Chapter 2

It must be, Dear, that, late or soon, Out of the ken of the watching moon, We shall abscond with Yesterday _Over the hills and far away_.

What does it matter? As I deem, We shall but follow as brave a dream As ever smiled a wanton May _Over the hills and far away_.

We shall remember, and, in pride, Fare forth, fulfilled and satisfied, Into the land of Ever-and-Aye, _Over the hills and far away_.

XXXIX

These were the woods of wonder We found so close and boon, When the bride-month in her beauty Lay mouth to mouth with June.

November, the old, lean widow, Sniffs, and snivels, and shrills, And the bowers are all dismantled, And the long grass wets and chills;

And I hate these dismal dawnings, These miserable even-ends, These orts, and rags, and heeltaps-- This dream of being merely friends.

XL

'Dearest, when I am dead, Make one last song for me: Sing what I would have said-- Righting life's wrong for me.

'Tell them how, early and late, Glad ran the days with me, Seeing how goodly and great, Love, were your ways with me.'

XLI

Dear hands, so many times so much When the spent year was green and prime, Come, take your fill, and touch This one poor time.

Dear lips, that could not leave unsaid One sweet-souled syllable of delight, Once more--and be as dead In the dead night.

Dear eyes, so fond to read in mine The message of our counted years, Look your proud last, nor shine Through tears--through tears.

XLII

When, in what other life, Where in what old, spent star, Systems ago, dead vastitudes afar, Were we two bird and bough, or man and wife? Or wave and spar? Or I the beating sea, and you the bar On which it breaks? I know not, I! But this, O this, my Very Dear, I know: Your voice awakes old echoes in my heart; And things I say to you now are said once more; And, Sweet, when we two part, I feel I have seen you falter and linger so, So hesitate, and turn, and cling--yet go, As once in some immemorable Before, Once on some fortunate yet thrice-blasted shore. Was it for good? O, these poor eyes are wet; And yet, O, yet, Now that we know, I would not, if I could, Forget.

XLIII

The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain-- They are with us like a disease: They worry the heart, they work the brain, As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane, And savage the helpless trees.

What does it profit a man to know These tattered and tumbling skies A million stately stars will show, And the ruining grace of the after-glow And the rush of the wild sunrise?

Ever the rain--the rain and the wind! Come, hunch with me over the fire, Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned, Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned, And the death came on desire!

XLIV

_He made this gracious Earth a hell_ _With Love and Drink_. _I cannot tell_ _Of which he died_. _But Death was well_.

Will I die of drink? Why not? Won't I pause and think? --What? Why in seeming wise Waste your breath? Everybody dies-- And of death!

Youth--if you find it's youth Too late? Truth--and the back of truth? Straight, Be it love or liquor, What's the odds, So it slide you quicker To the gods?

XLV

O, these long nights of days! All the year's baseness in the ways, All the year's wretchedness in the skies; While on the blind, disheartened sea A tramp-wind plies Cringingly and dejectedly! And rain and darkness, mist and mud, They cling, they close, they sneak into the blood, They crawl and crowd upon the brain: Till in a dull, dense monotone of pain The past is found a kind of maze, At whose every coign and crook, Broad angle and privy nook, There waits a hooded Memory, Sad, yet with strange, bright, unreproaching eyes.

XLVI

In Shoreham River, hurrying down To the live sea, By working, marrying, breeding Shoreham Town, Breaking the sunset's wistful and solemn dream, An old, black rotter of a boat Past service to the labouring, tumbling flote, Lay stranded in mid-stream: With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, That made me think of legs and a broken spine: Soon, all-too soon, Ungainly and forlorn to lie Full in the eye Of the cynical, discomfortable moon That, as I looked, stared from the fading sky, A clown's face flour'd for work. And by and by The wide-winged sunset wanned and waned; The lean night-wind crept westward, chilling and sighing; The poor old hulk remained, Stuck helpless in mid-ebb. And I knew why-- Why, as I looked, my heart felt crying. {63} For, as I looked, the good green earth seemed dying-- Dying or dead; And, as I looked on the old boat, I said:-- '_Dear God_, _it's I_!'

XLVII

Come by my bed, What time the gray ghost shrieks and flies; Take in your hands my head, And look, O look, into my failing eyes; And, by God's grace, Even as He sunders body and breath, The shadow of your face Shall pass with me into the run Of the Beyond, and I shall keep and save Your beauty, as it used to be, An absolute part of me, Lying there, dead and done, Far from the sovran bounty of the sun, Down in the grisly colonies of the Grave.

XLVIII

Gray hills, gray skies, gray lights, And still, gray sea-- O fond, O fair, The Mays that were, When the wild days and wilder nights Made it like heaven to be!

Gray head, gray heart, gray dreams-- O, breath by breath, Night-tide and day Lapse gentle and gray, As to a murmur of tired streams, Into the haze of death.

XLIX

Silence, loneliness, darkness-- These, and of these my fill, While God in the rush of the Maytide Without is working His will.

Without are the wind and the wall-flowers, The leaves and the nests and the rain, And in all of them God is making His beautiful purpose plain.

