. .
. . . The whole town rose
Eyes out to meet them; in a car of state
The Mayor and all the Councillors rode down
To give them greeting, while the blue-eyed team
Drawn in Cobb's glittering chariot of pure gold
Careered it from the station.
- But the Mayor -
Thou shouldst have seen the blandness of the man,
And watched the effulgent and unspeakable smiles
With which he beamed upon them.
His beard, by nature tawny, was suffused
With just so much of a most reverend grizzle
That youth and age should kiss in't. I assure you
He was a Southern Palmerston, so old
In understanding, yet jocund and jaunty
As though his twentieth summer were as yet
But in the very June o' the year, and winter
Was never to be dreamt of. Those who heard
His words stood ravished. It was all as one
As though Minerva, hid in Mercury's jaws,
Had counselled some divinest utterance
Of honeyed wisdom. So profound, so true,
So meet for the occasion, and so - short.
The king sat studying rhetoric as he spoke,
While the lord Abbot heaved half-envious sighs
And hung suspended on his accents.
CLAUD. But will it pay, Horatio?
HOR. Let Shylock see to that, but yet I trust
He's no great loser.
CLAUD. Which side went in first?
HOR. We did,
And scored a paltry thirty runs in all.
The lissom Lockyer gambolled round the stumps
With many a crafty curvet: you had thought
An Indian rubber monkey were endued
With wicket-keeping instincts; teazing Tinley
Issued his treacherous notices to quit,
Ruthlessly truthful to his fame, and who
Shall speak of Jackson?
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