“‘Dead and gone,’—a sorry burden of the Ballad of Life.”Death’s Jest Book.
“‘Dead and gone,’—a sorry burden of the Ballad of Life.”
Death’s Jest Book.
Say, fair maids, mayingIn gardens green,In deep dells straying,What end hath beenTwo Mays betweenOf the flowers that shoneAnd your own sweet queen—“They are dead and gone!”
Say, grave priests, prayingIn dule and teen,From cells decayingWhat have ye seenOf the proud and mean,Of Judas and John,Of the foul and clean?—“They are dead and gone!”
Say, kings, arrayingLoud wars to win,Of your manslayingWhat gain ye glean?“They are fierce and keen,But they fall anon,On the sword that lean,—They are dead and gone!”
ENVOY.
Through the mad world’s scene,We are drifting on,To this tune, I ween,“They are dead and gone!”
There’s a joy without canker or cark,There’s a pleasure eternally new,’Tis to gloat on the glaze and the markOf china that’s ancient and blue;Unchipp’d all the centuries throughIt has pass’d, since the chime of it rang,And they fashion’d it, figure and hue,In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
These dragons (their tails, you remark,Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),—When Noah came out of the ark,Did these lie in wait for his crew?They snorted, they snapp’d, and they slew,They were mighty of fin and of fang,And their portraits Celestials drewIn the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Here’s a pot with a cot in a park,In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,Where the lovers eloped in the dark,Lived, died, and were changed into twoBright birds that eternally flewThrough the boughs of the may, as they sang:’Tis a tale was undoubtedly trueIn the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
ENVOY.
Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do,Kind critic, your “tongue has a tang”But—a sage never heeded a shrewIn the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
(AFTER VILLON.)
Nay, tell me now in what strange airThe Roman Flora dwells to-day.Where Archippiada hides, and whereBeautiful Thais has passed away?Whence answers Echo, afield, astray,By mere or stream,—around, below?Lovelier she than a woman of clay;Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?
Where is wise Héloïse, that careBrought on Abeilard, and dismay?All for her love he found a snare,A maimed poor monk in orders grey;And where’s the Queen who willed to slayBuridan, that in a sack must goAfloat down Seine,—a perilous way—Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?
Where’s that White Queen, a lily rare,With her sweet song, the Siren’s lay?Where’s Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice fair?Alys and Ermengarde, where are they?Good Joan, whom English did betrayIn Rouen town, and burned her? No,Maiden and Queen, no man may say;Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?
ENVOY.
Prince, all this week thou need’st not pray,Nor yet this year the thing to know.One burden answers, ever and aye,“Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?”
Nay, be you pardoner or cheat,Or cogger keen, or mumper shy,You’ll burn your fingers at the feat,And howl like other folks that fry.All evil folks that love a lie!And where goes gain that greed amasses,By wile, and trick, and thievery?’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
Rhyme, rail, dance, play the cymbals sweet,With game, and shame, and jollity,Go jigging through the field and street,Withmyst’ryandmorality;Win gold atgleek,—and that will fly,Where all you gain atpassagepasses,—And that’s? You know as well as I,’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
Nay, forth from all such filth retreat,Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry,Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat,If you’ve no clerkly skill to ply;You’ll gain enough, with husbandry,But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses,And where goes all you take thereby?—’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
ENVOY.
Your clothes, your hose, your broidery,Your linen that the snow surpasses,Or ere they’re worn, off, off they fly,’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
Far in the Past I peer, and seeA Child upon the Nursery floor,A Child with books upon his knee,Who asks, like Oliver, for more!The number of his years is IV,And yet in Letters hath he skill,How deep he dives in Fairy-lore!The Books I loved, I love them still!
One gift the Fairies gave me: (ThreeThey commonly bestowed of yore)The Love of Books, the Golden KeyThat opens the Enchanted Door;Behind it BLUEBEARD lurks, and o’erAnd o’er doth JACK his Giants kill,And there is all ALADDIN’S store,—The Books I loved, I love them still!
Take all, but leave my Books to me!These heavy creels of old we boreWe fill not now, nor wander free,Nor wear the heart that once we wore;Not now each River seems to pourHis waters from the Muses’ hill;Though something’s gone from stream and shore,The Books I loved, I love them still!
ENVOY.
Fate, that art Queen by shore and sea,We bow submissive to thy will,Ah grant, by some benign decree,The Books I loved—to love them still.
The soft wind from the south land sped,He set his strength to blow,From forests where Adonis bled,And lily flowers a-row:He crossed the straits like streams that flow,The ocean dark as wine,To my true love to whisper low,To be your Valentine.
The Spring half-raised her drowsy head,Besprent with drifted snow,“I’ll send an April day,” she said,“To lands of wintry woe.”He came,—the winter’s overthrowWith showers that sing and shine,Pied daisies round your path to strow,To be your Valentine.
Where sands of Egypt, swart and red,’Neath suns Egyptian glow,In places of the princely dead,By the Nile’s overflow,The swallow preened her wings to go,And for the North did pine,And fain would brave the frost her foe,To be your Valentine.
