r.

What with your wardrobes stuffed with warrior gear,
Your gander-step parades, your prancing Prussians,
Your menaces that shocked the deafened sphere
With rude concussions;

Your fist that turned the pinkest rivals pale
Alike with sceptre, chisel, pen or palette,
And could at any moment, gloved in mail,
Smite like a mallet;

Master of all the Arts, and, what was more,
Lord of the limelight blaze that let us know it--
You seemed a gift designed on purpose for
The flippant poet.

Time passed and put to these old jests an end;
Into our open hearts you found admission,
Ate of our bread and pledged us like a friend
Above suspicion.

You shared our griefs with seeming-gentle eyes;
You moved among us cousinly entreated,
Still hiding, under that fair outward guise,
A heart that cheated.

And now the mask is down, and forth you stand
Known for a King whose word is no great matter,
A traitor proved, for every honest hand
To strike and shatter.

This was the "Day" foretold by yours and you
In whispers here, and there with beery clamours--
You and your rat-hole spies and blustering crew
Of loud Potsdamers.

And lo, there dawns another, swift and stern,
When on the wheels of wrath, by Justice' token,
Breaker of God's own Peace, you shall in turn
Yourself be broken.

O. S.

* * * * *

A DETERMINED ISLAND.

II.

I continue this record of our daily lives at Totland Bay on August 12th.
Before it appears in _Mr. Punch's_ columns great and decisive events may
have happened, but at present, except for such slight distractions as I
shall relate, we are still calm and peaceful. When we think or speak of
Belgium our faces glow, and we are all resolved, should the need arise,
to do as Belgium has done, and to do it in the same resolute and
unconquerable spirit. In the meantime we rush for the newspapers with a
constantly increasing eagerness. At about 11 A.M. the whole of Totland
Bay is filled with people reading their papers in the open air.
Everybody bumps into everybody else, but nobody minds. A gentleman the
other day set out in a canoe and read the morning's news to a party of
swimmers, who appeared to be much invigorated by what they heard.

On Sunday night, just as we had finished dinner, we suddenly heard the
report of a great gun