P.'s party tussles,
Of all the noisy votaries of CARL MARX;
Of all save slumber and Unmitigated Larks!
IV.
Dear are the memories of our wedded lives,
Dear also are the outfits of our wives,
And their huge trunks: but this is a sweet change!
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Charwomen prowl thereby: our halls look strange,
Our suites are swathed like ghosts. Here all is joy,
And, by the stirless silence rendered bold,
The very gulls stand round with furled wings.
What do _you_ think of it, TOBY, my boy?
The Session's Bills are half-forgotten things.
Is there discussion in our little Isle?
Let Parties broken so remain.
Factions are hard to reconcile:
Prate not of Law and Order--by the main!
There _is_ a fussiness worse than death
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Lost labour, and sheer waste of breath,
Sore task to hearts dead beat by many wars,
And ears grown dumb with listening to loud party jars.
V.
But propt on sand and pebbles rolly-olly
How sweet (while briny breezes fan us lowly)
With half-dropt eyelids still,
Beneath a boat-side tarry, coally,
To watch the long white breakers drawing slowly
Up to the curling turn and foamy spill--
To hear far-off the wheezy Town-Crier calling,
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" Truly, TOBIAS mine,
This _solitude a deux_ is most divine;
A Congress we--of Two; where no outfalling
Is possible.
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