ENVOY.
Spring, Swallow, South Wind, even so,Their various voice combine;But that they crave onmebestow,To be your Valentine.
(Les Œuvres de Monsieur Molière.A Paris,chez Louys Billaine,à la Palme.M.D.C. LXVI.)
LA COUR.
When these Old Plays were new, the King,Beside the Cardinal’s chair,Applauded, ’mid the courtly ring,The verses of Molière;Point-lace was then the only wear,Old Corneille came to woo,And bright Du Parc was young and fair,When these Old Plays were new!
LA COMÉDIE.
How shrill the butcher’s cat-calls ring,How loud the lackeys swear!Black pipe-bowls on the stage they fling,At Brécourt, fuming there!The Porter’s stabbed! a MousquetaireBreaks in with noisy crew—’Twas all a commonplace affairWhen these Old Plays were new!
LA VILLE.
When these Old Plays were new! They bringA host of phantoms rare:Old jests that float, old jibes that sting,Old faces peaked with care:Ménage’s smirk, de Visé’s stare,The thefts of Jean Ribou,—[66]Ah, publishers were hard to bearWhen these Old Plays were new.
ENVOY.
Ghosts, at your Poet’s word ye dareTo break Death’s dungeons through,And frisk, as in that golden air,When these Old Plays were new!
Here stand my books, line upon lineThey reach the roof, and row by row,They speak of faded tastes of mine,And things I did, but do not, know:Old school books, useless long ago,Old Logics, where the spirit, railed in,Could scarcely answer “yes” or “no”—The many things I’ve tried and failed in!
Here’s Villon, in morocco fine,(The Poet starved, in mud and snow,)Glatigny does not crave to dine,And René’s tears forget to flow.And here’s a work by Mrs. Crowe,With hosts of ghosts and bogies jailed in;Ah, all my ghosts have gone below—The many things I’ve tried and failed in!
He’s touched, this mouldy Greek divine,The Princess D’Este’s hand of snow;And here the arms of D’Hoym shine,And there’s a tear-bestained Rousseau:Here’s Carlyle shrieking “woe on woe”(The first edition, this, he wailed in);I once believed in him—but oh,The many things I’ve tried and failed in!
ENVOY.
Prince, tastes may differ; mine and thineQuite other balances are scaled in;May you succeed, though I repine—“The many things I’ve tried and failed in!”
Swift as sound of music fledWhen no more the organ sighs,Sped as all old days are sped,So your lips, love, and your eyes,So your gentle-voiced repliesMine one hour in sleep that seem,Rise and flit when slumber flies,Following darkness like a dream!
Like the scent from roses red,Like the dawn from golden skies,Like the semblance of the deadFrom the living love that hies,Like the shifting shade that liesOn the moonlight-silvered stream,So you rise when dreams arise,Following darkness like a dream!
Could some spell, or sung or said,Could some kindly witch and wise,Lull for aye this dreaming headIn a mist of memories,I would lie like him who liesWhere the lights on Latmos gleam,—Wake not, find not ParadiseFollowing darkness like a dream!
ENVOY.
Sleep, that giv’st what Life denies,Shadowy bounties and supreme,Bring the dearest face that fliesFollowing darkness like a dream!
Fair islands of the silver fleece,Hoards of unsunned, uncounted gold,Whose havens are the haunts of Peace,Whose boys are in our quarrel bold;Ourbolt is shot, our tale is told,Our ship of state in storms may toss,But ye are young if we are old,Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!
Ay,wemust dwindle and decrease,Such fates the ruthless years unfold;And yet we shall not wholly cease,We shall not perish unconsoled;Nay, still shall Freedom keep her holdWithin the sea’s inviolate fosse,And boast her sons of English mould,Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!
All empires tumble—Rome and Greece—Their swords are rust, their altars cold!For us, the Children of the Seas,Who ruled where’er the waves have rolled,For us, in Fortune’s books enscrolled,I read no runes of hopeless loss;Nor—whileyelast—our knell is tolled,Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!
ENVOY.
Britannia, when thy hearth’s a-cold,When o’er thy grave has grown the moss,StillRule Australiashall be trolledIn Islands of the Southern Cross!
Where smooth the southern waters runBy rustling leagues of poplars grey,Beneath a veiled soft southern sun,We wandered out of yesterday,Went maying through that ancient MayWhose fallen flowers are fragrant yet,And loitered by the fountain sprayWith Aucassin and Nicolette.
The grass-grown paths are trod of noneWhere through the woods they went astray.The spider’s traceries are spunAcross the darkling forest way.There come no knights that ride to slay,No pilgrims through the grasses wet,No shepherd lads that sang their sayWith Aucassin and Nicolette!
’Twas here by Nicolette begunHer bower of boughs and grasses gay;’Scaped from the cell of marble dun’Twas here the lover found the fay,Ah, lovers fond! ah, foolish play!How hard we find it to forgetWho fain would dwell with them as they,With Aucassin and Nicolette.
