(In a Garden.)
A LADY.—A POET.
The Lady.
SirPOET, ere you crossed the lawn(If it was wrong to watch you, pardon)Behind this weeping birch withdrawn,I watched you saunter round the garden.I saw you bend beside the phlox;Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle,Review my well-ranged hollyhocks,Smile at the fountain’s slender spurtle;
You paused beneath the cherry-tree,Where my marauder thrush was singing,Peered at the bee-hives curiously,And narrowly escaped a stinging;And then—you see I watched—you passedDown the espalier walk that reachesOut to the western wall, and lastDropped on the seat before the peaches.
What was your thought? You waited long.Sublime or graceful,—grave,—satiric?A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song?A tender Tennysonian lyric?Tell me. That garden-seat shall be,So long as speech renown disperses,Illustrious as the spot where he—The gifted Blank—composed his verses.
Madam,—whose uncensorious eyeGrows gracious over certain pages.Wherein the Jester’s maxims lie,It may be, thicker than the Sage’sI hear but to obey, and couldMere wish of mine the pleasure do you,Some verse as whimsical as Hood,—As gay as Praed,—should answer to you.
But, though the common voice proclaimsOur only serious vocationConfined to giving nothings names,And dreams a “local habitation;”Believe me, there are tuneless days,When neither marble, brass, nor vellum,Would profit much by any laysThat haunt the poet’s cerebellum.
More empty things, I fear, than rhymes,More idle things than songs, absorb it;The “finely-frenzied” eye, at times,Reposes mildly in its orbit;And, painful truth, at times, to him,Whose jog-trot thought is nowise restive,“A primrose by a river’s brim”Is absolutely unsuggestive.
The fickle Muse! As ladies will,She sometimes wearies of her wooer;A goddess, yet a woman still,She flies the more that we pursue her;In short, with worst as well as best,Five months in six, your hapless poetIs just as prosy as the rest,But cannot comfortably show it.
You thought, no doubt, the garden-scentBrings back some brief-winged bright sensationOf love that came and love that went,—Some fragrance of a lost flirtation,Born when the cuckoo changes song,Dead ere the apple’s red is on it,That should have been an epic long,Yet scarcely served to fill a sonnet.
Or else you thought,—the murmuring noon,He turns it to a lyric sweeter,With birds that gossip in the tune,And windy bough-swing in the metre;Or else the zigzag fruit-tree armsRecall some dream of harp-prest bosoms,Round singing mouths, and chanted charms,And mediæval orchard blossoms,—
Quiteà la mode. Alas! for prose,—My vagrant fancies only rambledBack to the red-walled Rectory close,Where first my graceless boyhood gambolled,Climbed on the dial, teased the fish,And chased the kitten round the beeches,Till widening instincts made me wishFor certain slowly-ripening peaches.
Three peaches. Not the Graces threeHad more equality of beauty:I would not look, yet went to see;I wrestled with Desire and Duty;I felt the pangs of those who feelThe Laws of Property beset them;The conflict made my reason reel,And, half-abstractedly, I ate them;—
Or Two of them. Forthwith Despair—More keen than one of these was rotten—Moved me to seek some forest lairWhere I might hide and dwell forgotten,Attired in skins, by berries stained,Absolved from brushes and ablution;—But, ere my sylvan haunt was gained,Fate gave me up to execution.
I saw it all but now. The grinThat gnarled old Gardener Sandy’s features;My father, scholar-like and thin,Unroused, the tenderest of creatures;I saw—ah me—I saw againMy dear and deprecating mother;And then, remembering the cane,Regretted—THAT I’D LEFT THE OTHER.
Isit that things go by, or is it that people go by the things? If the former, it is no wonder that a good deal of gloom hangs about the matter. To be standing still, and to have a panorama constantly moving by one, bearing on its face all things fair and beautiful—happy love scenes, kindly friends, pleasant meetings, wise speeches, noble acts, stirring words, national epochs, as well as gay landscapes of hill and dale, and river and sun, and shade and trees, and cottages and labouring men and grazing cattle; to have all things moving by one, and oneself to stagnate and alone to be left behind, as all else moves on to greet the young, the hopeful, and the untried,—there is indeed something sad in this. We have seen these good and beautiful and soul-touching visions once. They charmed and entranced us as they lingered with us for a few brief and blissful moments, but they have gone by and left us alone. We shall never look upon them again. Yes, it is bitter—too bitter almost for man to dwell upon much. He must turn elsewhere, and try to bury the past in forgetfulness, gazing on the new visions as they in turn pass by him, knowing that their time is short, and that they too, like all the old ones, will very soon be as though they were not.
But it is not so. Man is passing the world by, and not the world man. Man is passing on, year after year, in his magnificent and irresistible course, never losing, and ever gaining. All he sees, and knows, and feels, anddoes becomes an inseparable part of himself, far more closely bound up with his life and nature than even his flesh, and nerves, and bones. It is not merely that he remembers the past and loves the past, but he is the past; and he is more the whole assembly of the past than he is anything else whatever. Man alone moves onward to perfection and to happiness, as a universe stands still ministering to his lordly progress. Even the life, the passions, and the personal progress of each particular man stand still, as it were, in the service of all the rest, and become their lasting and inalienable treasure. Nothing is wasted or irreparable but wrong-doing, and that too is not lost.
“Oncemore, who would not be a boy?”—orgirl? and revel in the delights—real or imaginary—ofthings gone by? What a halo is round them! Their pleasures were exquisite, and their very miseries have in remembrance, a piquancy of flavour that is almost agreeable. I suppose the habit of most of us who have attained a certain, or rather uncertain age, is to revel in the past, to endure the present, and to let the future look after itself.
