POETRY.

"EX PARTE " PORTRAITS.

[" Pictures like these, dear Madam ! to design. Asksno firm hand and no unerring line ; Some wand'ring touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke, alone can hit 'em right : For how should equal colours do the knack ? - Chameleons who can paint in white and black Y ".

• —Pops.] No. WINSTON CHURCHILL.

Daman into devious channels by your longing to outshine All the deeds that gild the annals of a memorable line; Ever planning new surprises public notice to engage, In a dozen diffrent guises have you bounded on the stage.

Prom your earliest days at Harrow, that renowned scholastic hive, Planted in Tour inmost marrow was the purpose to arrive ; Hence imperfectly enamoured' of the groves of Academe, For an ampler space you clamoured in the popular esteem. Thus you made your life a solo in the high bravura style Whether you were playing polo, or campaigning on the Nile ; Fraternising with a vulture, as you dodged the Burgher host, Or entrancing with your culture readers of the Morning Post.

Freed from regimental fetters which your soaring spirit galled, By the magic spell of letters you were for a time enthralled ; Chronicles of war inditing, touching the romantic lyre, Or with filial fervour writing memoirs of your stormy sire.

Like the famed Pellaean stripling, whose unconscionable mind Strove (in spite of Mr. Kipling) East and West in one to bind, You, athirst for greater glories than one party could provide, Were alternately with Tories and with Radicals allied.

By ambition never sleeping spurred to startle and astound, Yet your ear for ever keeping diligently to the ground, By a premature conversion yon neglected to discern Chances for your self-assertion that may never more return.

Strange it is to see the cronies you have taken to of late— Not the gilded macaronis of your unregenerate state. Now you welcome all plebeians as your bosom friends at sight, And pale pacifists with paeans greet you as a second Bright.

Lending an alert attention to the murmurs of the mob, Of dramatic intervention you have made a special job ; Stimulating party bosses when elections go astray ; Volunteering copious glosses on the frugal text of Grey.

As an orator effective in a strident florid strain, Happiest in sheer invective, more hubristic than humane; Witty, yet too often sinning by your vitriolic verve; Seldom you succeed in winning eulogy without reserve.

Modelling your style on Gibbon's (so the paragraphers say), With your tropes and tags and ribbons you have made it wondrous gay; Galvanising airs and graces old as the eternal hills, Titivating commonplaces with sesquipedalian frills.

Quite the Admirable Crichton of an undistinguished age, Like s Ministerial Triton'mid the minnows you rampage ; With the frenzy of a Zulu plunging madly in the fray, While the suave, impassive Lulu listens with serene dismay.

Now you hunt, a lively couple, with your little friend from Wales— Both of you adroit and supple, on humanitarian trails; Dear to all the cheapest papers for the copy you supply Gratis by your agile capers cut to please the public eye.

Thus your course is splashed with colour, shot with Transatlantic vim, And St. Stephen's would be duller if your sanguine star grew dim ; For although the Tories hate you, yet, when you aro in the van, Nobody should underrate you as a first-class fighting man.

C. L. G.