The moping M.P. motionless and stiff,
Who, on his bench sat silently and stilly,
Gawped with round eyes and pendulous lips, as if
He had been stricken silly:
No cheery sound, except when far away
Came echoes of 'cute LABBY's cynic laughter,
Which, sick of Dumbleborough's chattering jay,
His listeners rambled after.
But Echo's self tires of a GRAHAM's tongue,
Rot blent with rudeness gentlest nymph can't pardon.
Why e'en the G.O.M. his grey head hung,
And wished he were at Hawarden.
Like vine unpruned, SEXTON's exuberant speech
Sprawled o'er the question with the which he'd grapple;
PICTON prosed on,--the style in which men preach
In a dissenting chapel.
Prince ARTHUR twined one lank leg t'other round,
Drooping a long chin like BURNE-JONES's ladies;
And HARCOURT, sickening of the strident sound,
Wished CONYBEARE in Hades.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of imminent doom the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The House is Haunted!

II.

Oh, very gloomy is this House of Woe,
Where yawns are numerous while Big Ben is knelling.
It is not on the Session dull and slow,