Oh! Do you know the Muses nine The daughters of Jove and Mnemosyne? And have you heard how they play the deuce With 'longs' and 'shorts' at Olympus? They waltz around on the boarded floor To pay their homage to Terpsichore; They act a tragedy—this I ween Not under the guidance of Melpomene; While Comedy—H'm—if it prove a failure Is–pardon the rhyme—disowned by Thalia; The love that never was taught by Plato They learn to express from the fair Erato While writers of vers de société chirp At the foot of the footstool of Miss Euterpe, Though singers and actors can hardly hope For a line on the tablets of Calliope, And barely two of the crowd aspire To follow the calm-eyed Polyhymnia, Or turn to the Heavens and bother their crania With profitless watching the stars, like Urania. Which things—that the last may be hurried more quickly o— Ver—move the wrath of the scornful and sick Clio, Who wails, through our pen, from Parnassian glades:— 'This is classical knowledge in Simla, Oh Hades!'
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