Analysis of England's Alfred Abroad

Wrong? are they wrong? Of course they are,
        I venture to reply;
    For I bore 'my first' (and, I hope, my worst)
        A month or so gone by;
    And I can't repeat it under this
        Or any other sky.

What! has the public never heard
        In these benighted climes
    That nascent note of my Laureate throat,
        That fluty fitte of rhymes
    Which occupied about a half
        A column of the Times?

They little know what they have lost,
        Nor what a carnal beano
    They might have spent in the thick of Lent
        If only Daniel Leno
    Had sung them Jameson's Ride and knocked
        The Monaco Casino.

Some day the croupiers' furtive eyes
        Will all be wringing wet;
    Even the Prince will hardly mince
        The language of regret
    At entertaining unawares
        The famed Alhambra Pet.

But still not quite incognito
        I mark the moving scene,
    In a tepid zone where (like my own)
        The palms are ever green,
    And find myself reported as
        A herald of the Queen.

Here where aloft the heavens are blue,
        And blue the seas below,
    I roll my eye and fondly try
        To get the rhymes to go,
    As I pace The Garden that I love,
        Composing all I know.

But when my poet-pinions droop,
        And all the air is wan,
    I enter in to the courts of sin
        And put a louis on,
    And hold my heart and look again,
        And lo! the thing is gone!

Wrong? is it wrong? To baser crafts
        Has England's Alfred pandered,
    Who once to the sign of Ph�bus' shrine
        With awesome gait meandered,
    And ever wrote in the cause of right
        According to his Standard?

Nay! this is life! to take a turn
        On Fortune's captious crust;
    To pluck the day in a human way
        Like men of common dust;
    But O! if England's only bard
        Should absolutely bust!

A laureate never borrows on
        His coming quarter's pay;
    And I mean to stop or ever I pop
        My crown of peerless bay;
    So I'll take the next rapide to Nice,
        And the 'bus to Cimiez.