MyPostman, though I fear thy tread,And tremble as thy foot draws nearer,’Tis not the Christmas Dun I dread,Mymortal foe is much severer,—The Unknown Correspondent, who,With undefatigable pen,And nothing in the world to do,Perplexes literary men.
From Pentecost and Ponder’s EndThey write: from Deal, and from Dacotah,The people of the Shetlands sendNo inconsiderable quota;They write forautographs; in vain,In vain does Phyllis write, and Flora,They write that Allan QuatermainIs not at all the book for Brora.
They write to say that they have metThis writer ‘at a garden party,And though’ this writer ‘mayforget,’Theirrecollection’s keen and hearty.‘And will you praise in your reviewsA novel by our distant cousin?’These letters from Provincial BluesAssail us daily by the dozen!
O friends with time upon your hands,O friends with postage-stamps in plenty,O poets out of many lands,O youths and maidens under twenty,Seek out some other wretch to bore,Or wreak yourselves upon your neighbours,And leave me to my dusty loreAnd my unprofitable labours!
Withcertain rhymes ’tis hard to deal;For ‘silver’ we have ne’er a rhyme.On ‘orange’ (as on orange peel)The bard has slipped full many a time.With ‘babe’ there’s scarce a sound will chime,Though ‘astrolabe’ fits like a glove;But, ye that on Parnassus climb,Why, why are rhymes so rare toLove?
A rhyme to ‘cusp,’ to beg or steal,I’ve sought, from evensong to prime,But vain is my poetic zeal,There’s not one sound is worth a ‘dime’:‘Bilge,’ ‘coif,’ ‘scarf,’ ‘window’—deeds of crimeI’d do to gain the rhymes thereof;Nor shrink from acts of moral grime—Why, why are rhymes so rare toLove?
To ‘dove’ my fancies flit, and wheelLike butterflies on banks of thyme.‘Above’?—or ‘shove’—alas! I feel,They’re too much used to be sublime.I scorn with angry pantomime,The thought of ‘move’ (pronounced asmuv).Ah, in Apollo’s golden climeWhy, why are rhymes so rare toLove?
Prince of the lute and lyre, revealNew rhymes, fresh minted, from above,Nor still be deaf to our appeal.Why,whyare rhymes so rare toLove?
TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Written in wet weather, this conveyed to the Master of Ballantrae a wrong idea of a very beautiful and charming place, with links, a river celebrated by Burns, good sea-fishing, and, on the river, a ruined castle at every turn of the stream. ‘Try Ballantrae’ is a word of wisdom.
Whansuthern wunds gar spindrift fleeAbune the clachan, faddums hie,Whan for the cluds I canna seeThe bonny lift,I’d fain indite an Ode totheeHad I the gift!
Ken ye the coast o’ wastland Ayr?Oh mon, it’s unco bleak and bare!Ye daunder here, ye daunder there,And mak’ your moan,They’ve rain and wund eneuch to tearThe suthern cone!
Ye’re seekin’ sport! There’s nane ava’,Ye’ll sit and glower ahint the wa’At bleesin’ breakers till ye staw,If that’s yer wush;‘There’s aye the Stinchar.’ Hoot awa’,She wunna fush!
She wunna fush at ony gait,She’s roarin’ reid in wrathfu’ spate;Maist like yer kimmer when ye’re lateFrae Girvan Fair!Forbye to speer for leave I’m blateFor fushin’ there!
O Louis, you that writes in Scots,Ye’re far awa’ frae stirks and stots,Wi’ drookit hurdies, tails in knots,An unco way!Mymirth’s like thorns aneth the potsIn Ballantrae!
RHYMES MADE IN A DREAM
Iknownot what my secret is,I know but it is mine;I know to dwell with it were bliss,To die for it divine.I cannot yield it in a kiss,Nor breathe it in a sigh.I know that I have lived for this;For this, my love, I die.
TheHaunted Homes of England,How eerily they stand,While through them flit their ghosts—to wit,The Monk with the Red Hand,The Eyeless Girl—an awful spook—To stop the boldest breath,The boy that inked his copybook,And so got ‘wopped’ to death!
Call them not shams—from haunted GlamisTo haunted Woodhouselea,I mark in hosts the grisly ghostsI hear the fell Banshie!I know the spectral dog that howlsBefore the death of Squires;In my ‘Ghosts’-guide’ addresses hideFor Podmore and for Myers!
I see the Vampire climb the stairsFrom vaults below the church;And hark! the Pirate’s spectre swears!O Psychical Research,Canstthounot hear what meets my ear,The viewless wheels that come?The wild Banshie that wails to thee?The Drummer with his drum?
