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!
St. Paul and the Devil disputing about the Immortality of Man’s Soul, and St. Paul maintaining the same, (from the similitude of the corn-seed sown, which again sprouteth,) the Devil refutes him by his atheistic subtlety, but is put to shame by the evidence of three witnesses, namely, Persephone, Hela, and St. Lucy.
The Scene is Mount Gerizim.
Intrabunt Sanctus Paulus,et Diabolus,interse de immortalitate Animae disputantes.SANCTUS PAULUS.
Intrabunt Sanctus Paulus,et Diabolus,interse de immortalitate Animae disputantes.
SANCTUS PAULUS.
Ye say that when a man is deadHe never more shall lift his head,As doth the flower perishèd,Nor break ne sweet ne bitter bread.I hold you much in scorn!Lo, if you cast in earth a seedThat seemeth to be dead indeed,I wot ye shall have corn;And all men shall rejoice and reap:And so it fares with them that sleep,The narrow house doth them but keepUntil the judgment morn.
DIABOLUS.
There is an end of grief and mirth,There is an end of all things born,And if ye sow into the earthA seed, ye shall have corn;But if ye sow its withered rootIt shall not bear you any fruit,It will not sprout and spring again;And if ye look to gather grain,Of men mote ye have scorn.Man’s body buried is the sownDead root, whose flower is over-blown.
SANCTUS PAULUS.
Beshrew thee for thy subtletiesThat melt the hearts of men with lies,An evil task hath he that triesTo still thy subtle tongue!But look ye round and ye shall seeThe Dames that Queens of dead men be,I wot there are no mo than three,When all is said and sung.
Hic intrabunt et cantabunt tres Reginæ.
PERSEPHONE.
I am the Queen Persephone.The lips of Grecians prayed to me,Saying, I give men sleep;But I would have ye well to knowThat with me none do slumber so;But there be some that weep,And juster souls content to dwellAmong the fields of asphodel,By the Nine Waters deep.
HELA.
I am the Queen of Hela’s House,Great clouds I bind upon my brows;Night for a covering.For them I hold, I will ye wotThey sorrow, but they slumber not,They have no lust to sing,And never comes a merry voice,Nor doth a soul of them rejoiceUntil their uprising.
SANCTA LUCIA.
I am a Queen of Paradise,And who shall look on me, I wis,His spirit shall find grace.Whoso dwells with me walks alongIn gardens glad with small birds’ song,A flowered and grassy place,Therein the souls of blessèd menWait each, till comes his love again,To look upon her face!
SANCTUS PAULUS.
Thou, Sir Diabolus, art shent,I wot that well ye might repent,But till Midsummer fall in Lent,Ye will not cease to sin.Get thee to dungeon undergroundAnd sit beside thy man, Mahound.I wot I would ye twain were boundFor evermore therein.
Fugiat Diabolus ad locum suum.
A BALLAD OF THE SCHOOL-BOARD FLEET.
Which my name is Stoker Bill,And a pleasant berth I fill,And the care the ladies take of me is clipping;They have made me pretty snug,With a blooming Persian rug,In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.
There’s my Whistler pastels, there,As are quite beyond compare,And a portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist skipping;From such art we all expectQuite a softening effect,In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.
And my beer comes in a mug—Such a rare old Rhodian jug!And here I sits æsthetically sipping;And I drinks my grog or aleOn a chair by Chippendale—We’ve no others in our modern training shipping.
There’s our first Liftenant, too,Is a rare old (China) Blue,And you do not very often catch him trippingAt a monogram or mark,But no more than Noah’s ark,Does he know the way to manage this here shipping.
But the Boys? the Boys, they standsWith white lilies in their hands,And they do not know the meaning of a whipping:For the whole delightful ship isLike a dream of Lippo Lippi’s,More than what you mostly see in modern shipping.
Well, some coves they cuts up rough,And they calls æsthetics stuff,And they says as we’ve no business to keep dippingIn the rates, but ladies likes it,And our flag we never strikes it—Bless old England’s new Æsthetic Training Shipping!
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 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.
THE END.
CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
[34]Cf. “Suggestions for Academic Reorganization.”
[48]Thomas of Ercildoune.
[66]A knavish publisher.
[88]Vous y verrez, belle Julie,Que ce chapeau tout maltraitéFut, dans un instant de folie,Par les Grâces même inventé.
‘À Julie.’Essais en Prose et en Vers, par Joseph Lisle; Paris. An. V. de la République.