CYCLOMETRES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2250, 15 April 1897, Page 53

CYCLOMETRES.

| THE JINGLESJBY LEGEND. x. In the tower a Friar of Orders Grey Was telling hia ebony beads ; He sat in the light of the dying day, Watching the level macadamised way That up to the minster leads : And ever he gazed wistfully, wearily, Through the old oriel, dismally, drearily> As the mist descended, stealthily, eerily, Over the buttercup meads. In vain he tells his ebony beads, Blessed by a saint of old, In vain iv his ancient missal reads, And looks ou his rood of gold. In the saintliest heart there spring up weeds, Dicotyledonous evil deeds, As burrs aud nettles spring from seeds In the richest garden mould. H. A saint was the Friar of Orders Grey, And a holy saint to boot, But, as I have said, in the saintlio3t clay The seeds of ill take root. A fleshly desire in hi 3 heart he nursed, He lusted and longed for the thing accursed ; And, as up in tbe cupboard he hung his stole, For all he was pious, and pure as an icicle, Murmured •• The Devil t»ke my soul, 11 But I'll have a Hurnber bicycle 1 " in. Rit-a-tat ! ' What wns that, Made the heart of the Friar to go pit-a-pat ? Soft as the tread of the midnight rat, When he walks abroad in a brewery vat, Softer than tootfall of lynx or of cat, Or the brush of tho wing of a vampire batBy the clammy steps of the turret stair It came, and stood on the Friar's mat. " Come in ! who's there ? " And then Before you had time to say Jack Robinson, entered a person in black, Very long, very dark, but not very fat, In an apron and gaiters and broad shovel-hat ; . Behind him was something — you could not tell what — A long supple something, looped up in a plait ; It looked like a cable, A cable of sable, Voluted, and twisted, and coiled in his rear; And his feet ! oh dear ! The shape of his feec was decidedly queer ; Ha wore no boot, But a bicycle shoe On each narrow foot, Quite clef b to the toe. IV. The Friar at first could do nothing but stare, But at last he recovered his affable air, And pointed his guest to a seat that was there. With a nervous look at tho book of prayer, Tbe Person in Black Took the prrf£. r^d chair ; First dusricf the pfat With bis handle, retucf neat, And carefully hanging his coil on the back. " You see, I've a knack," Saui the Person in Black, " Of hearing what's eaid, it matters not where— " On laud or on sea, on earth or in air, — " Aud now iet us settle that little affair : "I mean a equare deal, " For if,* really droll, " The hot burring zeal " I have for your soul. "So, give me your ghost, and as soon as you like "I'll letch yon a first-grade Humber bike. ''Yet, on my parole, " What i* that thiDg — a soul ? " 'Tis sure an »tf tir of no moment at all, "A thing without substance, dimension, or place, "Having no point in time or location in space, " Mere nebulous flame, " A shadow, a name, "A mystical, vacuous, valueless article, " A nudulous, vagulous, blaudulous particle." " Soft, soft ! " cried the Friar of Orders Grey, " Sweet stranger, nit so fast, I pray ; " Tee wares to decry "That you mean to buy, " Is a trick too stale at this time of day. " Yet (since it would be a thing ab-urd " If a holy friar went biclc on his word, " I'm ready to close with your odd proposition, "But Mibje"l to this one small condition — "That you get up steam, put on your pace, " And beat my aoul in a bicycle race, " From the churchyard to St. Peter's gate, " Tbo Siint hinnelf to decide my fate ; "Aud because you are such a light-weight chap " You'll give me, of course, a fair handicap ; " Less you cannot allow, perforce, " Taan a trillion of miles in so long a course." "Done!" said the d the Person in Black, And the two struck palms with a sounding smack. v. Oh, but it was a fair machine ! Forged on uo eirthly forge, I ween ; For never were wrought by man's anneal Birs of such strangely tempered steel ; Its gossamer wheels were finer than those That hang at morn on the dew-dropped rose ; And its punctufeless tyres, as souud as a bell, Were filled with blasts all fresh from — well, From a place that mannerly lords and ladies By common consent pronounce as Hades, I Though it's otherwise named in Tate and Brady's. I vrj High in his tower the Friar Grey Pa'e and still on his pallet lay, A dying friar he was that day, | With his sins confessed and his sins forgiven, j Houseled, ancle 3, consigned, and shriven. i Kind Eu*-hanasius stood by his bed, i One Laud ou his pu'se s,nd one on his head, To whom tli9 dying friar eaid :—: — " Good brother, a thing my poor soul lacks, " Aud that is a packet of silver tacks, " Iv a bowl ot holy water dipb, ! " Let them bo sharp, and let them be long, j " Of finest m^tal and hammered strong, "And lay them in my dead hand in the crypt." This said, the Friar his anchor shipped, Aud over the silent sea silently slipped. ■ VII. ■ At the sound of the starter's pistol shot, I Tne Friar set off at a gentle trot, (At first it's its well to do fsbis as not), Into fchp regions of eager air, Up the incline of the golden stair, lu'o the lonely desert of stars, Skirting the disc of t&e blood-red Mara.

