POETRY.

A LIBERAL RETROSPECT.

(According to the British Weekly, the Liberals "were never more sanguine or Serene than at the opening of the New Year.")

WHEN we survey the sessions, especially the last, Since Britain's strength and honour into our keeping passed, Comparing all that has been with all that might have been, What wonder if we Liberals feel sanguine and serene!

Wecrv-eshunted honest Elgin to advance a renegade ; Eliminated Loreburn, who called a spade a spade; Thrown Horace Plunkett to the wolves of faction and Gombeen ; Yet all the while our attitude was sanguine and serene.

We've shown our love of Empire in a very concrete shape By lending Pentland to Madras and Gladstone to the Cape ; While underneath the velvet rule of gentle Aberdeen The A. 0. H. grows daily more sanguine and serene.

We've helped Trade Unionists to bid the Law a long good-bye; Allowed Ben Tillett to control the nation's food supply ; Released the fair incendiaries who scatter paraffin, And helped to make the criminal more sanguine and serene.

We've gerrymandered Justice with the aid of " Jester " Jones ; We've shown our business talents in the sphere of telephones ; Three Education Ministers have flashed across the scene, But School Inspectors now have grown more sanguine and serene.

We've giv'n more railway passengers a chance of kingdom come By boldly legalizing the sacred rights of rum ; Yet staunch supporters of the cause of Temperance we've been, For bigotry is hateful when you're sanguine and serene.

We've standardized veracity, and serve it fresh and pure, According to the formula of Hem merde and Ure ; We've proved that dukes and landlords are birds of prey obscene And taught their libellers to feel more sanguine and serene.

We've watched the Tories quail before the intellect of Mond ;* We've seen Chiozza plunge them in a Slough of dire Despond ; Unerring in arithmetic, implacable in mien, Never were propagandists more sanguine or serene.

We've set the seal of statesmanship on George's Liruehouse lingo And turned good Frederic Harrison into a sort of Jingo ;— 'Tis pity that a sage who once upheld the Guillotine Should ultimately cease to be both sanguine and serene.

Professing to be champions of the needy and the sick, We've cut their truest helpers—the doctors—to the quick ; And dislocating utterly the medical machine, Declare that we have never been more sanguine or serene.

When Party men at times assumed an independent tone, By decorating discontent we cleared the danger zone ; Our choice of Peers and baronets has stirred the Nation's spleen, But we cannot be fastidious and sanguine and serene.

We've turned Britannia's trident into a two-horned prong ; We know, whatever Ulster does, that Ulster will be wrong ; We dare not let the Union Jack float over College Green— Such conduct would be neither just nor sanguine and serene.

In Wales our single motive is to purify the Church, Though disinclined to leave the claims of Mammon in the lurch ; But though of self-respect we keep not one small smithereen, Come weal, come woe, the front we show is sanguine and serene.

C. L. G.