But I wait in a horror of strangeness-- A tool on His workshop floor, Worn to the butt, and banished His hand for evermore.

L

So let me hence as one Whose part in the world has been dreamed out and done: One that hath fairly earned and spent In pride of heart and jubilance of blood Such wages, be they counted bad or good, As Time, the old taskmaster, was moved to pay; And, having warred and suffered, and passed on Those gifts the Arbiters preferred and gave, Fare, grateful and content, Down the dim way Whereby races innumerable have gone, Into the silent universe of the grave.

Grateful for what hath been-- For what my hand hath done, mine eyes have seen, My heart been privileged to know; With all my lips in love have brought To lips that yearned in love to them, and wrought In the way of wrath, and pity, and sport, and song: Content, this miracle of being alive Dwindling, that I, thrice weary of worst and best, May shed my duds, and go From right and wrong, And, ceasing to regret, and long, and strive, Accept the past, and be for ever at rest.

FINALE

_Schizzando ma con sentimento_

A sigh sent wrong, A kiss that goes astray, A sorrow the years endlong-- So they say.

So let it be-- Come the sorrow, the kiss, the sigh! They are life, dear life, all three, And we die.

WORTHING, 1899-1901.

LONDON TYPES

(_To_ S. S. P.)

I. BUS-DRIVER

He's called _The General_ from the brazen craft And dash with which he _sneaks a bit of road_ And all its fares; challenged, or chafed, or chaffed, _Back-answers_ of the newest he'll explode; He reins his horses with an air; he treats With scoffing calm whatever powers there be; He _gets it straight_, puts _a bit on_, and meets His losses with both _lip_ and _pounds s. d._; He arrogates a special taste in _short_; Is loftily grateful for a flagrant _smoke_; At all the smarter housemaids winks his court, And taps them for half-crowns; being _stoney-broke_, Lives lustily; is ever _on the make_; And hath, I fear, none other gods but _Fake_.

II. LIFE-GUARDSMAN

Joy of the Milliner, Envy of the Line, Star of the Parks, jack-booted, sworded, helmed, He sits between his holsters, solid of spine; Nor, as it seems, though _WESTMINSTER_ were whelmed, With the great globe, in earthquake and eclipse, Would he and his charger cease from mounting guard, This Private in the Blues, nor would his lips Move, though his gorge with throttled oaths were charred! He wears his inches weightily, as he wears His old-world armours; and with his port and pride, His sturdy graces and enormous airs, He towers, in speech his Colonel countrified, A triumph, waxing statelier year by year, Of British blood, and bone, and beef, and beer.

III. HAWKER

Far out of bounds he's figured--in a race Of West-End traffic pitching to his loss. But if you'd see him in his proper place, Making the _browns_ for _bub_ and _grub_ and _doss_, Go East among the merchants and their men, And where the press is noisiest, and the tides Of trade run highest and widest, there and then You shall behold him, edging with equal strides Along the kerb; hawking in either hand Some artful nothing made of twine and tin, Cardboard and foil and bits of rubber band: Some penn'orth of wit-in-fact that, with a grin, The careful City marvels at, and buys For nurselings in the Suburbs to despise!

IV. BEEF-EATER

His beat lies knee-high through a dust of story-- A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime; Ghosts that are _ENGLAND'S_ wonder, and shame, and glory Throng where he walks, an antic of old time; A sense of long immedicable tears Were ever with him, could his ears but heed; The stern _Hic Jacets_ of our bloodiest years Are for his reading, had he eyes to read, But here, where _CROOKBACK_ raged, and _CRANMER_ trimmed, And _MORE_ and _STRAFFORD_ faced the axe's proving, He shows that Crown the desperate Colonel nimmed, Or simply keeps the Country Cousin moving, Or stays such Cockney pencillers as would shame The wall where some dead Queen hath traced her name.

V. SANDWICH-MAN

An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust; An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit; _ST. MARTIN'S STEPS_, where every venomous gust Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit; And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot, Draped in a wrap that, modish ten-year syne, Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and soot, A horrible hat, that once was just as fine; The drunkard's mouth a-wash for something drinkable, The drunkard's eye alert for casual _toppers_, The drunkard's neck stooped to a lot scarce thinkable, A living, crawling blazoning of Hot-Coppers, He trails his mildews towards a Kingdom-Come Compact of _sausage-and-mash_ and _two-o'-rum_!

VI. 'LIZA

_'LIZA'S old man_'s perhaps a little _shady_, _'LIZA'S old woman_'s prone to _booze_ and cringe; But _'LIZA_ deems herself _a perfect lady_, And proves it in her feathers and her fringe. For _'LIZA_ has a _bloke_ her heart to cheer, With _pearlies_ and a _barrer_ and a _jack_, So all the vegetables of the year Are duly represented on her back. Her boots are sacrifices to her hats, Which knock you speechless--_like a load of bricks_! Her summer velvets dazzle _WANSTEAD FLATS_, And cost, at times, a good eighteen-and-six. Withal, outside the gay and giddy whirl, _'LIZA'S_ a stupid, straight, hard-working girl.