But ss be got clear Of the crimson sphere, The Friar got into a terrible fluster, And felt as limp as his grandmother's duster To find himself caught in an astevoid buster ; For the bravest of friars his courage must muster Whon ho sees, in the distance, With steady insistence, Some score planetoids come along in a cluster. But the monk pedalled fast and evermore faster, j And so left behind him the zone of disaster. On he sped with velocity tyrannous, Spinning past Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, Past the confines of the solar system, Where even the Lick telescope would have missed him. vm. As the Holy Friar went bowling along, Crooning & stave from a matin-song, Suddenly — how, he was never aware, Suddenly — whence, he could never declare, All space overflowed with a symphony rare, A symphony sweet beyond compare. Ob, never were notes, in flat or in sharp, Of dulcimer, psaltery, sackbut, or harp, So cuuning-sweet as that heavenly aaitr t Not of esrth was the strain, The seraphic refrain, That struck through the friar's enraptured brain, To ecstaiy touching his ghojtly ears, Filling his spirit with mystical fears, Thrilling his soul to a passion of tears, Heaving and swelling with mighty crescendo, Fainting and failing with dim minueudo, Forte, fortissimo, Dolce, dolcisaimo, Rallentando, schetzando, piau-pianissimo, Trilling and dashing, Shrilliug and clashing, Like millions of organ pipes booming aud crashing — The great diapason cf quiring spheres, Beating the time for the marching years. IX. This is all very fine, and mighty poetical, But a trifle irrelevant, not to say parenthetical, What a friar, perhaps, would call eptxegetical ; Mais revenons ;l uos lnoutous, I'll put my best foot on, And return to the chasa by that Person Heretical, The chase of the monk by the Peraon in Black, Who ca, with scanty politeness, I left on the track. Over the tenebrous wastes they whirled That stretch forlorn from world to world, Black, rayles«, interstellar plmce3, Dun, dayless, dim lacunar spaces, By the topaz flue of Aldebarau, In the nojntide glare or the twilight wan Of suns and moons uukenned by man ; Or wrspo in a veil Of vapour pale, In a wandering comet's crepuscular tail } Ovtr the Hyades, Into th'i Pleiades — Regions that mtver a wiog can span, Ssve the mighty sweep ot an angel's van. But the Holy Friar waa no fit match For the Person in Black who started from scratch ; 'Twas a large handicap, to be sure, but the trillion Of miles before long narrowed down to a billion, And from that to the mere bagatelle of a million. Now they had gained the Milky Wn.y, And the shining goal-posts before them lay ; Ou, on they sped at a murderous rate, Over the tiivdry turnpike of fate, By many a constellation hoary, To where the finger of Alpha Centauri Pointed the way to the golden gate — Astronomers call it the Crux Australis, A mighty portal in shape of a cross, Studded with quadruple starry boss, Far, far in the south, where the Centaur's tail is. Onward they sped, Doubled up to a Zed ; Bat alack and alack 1 For close at his back The Friar could hear the Person in Black. Ob, it wn3 worse than the pains of death, To feel the hob glow of his sulphurous breath ! And there in the gate, Though ill at Lis ease, The umpire ytas Bittiug And grasping his keys, Scarce daring to breathe or to wink or to sneeze, As on to the heels of the Holy Briar Tho Person in Black drew nigher and nigher, With glowing wheel and red-hot tyte, Snorting, and panting, and breathing fire. " Spryer, my son, with your pedals, spryer! "Fleeter, my son, ob, fleeter) fleeter!" Cried from the gate the excited Peter. x. The Friar perceives at this terrible juncture That his one single hope of escape is a puncture : So with a sly dip In the depth of his scrip, He seizes a sharp-pointed flat-headed tack And drops it behind on th 9 bicycle track — Wnen whack ! A tremendous, stupendous, and horrible crack ! EsplosioD, combustion, blue ruin, and wrack ! The Person in Black Is pitched on his back, And tipped from the Milky Way down the Coal Sack. Sheer down he reels, Head over heels, A tangle of gaiters, gutta-percha, and wheels ; And, as downward be spins, His respectable shins On the edge of a j«g iv Canopns he peels. Ob, 'twould have made yaur cockles to glow, To hear the luncjs of St. Peter crow — Ha, h:i ! ha, ha ! ho, ho ! ho, ho ! When he saw this sable and subtle old card So prettily hoist with his own petard. XI. Three days he fell, j Three nights as well. | Headlong, pell-mell, | Till he reached the flrafc stag* on the way to Sheol, (The planet, good reader, where you and I dwell,) At half-past ssven p m. to a minute, Just in time for h meeting of Anglican Synod. But ahs ! his brand-new, glossy, silk shovelhat— ; It especially grieves me to think about thatFell into a Methodist dyer's val For the grimy and horrified di er to fi*h up, And was afterwards worn kj a suffragan : bishop. Finis. Sir Henry Thompson describd? natural ape rient watera as vastly superior to artificial soluj tions, however .skilfully prepared 5 and " HunI YADI JANO.S" as " THE MOST CO.NCEN!-]\|VTED OF THE salimo group." Aunual sale six n.v)lion bottles. Signature, And <fas Saxleuneb, on Uhel secures genuineness.