O Haunted Homes of England,Though tenantless ye stand,With none content to pay the rent,Through all the shadowy land,Now, Science true will find in youA sympathetic perch,And take you all, both Grange and Hall,For Psychical Research!
AhouseI took, and many a spookWas deemed to haunt that House,I bade the glum Researchers comeWith Bogles to carouse.That House I’d sought with anxious thought,’Twas old, ’twas dark as sin,Anddeeds of bale, so ran the tale,Had oft been done therein.
Full many a child its mother wild,Men said, had strangled there,Full many a sire, in heedless ire,Had slain his daughter fair!’Twas rarely let: I can’t forgetA recent tenant’s dread,This widow lone had heard a moanProceeding from her bed.
The tenants next were chiefly vexedBy spectres grim and grey.A Headless Ghost annoyed them most,And so they did not stay.The next in turn saw corpse lights burn,And also a Banshie,A spectral Hand they could not stand,And left the House to me.
Then came my friends for divers ends,Some curious, some afraid;No direr pest disturbed their restThan a neat chambermaid.The grisly halls were gay with balls,One melancholy nookWhere ghostsgalorewere seen beforeNow yielded ne’er a spook.
When man and maid, all unafraid,‘Sat out’ upon the stairs,No spectre dread, with feet of lead,Came past them unawares.I know not why, but alway IHave found that it is so,That when the glum Researchers comeThe brutes of bogeys—go!
‘A French writer (whom I love well) speaks of three kinds of companions,—men, women, and books.’Sir John Davys.
‘A French writer (whom I love well) speaks of three kinds of companions,—men, women, and books.’
Sir John Davys.
Threekinds of companions, men, women, and books,Were enough, said the elderly Sage, for his ends.And the women we deem that he chose for their looks,And the men for their cellars: the books were his friends:‘Man delights me not,’ often, ‘nor woman,’ but booksAre the best of good comrades in loneliest nooks.
For man will be wrangling—for woman will fretAbout anything infinitesimal small:Like the Sage in our Plato, I’m ‘anxious to getOn the side’—on the sunnier side—‘of a wall.’Let the wind of the world toss the nations like rooks,If only you’ll leave me at peace with my Books.
And which are my books? why, ’tis much as you please,For, given ’tis a book, it can hardly be wrong,And Bradshaw himself I can study with ease,Though for choice I might call for a Sermon or Song;And Locker on London, and Sala on Cooks,‘Tom Brown,’ and Plotinus, they’re all of them Books.
There’s Fielding to lap one in currents of mirth;There’s Herrick to sing of a flower or a fay;Or good Maître Françoys to bring one to earth,If Shelley or Coleridge have snatched one away:There’s Müller on Speech, there is Gurney on Spooks,There is Tylor on Totems, there’s all sorts of Books.
There’s roaming in regions where every one’s been,Encounters where no one was ever before,There’s ‘Leaves’ from the Highlands we owe to the Queen,There’s Holly’s and Leo’s adventures in Kôr:There’s Tanner who dwelt with Pawnees and Chinooks,You can cover a great deal of country in Books.
There are books, highly thought of, that nobody reads,There is Geusius’ dearly delectable tomeOf the Cannibal—he on his neighbour who feeds—And in blood-red morocco ’tis bound, by Derome;There’s Montaigne here (a Foppens), there’s Roberts (on Flukes),There’s Elzevirs, Aldines, and Gryphius’ Books.
There’s Bunyan, there’s Walton, in early editions,There’s many a quarto uncommonly rare;There’s quaint old Quevedo adream with his visions,There’s Johnson the portly, and Burton the spare;There’s Boston of Ettrick, who preached of the ‘CrooksIn the Lots’ of us mortals, who bargain for Books.
There’s Ruskin to keep one exclaiming ‘What next?’There’s Browning to puzzle, and Gilbert to chaff,And Marcus Aurelius to soothe one if vexed,And goodMarcus Tvainusto lend you a laugh;There be capital tomes that are filled with fly-hooks,And I’ve frequently found them the best kind of Books.
Poet, beware! The sonnet’s primrose pathIs all too tempting for thy feet to tread.Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,Because the sated reader roars in wrath:‘Little indeed to say the singer hath,And little sense in all that he hath said;Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read,And naught but stubble is his aftermath!’
Then shall he cast that bonny book of thineWhere the extreme waste-paper basket gapes,There shall thy futile fancies peak and pine,With other minor poets, pallid shapes,Who come a long way short of the divine,Tormented souls of imitative apes.
