Part 11
GR-R-R--there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What! your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims-- Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames!
At the meal we sit together: _Salve tibi!_ I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year; _Not a plenteous cork-crop; scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt: What’s the Latin name for “parsley”?_ What’s the Greek name for swine’s snout?
Whew! we’ll have our platter burnished, Laid with care on our own shelf; With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished, And a goblet for ourself, Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps Marked with L for our initial! (He-he! There his lily snaps!)
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores Squats outside the convent bank With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, Can’t I see his dead eye glow Bright as ’t were a Barbary corsair’s? (That is, if he’d let it show!)
When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Crosswise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu’s praise. I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange pulp-- In three sips the Arian frustrate, While he drains his at one gulp.
Oh, those melons! If he’s able, We’re to have a feast, so nice! One goes to the abbot’s table, All of us get each a slice. How go on your flowers? None double? Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange! And I, too, at such trouble Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
There’s a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails. If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off to hell, a Manichee?
Or, my scrofulous French novel On gray paper, with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe. If I double down its pages At the woful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?
Or, there’s Satan! One might venture Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave Such a flaw in the indenture As he’d miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia We’re so proud of! _Hy_, _Zy_, _Hine_.... ’St, there’s Vespers! _Plena gratia_, _Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r--you swine! _Robert Browning._
CYNICAL ODE TO AN ULTRA-CYNICAL PUBLIC
YOU prefer a buffoon to a scholar, A harlequin to a teacher, A jester to a statesman, An anonyma flaring on horseback To a modest and spotless woman-- Brute of a public!
You think that to sneer shows wisdom; That a gibe outvalues a reason; That slang, such as thieves delight in, Is fit for the lips of the gentle, And rather a grace than a blemish-- Thick-headed public!
You think that if merit’s exalted, ’Tis excellent sport to decry it, And trail its good name in the gutter; And that cynics, white-gloved and cravatted, Are the cream and quintessence of all things-- Ass of a public!
You think that success must be merit; That honour and virtue and courage Are all very well in their places, But that money’s a thousand times better-- Detestable, stupid, degraded Pig of a public! _Charles Mackay._
THE GREAT CRITICS
WHOM shall we praise? Let’s praise the dead! In no men’s ways Their heads they raise, Nor strive for bread With you or me. So, do you see, We’ll praise the dead! Let living men Dare but to claim From tongue or pen Their meed of fame, We’ll cry them down, Spoil their renown, Deny their sense, Wit, eloquence, Poetic fire, All they desire. Our say is said, Long live the dead! _Charles Mackay._
THE LAUREATE
WHO would not be The Laureate bold, With his butt of sherry To keep him merry, And nothing to do but to pocket his gold?
’Tis I would be the Laureate bold! When the days are hot, and the sun is strong, I’d lounge in the gateway all the day long, With her Majesty’s footmen in crimson and gold. I’d care not a pin for a waiting-lord; But I’d lie on my back on the smooth greensward, With a straw in my mouth, and an open vest, And the cool wind blowing upon my breast, And I’d vacantly stare at the clear blue sky, And watch the clouds that are listless as I, Lazily, lazily! And I’d pick the moss and the daisies white, And chew their stalks with a nibbling bite; And I’d let my fancies roam abroad In search of a hint for a birthday ode, Crazily, crazily!
Oh, that would be the life for me, With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle all day to the Queen’s cockatoo, Trance-somely, trance-somely! Then the chambermaids, that clean the rooms, Would come to the windows and rest on their brooms, With their saucy caps and their crispéd hair, And they’d toss their heads in the fragrant air, And say to each other, “Just look down there, At the nice young man, so tidy and small, Who is paid for writing on nothing at all, Handsomely, handsomely!”
They would pelt me with matches and sweet pastilles, And crumpled-up balls of the royal bills, Giggling and laughing, and screaming with fun, As they’d see me start, with a leap and a run, From the broad of my back to the points of my toes, When a pellet of paper hit my nose, Teasingly, sneezingly. Then I’d fling them bunches of garden flowers, And hyacinths plucked from the castle bowers; And I’d challenge them all to come down to me, And I’d kiss them all till they kisséd me, Laughingly, laughingly.
Oh, would not that be a merry life, Apart from care and apart from strife, With the Laureate’s wine and the Laureate’s pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen’s cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a bottle or two, Quaffingly, quaffingly!
’Tis I would be The Laureate bold, With my butt of sherry To keep me merry, And nothing to do but to pocket my gold!
_William E. Aytoun._
WOMAN’S WILL
MEN, dying, make their wills, but wives Escape a work so sad; Why should they make what all their lives The gentle dames have had? _John Godfrey Saxe._
THE MOURNER À LA MODE
I SAW her last night at a party (The elegant party at Mead’s), And looking remarkably hearty For a widow so young in her weeds; Yet I know she was suffering sorrow Too deep for the tongue to express-- Or why had she chosen to borrow So much from the language of dress?
