"Four little whitey boys out for a run,

Ate early greeny food. Then there were none!"

Who-o-o-f! It's hot amost as Summer-time; yet what a blessed breeze

Is a-whiffing round the corners, and a-whoostling through the trees!

And the sunlight on the roof-slates, all aslant to the blue sky,

Seems to twinkle like the larfter in a pooty gurl's blue eye,

When you swing in the dance, and she feels you've got 'er step:

And the trees—ah! bless their branches!—through the winter weeks they've slep',

When the worrying winds would let 'em, all as black and mum as mutes,

A-waiting for the blackbirds, with their calls like meller flutes.

Just to whistle them awake like. Oh! but now they stir and rouse

Like a girl who has bin dreamin' of her lover in a drowse,

And wakes up to feel 'is kisses on 'er softly poutin' lips.

How they burst, all a-thirst for the April shower that drips

Tinkle-tink from leaf to leaf, washing every spraylet clean

From the sooty veil of London, which might dim the buddin' green

Of the pluckiest lime-tree, sproutin' o'er brown pales in a back-yard;

For these limes bud betimes, and they find it middlin' hard

To make way at windy corners, when the lamp as lights 'em through,

Like gold on green in pantomimes, is blown till it burns blue,

By the angry nor'east gusts. But the nor'east wind to-day

Is less like a rampin' lion than some new-born lamb at play.

Wy, the laylock's out aready, purple spires and creamy clumps.

Oh, that scent of shower-washed laylock! There's a somethin' in me jumps

As I ketch it round some corner, where the heart-shaped leaflets small

Cluster up against the stucco, as they did about that wall,

Grey, and gritty, and glass-spiked, of our tumble-down old cot

Out Epping way, in boy-time long ago, and quite a lot

Of remembrances came crowding, like good ghostes, in that scent;

There's the mother's call to dinner, there's the landlord's call—for rent!

And the call of the rooks,—and another call, fur off,

Like a whisper from a grave-yard, green and silent.

Some may scoff

At a Cockney's chat of laylocks. I could bury my old phiz

In their crisp and nutty coolness, as I did when flirty Liz,

My first sweetheart, sent me packing, one Spring mornin'—for a while—

And them blossoms cooled my anger—most as much as the arch smile

Which won me back to wooin'.

There's a blackbird on the top

Of yon tall, half bare acacia, pipes as if he'd never stop,

Tryin' all his tunelets over, like a sort of talking flute:—

"Chip-chip! Tsee-tsee! Chu-chu! Chu-rook!" goes the bird of sable suit.

"We-know-it! We-know-it! We-know-it! Bring-the-whip!—the whip!—the whip!

"Chu-rook-chu-chu! Chu-rook-chu-chu! Tsee-tsee-chu-chu-chip-chip!"

So he pours his pantin' heart out in a song half tune, half patter,

Like a meller music-haller of the tree-tops!

Ah—what matter

That 'tis only London's outskirts, that I'm a poor Cockney cove,

When this Wondrous Spring is on us? As my shallow on I shove,

And blare out my "All-a-blowing, All-a-growing!" down the streets,

There's a something fresh and shining-like in every face I meets!

Tis the Spring-love breaking through them! Wy, the very dirt looks clean

In the shimmer of the sunlight, and the shadow of the green.

All-a-blowing! All-a-growing! When I shout, I seem to sing,

For my cry takes on a music. It's the very Voice of Spring!

Cried Genius A. to Genius B., "Let's summon Genius C.,

And, to make a partie carrée, we will call in Genius D."

And when they were assembled these solemn four sat down,

And they all read Mr. Balfour's speech, and read it with a frown.

Said Genius A., "No Geniuses? By Heaven, he's talking rot!"

And Genius B. replied thereto, "I can't say he is not."

And C. and D., the poets, who warble like the birds,

Agreed with Genius A. and B. in scorning Balfour's words.

"A Genius may arise, he says; that's coming it too strong;

Why, dash it, I can count up three in prose and eke in song!"

Thus A. began; the three replied, "You're not an egoist;

You quite forgot to add yourself, and so complete the list."

"We'll prove it on the spot," declared dramatic Genius A.

"You three shall sit as judges, and I will read my play.

'Tis a drama of the passions, all strictly based on facts,

And they break the Decalogue to bits in five exhaustive Acts."

"That might be good," said B.; "but I've a little thing, I guess,

Which ought to take precedence, a novel in MS.;

With characters so deftly drawn in all their changing scenes,

That Thackeray and Dickens must be knocked to smithereens."

But C. broke in; his hair was long, his eyes were very wild,

He was in truth a strangely-garbed and most poetic child;

Said he, "Your plays and novels may all be very well,

But I've an epic poem here on Happiness in Hell."

And D., the pretty lyricist, he hummed and then he hawed,

"I've half a hundred sonnets here to Mabel, Madge, and Maud.

I'll read them first, and then I'll read"—the other three grew pale—

"My last new book, The Musings of a Town-bred Nightingale."

*            *            *            *            *            *

And so they sat, and talked and talked, the argument waxed hot,

For each one was a Genius born, and none would budge a jot.

And till they settle who begins, and which of them shall yield,

I fear the "dearth of Geniuses"—see speech—must hold the field.