Ho, warders, cry a tournay! ho, heralds, call the knights!What gallant lance for old Romance ’gainst modern fiction fights?The lists are set, the Knights are met, I ween, a dread array,St. Chad to shield, a stricken field shall we behold to-day!First to the Northern barriers pricks Roland of Roncesvaux,And by his side, in knightly pride, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,The Templar rideth by his rein, two gallant foes were they;And proud to see,le brave Bussyhis colours doth display.
Ready at need he comes with speed, William of Deloraine,And Hereward the Wake himself is pricking o’er the plain.The good knight of La Mancha’s here, here is Sir Amyas Leigh,And Eric of the gold hair, pride of Northern chivalry.There shines the steel of Alan Breck, the sword of Athos shines,Dalgetty on Gustavus rides along the marshalled lines,With many a knight of sunny France the Cid has marched from Spain,And Götz the Iron-handed leads the lances of Almain.
But who upon the Modern side are champions? With the sleeveAdorned of his false lady-love, rides glorious David Grieve,A bookseller sometime was he, in a provincial town,But now before his iron mace go horse and rider down.Ho, Robert Elsmere! count thy beads; lo, champion of the fray,With brandished colt, comes Felix Holt, all of the Modern day.And Silas Lapham’s six-shooter is cocked: the Colonel’s spry!There spurs the wary Egoist, defiance in his eye;There Zola’s ragged regiment comes, with dynamite in hand,And Flaubert’s crew of country doctors devastate the land.On Robert Elsmere Friar Tuck falls with his quarter-staff,Nom Dé! to see the clerics fight might make the sourest laugh!They meet, they shock, full many a knight is smitten on the crown,So keep us good St. Geneviève, Umslopogaas is down!About the mace of David Grieve his blood is flowing red,Alas for ancient chivalry,le brave Bussyis sped!Yet where the sombre Templar rides the Modern caitiffs fly,The Mummer (ofThe Mummer’s Wife) has got it in the eye,From Felix Holt his patent Colt hath not averted fate,And Silas Lapham’s smitten fair, right through his gallant pate.There Dan Deronda reels and falls, a hero sore surprised;Ha,Beauséant! still may such fate befall the Circumcised!The Egoist is flying fast from him of Ivanhoe:Beneath the axe of Skalagrim fall prigs at every blow:The ragged Zolaists have fled, screaming ‘We are betrayed,’But loyal Alan Breck is shent, stabbed through the Stuart plaid;In sooth it is a grimly sight, so fast the heroes fall,Three volumes fell could scarcely tell the fortunes of them all.At length but two are left on ground, and David Grieve is one.Ma foy, what deeds of derring-do that bookseller hath done!The other, mark the giant frame, the great portentous fist!’Tis Porthos! David Grieve may call on Kuenen an he list.The swords are crossed;Doublez,dégagez,vite! great Porthos calls,And David drops, that secretbottehath pierced his overalls!And goodly Porthos, as of old the famed Orthryades,Raises the trophy of the fight, then falling on his knees,He writes in gore upon his shield, ‘Romance, Romance, has won!’And blood-red on that stricken field goes down the angry sun.Night falls upon the field of death, night on the darkling lea:Oh send us such a tournay soon, and send me there to see!
PomonaRoad and Gardens, N.,Were pure as they were fair—In other districts much I fear,That vulgar language shocks the ear,But brawling wives or noisy menWere never heard ofthere.
No burglar fixed his dread abodeIn that secure retreat,There were no public-houses nigh,But chapels low and churches high,You might have thought Pomona RoadA quite ideal beat!
Yet that was not at all the viewTaken by B. 13.That active and intelligentPoliceman deemed that he was meantProfound detective deeds to do,And that repose was mean.
Now there was nothing to detectPomona Road along—None faked a cly, nor cracked a crib,Nor prigged a wipe, nor told a fib,—Minds cultivated and selectSlip rarely into wrong!
Thus bored to desolation wentThe Peeler on his beat;He know not Love, he did not care,If Love be born on mountains bare;Nay, crime to punish, or prevent,Was more than dalliance sweet!
The weary wanderer, day by day,Was marked by Howard Fry—A neighbouring philanthropist,Who saw what that Policeman missed—A sympathetic ‘Well-a-day’He’d moan, and pipe his eye.
‘WhatcanI do,’ asked Howard Fry,‘To soothe that brother’s pain?His glance when first we met was keen,Most martial and erect his mien’(What mien may mean, I know not I)‘Buthemust joy again.’
‘I’ll start on a career of crime,I will,’ said Howard Fry—He spake and acted! Deeds of bale(With which I do not stain my tale)He wrought like mad time after time,Yet wrought them blushfully.
