s rustle the rover
Through brushwood and fern to a glad "Gone away!"
With a "Come along, Pilot!"--one spur-touch and over--
The huntsman is clear on his galloping grey;
Before him the pack's running straight on the stubble--
"_Toot-toot-too-too-too-oot!_" "_Tow-row-ow-ow-ow!_"
The leaders are clambering up through the double
And glittering away on the brown of the plough.

The front rank, hands down, have the big fence's measure;
The faint-hearts are craning to left and to right;
The Master goes through with a crash on "The Treasure;"
The grey takes the lot like a gull in his flight;
There's a brown crumpled up, lying still as a dead one;
There's a roan mare refusing, as stubborn as sin;
While the breaker flogs up on a green underbred one
And smashes the far-away rail with a grin.

The chase carries on over hilltop and hollow,
The life of Old England, the pluck and the fun;
And who would ask more than a stiff line to follow
With hounds running hard in the Opening Run?

W. H. O.

* * * * *

IN PRAISE OF THE PELICANS.

The pelicans in St. James's Park
On every day from dawn to dark
Pursue, inscrutable of mien,
A fixed unvarying routine.
Whatever be the wind or weather
They spend their time in peace together,
And plainly nothing can upset
The harmony of their quartet.

Most punctually by the clock
They roost upon or quit their rock,
Or swim ashore and hold their levee,
Lords of the mixed lacustrine bevy;
Or with their slow unwieldy gait
Their green domain perambulate,
Or with prodigious flaps and prances
Indulge in their peculiar dances,
Returning to their feeding-ground
What time the keeper goes his round
With fish and scraps for their nutrition
After laborious deglutition.

Calm, self-sufficing, self-possessed,
They never mingle with the rest,
Watching with not unfriendly eye
The antics of the lesser fry,
Save when bold sparrows draw too near
Their mighty beaks--and disappear.

Outlandish birds, at times grotesque,
And yet superbly picturesque,
Although resignedly we mourn
A Park dismantled and forlorn,
Long may it be ere you forsake
Your quarters on the minished Lake;
For there, with splendid plumes and hues
And ways that startle and amuse,
You constantly refresh the eye
And cheer the heart of passers-by,
Untouched by years of