Now this is all well enough for the sentimentalist, or for the poet who, like Bulwer, can write at thirty “on the departure of youth.” But to the philosopher—that is, of course, to each member of “Pen and Pencil”—another and more useful tone of mind and method of comparison should not be absent. Is not the present what was the future to the past, and may we not by comparing the existing with what has been, as also with what was the aspiration of the past, throw some light, borrowed though it be, on what will be the present to our descendants? Mr. Pecksniff observes: “It is a poor heart that never rejoices.” Let us manifest our wealth—of imagination, shall I say?—by endeavouring to realize how, through the falsehood and wickedness of the past, we have arrived at our own lofty and noble eminence.
When we read, in the blood-stained pages of history, of nations and continents plunged into warfare of the most horrible and heartrending description, at the call of national glory or dynastic ambition, how can we sufficiently rejoice at the soft accents of peace and happinesswhich none would now venture to interrupt over the length and breadth of happy Europe?
The age of falsehood and party spirit may be said to have passed away. Our newspapers tell nothing but truth, and the only difference perceptible in their mild criticisms of friend or foe, is that they betray a generous tendency to do more than justice to their enemies.
If we cannot say that pauperism is extinct, yet we can honestly affirm that, if we cannot destroy the accursed thing itself, yet we can, and do so deal with paupers that the weakest, at least, soon cease to be a burden on the rates. Science and humanity have shaken hands, and the soft persuasions of chemical compounds are employed to assist down any unhappy girl who should be betrayed into aspirations towards the chimney-pot. We all know that gluttony is one of the greatest evils in the world, and which of our hearts could be hard enough not to glow with rapture at the benevolent rule of a London Union, mentioned in to-day’s paper, of never giving their inmates anything to tax their digestive forces between 5P.M.and 8A.M.
Again, when we read in our “Spectators” or other venerable records of the follies of fashion of 150 years ago, or indeed of any other epoch we like to recur to—of hoops and paint, and patches—how may we rejoice at the greater wisdom of our ladies in these days, in recognizing how beautifully they blend the tasteful with the useful! Their crinoline, how Grecian in its elegance; their chignons, how intellectual in appearance; their bonnets, how well calculated to protect from rain and sun; their trains, how cleanly; their boot-heels, how well calculated to produce by natural means what the barbarian Chinese seek by coarser methods—to deform the foot, and thus, by limiting their power of walking, to leave them more time for high intellectual culture.
Of the improvement in our social morals it is needless to speak, and indeed I must decline to do so, if only that in drawing a comparison I should have to shock the ears of “Pen and Pencil” with some allusions tothings gone by. I will but casually refer to two salient characteristics of the enormities of bygone times—to novels and to the theatre. Compare but for a moment the wild and almost licentious writings of a Walter Scott, an Edgeworth, or an Austen with the pure and unexaggerated novels of the present halcyon time. And for our theatres, if it be possible to imagine anything more chaste and elevating than the existing drama—anything more stimulating to all that is purest, more repressive of all that is vulgar and low in our ballets or pantomimes—why, I very much mistake the realities that lie before us.
Finally, in the religion of the country—there where one looks for the summing up and climax as it were of all the incidental advances we have glanced at, how glorious is the spectacle! The fopperies of ecclesiastical upholstery banished from the land; the hardness and cruelty of dogmatic intolerance heard no more; a noble life everywhere more honoured than an orthodox belief.
Surely we have reached the Promised Land—it overflows with charity, with peace, plenty, and concord; and the only regret left to us is the fear that in so good a world none of us can entertain the hope to leave it better than we found it!
Someyears go by so comfortably calm,So like their fellows, that they all seem one;Each answering each, as verses in a psalm,We miss them not—until the psalm is done:
Until, above the mild responsive strain,An alter’d note, a louder passage rolls,Whose diapason of delight or painEnds once for all the sameness of our souls:
Until some year, with passionate bold hand,Breaks up at length our languid liberty,And changes for us, in one brief command,Both all that was, and all that was to be.
Thenceforth, the New Year never comes unheard;No noise of mirth, no lulling winter’s snowCan hush the footsteps which are bringing wordOf things that make us other than we know.
Thenceforth, we differ from our former selves;We have an insight new, a sharper senseOf being; how unlike those thoughtless elvesWho wait no end, and watch no providence!
We watch, we wait, with not a star in view:Content, if haply whilst we dwell aloneThe memory of something live and trueCan keep our hearts from freezing into stone.
Thelittle Goose-girl came singingAlong the fields, “Sweet May, oh! the long sweet day.”That was her song,Bringing about her, floating aboutIn and out through the long fair tressesOf her hair; oh! a thousand thousand idlenesses,Spreading away on May’s breath everywhere“Idleness, sweet idleness.”
But this was a time,Two thousand and ninety-nine,When, singing of idleness even in Spring,Or drinking wind-wine,Or looking up into the blue heavenWas counted a crime.A time, harsh, not sublime,One terrible sort of school-Hour all the year through,When everyone had to do something, and do it by rule.Why, even the babies could calculateTwo and two at the least, mentally, without a slate,Each calling itself an aggregateOf molecules—It was always school—schools,All over the world as far as the sky could coverIt—dry land and sea.High Priests said,“Let matter be Z,Thoroughly calculated and triedTo work our problems with, before all eyes—Anything beside that might prove a dangerous guide:X’s and Y’s,Unknown quantities,We hesitate not, at once to designateFit only, now and for ever to be laid aside.”So, you seeEverything was made as plain as could be,Not the ghost of a doubt even left to roam about free.Everybody’s concernBeing just to learn, learn, learn,In one way—but only in one way.