Her shawl was as sable as night; And her gloves were as dark as her shawl; And her jewels--that flashed in the light-- Were black as a funeral pall; Her robe had the hue of the rest, (How nicely it fitted her shape!) And the grief that was heaving her breast Boiled over in billows of crape!
What tears of vicarious woe, That else might have sullied her face, Were kindly permitted to flow In ripples of ebony lace While even her fan, in its play, Had quite a lugubrious scope, And seemed to be waving away The ghost of the angel of Hope!
Yet rich as the robes of a queen Was the sombre apparel she wore; I’m certain I never had seen Such a sumptuous sorrow before; And I couldn’t help thinking the beauty, In mourning the loved and the lost, Was doing her conjugal duty Altogether regardless of cost!
One surely would say a devotion Performed at so vast an expense Betrayed an excess of emotion That was really something immense; And yet, as I viewed, at my leisure, Those tokens of tender regard, I thought: It is scarce without measure-- The sorrow that goes by the yard!
Ah, grief is a curious passion; And yours--I am sorely afraid The very next phase of the fashion Will find it beginning to fade; Though dark are the shadows of grief, The morning will follow the night; Half-tints will betoken relief, Till joy shall be symboled in white!
Ah, well! it were idle to quarrel With fashion, or aught she may do; And so I conclude with a moral And metaphor--warranted new: When measles come handsomely out, The patient is safest, they say; And the sorrow is mildest, no doubt, That works in a similar way! _John Godfrey Saxe._
THERE IS NO GOD
“THERE is no God,” the wicked saith, “And truly it’s a blessing, For what he might have done with us It’s better only guessing.”
“There is no God,” a youngster thinks, “Or really, if there may be, He surely didn’t mean a man Always to be a baby.”
“There is no God, or if there is,” The tradesman thinks, “’twere funny If he should take it ill in me To make a little money.”
“Whether there be,” the rich man says “It matters very little, For I and mine, thank somebody, Are not in want of victual.”
Some others, also, to themselves, Who scarce so much as doubt it, Think there is none, when they are well, And do not think about it.
But country folks who live beneath The shadow of the steeple; The parson and the parson’s wife, And mostly married people;
Youths green and happy in first love, So thankful for illusion; And men caught out in what the world Calls guilt, in first confusion;
And almost every one when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like him. _Arthur Hugh Clough._
THE LATEST DECALOGUE
THOU shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two? No graven images may be Worshipped, except the currency. Swear not at all; for, for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse. At church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world thy friend. Honour thy parents; that is, all From whom advancement may befall. Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive Officiously to keep alive. Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it. Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it’s so lucrative to cheat. Bear not false witness; let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly. Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition. _Arthur Hugh Clough._
FROM “A FABLE FOR CRITICS”
“THERE is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection ’tis kindled o’ nights, With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation (There’s no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation); Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on; He’s too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on; Unqualified merits, I’ll grant, if you choose, he has ’em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.
* * * * * “Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who’s hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd’s worth. No, don’t be absurd, he’s an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you’ll endanger the life of your client By attempting to stretch him up into a giant.
* * * * *
“There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne’er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard, and all that kind of thing; And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it) From the very same cause that has made him a poet-- A fervour of mind which knows no separation ’Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If ’twere I, or mere wind, through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favourite direction, And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar’s not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he’s prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats, When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, And can ne’er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before: Like old What’s-his-name there at the battle of Hastings (Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings), Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor: _Anne haec_, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, _Vestis filii tui_, O leather-clad Fox? Can that be my son, in the battle’s mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly’s spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?
* * * * *
“There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; ’Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe; His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek-- He’s a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck; When nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man. The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight; Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, She sang to her work in her sweet, childish way, And found, when she’d put the last touch to his soul, That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole.
* * * * *
“There’s Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit-- A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems ’tis painful sometimes, and invites A thought of the way the new telegraph writes, Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully, As if you got more than you’d title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild Father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you a fright’ning. He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e’er achieved aught in’t so worthy of praise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand ‘Marseillaise.’ You went crazy, last year, over Bulwer’s ‘New Timon’; Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne’er reach the best point and vigour of Holmes. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes.” _James Russell Lowell._
THE PIOUS EDITOR’S CREED
I DU believe in Freedom’s cause, Ez fur away ez Paris is; I love to see her stick her claws In them infarnal Pharisees; It’s wal enough agin a king To dror resolves an’ triggers, But libbaty’s a kind o’ thing That don’t agree with niggers.
I du believe the people want A tax on teas an’ coffees; Thet nothin’ aint extravygunt, Purvidin’ I’m in office; Fer I hev loved my country sence My eye-teeth fill’d their sockets, An’ Uncle Sam I reverence, Partic’larly his pockets.
