"WHITTINGTON REDIVIVUS;"

Hear the loud Election bells— Noisy bells! What a world of wonderment their clatter-clash compels! How they jangle, jangle, jangle, On the air of coming night! Like committee-men a-wrangle, And my thoughts are in a tangle Of mixed doldrums and delight. How they chime, chime, chime! In my head there runs a rhyme, And I wish I were but certain what their shindying foretells, What a future I may gather from the voices of the bells— The jangling and the wrangling of the bells! Now they sound like wedding bells, Golden bells! Meaning mischief in their music to the Moderates and the swells! Their vibrations there's a vox in Which to me sounds like a tocsin. From their molten golden notes, All in tune, What a pleasant sound there floats Like a promise of Progressive Party Votes, Blessed boon! Oh, from Bow to Sadler's Wells, What a gush of Unity voluminously swells. How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the Progress that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells. From the Brixtons, Claphams, Southwarks, Islingtons and Clerkenwells, To the rhyming and the chiming of those bells! Hear the Rate-Alarum bells— Brazen bells!— What base tarradiddles their loud turbulency tells! In men's startled ears in spite, How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak They can only shriek, shriek, Through the fog, In a clamorous appealing to the voters to retire That much Progressive Party, which—much like the Rates, or fire— Climbeth higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a bullying endeavour Now—now to sit, or never In the seat of Gog-Magog! Oh, those bells, bells, bells, What a tale their terror tells Of despair! What reactionary roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the City and Mayfair. Yet the ear it fully knows By their twanging And their clanging How the voting ebbs and flows. Yet the ear distinctly tells In the jangling and the wrangling How Monopoly sinks or swells By the sinking or the swelling in the clangour of those bells— Beastly bells!— is Landlordism, Ground-rents, Dirty Slums, and Drinking Hells In the clamour of those horrid Moderate bells! Hear the rolling of the bells,— Polling bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels. So Dick Whittington—poor wight!— Heard them ringing, with delight At the fair prophetic promise of their tone! For every sound that floats May I too hope my votes Will have grown? And the People—ah, the People!— Is their verdict, from each steeple, All mine own? Does that tolling, tolling, tolling, Mean "Return again my Dick!" Or do they as they're rolling Mean "turn out" or "cut your stick!"? Shall I be "Lord Mayor of London"? Or are we Progressives undone At the Polls? Pussy, what is it that tolls From each belfry, as it rolls, Rolls? A pæan from the bells To the Party of the Swells? Or a message from the bells That Reaction howls and yells? Does that tintinnabulation Mean false Joe's "Tenification" Or our own "Unification"? Sounds dear "Betterment" this time In the rolling Runic rhyme Of the bells? Does their throbbing mean that jobbing, And the London Landlord's robbing, Find their finish in these bells? That Monopoly is sobbing To the sobbing of those bells? That their knells, knells, knells, Ring out in Runic rhyme? Does the rolling of those bells Mean that I turn out this time? Can they possibly mean that, Faithful, purring, Pussy-Cat, After all your sweet mol-rowing? Sounds the verdict "Dick is going" In the tolling of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, In the moaning and the groaning of the bells?