Where then did the little Goose-girl come from that day?I don’t know. ThoughIsn’t there hard byA place, tender and sunny,One can feel slid betweenOur seen and unseen,And whose shadows we trace on the Earth’s faceNow and then dimly?—Well, sheWas as ignorant as she could ignorant be.The world wasn’t school to herWho came singing“Sweet Idleness, sweet Idleness” up to the very feetOf the Professors’ chairs,And of the thousand thousand pupils sitting round upon theirs;Who, up all sprang,At the sound of the words she sangWith “No, no, no, no, no,There are no sweets in May,None in the weary day;What foolish thing is this, singing of idleness in spring?”
“Oh! sunny spring,”Still sang the little Goose-girl. WonderingAs she was passing—And suddenly stay’d for a moment baskingIn the broad light, with wide eyes askingWhat “nay” could mean to the soft warm day.And as she stay’dThere stray’d out from herMay breaths, wandering all the school over.
But now, the hard eyes move herAnd her lips quiverAs the sweet notes shiverBetween them and die.So her singing ceases, sheLooking up, crying, “Why is my May not sweet?Is the wide sky fair?Are the free winds fleet?Are the feet of the Spring not rareThat tread flowers out of the soil?Oh! long hours, not for toil,But for wondering and singing.”“No, no, no, no,”These reply,“Silly fancies of flowers and skies,All these things we know.There is nothing to wonder at, sing,Love, or fear—Is not everything simple, and clear,And common, and near us, and weary?So, pass by idle dreaming—And you, if you would like to knowBeing from seeming,Come into the schools and study.”
“Still to sing sometimes when I have the will,And be idle and ponder,”Said the Goose-girl, “and look up to heaven and wonder?”“What! Squander Truth’s timeIn dreams of the unknown sublime—No—” Then “Ignorant always,” said she,“I must be,”And went on her way. “Sweet May, sad May”—Hanging her head—Till, “The mills of the gods grind slowly,” she said,“But they grind exceeding small,Let be, I will sit by the mills of the gods, and watch the slow atoms fall.”So, patient and still, through long patient hoursAs she laid her heart low in the hearts of the flowers,Through clouds and through shine,With smiles and with tears,Through long hours, through sweet years;Oh!years—for a hundred years was oneSchool-hour in two thousand and ninety-nine.And see!Who are these that come creeping out from the schools?—Long ago, when idlenessesOut of her tresses, stray’d the school over,Some slept of the learners, some played.These crept out to wonder and sing,And look forheryonder,Away up the hills,Amongst the gods’ mills.And now“Is it this way?” they say,Bowing low,“Oh! wise, by the heaven in thine eyesTeach—we will learn from thee—Is it no, is it yes,Labour or Idleness?”She,Answering meekly: “This—Neither no, nor yes,But ‘come into God and see.’”
Oh! the deeps we can feel; oh! the heights we must climb.Oh! slow gentle hours of the golden time—Here, the end of my rhyme.
May, 1869.
Nightfalls in the convict prison,—The eve of a summer day;Through the heated cells and galleries,The cooler nightwinds play.And slumber on folded pinionsWith oblivion brought relief;Stilling the weary tossings,—Smoothing the brow of grief.
Through a dungeon’s narrow gratingThe slanting moonlight fellDown by a careworn prisoner,Asleep in his lonely cell.The hand which lay so nervelessHad grasp’d a sword ere now,And the lips now parch’d with feverHad utter’d a patriot’s vow.
He stirr’d and the silence was broken,By the clanking of a chain,He sigh’d, but the sigh no longer,Show’d the spirit’s restless pain.For to him the dark walls faded,And the prisoner stood once moreBeneath the vine-wreath’d trellis,Beside his loved home’s door.
And memory drew the facesSo dear in earlier days,Of the sisters who were with himJoining in childish plays,And the mother whose lips first murmuredThe prayer which had made him brave,“Let his fate be what Thou wiliest,But not, oh! not a slave.”
And the friends whose blood beat quicklyAt the wrongs of their native landAnd the vow they had vowed together,Grasping each other’s hand.He dreamt of the first resistance,Of the one who basely fled;And the guard’s o’erwhelming numbersAnd the hopes of life all dead.
And then of the weary waiting,An exile on foreign ground;With stranger voices near him,And unknown faces round.Oh! ships o’er the gladsome waters,What news do you bring to-day?What tidings of home and kindredTo the exile far away?
And he dreamt of the glad returningTo the well-loved native shore;When news had come—All are readyTo dare the fight once more.Of the hearts that throbbed exulting,With hope of the coming strife,Of the sigh which fell unheededTo the thought of child and wife.
And he dreamt of the day of contest,Of whistling shot and shell,When he bore his country’s banner,And had borne it high and well.“Rally for Freedom! Forward!Stand! for our cause is Right;Sooner be slain than defeated,Better is death than flight.”
Ah! happy the first who perished,Who saw not the turning day,And the fallen flag, and the broken line,And the rout without hope or stay!And the prisoner groaned in his slumbers,But now, with a sudden glow,The glorious moonlight’s splendourPoured full on his humid brow.
On its rays there floated to himThe friends of his early youth,Who had borne their steadfast witnessIn the holy cause of Truth.“Welcome,” they said, “we await thee;Come, and receive thy meed,The crown of those who flinched notIn our country’s greatest need.”
Was it a dream, or delusion?Or vision? Who shall say?Its spell consoled the hoursOf many a weary day.And months went slowly over,And the winter’s icy breathBlew chill through an empty dungeon:The convict was freed—by Death.
Inexile, hopeless of relief,I pine, a hapless sailor,And this is how I came to grief,Upon an Arctic whaler.My exile is no land of palms,Of tropic groves and spices,But placed amid the savage charmsOf polar snows and ices.
It was a sad funereal coast,The billows moaned a dirge;The coast itself was lined withbays,The rocks were cloth’d withsurge.And here by cruel fogs and fatesOur ship was cast away—Where Davis found himself in straits,And Baffin turn’d to bay.