ENVOY.
Prince, ’tis a melancholy lay!For youth, for love we both regret.How fair they seem, how far away,With Aucassin and Nicolette!
AFTER FROISSART.
Not Jason nor Medea wise,I crave to see, nor win much lore,Nor list to Orpheus’ minstrelsies;Nor Her’cles would I see, that o’erThe wide world roamed from shore to shore;Nor, by St. James, Penelope,—Nor pure Lucrece, such wrong that bore:To see my Love suffices me!
Virgil and Cato, no man viesWith them in wealth of clerkly store;I would not see them with mine eyes;Nor him that sailed,sanssail nor oar,Across the barren sea and hoar,And all for love of his ladye;Nor pearl nor sapphire takes me more:To see my Love suffices me!
I heed not Pegasus, that fliesAs swift as shafts the bowmen pour;Nor famed Pygmalion’s artifice,Whereof the like was ne’er before;Nor Oléus, that drank of yoreThe salt wave of the whole great sea:Why? dost thou ask? ’Tis as I swore—To see my Love suffices me!
The modish Airs,The Tansey Brew,TheSwainsandFairsIn curtained Pew;NymphsKnellerdrew,BooksBentleyread,—Who knows them, who?Queen Anneis dead!
We buy her Chairs,Her China blue,Her red-brick SquaresWe build anew;But ah! we rue,When all is said,The tale o’er-true,Queen Anneis dead!
NowBullsandBears,A ruffling Crew,With Stocks and Shares,With Turk and Jew,Go bubbling throughThe Town ill-bred:The World’s askew,Queen Anneis dead!
ENVOY.
Friend, praise the new;The old is fled:VivatFrou-Frou!Queen Anneis dead!
(AFTER LYONNET DE COISMES.)
Who have loved and ceased to love, forgetThat ever they loved in their lives, they say;Only remember the fever and fret,And the pain of Love, that was all his pay;All the delight of him passes awayFrom hearts that hoped, and from lips that met—Too late did I love you, my love, and yetI shall never forget till my dying day.
Too late were we ‘ware of the secret netThat meshes the feet in the flowers that stray;There were we taken and snared, Lisette,In the dungeon ofLa Fausse Amistié;Help was there none in the wide world’s fray,Joy was there none in the gift and the debt;Too late we knew it, too long regret—I shall never forget till my dying day!
We must live our lives, though the sun be set,Must meet in the masque where parts we play,Must cross in the maze of Life’s minuet;Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay:But while snows of winter or flowers of MayAre the sad year’s shroud or coronet,In the season of rose or of violet,I shall never forget till my dying day!
ENVOY.
Queen, when the clay is my coverlet,When I am dead, and when you are grey,Vow, where the grass of the grave is wet,“I shall never forget till my dying day!”
Here I’d come when weariest!Here the breastOf the Windburg’s tufted overDeep with bracken; here his crestTakes the west,Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.
Silent here are lark and plover;In the coverDeep below the cushat bestLoves his mate, and croons above herO’er their nest,Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.
Bring me here, Life’s tired-out guest,To the blestBed that waits the weary rover,Here should failure be confessed;Ends my quest,Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!
ENVOY.
Friend, or stranger kind, or lover,Ah, fulfil a last behest,Let me restWhere the wide-winged hawk doth hover!
As,to the pipe,with rhythmic feetIn windings of some old-world dance,The smiling couples cross and meet,Join hands,and then in line advance,So,to these fair old tunes of France,Through all their maze of to-and-fro,The light-heeled numbers laughing go,Retreat,return,and ere they flee,One moment pause in panting row,And seem to say—Vos plaudite!
A. D.
Oronte—Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux,Mais de petits vers!“Le Misanthrope,” Acte i., Sc. 2.
Oronte—Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux,Mais de petits vers!
“Le Misanthrope,” Acte i., Sc. 2.
Your hair and chin are like the hairAnd chin Burne-Jones’s ladies wear;You were unfashionably fairIn ’83;And sad you were when girls are gay,You read a book aboutLe vraiMérite de l’homme, alone in May.Whatcanit be,Le vrai mérite de l’homme? Not gold,Not titles that are bought and sold,Not wit that flashes and is cold,But Virtue merely!Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau(And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know),You bade the crowd of foplings go,You glanced severely,Dreaming beneath the spreading shadeOf ‘that vast hat the Graces made;’[88]So Rouget sang—while yet he playedWith courtly rhyme,And hymned great Doisi’s red perruque,And Nice’s eyes, and Zulmé’s look,And dead canaries, ere he shookThe sultry timeWith strains like thunder. Loud and lowMethinks I hear the murmur grow,The tramp of men that come and goWith fire and sword.They war against the quick and dead,Their flying feet are dashed with red,As theirs the vintaging that treadBefore the Lord.O head unfashionably fair,What end was thine, for all thy care?We only see thee dreaming there:We cannot seeThe breaking of thy vision, whenThe Rights of Man were lords of men,When virtue won her own againIn ’93.
