Accept, dear girl, the season's compliments

For Christmas and the twenty-ninth December,

Your birthday—most auspicious of events—

Is also Mr. Gladstone's, you remember.

Yours was a close shave, but I'm bound to say

That February the twenty-ninth far worse is,

And worst of all, to come on All Fools' Day,

Like Bismarck—or the writer of these verses!