And from my chilly watch aloftI saw the icebergs sailing,Where I sat weeping very oft,While all the crew were whaling.For one and all, both great and small,From veteran to lubber,From captain down to cabin boy,Were used towhaleandblubber.
Our ship misled by ill advice—Our skipper, half seas over,Upon this continent of iceIncontinently drove her.While I alone to land did drive,Among the spars and splinters,And since have kept myself alive,Through two long Arctic winters.
It was a land most desolate,Where ice, and frost, and fog,Too truly did prognosticate,An utter want of prog.Another would have reeved a rope,And made himself a necklace;My wreck bereaved me of my hope,But did not leave me reckless.
And since, on oil and fat I’ve keptMy freezing blood in motion.(I think the “fatness” of the landTranscends the land of Goshen.)In vain, gaunt hunger to beguile,I try each strange device;Alas! my ribs grow thin the while,Amid the thick-ribb’d ice.
In vain I pour the midnight oil,As eating cares increase;And make the study of my nightsA history of Greece.Monarch of all that I survey,By right divine appointed;(If lubrication in and outCan make a Lord’s anointed).
Though lord of both the fowl and bruteMy schemes to catch them work ill,And three she-walrii constituteMy social Arctic circle;Three, did I say? there are but two,For she I chiefly fanciedHas been my stay the winter through,And now is turning rancid.
The cruel frost has nipped me some;My mournful glances lingerUpon a solitary thumb,And half a middle finger.In toto I have lost my toes,Down to the latest joint:And there is little of my noseAbove the freezing point.
Upon this floe of ice my tearsAre freezing as they flow;I lie between two sheets of ice,Upon a bed of snow.I have a hybernating feel,And with the Bear and Dormouse,Shall take it out in sleep untilSomething turns up to warm us:
Until some Gulf-Stream vagariesOr astronomic cycles,Shall bring to these raw latitudesThe climate of St. Michael’s.Or else some cataclysm rudeWith polar laws shallplaytricks,And Nature in a melting moodDissolve my icy matrix.
Maybe, a hundred centuries hence,Pr’aps thousands (say the latter),Amid the war of elementsAnd even the wreck of matter,When in the crush of worlds, our ownGets squeezed into a hexagon,The natives of this frozen zoneMay see me on my legs again.
Onceon a time, my children dear,A Fairy, called Urgande, lived here,Who though but as my finger tall,Was just as good as she was small;For of her wand one touch, they say,Could perfect happiness convey.O dear Urgande! O good Urgande!Do tell us where you’ve hid your wand!
Eight butterflies, in harness, drewHer tiny car of sapphire blue,In which, as o’er the land she went,Her smile to earth fresh vigour lent;The grape grew sweeter on the vine,More golden did the cornfield shine.O dear Urgande! O good Urgande!Do tell us where you’ve hid your wand!
The King a godson was of hers,And so she chose his Ministers—Just men who held the laws in sight,And whose accounts could face the light.The crook as shepherds did they keepTo scare the wolves and not the sheep.O dear Urgande! O good Urgande!Do tell us where you’ve hid your wand!
To show what love she tow’rds him bore,She touched the crown her godson wore—A happy people met his eye,Who for his sake would freely die;Did foreign foes the realm invadeNot long they lived, or short they stayed.O dear Urgande! O good Urgande!Do tell us where you’ve hid your wand!
The judges of this King so goodDecided always as they should:Not once throughout that pleasant reignDid Innocence unheard complain,Or guilt repentant vainly prayFor guidance in the better way.O dear Urgande! O good Urgande!Do tell us where you’ve hid your wand!
Alas! my dear, I must allowThere’s no Urgande on earth just now.America is sore be-mobbed;Poor Asia’s conquered, crushed, and robbed;And though at home, of course, we findOur rulers all that’s nice and kind—Still—dear Urgande! O good Urgande!Do tell us where you’ve hid your wand!
Violetsin the Springtide gathered,To the child-heart prest,Treasured in the breastWith a tender wistful joy,In their fading, fragrant yet:—A tearful sweet regretOf the early time.
Glowing, wayward crimson roses,Shedding perfume rareO’er the summer air,With a canker at the heartAnd a stem where thorns are set:—O bitter-sweet regretOf the golden prime!
Snowflakes falling through the darkness,Hiding out of sightGraves of past delight,Till the folded whiteness mocksWatching faces, wan and wet:—O mournful-sweet regretOf the wintry time.
IAMinformed by “Pen and Pencil,” with a certain harsh inexorableness of tone, thatsomethingI must produce this evening, or—incur a sentence too dreadful to be contemplated, no less than that of ostracism (perhaps ostracism for incapacity should be speltasstracism).
Well, what are the words?Realitiesanddrifting. Very good; then I’ll take both, for the most characteristic element that I have noted ofrealitiesis that they are constantlydrifting.
Wishing to start from an undoubted basis, I asked a friend, before sitting down to write, what exactly he understood byrealities, and he replied, with the air of a philosopher, “whatever man, through the medium of his senses, can surely realize.” The conclusion I draw is, that there is some inextricable connection betweenrealitiesandreal lies. In which I am confirmed by Johnson, who traces the derivation of the wordrealityasfromreal.
Sir John Lubbock, in his “Origin of Civilization,” under the heading of “Savage Tendency to Deification,” states as a fact that “The king of the Koussa Kaffirs, having broken off a piece of a stranded anchor, died soon afterwards, upon which all the Kaffirs looked upon the anchor as alive, and saluted it respectfully whenever they passed near it.” At a glance it occurred to me, this is arealitywell worthy of being brought under the notice of “Pen and Pencil.” Will it not furnish, thought I, materialfor their philosophers, and mirth for their humorists, and surely an excellent subject for their artists?But is it true? Ay, that must be my first discovery. Who shall hope to palm off doubtfulrealitiesupon “Pen and Pencil,” without deservedlydriftingto disgrace?