(FROM THE PROSE OF C. BAUDELAIRE.)
Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear,The wand’ring waters, green and grey;Thine eyes are wonderful and clear,And deep, and deadly, even as they;The spirit of the changeful seaInforms thine eyes at night and noon,She sways the tides, and the heart of thee,The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!
The Moon came down the shining stairOf clouds that fleck the summer sky,She kissed thee, saying, “Child, be fair,And madden men’s hearts, even as I;Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet,That know me and are known of me;The lover thou shalt never meet,The land where thou shalt never be!”
She held thee in her chill embrace,She kissed thee with cold lips divine,She left her pallor on thy face,That mystic ivory face of thine;And now I sit beside thy feet,And all my heart is far from thee,Dreaming of her I shall not meet,And of the land I shall not see!
“And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.”—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso. LucianiVera Historia.
“And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.”—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso. LucianiVera Historia.
’Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o’erWith all the waves and wars, a weary while,Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,Go down the ways of gold, and evermoreHis sad heart followed after, mile on mile,Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,Calypso, and the love that was of yore.
Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yetTo look across the sad and stormy space,Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,Because, within a fair forsaken placeThe life that might have been is lost to thee.
Homer, thy song men liken to the seaWith all the notes of music in its tone,With tides that wash the dim dominionOf Hades, and light waves that laugh in gleeAround the isles enchanted; nay, to meThy verse seems as the River of source unknownThat glasses Egypt’s temples overthrownIn his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.
No wiser we than men of heretoforeTo find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vastHis fertile flood, that murmurs evermoreOf gods dethroned, and empires in the past.
(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)
Dead—he is dead! The rouge has left a traceOn that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,Even while the people laughed that held him dearBut yesterday. He died,—and not in grace,And many a black-robed caitiff starts apaceTo slander him whoseTartuffemade them fear,And gold must win a passage for his bier,And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.
Ah, Molière, for that last time of all,Man’s hatred broke upon thee, and went by,And did but make more fair thy funeral.Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily,Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall,For torch, the stars along the windy sky!
The wail of Moschus on the mountains cryingThe Muses heard, and loved it long ago;They heard the hollows of the hills replying,They heard the weeping water’s overflow;They winged the sacred strain—the song undying,The song that all about the world must go,—When poets for a poet dead are sighing,The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.
And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weepingFor Adonais by the summer sea,The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleepingFar from ‘the forest ground called Thessaly’),These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,And are but echoes of the moan for thee.
(AFTER MELEAGER.)
Now the bright crocus flames, and nowThe slim narcissus takes the rain,And, straying o’er the mountain’s brow,The daffodilies bud again.The thousand blossoms wax and waneOn wold, and heath, and fragrant bough,But fairer than the flowers art thou,Than any growth of hill or plain.
Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown,That my Love’s feet may tread it down,Like lilies on the lilies set;My Love, whose lips are softer farThan drowsy poppy petals are,And sweeter than the violet!
(AFTER ALBERT GLATIGNY.)
The winter is upon us, not the snow,The hills are etched on the horizon bare,The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, whereThe black trees seem to shiver as you go.
Beyond lie church and steeple, with their oldAnd rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,Yet up that path, in summer of the year,And past that melancholy pile we strolledTo pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.
TO LUCIA.
Apollo left the golden MuseAnd shepherded a mortal’s sheep,Theocritus of Syracuse!
To mock the giant swain that woo’sThe sea-nymph in the sunny deep,Apollo left the golden Muse.
Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,Where Milon and where Battus reap,Theocritus of Syracuse!
To watch thy tunny-fishers cruiseBelow the dim Sicilian steepApollo left the golden Muse.
Ye twain did loiter in the dews,Ye slept the swain’s unfever’d sleep,Theocritus of Syracuse!
That Time might half withhisconfuseThy songs,—like his, that laugh and leap,—Theocritus of Syracuse,Apollo left the golden Muse!
ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισινἔυχεσθαι·. Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.Od.iii. 47.
ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισινἔυχεσθαι·. Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.
Od.iii. 47.
“OnceCagnwas like a father, kind and good,But He was spoiled by fighting many things;He wars upon the lions in the wood,And breaks the Thunder-bird’s tremendous wings;But still we cry to Him,—We are thy brood—O Cagn,be merciful! and us He bringsTo herds of elands, and great store of food,And in the desert opens water-springs.”
So Qing, King Nqsha’s Bushman hunter, spoke,Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,When all were weary, and soft clouds of smokeWere fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:And suddenly in each man’s heart there wokeA pang, a sacred memory of prayer.
As one that for a weary space has lainLulled by the song of Circe and her wineIn gardens near the pale of Proserpine,Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,And only the low lutes of love complain,And only shadows of wan lovers pine,As such an one were glad to know the brineSalt on his lips, and the large air again,—So gladly, from the songs of modern speechMen turn, and see the stars, and feel the freeShrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,And through the music of the languid hours,They hear like ocean on a western beachThe surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
Suggested by a female head in wax,of unknown date,but supposed to be either of the best Greek age,or a work of Raphael or Leonardo.It is now in the Lille Museum.
Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,While magical his fingers o’er thee strayed,Or that great pupil taught of VerrocchioRedeemed thy still perfection from the shade
That hides all fair things lost, and things unborn,Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace,And that grave tenderness of thine awhile;Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her faceIs pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn,And only on thy lips I find her smile.
“Take short views.”—Sydney Smith.
“Take short views.”—Sydney Smith.
The Fays that to my christ’ning came(For come they did, my nurses taught me),They did not bring me wealth or fame,’Tis very little that they brought me.But one, the crossest of the crew,The ugly old one, uninvited,Said, “I shall be avenged onyou,My child; you shall grow up short-sighted!”With magic juices did she laveMine eyes, and wrought her wicked pleasure.Well, of all gifts the Fairies gave,Hersis the present that I treasure!
The bore whom others fear and flee,I do not fear, I do not flee him;I pass him calm as calm can be;I do not cut—I do not see him!And with my feeble eyes and dim,Whereyousee patchy fields and fences,For me the mists of Turner swim—My“azure distance” soon commences!Nay, as I blink about the streetsOf this befogged and miry city,Why, almost every girl one meetsSeems preternaturally pretty!“Try spectacles,” one’s friends intone;“You’ll see the world correctly through them.”But I have visions of my own,And not for worlds would I undo them.
AFTER ROMNEY.
Mysterious Benedetta! whoThat Reynolds or that Romney drewWas ever half so fair as you,Or is so well forgot?These eyes of melancholy brown,These woven locks, a shadowy crown,Must surely have bewitched the town;Yet you’re remembered not.
Through all that prattle of your age,Through lore of fribble and of sageI’ve read, and chiefly Walpole’s page,Wherein are beauties famous;I’ve haunted ball, and rout, and sale;I’ve heard of Devonshire and Thrale,And all the Gunnings’ wondrous tale,But nothing of Miss Ramus.
And yet on many a lattice pane‘Fair Benedetta,’ scrawled in vainBy lovers’ diamonds, must remainTo tell us you were cruel.[108]But who, of all that sighed and swore—Wits, poets, courtiers by the score—Did win and on his bosom woreThis hard and lovely jewel?
Why, dilettante records sayAn Alderman, who came that way,Woo’d you and made you Lady Day;You crowned his civic flame.It suits a melancholy songTo think your heart had suffered wrong,And that you lived not very longTo be a City dame!
Perchance you were a Mourning Bride,And conscious of a heart that diedWith one who fell by Rodney’s sideIn blood-stained Spanish bays.Perchance ’twas no such thing, and youDwelt happy with your knight and true,And, like Aurora, watched a crewOf rosy little Days!
Oh, lovely face and innocent!Whatever way your fortunes went,And if to earth your life was lentFor little space or long,In your kind eyes we seem to seeWhat Woman at her best may be,And offer to your memoryAn unavailing song!
[Scribie, on the north-east littoral of Bohemia, is the land of stage conventions. It is named after the discoverer, M. Scribe.]
A pleasant land is Scribie, whereThe light comes mostly from below,And seems a sort of symbol rareOf things at large, and how they go,In rooms where doors are everywhereAnd cupboards shelter friend or foe.
This is a realm where people tellEach other, when they chance to meet,Of things that long ago befell—And do most solemnly repeatSecrets they both know very well,Aloud, and in the public street!
A land where lovers go in fours,Master and mistress, man and maid;Where people listen at the doorsOr ’neath a table’s friendly shade,And comic Irishmen in scoresRoam o’er the scenes all undismayed:
A land where Virtue in distressOwes much to uncles in disguise;Where British sailors frankly blessTheir limbs, their timbers, and their eyes;And where the villain doth confess,Conveniently, before he dies!
A land of lovers false and gay;A land where people dread a “curse;”A land of letters gone astray,Or intercepted, which is worse;Where weddings false fond maids betray,And all the babes are changed at nurse.
Oh, happy land, where things come right!We of the world where things go ill;Where lovers love, but don’t unite;Where no one finds the Missing Will—Dominion of the heart’s delight,Scribie, we’ve loved, and love thee still!
NIGHT.
Ah, listen through the music, from the shore,The “melancholy long-withdrawing roar”;Beneath the Minster, and the windy caves,The wide North Ocean, marshalling his wavesEven so forlorn—in worlds beyond our ken—May sigh the seas that are not heard of men;Even so forlorn, prophetic of man’s fate,Sounded the cold sea-wave disconsolate,When none but God might hear the boding tone,As God shall hear the long lament alone,When all is done, when all the tale is told,And the gray sea-wave echoes as of old!
MORNING.
This was the burden of the Night,The saying of the sea,But lo! the hours have brought the light,The laughter of the waves, the flightOf dipping sea-birds, foamy white,That are so glad to be!“Forget!” the happy creatures cry,“Forget Night’s monotone,With us be glad in sea and sky,The days are thine, the days that fly,The days God gives to know him by,And not the Night alone!”
