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Lord Lilac thought it rather rotten
That Shakespeare should be quite
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
–The exquisite Gorilla Girl….
He sometimes, in this giddy whirl
(Not being really bad at heart),
Remembered Shakespeare with a start–
But not with that grand constancy
Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree,
Lord Rosebery and Comyns Carr
And all the other names there are;
Who stuck like limpets to the spot,
Lest they forgot, lest they forgot.

Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff;
Lord Lilac had had quite enough.