Without indecent boasting, I believe I may assure this august assembly that I have probed this matter to its very root; the whole truth is in my hands, and shall be faithfully presented to this critical company. I shall be excused from detailing my method of examination; time would fail us were I to make the attempt; suffice it to say that I have brought all possible modes under contribution, and many more, and that not a single fact has been set down unless previously tested by a wild flight of imagination. Upon principle, too, I decline to say how I have arrived at the realities of the case, lest truth should suffer through disapproval of my process.
If I say that I have telegraphed direct, some wretched caviller may observe that he never heard of Kaffir wires. I may have conversed with the ghost of the wicked king of Koussa Kaffir through the medium of Mrs. Marshall, but some joker—how I do detest the race—might object to my plan ofmarshallingmy facts. I may have “asked that solemn question” of the leg of my loo-table, which doesnotby any means “seem eternal,” something after the fashion of Ion. I may have caught the little toe of Mr. Home, as he was floating in mid-air, and so found my information, as honest debts should be paid,on the nail. I may have—but no more—I respectfully decline to communicate, to-night at least, aught but the ascertainedrealities.
It is true, then, that a stranded anchor was thrown on the shore of Koussa Kaffir; that it created widespread wonder and inquiry as to its whence, its wherefore, andits whither; that the king, being of an inquiring mind, often examined the anchor, pondered over its shape and its materials; that one day, testing this last with too much energy, one fluke was quite lopped off. His majesty was pleased with the result, although it did not seem to do much towards solving the difficult questions connected with the strange visitor; but it was afterwards generally reported that some of the wisest of the Kaffirs had shaken their heads three times, and had remarked that if anything should happen they should doubt whether it was not for something.
Something did happen. The king that night ate for his supper forty-four ostrich eggs, beside two kangaroos and a missionary. It was too much for even a Kaffir king; he was seized with nightmare, raved of the weight of the anchor on his chest, and died.
The effect produced upon Kaffir public opinion, and the Kaffir press, was startling and instantaneous. The king had broken the anchor; the king had died—had diedbecausehe broke the anchor; that was evident, nay was proved—proved by unerring figures, as thus: the king was fifty-five years old; had lived, that is to say, 20,075 days; to say, therefore, that he had not died this daybecauseof his daring impiety was more than 20,000 to one against the doctrine of probabilities.
The anchor, therefore, was a power—was a devil to be feared—that is, a god to be worshipped; for in savage countries there is a wonderful likeness between the two. Thus was born a religion in Koussa Kaffir. Divine honours or dastard fears were lavished on the anchor; a priesthood sprang up who made their account in the Kaffir superstition. They were called anchorites. They were partly cheats, and partly dupes; but they made a livelihood between the two characters. They fixedthe nature and the amount of the sacrifices to be offered, and the requirements of the anchor were in remarkable harmony with the wants of its priests. Natural causes, too, were happily blended with supernatural. The anchor was declared to be the great healer of diseases. For immense sums the ministering priests would give small filings to the diseased, and marvellous were the cures produced by oxides and by iron; never, in short, was there a more prosperous faith. The morals of the people, I grieve to say, did not improve in proportion to their faith. An anchor that is supposed to remit sins on sacerdotal intercession is probably not favourable to the higher morals in Koussa Kaffir.
But a trial had to come upon the anchor-devil and its worshippers. Under it it must collapse, or passing through it as through the flame of persecution, come forth stronger and brighter than ever. Which should it be? It was an interesting spectacle. Let me finish my story.
There returned to Koussa Kaffir a native who had voyaged round the world since he had left his native land; he had seen and had observed much; he was well acquainted with anchors; had seen them in all stages and under all conditions; he knew their use by long experience; he had handled them. One time his vessel had been saved by its stout anchor, another time he had had to save the ship by slipping his cable and leaving the anchor at the bottom; he had never known an anchor resent the worst usage; he would not worship this old broken one. Some thought him mad, some wicked; he was called infidel by those who knew his mind, but for a long time he followed his friends’ advice, and said nothing of his awful heresy.
But this condition of mind would hardly last forever. Travel had improved his intellectual force, as well as given special knowledge about anchors and other things; he began to lament over and even to despise the folly of his race; he burned to cast off some at least of their shackles of ignorance and superstition. “How shall I begin,” cried he one day, “to raise their souls to something higher, while they worship that stupid old rusty anchor in the sand?”
His soul began to burn with the spirit of martyrs and reformers. “I will expose this folly; I will break to pieces their anchor-devil, and when they see that all is well as it was before, they will begin to laugh at their own devil, and will have their minds open to a higher faith.”
But first he would consult his friends; if possible obtain their sanction, and act in unison with others. He met with no encouragement. One gravely rebuked him for his presumption and conceit, and produced a long list of eminent Kaffirs who had bowed before the anchor. Another found in the absurdity of the anchor faith its best evidence of solidity. It was, he said, a faith too improbable for a Kaffir to have invented; any fool, he added, could believe a probable religion, but it needed a superior Kaffir to swallow this. Some put their tongues in their cheeks (a vulgar habit amongst the Koussa Kaffirs), and said: “Silly fellow, we know all that as well as you do, but the anchor is a profitable anchor, and as needs must, you shall be one amongst the priests.”
Again, others said: “We, too, have our doubts, but as a political engine we must retain our anchor. How should we keep down the lower orders? How restrain our servants from pilfering without its influence and sanctifying power? The fact is, that in our complicatedsocial system all society depends upon the anchor.” “Between ourselves,” one added, “if heaven had not sent that particular anchor some of us think we must have sent to Woolwich for another.”