(FOUNDED ON A NEW ZEALAND MYTH.)
In the Morning of Time, when his fortunes began,How bleak, how un-Greek, was the Nature of Man!From his wigwam, if ever he ventured to roam,There was nobody waiting to welcome him home;For the Man had been made, but the woman hadnot,And Earth was a highly detestable spot.Man hated his neighbours; they met and they scowled,They did not converse but they struggled and howled,For Man had no tact—he would ne’er take a hint,And his notions he backed with a hatchet of flint.
So Man was alone, and he wished he could seeOn the Earth some one like him, but fairer than he,With locks like the red gold, a smile like the sun,To welcome him back when his hunting was done.And he sighed for a voice that should answer him still,Like the affable Echo he heard on the hill:That should answer him softly and always agree,And oh, Man reflected,how nice it would be!
So he prayed to the Gods, and they stooped to his prayer,And they spoke to the Sun on his way through the air,And he married the Echo one fortunate morn,And Woman, their beautiful daughter, was born!The daughter of Sunshine and Echo she cameWith a voice like a song, with a face like a flame;With a face like a flame, and a voice like a song,And happy was Man, but it was not for long!
For weather’s a painfully changeable thing,Not always the child of the Echo would sing;And the face of the Sun may be hidden with mist,And his child can be terribly cross if she list.And unfortunate Man had to learn with surpriseThat a frown’s not peculiar to masculine eyes;That the sweetest of voices can scold and can sneer,And cannot be answered—like men—with a spear.
So Man went and called to the Gods in his woe,And they answered him—“Sir, you would needs have it so:And the thing must go on as the thing has begun,She’s immortal—your child of the Echo and Sun.But we’ll send you another, and fairer is she,This maiden with locks that are flowing and free.This maiden so gentle, so kind, and so fair,With a flower like a star in the night of her hair.With her eyes like the smoke that is misty and blue,With her heart that is heavenly, and tender, and true.She will die in the night, but no need you should mourn,You shall bury her body and thence shall be bornA weed that is green, that is fragrant and fair,With a flower like the star in the night of her hair.And the leaves must ye burn till they offer to youSoft smoke, like her eyes that are misty and blue.
“And the smoke shall ye breathe and no more shall ye fret,But the child of the Echo and Sun shall forget:Shall forget all the trouble and torment she brings,Shall bethink ye of none but delectable things;And the sound of the wars with your brethren shall cease,While ye smoke by the camp-fire the great pipe of peace.”So the last state of Man was by no means the worst,The second gift softened the sting of the first.
Nor the child of the Echo and Sun doth he heedWhen he dreams with the Maid that was changed to the weed;Though the Echo be silent, the Sun in a mist,The Maid is the fairest that ever was kissed.And when tempests are over and ended the rain,And the child of the Sunshine is sunny again,He comes back, glad at heart, and again is at oneWith the changeable child of the Echo and Sun.
Thepainted Briton built his mound,And left his celts and clay,On yon fair slope of sunlit groundThat fronts your garden gay;The Roman came,he bore the sway,He bullied,bought,and sold,Your fountain sweeps his works awayBeside your manor old!
But still his crumbling urns are foundWithin the window-bay,Where once he listened to the soundThat lulls you day by day;—The sound of summer winds at play,The noise of waters coldTo Yarty wandering on their way,Beside your manor old!
The Roman fell:his firm-set boundBecame the Saxon’s stay;The bells made music all aroundFor monks in cloisters grey,Till fled the monks in disarrayFrom their warm chantry’s fold,Old Abbots slumber as they may,Beside your manor old!
Envoy.
Creeds,empires,peoples,all decay,Down into darkness,rolled;May life that’s fleet be sweet,I pray,Beside your manor old.
A DREAM IN JUNE.
Intwilight of the longest dayI lingered over Lucian,Till ere the dawn a dreamy wayMy spirit found, untrod of man,Between the green sky and the grey.
Amid the soft dusk suddenlyMore light than air I seemed to sail,Afloat upon the ocean sky,While through the faint blue, clear and pale,I saw the mountain clouds go by:My barque had thought for helm and sail,And one mist wreath for canopy.
Like torches on a marble floorReflected, so the wild stars shone,Within the abysmal hyaline,Till the day widened more and more,And sank to sunset, and was gone,And then, as burning beacons shineOn summits of a mountain isle,A light to folk on sea that fare,So the sky’s beacons for a whileBurned in these islands of the air.
Then from a starry island setWhere one swift tide of wind there flows,Came scent of lily and violet,Narcissus, hyacinth, and rose,Laurel, and myrtle buds, and vine,So delicate is the air and fine:And forests of all fragrant treesSloped seaward from the central hill,And ever clamorous were theseWith singing of glad birds; and stillSuch music came as in the woodsMost lonely, consecrate to Pan,The Wind makes, in his many moods,Upon the pipes some shepherd Man,Hangs up, in thanks for victory!On these shall mortals play no more,But the Wind doth touch them, over and o’er,And the Wind’s breath in the reeds will sigh.
