let them know at once that they are hopelessly
old-fashioned. The New Poetry in its _highest_ expression banishes
form, regularity and rhythm, and treats rhyme with unexampled
barbarity. Here and there, it is true, rhymes get paired off quite
happily in the conventional manner, but directly afterwards you may
come upon a poor weak little rhyme who will cry in vain for his mate
through half a dozen interloping lines. Indeed, cases have been known
of rhymes that have been left on a sort of desert island of a verse,
and have never been fetched away. And sometimes when the lines have
got chopped very short, the rhymes have tumbled overboard altogether.
That is really what is meant by "impressionism" in poetry carried to
its highest excellence. There are, of course, other forms of the New
Poetry. There is the "blustering, hob-nailed" variety which clatters
up and down with immense noise, elbows you here, and kicks you there,
and if it finds a pardonable weakness strolling about in the middle of
the street, immediately knocks it down and tramples upon it. Then too
there is the "coarse, but manly" kind which swears by the great god,
Jingo, and keeps a large stock of spread eagles always ready to swoop
and tear without the least provocation.

However, _Mr. Punch_ may as well let his specimens speak for
themselves. Here, then, is

NO. I.--A GRAVESEND GREGORIAN.

BY W.E. H-NL-Y. (_CON BRIO._)

Deep in a murky hole,
Cavernous, untransparent, fetid, dank,
The demiurgus of the servants' hall,
The scuttle-bearing buttons, boon and blank
And grimy loads his evening load of coals,
Filled with respect for the cook's and butler's rank,
Lo, the round cook half fills the hot retreat,
Her kitchen, where the odours of the meat,
The cabbage and sweets all merge as in a pall,
The stale unsavoury remnants of the feast.
Here, with abounding confluences of onion,
Whose vastitudes of perfume tear the soul
In wish of the not unpotatoed stew,
They float and fade and flutter like morning dew.
And all the copper pots and pans in line,
A burnished army of bright utensils, shine;
And the stern butler heedless of his bunion
Looks happy, and the tabby-cat of the house
Forgets the elusive, but recurrent mouse
And purrs and dreams;
And in his corner the black-beetle seems
A plumed Black Prince arrayed in gleaming mail;
Whereat the shrinking scullery-maid grows pale,
And flies for succour to THOMA