But the only arguments that caused him any hesitation, and which did give him some pain, were from certain women who implored him not to destroy their anchor idol. “We cannot judge,” said one of these, “between your arguments and the conclusions we have been brought up to reverence. The anchor may not be a god but only a symbol, but how beautiful a one! Does not the anchor save the ship? And are not our own lives, too, like the storm-tossed vessel? That anchor is associated with all we have felt, suffered, prayed for. Destroy that symbol, and you wound and endanger the deepest element of religion in our hearts.”
Finally, one very intelligent friend said to him with much solemnity: “Rash man, forbear! Stop while there is time in a course that may bring down ruin on the State and on yourself, and for the doing of which you can have, as a rational being, no temptation whatever. I grant you you may be right, and the rest all wrong; but what then? We can know nothing of the matter, andyou may be wrong. Now, anyhow,we are on the safe side of the hedge. If the anchor be a devil he may do you harm, and if he be only a bit of rusty iron, you will be none the worse for a bow and a grimace.”
The rash man was immovable. Doomed by the infernal gods to pay the penalty of having lit his Promethean torch at Woolwich dockyard, armed with a mighty hammer, and followed by an awe-struck crowd, he fell upon the anchor, and with one mighty blow, struck off the other fluke. It was his last! Inspiredby religious zeal, the Koussa Kaffirs rushed upon him, and in the sight of the outraged anchor beat his brains out on the beach. It was observed that his friend who liked to be “on the safe side” threw the first stone, and the advocate of public morals was the next; after that they rained too thick to tell who did the most.
Meantime the anchor of Koussa Kaffir will be worshipped for a thousand years, for has it not slain the only two men who dared to question its authority?
[Ye Prologue.]
IHADbeen to the theatre, swallowed a play,Seen bright Marie Wilton, and cried with the bestO’er the poor parting lovers; then laugh’d and was gayAt the plump roly-poly, the puns, and the rest.
[Acte ye fyrste.]
So into the streets, warmly muffled, I came,And turn’d my steps homeward, three miles in the fog;When, threading a court (I can’t tell you its name),I tripp’d against something I thought was a dog,
For it moan’d. I stoop’d down, half-expecting a bite;But the thing never moved; then I look’d, and behold,A baby, wrapt up in brown paper and night,Half-dying with hunger, half-frozen with cold.
I return’d to the Foundling, and ringing the bell,Gave Baby in charge; then, retracing my way,I mused upon this which had happen’d, and fellFrom my comedy-mood to a tragedy-play.
[Acte ye second.]
I had seen the first act—now the second began.Night lifted her curtain; and, here in the street,A minute City Arab, the least of his clan,Patter’d past on the pavement,—no shoes to his feet;
Black, shivering, starving; not daring to beg,Not able to work, not unwilling to steal,If a chance came his way; he was fleet of his leg;He would risk a policeman to pilfer a meal.
Sure enough the chance came; ’twas a truckful of bread;No Gorgon to watch it—no dragon to slay;Like a juvenile Jason, he plunder’d and fled;Like a Jason, he found a Medea to pay—
In the shape of a lout, twice the size of himself,The sole witness, by hunger made ruthless and keen;He demolish’d the pilferer, pilfer’d the pelf,Disappear’d with his booty—and down came the scene.
[Acte ye thyrde.]
Act the third was a garret;—I thought I had clombUp a hundred of stairs, to a hole in the roof,Where a lad of eighteen had made shift of a home,—With a wife, if you please—and a baby for proof.
He was thief by profession—a cadger—a sot—Sticking close to his calling; and so, as we say,An habitual rogue;—had he chosen his lot,It may be he had pitch’d on an honester way.
As it was, he was light of his fingers—adeptAt shop-lifting and burglary—nimble and cute;Never fear’d a policeman (unless when he slept),And was held by his pals in the highest repute.
[Acte ye fovrthe.]
Act the fourth is the hulks, where our hero appearsIn the proper stage garments of yellow and red;With a chain to his leg this last dozen of years,And a warder to see that he works for his bread.
[Morall Reflecciouns.]
Once again—’tis his lot; you won’t hear him complain;He was born to it, kick’d to it—Fortune is blind;And if some have the pleasure, somemusthave the pain;So it’s each for himself—and the devil behind.
[ Acte ye last and Ingenious rhyme.]
The last act of our drama—well, what shall it be?The august British Public, defraying the cost?—Or . . . P-a-r-l-i-a-m-e-n-t?Or the angels, lamenting the soul that is lost?
BOW-WOW!
I’m my master’s dog; whose dog are you? I live in a kennel, which somebody was good enough to make for me; and I sleep on straw, which grew that I might sleep on it. I have my meals brought to me punctually; and, therefore, I conclude that meals are a noble institution and that punctuality is a virtue. When I act as a good dog ought to act, I get a bone, and my master pats me on the back. Therefore I always do what is expected of me; and that I call morality. Dogs which have no kennels flounder about in the gutter. Having a kennel, I eschew the gutter;—and that I call respectability. It is in the nature of dogs to lick their masters’ feet. The best dogs do it, so I follow their example;—and that I call religion. If I do what is not expected of me, I get the stick. I do not like the stick, so I behave myself;—and that I call conventionality. There is a chain round my neck, lest I should run away. I cannot break the chain, so I play with it;—and that I call the proper subjection of the individual. But I am free to pull at my chain till my neck is sore;—and that I call liberty . . . For the rest, I bark.
