reprinted in every edition until 1851, when it was suppressed.]

Sure never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.
Stand off, or else my skipping-rope
Will hit you in the eye.
How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!
How fairy-like you fly!
Go, get you gone, you muse and mope--
I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Or tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope
And hang yourself thereby.




XLIV

=The New Timon and the Poets=

[From _Punch_, February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his
satirical poem 'New Timon: a Romance of London,' in which he bitterly
attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension granted the previous
year, particularly referring to the poem 'O Darling Room' in the 1833
volume. Tennyson replied in the following vigorous verses, which made
the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 'I
never sent my lines to _Punch_. John Forster did. They were too
bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published