row to furrow,
To sit out speeches arguing round and round,
From County or from Borough.
The Members, like wild rabbits, scudded through
The lobbies, took their seats, lounged, yawned--and vanished.
The Whips like spectres wandered; well they knew
All discipline was banished.
The blatant bore,--the faddist, and the fool,
Were listened to with an indifferent tameness.
The windbag of the new Hibernian school
Railed on with shocking sameness.
The moping M.P. motionless and stiff,
Who, on his bench sat silently and stilly,
Gawped with round eyes and pendulous lips, as if
He had been stricken silly:
No cheery sound, except when far away
Came echoes of 'cute LABBY's cynic laughter,
Which, sick of Dumbleborough's chattering jay,
His listeners rambled after.
But Echo's self tires of a GRAHAM's tongue,
Rot blent with rudeness gentlest nymph can't pardon.
Why e'en the G.O.M. his grey head hung,
And wished he were at Hawarden.
Like vine unpruned, SEXTON's exuberant speech
Sprawled o'er the question with the which he'd grapple;
PICTON prosed on,--the style in which men preach
In a dissenting chapel.
Prince ARTHUR twined one lank leg t'other round,
Drooping a long chin like BURNE-JONES's ladies;
And HARCOURT, sickening of the strident sound,
Wished CONYBEARE in Hades.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of imminent doom the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The House is Haunted!

II.

Oh, very gloomy is this House of Woe,
Where yawns are numerous while Big Ben is knelling.
It is not on the Session dull and slow,
These pale M.P.'s are dwelling.
Oh, very, very dreary is the gloom,
But M.P.'s heed not HEALY's elocution;
Each one is wondering what may be his doom
After the Dissolution!

That House of Woe must soon be closed to all
Who linger now therein with tedium mortal,
And of those lingerers a proportion small
Again may pass its portal.
There's many a one who o'er its threshold stole
In Eighty-Six's curious Party tangle,
Who for the votes which helped him head the poll
In vain again may angle.
The GRAHAMS and the CALDWELLS may look bold,
So may the CONYBEARES, and COBBS and TANNERS;
But the next House quite other men may hold,
And (let's hope) other manners.
They'd like to know when this will close its door
Upon each moribund