There are three kinds of spiritual beings: men, dogs, and cats. Men are supreme, and made both dogs and cats. Dogs were created for happiness, and cats for misery. We are the good race, and they are the evil. It is the duty of a dog to kill a cat. Then hate cats, and hang them up by the tails in the back garden. If Iam a bad dog, I shall be turned into a cat, and hung up by my tail. Cats are fed on black beetles; but men are very happy, and eat bones all day long. I eat a bone when I can get one; which makes me think that I shall some day be turned into a man. When I am, I shall hang up cats by the tails.
Of created beings dogs are the only ones who have souls. There is a heaven for dogs, but for no one else. There are no cats in heaven; and for that matter, very few dogs; but I hope to be one of them; for there the dogs have meaty bones, and bark all day long, making sweet music. This is the Dogs’ creed. All who believe it will go to Bone-land; and all who do not, will be hung up with the cats in the back garden.
Bow-wow!
Underthe rolling smoke, the brave black smoke,Our work is wrought;Fashion’d strong with every sturdy strokeThat does wild music from the roofs provokeIn echoes brought.A rare bold sportRather than labour stern, or blunting task;A toil to askNot blench from. Merrily round the fireWe work our will,Producing stillSome new form daily to our hearts’ desire.
Delicate iron bandsThat, as with fairy hands,Heavenward aspireTo carry roofs, sun pierced and ever gleaming,Wherein the varied raceOf fruit or flowers finds place,While the weak Northern rays through mist are streaming.
Or lofty gateOf palace or of temple set apart;The hallowed gaols of art,Where low estateIs never welcome; ever warmly biddenTo enter and abide. Far better hiddenLife’s earnest prime behind the factory gate.Always the rolling smoke, the brave black smoke,Is overhead,Like floating incense looming through the sky,It tells the prayer of work goes on hard byWhere zeal new energies of life evokes;While iron redFrom earthy bedBlackens to use beneath the smith’s firm strokes.
Under the rolling smoke, the brave black smoke,Our lot is laid.Our ever-flaming altar spreads on highThis great scroll as a witness in the skyOf effort made.Here, rare workmanship, we, day by day,Strive to display,Not heeding if our work make weal or woe.We do our best,Ye will the rest,To meet whose wants me make our furnace glow.
Pleasant are our rough handsThat work the world’s demandsAnd never tire,Bringing to shape forms past the quaintest dreaming.Hot, and with grimy armsWe weave the Earth’s new charms,Only a hymn of praise our toil esteeming.
Under the rolling smoke, the brave black smoke,Our work is wrought;Not a cloud, the summer air to choke,But banner of our craft, the floating smokeEnsigns our labour, with bright meanings fraught.
Whenwinter was here, from my window on highI saw her sweet face up at hers where she sat.We never had met, but ’twas plain she and IFrom falling in love were not hinder’d by that.Between the bare boughs of these lindens how oftKind kisses we blew I’ve no patience to sing,For there are the leaves now all quiv’ring aloft—Ah! why are you here again, horrible Spring?
Yes, there are the leaves, and no more I beholdMy kind little neighbour put forth her dear headTo scatter the bread-crumbs, when, tamed by the cold,The robins, her pensioners, wait to be fed.The minute her casement she open would throw,The Loves with our errands were all on the wing.What is there for beauty to equal the snow?Ah! why are you here again, horrible Spring?
And ’twere not for you I should still with the dawnBehold her new-risen in simplest array;So, radiant and lovely, great painters have drawnAurora enclosing the curtains of day.At eve, in the heavens though stars might be bright,I watched for her taper my planet to bring;How lonely I felt when she put out her light;Ah! why are you here again, horrible Spring?
Ever dear to my heart must the winter remain;How glad I should be if I only could hearThe sharp little tinkling of sleet on the pane,Than whispering of zephyrs more dulcet and dear.Your fruits and your flowers are odious and vile,Your long sunny days only sadness can bring;More sunny by far was the light of her smile.Ah! why are you here again, horrible Spring?
Throughhoary centuries, through History’s page,Like tongues of fire unquench’d, undimm’d by age,Whisper the voices, living, clear and true,The crust of Time and changes piercing through;Sometimes like trumpets’ martial tones they ring—Anon, scarce heard, in trembling accents sing,Yet there is life in what they tell and say,A life nor years nor days can sweep away:From out the Past, from out the silent grave,From the lone deep where beats the ceaseless wave,They yearn, they rise, they plead with deathless tone:From hill, from field, from cot, from kingly throneThey bring their witness;—if we list or learn,The days shall tell of each one in his turn:—Oh, who shall say a voice, however weak,Its message doth not bear—its lesson speak!
The Child speaks.
Tweet, tweet, tweet!The birds cry out of the sky.Tweet, tweet, tweet,Mother I want to fly.Up, and up, and up,Above the poplars tall,Mother, if I had wings,I would fly and never fall!
The Mother speaks.
Sweet, sweet, sweet!So the swallows are here again,Flying over the village street,And out to the open plain.Sweet, sweet, sweet!As they cried three springs ago,When Will led me through the fieldsDown to the church below.Three years have come and gone,Through warm summer and winter coldI have carried his dinner afield,And led the cattle to fold.Three years have come and gone,And my child is just two years old,And the swallows are crying again Sweet, sweet,And my tale is told.
The Grandmother speaks.
Fleet, fleet, fleet,Are those the swallows I hear?The sound was sudden and sweet,And this is the spring of the year.To my dim eyes they seemBut a sudden light as they pass;But I know how they skim o’er the stream,And over the churchyard grass.Their wings are a sudden light,Thy tunes will not be long,For my spirit is nearer its flightThan that of the young and the strong;Fleet, fleet, fleet, my days are waning fast,I hear them cry, for out of the sky,“There are wings for the soul at last.”
ANEWseason is begun. Parliament met to-day. London is getting full, and the price of coals has fallen. The celandine (swallow-flower) is beginning to cover the hedgerow banks of the Isle of Wight with yellow stars, and the swallows themselves will soon be with us again.
