Volume 103 — LOCAL COLOUR.
Reading edition
Mr. Alfred Austin, in his new poem, Fortunatus, the Pessimist, has hit upon a new notion, to say nothing of a novel rhyme. Sings he:—
"When the foal and brood-mare hinny, And in every cut-down spinney Lady's-Smocks grow mauve and mauver, Then the Winter days are over."
This opens a polychromatic vista to the New Poetry. Technical Art comes to the aid of the elder Muses. The products of gas-tar alone should greatly regenerate a something time-worn poetic phraseology. As thus:—
When the poet, Mr. Pennyline, Is inspired by beauteous Aniline, Products chemical and gas-tarry Give the modern Muse new mastery. Mauve may chime with love, and mauver Form a decent rhyme to lover; While (and if not, why not?) mauvest Antiphonetic proves to lovest. (Verse erotic always sports Tricksily with longs and shorts. Verbal votaries of Venus Are an arbitrary genus, And as arrogant as Howells In their dealings with the vowels. Love, move, rove, linked in a sonnet, Pass for rhymes; the best have done it!) Then again there is Magenta! Surely science never sent a Handier rhyme to—well, polenta, Or (for Cockney Muses) Mentor! The poetic sense auricular Can't afford to be particular. Rags of rhymes, mere assonances, Now must serve. Pegasus prances, Like a Buffalo Bill buck-jumper, When you have a "regular stumper" (Such as "silver") do not care about Perfect rhyming; "there or thereabout" Is the Muse's maxim now. You may get (bards have, I trow) Rhyme's last minimum irreducible, From dye-vat, retort, or crucible.
Verily (as Touchstone says), "I'll rhyme you so, eight years together, dinners and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted." And if it is "the right butterwoman's rate to market," or "the very false gallop of verses," it is at any rate good enough for a long-eared public or a postulant for the Laureateship.