70
 | An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Cassell's Magazine Volume 31-0082.png}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
I know a land where it is afternoon
Sometimes, but mostly evening; where the sun
Shines not at all, but where a pasteboard moon
With incandescent eye winks feebly on
Monarch & bandit, dashing gay dragoon,
Maid in distress, gay Frenchman, stately Don,
Rage, humour, greed,
tears sandwiched into laughter
Estrangement first
& reconcilement after.
There have I met the Melancholy Dane,
Striving to fight unconquerable ill,
There have I seen the noble Moor in vain
Combat, the wild tormenting thirst to kill
What he loved best; and there amid a train
Of sprites & fairies, seen a sight that still
In a more real world is seen alas!
A fairy queen enamoured of an Ass.
There enter we on scenes of revelry
By potent aid of that magician’s wand
The blythe conductors baton waved
Tempering the wind of instrumental band on high,
To the stage lambs, whose shepherds cheerily
Threading the dance, with damsels hand in hand
Sooth the distracted heroine’s anxiety
With jödelling choruses of Lurlurliety.
There we may see the villain pause to think
On happier times, ere he had fallen so low,
And watch his arm arrested on the brink
Of dealing out the deadly coward’s blow
Full in the hero’s midriff
ere he drink
The fiery beaker
of best (stage) Bordeaux,
By hearing—Mercy! Can it be?
Just Heaven,
It is!—the village clock
striking eleven.