I may mention as another agreeable sign of spring the return of “Pen and Pencil,” not to the old nest, but under shelter of the old hospitality.
The Rhodians used to salute the return of the swallows with a traditional popular song, theChelidonisma; perhaps some lady present may gratify us with a chant of the like purport. My own aim this evening is merely to give some brief natural history notes on the British swallows, drawn partly from books and partly from my own observation.
There are about sixty species of the family of Hirundinidæ, but only four kinds (counting the swift as one) are habitual visitors of the British Islands—the chimney swallow, the house martin, the bank martin (Hirundo rustica,urbica, andriparia), and fourthly the swift (Cypselus).
The chimney swallow (rustica) has a brownish-red throat, back of blue-black lustre, under part of body reddish-white, and a long forked tail. It is a bold bird, and trusting to its superior speed, dashes at a hawk whenever it sees one. It always builds near men, andmakes its cup-shaped nest inside chimneys and old wells, in barns, gateways, sheds, and arches of bridges. There are four or five spotted eggs, and it brings out two broods each year. The chimney swallow has a sweet little song of its own, and is one of the earliest birds heard of a summer morning, beginning soon after two o’clock. It is said to grow very tame in confinement, but I never saw and should not like to see one in a cage. These are the most abundant of our swallows, and the same birds return year after year, while their little time endures, to the same localities, and often very likely to the same nests.
The house martin (urbica), or window swallow or martlet, is smaller and less agile than its cousin just described, and has a far shorter tail. Its feet and toes are downy. It comes later than the chimney swallow, builds amidst towns, on theoutsideof houses, under eaves and in window niches, and chooses a northern aspect to avoid the direct rays of the sun, which would crack its mud nest. Martlets sometimes build on the face of cliffs, as may be seen at the Giant’s Causeway. It has four or fivewhiteeggs, and brings out two broods. As a vocalist it can only get as far as a chirp, or at most a small twitter. Its body is white below, and purple on the back and wings. The house martin does not, like the chimney swallow, sweep the ground and water in its flight.
The bank swallow (riparian) or sand martin, which is so sociable with its own kind but not with man, digs horizontal and serpentine holes in banks, sloping upwards to avoid rain, where it lays in a careless nest four or six white eggs. It has sometimes, but perhaps not always, two broods. These are the smallest and wildest of our swallows; nearly mute, or with only a tiny chirp; and, whenthey can, frequent large spaces of water. They often fly waveringly with a quick fluttering of wings, somewhat like butterflies, and anon sail circling like other swallows. They use their old caves for some years, but may often be seen digging new ones. They are probably driven out sometimes by the fleas which, as I have often seen, abound in their habitations. Birds, indeed, free and airy as their life seems, suffer much from vermin, and the poor baby swallows are terribly preyed upon. The sand martin is mouse-coloured on the back and brownish-white below. It is the earliest to arrive in England, and may be expected now in three weeks or so. Next we may look for the chimney swallow with his long tail—then for the house martin, and latest of all comes the swift (Cypselus), which some naturalists say is no true swallow, having several anatomical peculiarities, the most noticeable being that all four toes go forward. No other bird, I think (save the Gibraltar swift), has a similar foot. The swift can cling well to the face of a wall, but cannot perch in the usual bird fashion, and gets on very badly on the ground, finding it difficult to rise on the wing. Once in the air, with its long wings in motion, it is truly master of the situation. It is one of the speediest, if not the speediest, and can keep on the wing for sixteen hours, which is longer than any other bird. The swifts are most active in sultry thundery weather. They fly in rain, but dislike wind. They are the latest day-birds in summer, and their one very shrill note may be heard up to nearly nine o’clock. Sometimes they get excited and dart about screaming, perhaps quarrelling, but usually the swallows, all of them, agree well among themselves, though they also keep a proper distance. The swifts build high in holes of walls and rocks. The Tower of London is one of their London palaces. The nest isbulky and has two white eggs. There is but one brood in the season, and the swift leaves town for Africa in August, going earliest, although he was the latest to come.
Swallows for several weeks after their arrival in England play about before beginning their nests—
“Like children coursing every roomOf some new house.”
“Like children coursing every roomOf some new house.”
They wait for fit weather to go away, and may then be seen sitting in rows as though meditating on their journey, perhaps dimly sorry to part—
“With a birdish trouble, half-perplexed.”
“With a birdish trouble, half-perplexed.”
Utterly mysterious and inscrutable to us are the feelings of our lower fellow-creatures on this earth, and how the bird of passage, “lone-wandering but not lost,” finds its distant goal, is beyond man’s wit to explain.
After this I fear tedious sketch of our four winged friends, I will only add another word or two as to the name swallow, a rather odd word, entirely different from the Greekχελῖδών, and the Latinhirundo(which, unlike as it may appear, philologists tell us is formed from the Greek name). The Italians call the birdrondine(evidently from the Latin), and the Frenchhirondelle. We get our word from the Anglo-Saxon,swalewe, and the modern German isschwalbe. What does this mean? I must own with regret that it seems to me most likely that the name is given on account of the voracity of this bird, which is engaged in swallowing gnats, beetles, bees, may-flies, dragon-flies, and all kinds of flies from break of day till sunset. The Anglo-Saxon verb to swallow isswelgan. Fain would I take the wordswelgel, air, sky; but the Spanish name for our bird seems conclusive for the baser derivation. The Spaniards call it golondrina (evidently fromgola, throat); and it maybe added, make a cruel kind of amusement out of the gulosity of the swallows, by angling for them with fishing-flies from the walls of the Alhambra, round which the birds dart in myriads on a summer’s day—descendants of those that played round the heads of the Moorish kings, who perhaps were kinder to their visitors.