Aubrey Beer de Beers,
Are there no models at your gate,
Live, shapely, possible and clean?
Or won't they do to 'decorate'?
Then by all means bestrew your scenes
With half the lotuses that blow,
Pothooks and fishing-lines and things,
But let the human woman go!

VI. A NEW BLUE BOOK.

[It was hardly to be supposed that the young decadents who once rioted
... in the _Yellow Book_ would be content to remain in obscurity after
the metamorphosis of that periodical and the consequent exclusion of
themselves. The _Savoy_, we learn, to be edited by Mr. Arthur Symons
and Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, will appear early in December.--_Globe_.]

'The world's great age begins anew,'
Cold virtue's weeds are cast;
Our heads are light, our tales are blue,
And things are moving fast;
And no one any longer quarrels
With anybody else's morals.

A racier journal stamps its pages
With Beardsleys braver far;
A bolder Editor engages
To shame the morning star,
On _London Nights_, not near so chilly,
Sampling a shadier Piccadilly.

Satyr and Faun their late repose
Now burst like anything;
New Maenads, turning sprightlier toes,
Enjoy a jauntier fling;
With lustier lips old Pan shall play
Drain-pipes along the sewer's way.

Priapus, wrongly left for dead,
Is dead no more than Pan;
Silenus rises from his bed
And hiccups like a man;
There's something rather chaste (between us)
About Priapus and Silenus.

O cease to brew your Bodley pap
Whence all the spice is spent!
The splendour of its primal tap
Was gone when Aubrey went;
Behold that subtle Sphinx prepare
Fresh liquors fit to lift your hair.

Another Magazine shall rise
And paint the palsied town,
Of humbler hue, of simpler size,
And sold at half a crown;
Please note the pregnant brand--_Savoy_,
And don't confuse with _saveloy_.[*]

FOOTNOTES:

[*] Saveloy, a kind of sausage; French _cervelas_, from its containing
brains.--SKEAT.

VII. TO A BOY-POET OF THE DECADENCE.

[Showing curious reversal of epigram--'La nature l'a fait sanglier; la
civilisation l'a reduit a l'etat de cochon.']

But my good little man, you have made a mistake
If you really are pleased to suppose
That the Thames is alight with the lyrics you make;
We could all do the same if we chose.

From Solomon down, we may read, as we run,
Of the way