_ "AIN'T YOU ASHAMED TO GO BATTING THESE DAYS?"]
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[Illustration: "NAH, ALL THEM AS IS WILLIN' TO COME ALONG O' ME, PLEASE
SIGNIFY THE SAME IN THE USUAL MANNER. CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY."]
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TO A MODERN MUSE.
O Metaphasia, peerless maid,
How can I fitly sing
The priceless decorative aid
To dialogue you bring,
Enabling serious folk, whose brains
Are commonplace and crude,
To soar to unimagined planes
Of sweet ineptitude.
Changed by your magic, common-sense
Nonsensical appears,
And stars of sober influence
Shoot madly from their spheres.
You lure us from the beaten track,
From minding P.'s and Q.'s,
To paths where white is always black
And pies resemble pews.
Strange beasts, more strange than the giraffe,
You conjure up to view,
The flue-box and the forking-calf,
Unknown at any Zoo;
And new vocations you unfold,
Wonder on wonder heaping,
Hell-banging for the over-bold,
And toffee-cavern keeping.
With you we hatch the pasty snipe,
And all undaunted face
Huge fish of unfamiliar type--
Bush-pike and bubble-dace;
Or, fired by hopes of lyric fame,
We deviate from prose,
And make it our especial aim
Bun-sonnets to compose.
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