I du believe in any plan O’ levyin’ the taxes, Ez long, ez, like a lumberman, I get jest wut I axes: I go free-trade thru thick an’ thin, Because it kind o’ rouses The folks to vote--an’ keeps us in Our quiet custom-houses.
I du believe it’s wise an’ good To send out furrin missions, Thet is, on sartin understood An’ orthydox conditions-- I mean nine thousan’ dolls. per ann., Nine thousan’ more fer outfit, An’ me to recommend a man The place ’ould jest about fit.
I du believe in special ways O’ prayin’ an’ convartin’; The bread comes back in many days, An’ butter’d, tu, fer sartin; I mean in preyin’ till one busts On wut the party chooses, An’ in convartin’ public trusts To very privit uses.
I du believe hard coin’s the stuff Fer ’lectioneers to spout on; The people’s ollers soft enough To make hard money out on; Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, An’ gives a good-sized junk to all, I don’t care how hard money is, Ez long ez mine’s paid punctooal.
I du believe with all my soul In the great Press’s freedom, To p’int the people to the goal, An’ in the traces lead ’em. Palsied the arm thet forges yokes At my fat contracts squintin’, An’ wither’d be the nose thet pokes Inter the Gov’ment printin’!
I du believe that I should give Wut’s his’n unto Cæsar, For it’s by him I move an’ live, Frum him my bread an’ cheese air; I du believe thet all o’ me Doth bear his souperscription-- Will, conscience, honour, honesty, An’ things o’ thet description.
I du believe in prayer an’ praise To him thet hez the grantin’ O’ jobs--in everythin’ thet pays, But most of all in Cantin’; This doth my cup with marcies fill, This lays all thought o’ sin to rest; I don’t believe in princerple, But, oh! I du in interest.
I du believe in bein’ this Or thet, ez it may happen, One way or t’other hendiest is To ketch the people nappin’. It aint by princerples nor men My preudunt course is steadied; I scent which pays the best, an’ then Go into it bald-headed.
I du believe thet holdin’ slaves Comes nat’ral tu a Presidunt, Let ’lone the rowdedow it saves To hev a well-broke precedunt; Fer any office, small or gret, I couldn’t ax with no face, Without I’d ben, thru dry an’ wet, Th’ unrizzest kind o’ doughface.
I du believe wutever trash ’Ill keep the people in blindness, Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash Right inter brotherly kindness; Thet bomb-shells, grape, an’ powder, ’n’ ball Air good-will’s strongest magnets; Thet peace, to make it stick at all, Must be druv in with bagnets.
In short, I firmly du believe In Humbug generally, Fer it’s a thing thet I perceive To hev a solid vally; This heth my faithful shepherd ben, In pasture sweet heth led me, An’ this’ll keep the people green, To feed ez they hev fed me. _James Russell Lowell._
REVELRY IN INDIA
WE meet ’neath the sounding rafter, And the walls around are bare; As they echo the peals of laughter, It seems that the dead are there; But stand to your glasses steady, We drink to our comrades’ eyes. Quaff a cup to the dead already, And hurrah for the next that dies!
Not here are the goblets flowing, Not here is the vintage sweet; ’Tis cold, as our hearts are growing, And dark as the doom we meet. But stand to your glasses steady, And soon shall our pulses rise. A cup to the dead already-- Hurrah for the next that dies!
Not a sigh for the lot that darkles, Not a tear for the friends that sink; We’ll fall, ’midst the wine-cup’s sparkles, As mute as the wine we drink. So stand to your glasses steady, ’Tis in this that our respite lies. One cup to the dead already-- Hurrah for the next that dies!
Time was when we frowned at others; We thought we were wiser then; Ha, ha! let those think of their mothers, Who hope to see them again. No! stand to your glasses steady; The thoughtless are here the wise A cup to the dead already-- Hurrah for the next that dies!
There’s many a hand that’s shaking, There’s many a cheek that’s sunk; But soon, though our hearts are breaking, They’ll burn with the wine we’ve drunk. So stand to your glasses steady, ’Tis here the revival lies. A cup to the dead already-- Hurrah for the next that dies!
There’s a mist on the glass congealing, ’Tis the hurricane’s fiery breath; And thus does the warmth of feeling Turn ice in the grasp of death. Ho! stand to your glasses steady; For a moment the vapour flies. A cup to the dead already-- Hurrah for the next that dies!
Who dreads to the dust returning? Who shrinks from the sable shore, Where the high and haughty yearning Of the soul shall sing no more? Ho! stand to your glasses steady; This world is a world of lies. A cup to the dead already-- Hurrah for the next that dies!
Cut off from the land that bore us, Betrayed by the land we find, Where the brightest have gone before us, And the dullest remain behind-- Stand, stand to your glasses steady! ’Tis all we have left to prize. A cup to the dead already-- And hurrah for the next that dies! _Bartholomew Dowling._
A FRAGMENT