishop, with his nether

Limbs in leggings swathed demurely

( Hatbrim fastened by a tether

To the crown securely ),

Buttonholes some friendly Duke,

To discuss the Pentateuch,

Or abstracts ( with absent mind )

All th’ umbrellas he can find.

Here each great and famous Briton

Snored and slumbered almost daily:

Thackeray and Bulwer Lytton,

Dickens and Disraeli.

Trollope through this doorway stept,

In that chair Macaulay slept,

While, with cotton in his ears,

Herbert Spencer snubbed his peers.

Here our scientific pedants

Write their Monographs on Rabbits

Or their studies of the Red-ant's

Socialistic habits.

Here the statesman threshes out

Themes of Philosophic Doubt,

While the Laureate scours each shelf

For a rhyme to‘ Guelph’ and‘ self.’

Poet, painter, politician,

Throng this Hall of the Immortals;

Sophist, sage, and statistician

Cross these pompous portals.

Here the pundits of the State

Herd with the Episcopate;

Scientist and learned lord

Mix with Mr. H-mphr-y W-rd.

If the roof fell in, ah me!

Where would Mother England be?