And now when ’buses night by nightWere stopped, conductors slain,When youths and men, and maids unwed,Were stabbed or knocked upon the head,Then B. 13 grew sternly bright,And was himself again!
Pomona Road and Gardens, N.,Are now a name of fear.Commercial travellers flee in haste,Revolvers girt about the waistAre worn by city gentlemenWho have their mansions near.
But B. 13 elated goes,Detection in his eye;While Howard Fry does deeds of bale(With which I do not stain my tale)To lighten that Policeman’s woes,But does them blushfully.
Such is Philanthropy, my friends,Too often such her plan,She shoots, and stabs, and robs, and flingsBombs, and all sorts of horrid things.Ah, not to serve her private ends,But for the good of Man!
Inlight of sunrise and sunsetting,The long days lingered, in forgettingThat ever passion, keen to holdWhat may not tarry, was of oldBeyond the doubtful stream whose floodRuns red waist-high with slain men’s blood.
Was beauty once a thing that died?Was pleasure never satisfied?Was rest still broken by the vainDesire of action, bringing pain,To die in vapid rest again?All this was quite forgotten, thereNo winter brought us cold and care,Nor spring gave promise unfulfilled,Nor, with the heavy summer killed,The languid days droop autumnwards.So magical a season guardsThe constant prime of a green June.So slumbrous is the river’s tune,That knows no thunder of rushing rains,Nor ever in the summer wanes,Like waters of the summer-timeIn lands far from the fairy clime.
Alas! no words can bring the bloomOf Fairyland, the lost perfume.The sweet low light, the magic air,To minds of who have not been there:Alas! no words, nor any spellCan lull the heart that knows too wellThe towers that by the river stand,The lost fair world of Fairyland.
Ah, would that I had never beenThe lover of the Fairy Queen.Or would that I again might beAsleep below the Eildon Tree,And see her ride the forest wayAs on that morning of the May!
Or would that through the little town,The grey old place of Ercildoune,And all along the sleepy streetThe soft fall of the white deer’s feetCame, with the mystical command,That I must back to Fairy Land!
FRENCH FOLK-SONG
Ilavedmy handsBy the water-side,With willow leavesMy hands I dried.
The nightingale sangOn the bough of a tree,Sing, sweet nightingale,It is well with thee.
Thou hast heart’s delight,I have sad heart’s sorrow,For a false false maidThat will wed to-morrow.
It is all for a roseThat I gave her not,And I would that it grewIn the garden plot,
And I would the rose-treeWere still to set,That my love MarieMight love me yet!
MODERN GREEK
Themoon came up above the hill,The sun went down the sea,‘Go, maids, and draw the well-water,But, lad, come here to me.
Gird on my jack, and my old sword,For I have never a son,And you must be the chief of allWhen I am dead and gone.
But you must take my old broadsword,And cut the green boughs of the tree,And strew the green boughs on the ground,To make a soft death-bed for me.
And you must bring the holy priest,That I may sainèd be,For I have lived a roving lifeFifty years under the greenwood tree.
And you shall make a grave for me,And dig it deep and wide,That I may turn about and dreamWith my old gun by my side.
And leave a window to the eastAnd the swallows will bring the spring,And all the merry month of MayThe nightingales will sing.’
FROM CHARLES D’ORLÉANS
Theyear has changed his mantle coldOf wind, of rain, of bitter air,And he goes clad in cloth of goldOf laughing suns and season fair;No bird or beast of wood or woldBut doth in cry or song declare‘The year has changed his mantle cold!’All founts, all rivers seaward rolledTheir pleasant summer livery wearWith silver studs on broidered vair,The world puts off its raiment old,The year has changed his mantle cold.
FROM VICTOR HUGO
SinceI have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,Since I have known your soul and all the bloom of it,And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade,
Since it was given to me to hear one happy whileThe words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;
Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,A ray, a single ray of your star veiled always,Since I have felt the fall upon my lifetime’s streamOf one rose-petal plucked from the roses of your days;
I now am bold to say to the swift-changing hours,Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old.Fleet to the dark abyss with all your fading flowers,One rose that none may pluck within my heart I hold.
Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spillThe cup fulfilled of love from which my lips are wet,My heart has far more fire than you have frost to chill.My soul more love than you can make my soul forget.
FROM RONSARD
Hidethis one night thy crescent, kindly Moon,So shall Endymion faithful prove, and restLoving and unawakened on thy breast;So shall no foul enchanter importuneThy quiet course, for now the night is boon,And through the friendly night unseen I fareWho dread the face of foemen unaware,And watch of hostile spies in the bright noon.
