The Licensing Bills. (For the Free Lance.)

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 172, 17 October 1903, Page 15

The Licensing Bills. (For the Free Lance.)

[With Apologies to thr late Edgar Allan Poe.]

Heai the row about the Bills, Liquor Hills ; What a woild of hubbub all the House and Lobby fills. How they chattel, chatter, chatter. And they wi angle day and night, With a loud incessant clattei, And a superficial smatter, That would shock a Bedlamite : Wasting time, time, time, la a solemn pantomime, To the eloquent oiation that so musically thulls Fiom Taylor and from Bedford and the frameis of the Bills. Bills, bills, bills, bills, The Amendment and Consolidation Bills. See the Prohibition Bills, Drastic bills ' What a world of strife the Prohibitionist instils, How he enters with delight On a Local Option fight ; How he canvasses the voters on the rolls, O'er the liquor tiade exults When he reads the glad lesults Of the polls ; And declares there is no cure For all human aches and ills That has ever been discoveied Like the Prohibition Bills, Bills, bills, bills ! And he'd lead a grand crusade Against that wicked trade, Licensed Victuallers abolish, And their houses all demolish, By the bills, bills, bills, By the power of the Piohibition Bills. Read the Licensed Victuallers Bills, Such a tale of terror that pool Boniface it chills. And the publican takes fright When he sees a fellow tight In his bar, Lest some petty, lurking sneak, Gets him lugged before the beak, And he's fined, In spite of all his pleading to the meicy of the law, In a sad expostulation that is never worth a straw ; In a mass of legal lore, Getting more and moie obscuie In such complicated clauses as a layman must abhor, In the bills, bills, bills, That the liquor it fills With despan. Hear the lawyers fight and roar, And what rubbish they outpour, Splitting han. Yet the public cleaily knows By the clanging and the slanging Bow the struggle ebbs and flows, How the noise the courthouse fills With the wrangling and the jangling Over aggravating bilk, And the desperate endeavours to expound those dreadful bills, Bills, bills, bills, bills. The clamour and the glamoui of the bills. Read the new amendment bills, Seddon's bills. What a world of solid thought their multitude instils. In the silence of the night He must wake up with affright When he dreams of bills in legions and their tones, And with tired and woriied biain, Tries to go to sleep again With a groan. And the people — ah, the people, Who have to woik to keep all The rest alive, ■Vnd who, toiling, toiling, toiling In the busy human hive Have to suffer all the ills From those wretched muddled bills, Bills, bills, bills, While King Richard toils and moils Amidst those awful bioils Over bills. Bills for breakfast and for luncheon, And for dinner all day long, And their authors crowd the lobbies In a motley kind of throng With their bills. They come pouung down the chimney In a pei feet avalanche, Causing many a cheek to blanch At the bills ; Stuffed under office doois, Scattered broadcast on the floois, In his pockets and his boots — Liquor bills , Coming pouring in Dy shoots On his desk ; Forming piles, piles, piles, A burlesque, And every cornei fills With the bills, bills, bills, Liquoi bills