Between the daylight and the darkThat island lies in silver air,And suddenly my magic barqueWheeled, and ran in, and grounded there;And by me stood the sentinelOf them who in the island dwell;All smiling did he bind my hands,With rushes green and rosy bands,They have no harsher bonds than theseThe people of the pleasant landsWithin the wash of the airy seas!
Then was I to their city led:Now all of ivory and goldThe great walls were that garlandedThe temples in their shining fold,(Each fane of beryl built, and eachGirt with its grove of shadowy beech,)And all about the town, and through,There flowed a River fed with dew,As sweet as roses, and as clearAs mountain crystals pure and cold,And with his waves that water kissedThe gleaming altars of amethystThat smoke with victims all the year,And sacred are to the Gods of old.
There sat three Judges by the Gate,And I was led before the Three,And they but looked on me, and straightThe rosy bonds fell down from meWho, being innocent, was free;And I might wander at my willAbout that City on the hill,Among the happy people cladIn purple weeds of woven airHued like the webs that Twilight weavesAt shut of languid summer evesSo light their raiment seemed; and gladWas every face I looked on there!
There was no heavy heat, no cold,The dwellers there wax never old,Nor wither with the waning time,But each man keeps that age he hadWhen first he won the fairy clime.The Night falls never from on high,Nor ever burns the heat of noon.But such soft light eternallyShines, as in silver dawns of JuneBefore the Sun hath climbed the sky!
Within these pleasant streets and wide,The souls of Heroes go and come,Even they that fell on either sideBeneath the walls of Ilium;And sunlike in that shadowy isleThe face of Helen and her smileMakes glad the souls of them that knewGrief for her sake a little while!And all true Greeks and wise are there;And with his hand upon the hairOf Phaedo, saw I Socrates,About him many youths and fair,Hylas, Narcissus, and with theseHim whom the quoit of Phoebus slewBy fleet Eurotas, unaware!
All these their mirth and pleasure madeWithin the plain Elysian,The fairest meadow that may be,With all green fragrant trees for shadeAnd every scented wind to fan,And sweetest flowers to strew the lea;The soft Winds are their servants fleetTo fetch them every fruit at willAnd water from the river chill;And every bird that singeth sweetThrostle, and merle, and nightingaleBrings blossoms from the dewy vale,—Lily, and rose, and asphodel—With these doth each guest twine his crownAnd wreathe his cup, and lay him downBeside some friend he loveth well.
There with the shining Souls I layWhen, lo, a Voice that seemed to say,In far-off haunts of Memory,Whoso doth taste the Dead Men’s bread,Shall dwell for ever with these Dead,Nor ever shall his body lieBeside his friends,on the grey hillWhere rains weep,and the curlews shrillAnd the brown water wanders by!
Then did a new soul in me wake,The dead men’s bread I feared to break,Their fruit I would not taste indeedWere it but a pomegranate seed.Nay, not with these I made my choiceTo dwell for ever and rejoice,For otherwhere the River rollsThat girds the home of Christian souls,And these my whole heart seeks are foundOn otherwise enchanted ground.
Even so I put the cup away,The vision wavered, dimmed, and broke,And, nowise sorrowing, I wokeWhile, grey among the ruins greyChill through the dwellings of the dead,The Dawn crept o’er the Northern sea,Then, in a moment, flushed to red,Flushed all the broken minster old,And turned the shattered stones to gold,And wakened half the world with me!
L’Envoi.
To E. W. G.
(Who also had rhymed on theFortunate Islandsof Lucian).
Each in the self-same field we gleanThe field of the Samosatene,Each something takes and something leavesAnd this must choose,and that foregoIn Lucian’s visionary sheaves,To twine a modern posy so;But all my gleanings,truth to tell,Are mixed with mournful asphodel,While yours are wreathed with poppies red,With flowers that Helen’s feet have kissed,With leaves of vine that garlandedThe Syrian Pantagruelist,The sage who laughed the world away,Who mocked at Gods,and men,and care,More sweet of voice than Rabelais,And lighter-hearted than Voltaire.
(ST. ANDREWS, 1862. OXFORD, 1865.)
St. Andrews by the Northern sea,A haunted town it is to me!A little city, worn and grey,The grey North Ocean girds it round.And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,The long sea-rollers surge and sound.And still the thin and biting sprayDrives down the melancholy street,And still endure, and still decay,Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.Ghost-like and shadowy they standDim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.
St. Leonard’s chapel, long agoWe loitered idly where the tallFresh budded mountain ashes blowWithin thy desecrated wall:The tough roots rent the tomb below,The April birds sang clamorous,We did not dream, we could not knowHow hardly Fate would deal with us!
O, broken minster, looking forthBeyond the bay, above the town,O, winter of the kindly North,O, college of the scarlet gown,And shining sands beside the sea,And stretch of links beyond the sand,Once more I watch you, and to meIt is as if I touched his hand!