Thou know’st, O Moon, the bitter power of Love.’Tis told how shepherd Pan found ways to moveWith a small gift thy heart; and of your grace,Sweet stars, be kind to this not alien fire,Because on earth ye did not scorn desire,Bethink ye, now ye hold your heavenly place.
FROM RONSARD
Asin the gardens, all through May, the Rose,Lovely, and young, and rich apparelled,Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red,When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows;Graces and Loves within her breast repose,The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed,Till rains and heavy suns have smitten deadThe languid flower and the loose leaves unclose,—
So this, the perfect beauty of our days,When heaven and earth were vocal of her praise,The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes:And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tombPour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom,That, dead as living, Rose may be with roses.
No, the Muse has gone away,Does not haunt me much to-day.Everything she had to sayHas been said!’Twas not much at any timeShe could hitch into a rhyme,Never was the Muse sublime,Who has fled!
Any one who takes her inMay observe she’s rather thin;Little more than bone and skinIs the Muse;Scanty sacrifice she wonWhen her very best she’d done,And at her they poked their fun,In Reviews.
‘Rhymes,’ in truth, ‘are stubborn things.’And to Rhyme she clung, and clings,But whatever song she singsScarcely sells.If her tone be grave, they say‘Give us something rather gay.’If she’s skittish, then they pray‘Something else!’
Much she loved, for wading shod,To go forth with line and rod,Loved the heather, and the sod,Loved to restOn the crystal river’s brimWhere she saw the fishes swim,And she heard the thrushes’ hymn,By the Test!
She, whatever way she went,Friendly was and innocent,Little need the Bard repentOf her lay.Of the babble and the rhyme,And the imitative chimeThat amused him on a time,—Now he’s grey.
Jeanne d’Arc is said to have led a Scottish force at Lagny, when she defeated the Burgundian, Franquet d’Arras. A Scottish artist painted her banner; he was a James Polwarth, or a Hume of Polwarth, according to a conjecture of Mr. Hill Burton’s. A monk of Dunfermline, who continued Fordun’s Chronicle, avers that he was with the Maiden in her campaigns, and at her martyrdom. He calls herPuella a spiritu sancto excitata. Unluckily his manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence. At her trial, Jeanne said that she had only once seen her own portrait: it was in the hands of a Scottish archer. The story of the white dove which passed from her lips as they opened to her last cry ofJesus! was reported at the trial for her Rehabilitation (1450–56).
Two archers of the name of Lang, Lain, or Laing were in the French service about 1507. See the book on the Scottish Guard, by Father Forbes Leith, S. J.
These verses were written, curiously enough, the day before the Maiden was raised to the rank of ‘Venerable,’ a step towards her canonisation, which, we trust, will not be long delayed. It is not easy for any one to understand the whole miracle of the life and death of Jeanne d’Arc, and the absolutely unparalleled grandeur and charm of her character, without studying the full records of both her trials, as collected and published by M. Quicherat, for the Société de l’Histoire de France.
This story is versified from the account inMemoirs of the Rev. John Blackader, by Andrew Crichton,Minister of the Gospel. Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1826. Dunbar was retained as a prisoner, when negotiations for surrender, in 1691, were broken off by Middleton’s return with supplies. Halyburton was, it seems, captured later, and only escaped hanging by virtue of the terms extorted by Middleton. Patrick Walker tells the tale of Peden and the girl. Wodrow, in hisAnalecta, has the story of the Angel, or other shining spiritual presence, which is removed from its context in the ballad. The sufferings from weak beer are quoted in Mr. Blackader’s Memoirs. Mitchell was the undeniably brave Covenanter who shot at Sharp, and hit the Bishop of the Orkneys. He was tortured, and, by an act of perjury (probably unconscious) on the part of Lauderdale, was hanged. The sentiments of the poem are such as an old cavalier, surviving to 1743, might perhaps have entertained. ‘Wullie Wanbeard’ is a Jacobite name for the Prince of Orange, perhaps invented only by the post-Jacobite sentiment of the early nineteenth century.
Thepervenche, or periwinkle.
One of the college bells of St. Salvator, mentioned by Ferguson, is called ‘Kate Kennedy’; the heroine is unknown, but Bishop Kennedy founded the College. ‘Kate Kennedy’s Day’ was a kind of carnival, probably a survival from that festivity.
As a matter of fact the Haunted House Committee of the Society for Psychical Research have never succeeded in seeing a ghost.
Printed by T. and A.Constable, Printers to Her Majesty,at the Edinburgh University Press