England's Alfred Abroad

[M. Alfred Austin, poete-laureat d'Angleterre, vient d'arriver a Nice, o il a devance la Reine. Il etait, hier, dans les jardins de Monte-Carlo. Sera-ce sous notre ciel qu'il ecrira son premier poeme?, Menton-Mondain.]     Wrong? are they wrong? Of course they are,         I venture to reply;     For I bore 'my first' (and, I hope, my worst)         A month or so gone by;     And I can't repeat it under this         Or any other sky.     What! has the public never heard         In these benighted climes     That nascent note of my Laureate throat,         That fluty fitte of rhymes     Which occupied about a half         A column of the Times?     They little know what they have lost,         Nor what a carnal beano     They might have spent in the thick of Lent         If only Daniel Leno     Had sung them Jameson's Ride and knocked         The Monaco Casino.     Some day the croupiers' furtive eyes         Will all be wringing wet;     Even the Prince will hardly mince         The language of regret     At entertaining unawares         The famed Alhambra Pet.     But still not quite incognito         I mark the moving scene,     In a tepid zone where (like my own)         The palms are ever green,     And find myself reported as         A herald of the Queen.     Here where aloft the heavens are blue,         And blue the seas below,     I roll my eye and fondly try         To get the rhymes to go,     As I pace The Garden that I love,         Composing all I know.     But when my poet-pinions droop,         And all the air is wan,     I enter in to the courts of sin         And put a louis on,     And hold my heart and look again,         And lo! the thing is gone!     Wrong? is it wrong? To baser crafts         Has England's Alfred pandered,     Who once to the sign of Phbus' shrine         With awesome gait meandered,     And ever wrote in the cause of right         According to his Standard?     Nay! this is life! to take a turn         On Fortune's captious crust;     To pluck the day in a human way         Like men of common dust;     But O! if England's only bard         Should absolutely bust!     A laureate never borrows on         His coming quarter's pay;     And I mean to stop or ever I pop         My crown of peerless bay;     So I'll take the next rapide to Nice,         And the 'bus to Cimiez.     MENTONE, Feb. 1896.