Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/101



ORD Lilac thought it rather rotten

That Shakespeare should be quite forgotten,

And therefore got on a Committee

With several chaps out of the city,

And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree,

Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery

And F.C.G. and Comyns Carr,

Two dukes and a dramatic star,

Also a clergyman now dead;

And while the vain world careless sped

Unheeding the heroic name—

The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame

Still sat unconquered in a ring,

Remembering him like anything.

Lord Lilac did not long remain,

Lord Lilac did not come again.

He softly lit a cigarette

And sought some other social set

Where, in some other knots or rings,

People were doing cultured things,

—Miss Zwilt's Humane Vivarium

—The little men that paint on gum