And therefore art thou yet more dear,O, little city, grey and sere,Though shrunken from thine ancient prideAnd lonely by thy lonely sea,Than these fair halls on Isis’ side,Where Youth an hour came back to me!
A land of waters green and clear,Of willows and of poplars tall,And, in the spring time of the year,The white may breaking over all,And Pleasure quick to come at call.And summer rides by marsh and wold,And Autumn with her crimson pallAbout the towers of Magdalen rolled;And strange enchantments from the past,And memories of the friends of old,And strong Tradition, binding fastThe “flying terms” with bands of gold,—
All these hath Oxford: all are dear,But dearer far the little town,The drifting surf, the wintry year,The college of the scarlet gown,St. Andrews by the Northern sea,That is a haunted town to me!
IN MEMORIAM S. F. A.
Thecall of homing rooks, the shrillSong of some bird that watches late,The cries of children break the stillSad twilight by the churchyard gate.
And o’er your far-off tomb the greySad twilight broods, and from the treesThe rooks call on their homeward way,And are you heedless quite of these?
The clustered rowan berries redAnd Autumn’s may, the clematis,They droop above your dreaming head,And these, and all things must you miss?
Ah, you that loved the twilight air,The dim lit hour of quiet best,At last, at last you have your shareOf what life gave so seldom, rest!
Yes, rest beyond all dreaming deep,Or labour, nearer the Divine,And pure from fret, and smooth as sleep,And gentle as thy soul, is thine!
So let it be! But could I knowThat thou in this soft autumn eve,This hush of earth that pleased thee so,Hadst pleasure still, I might not grieve.
Ouryouth began with tears and sighs,With seeking what we could not find;Our verses all were threnodies,In elegiacs still we whined;Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,We sought and knew not what we sought.We marvel, now we look behind:Life’s more amusing than we thought!
Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!What? not content with seas and skies,With rainy clouds and southern wind,With common cares and faces kind,With pains and joys each morning brought?Ah, old, and worn, and tired we findLife’s more amusing than we thought!
Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;We set our souls on salmon flies,We whistle where we once repined.Confound the woes of human-kind!By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;Who hum, contented or resigned,“Life’s more amusing than we thought”!
Envoy.
O nate mecum, worn and linedOur faces show, but that is naught;Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:Life’s more amusing than we thought!
THE ANGLER’S APOLOGY.
Justone cast more! how many a yearBeside how many a pool and stream,Beneath the falling leaves and sere,I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!
Dreamed of the sport since April firstHer hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,Adown the pastoral valleys burstWhere Ettrick and where Teviot flow.
Dreamed of the singing showers that break,And sting the lochs, or near or far,And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”From Urigil to Lochinvar.
Dreamed of the kind propitious skyO’er Ari Innes brooding grey;The sea trout, rushing at the fly,Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!
* * * * *
Brief are man’s days at best; perchanceI waste my own, who have not seenThe castled palaces of FranceShine on the Loire in summer green.
And clear and fleet Eurotas still,You tell me, laves his reedy shore,And flows beneath his fabled hillWhere Dian drave the chase of yore.
And “like a horse unbroken” yetThe yellow stream with rush and foam,’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!
I may not see them, but I doubtIf seen I’d find them half so fairAs ripples of the rising troutThat feed beneath the elms of Yair.
Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,And Autumn in that lonely valeWhere wedded Avons westward sweep,
Or where, amid the empty fields,Among the bracken of the glen,Her yellow wreath October yields,To crown the crystal brows of Ken.
Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,You never heard the ringing reel,The music of the water side!
Though Gods have walked your woods among,Though nymphs have fled your banks along;You speak not that familiar tongueTweed murmurs like my cradle song.
My cradle song,—nor other hymnI’d choose, nor gentler requiem dearThan Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!
SONNET.
(AFTER RICHEPIN.)
Lighthas flown!Through the greyThe wind’s wayThe sea’s moanSound alone!For the dayThese repayAnd atone!
Scarce I know,Listening soTo the streamsOf the sea,If old dreamsSing to me!
TO C. H. ARKCOLL.
Whenstrawberry pottles are common and cheap,Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,When midnight dances are murdering sleep,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And far from Fleet Street, far from here,The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!
When clamour that doves in the lindens keepMingles with musical plash of the weir,Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And better a crust and a beaker of beer,With rose-hung hedges on either hand,Than a palace in town and a prince’s cheer,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!
When big trout late in the twilight leap,When cuckoo clamoureth far and near,When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer,Where kine knee deep in the water stand,On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!
Envoy.
Friend, with the fops while we dawdle here,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!
Betweenthe moonlight and the fireIn winter twilights long ago,What ghosts we raised for your desireTo make your merry blood run slow!How old, how grave, how wise we grow!No Christmas ghost can make us chill,Savethosethat troop in mournful row,The ghosts we all can raise at will!
The beasts can talk in barn and byreOn Christmas Eve, old legends know,As year by year the years retire,We men fall silent then I trow,Such sights hath Memory to show,Such voices from the silence thrill,Such shapes return with Christmas snow,—The ghosts we all can raise at will.