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APPARENT FAILURE.

11*

APPARENT FAILURE.

"We shall soon lose a celebrated building."

Paris Newspaper.

1.

No, for I'll save it! Seven years since,
I passed through Paris, stopped a day
To see the baptism of your Prince ;

Saw, made my bow, and went my way:
Walking the heat and headache off,

I took the Seine-side, you surmise,
Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,
Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies,
So sauntered till what met my eyes?

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2.

Only the Doric little Morgue!

drowned:

The dead-house where you show your Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,

Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.

One pays one's debt in such a case;

I plucked up heart and entered, stalked,

Keeping a tolerable face

Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked :

Let them! No Briton's to be balked!

3.

First came the silent gazers; next,
A screen of glass, we're thankful for ;
Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text,

The three men who did most abhor
Their life in Paris yesterday,

So killed themselves: and now, enthroned

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Each on his copper couch, they lay

Fronting me, waiting to be owned.
I thought, and think, their sin 's atoned.

4.

Poor men, God made, and all for that!

The reverence struck me; o'er each head Religiously was hung its hat,

Each coat dripped by the owner's bed, Sacred from touch: each had his berth,

His bounds, his proper place of rest,

Who last night tenanted on earth

Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast, Unless the plain asphalte seemed best.

5.

How did it happen, my poor boy?

You wanted to be Buonaparte

And have the Tuileries for toy,

And could not, so it broke your heart?

You, old one by his side, I judge,

Were, red as blood, a socialist,

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What fancy was it, turned your brain?

O, women were the prize for you! Money gets women, cards and dice

Get money, and ill-luck gets just

The copper couch and one clear nice
Cool squirt of water o'er your bust,
The right thing to extinguish lust!

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