 | Pleasant Odes |  |
133
Commandant Cronje.
135
I.
Dear Commandant Cronje,—
You are an unpleasant little person
And scarcely the person to whom to indite immortal verse:
Indeed, when I mentioned your name to my Muse,
Who, unlike Mr. Watson's Muse, has a sort of tenderness for the British,
She wept bitterly, and observed:
“If you write to—to—him
I shall go home—to Mamma,
So there!”
That you are great, however,
Cannot be denied;
And, after all,
Women's tears,
Be they shed over matters of metre or matters of murder,
Should never be allowed to keep a real man from his duty—
Should they, Commandant Cronje?
136
II.
Dear Commandant(I call you “dear,” of course,
In an entirely perfunctory
And non-committal sense),
When I read on the placards some months back:
CRONJE IN FULL FLIGHT,
KITCHENER IN HOT PURSUIT,
I rejoiced
And was exceeding glad,
And went merrily to lunch
(Which is a very good thing to do).
137
III.
Merrily, merrily over the snowI hied me to a place where everything that is eminent in Fleet Street lunches,
And where the waiters wear an unaccountable look of dejection;
I sat down opposite a gentleman who was smoking the end of a cigar off the end of a fork.
For twenty minutes he said nothing;
At the end of that period, however, fixing me with lack-lustre eye,
He trotted out the old, old, ancient and fishlike query:
“What
Do you think
Of the situation
In South Africa?”
I answered him civilly and truthfully (it is my engaging habit to answer people thus).
I said, in the midst of a rather large mouthful of rum omelette,
“Sir, I am incapable of thought.”
138
IV.
Here occurred one of the most fearful pauses in history.139
V.
Then my friend with the fork demanded fiercely:“Do you mean to tell me, sir,
That you really believe, sir,
That a general of Cronje's parts, sir,
A general of Cronje's stamina (he said “staminer”) and military genius, sir,
Would fly, sir,
Before Kitchener, sir,
Unless he had something up his sleeve, sir?
Mark my words, sir,
Within the next few days, sir,
Cronje will turn round and make a stand, sir,
And then—why then, sir,
The British will get crumpled up, sir,
As per usual, sir!”
140
VI.
Clearly it was time to pay and go:I did both.
141
VII.
The Cronjectures of the gentleman with the forkHaunted me all that week.
Partially, at any rate, they were realised;
You, my dear Commandant,
Did make a stand,
And a very fine stand it was.
142
VIII.
And yet, and yet, and yet—143
IX.
I wonder what the gentleman with the forkIs thinking now?
| Pleasant Odes | |