The Athenaeum (Club Cantos)

Dignified, austere, infestive,
Stands the stately Athenaeum,
With an atmosphere suggestive
Of a mausoleum.
Freezing silence reigns within
(You can hear the falling pin! )
And the punster points with pride
To the _frieze_ you get outside!

Here the Bishop, with his nether
Limbs in leggings swathed demurely
(Hatbrim fastened by a tether
To the crown securely),
Buttonholes some friendly Duke,
To discuss the Pentateuch,
Or abstracts (with absent mind)
All th' umbrellas he can find.

Here each great and famous Briton
Snored and slumbered almost daily:
Thackeray and Bulwer Lytton,
Dickens and Disraeli.
Trollope through this doorway stept,
In that chair Macaulay slept,
While, with cotton in his ears,
Herbert Spencer snubbed his peers.

Here our scientific pedants
Write their Monographs on Rabbits
Or their studies of the Red-ant's
Socialistic habits.
Here the statesman threshes out
Themes of Philosophic Doubt,
While the Laureate scours each shelf
For a rhyme to 'Guelph' and 'self.'

Poet, painter, politician,
Throng this Hall of the Immortals;
Sophist, sage, and statistician
Cross these pompous portals.
Here the pundits of the State
Herd with the Episcopate;
Scientist and learned lord
Mix with Mr. H-mphr-y W-rd.

If the roof fell in, ah me!
Where would Mother England be?

End of title