C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892)

WILL there never come a season

Which shall rid us from the curse

Of a prose which knows no reason

And an unmelodious verse;

When the world shall cease to wonder

At the genius of an ass,

And a boy’s eccentric blunder

Shall not bring success to pass;

When mankind shall be delivered

From the clash of magazines,

And the inkstand shall be shivered

Into countless smithereens:

When there stands a muzzled stripling,

Mute, beside a muzzled bore,—

When the Rudyards cease from kipling,

And the Haggards ride no more?