VII. 'LADY'

Time, the old humourist, has a trick to-day Of moving landmarks and of levelling down, Till into Town the Suburbs edge their way, And in the Suburbs you may scent the Town. With _MOUNT ST._ thus approaching _MUSWELL HILL_, And _CLAPHAM COMMON_ marching with the _MILE_, You get a _HAMMERSMITH_ that _fills the bill_, A _HAMPSTEAD_ with a serious sense of style. So this fair creature, pictured in _THE ROW_, As one of that 'gay adulterous world,' {79} whose round Is by the _SERPENTINE_, as well would show, And might, I deem, as readily be found On _STREATHAM'S HILL_, or _WIMBLEDON'S_, or where Brixtonian kitchens lard the late-dining air.

VIII. BLUECOAT BOY

So went our boys when _EDWARD SIXTH_, the King, Chartered _CHRIST'S HOSPITAL_, and died. And so Full fifteen generations in a string Of heirs to his bequest have had to go. Thus _CAMDEN_ showed, and _BARNES_, and _STILLING-FLEET_, And _RICHARDSON_, that bade our _LOVELACE_ be; The little _ELIA_ thus in _NEWGATE STREET_; Thus to his _GENEVIEVE_ young _S. T. C._ With thousands else that, wandering up and down, Quaint, privileged, liked and reputed well, Made the great School a part of _LONDON TOWN_ Patent as _PAUL'S_ and vital as _BOW BELL_: The old School nearing exile, day by day, To certain clay-lands somewhere _HORSHAM_ way.

IX. MOUNTED POLICE

Army Reserve; a worshipper of _BOBS_, With whom he stripped the smock from _CANDAHAR_; Neat as his mount, that neatest among cobs; Whenever pageants pass, or meetings are, He moves conspicuous, vigilant, severe, With his Light Cavalry hand and seat and look, A living type of Order, in whose sphere Is room for neither _Hooligan_ nor _Hook_. For in his shadow, wheresoe'er he ride, Paces, all eye and hardihood and grip, The dreaded _Crusher_, might in his every stride And right materialized girt at his hip; And they, that shake to see these twain go by, Feel that the _Tec_, that plain-clothes Terror, is nigh.

X. NEWS-BOY

Take any station, pavement, circus, corner, Where men their styles of print may call or choose, And there--ten times more _on it_ than _JACK HORNER_-- There shall you find him swathed in sheets of news. Nothing can stay the placing of his wares-- Not bus, nor cab, nor dray! The very _Slop_, That imp of power, is powerless! Ever he dares, And, daring, lands his public neck and crop. Even the many-tortured London ear, The much-enduring, loathes his _Speeshul_ yell, His shriek of _Winnur_! But his dart and leer And poise are irresistible. _PALL MALL_ Joys in him, and _MILE END_; for his vocation Is to purvey the stuff of conversation.

XI. DRUM-MAJOR

Who says _Drum-Major_ says a man of mould, Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread, And pacing still, a triumph to behold, Of his own spine at least two yards ahead! Attorney, grocer, surgeon, broker, duke-- His calling may be anything, who comes Into a room, his presence a rebuke To the dejected, as the pipes and drums Inspired his port!--who mounts his office stairs As though he led great armies to the fight! His bulk itself's pure genius, and he wears His avoirdupois with so much fire and spright That, though the creature stands but five feet five, You take him for the tallest He alive.

XII. FLOWER-GIRL

There's never a delicate nurseling of the year But our huge _LONDON_ hails it, and delights To wear it on her breast or at her ear, Her days to colour and make sweet her nights. Crocus and daffodil and violet, Pink, primrose, valley-lily, clove-carnation, Red rose and white rose, wall-flower, mignonette, The daisies all--these be her recreation, Her gaudies these! And forth from _DRURY LANE_, Trapesing in any of her whirl of weathers, Her flower-girls foot it, honest and hoarse and vain, All boot and little shawl and wilted feathers: Of populous corners right advantage taking, And, where they squat, endlessly posy-making.

XIII. BARMAID

Though, if you ask her name, she says _ELISE_, Being plain _ELIZABETH_, e'en let it pass, And own that, if her aspirates take their ease, She ever makes a point, in washing glass, Handling the engine, turning taps for _tots_, And countering change, and scorning what men say, Of posing as a dove among the pots, Nor often gives her dignity away. Her head's a work of art, and, if her eyes Be tired and ignorant, she has a waist; Cheaply the Mode she shadows; and she tries From penny novels to amend her taste; And, having mopped the zinc for certain years, And faced the gas, she fades and disappears. _The Artist muses at his ease_, _Contented that his work is done_, _And smiling_--_smiling_!--_as he sees_ _His crowd collecting_, _one by one_. _Alas_! _his travail's but begun_! _None_, _none can keep the years in line_, _And what to Ninety-Eight is fun_ _May raise the gorge of Ninety-Nine_!

MUSWELL HILL, 1898.

III. THREE PROLOGUES

I. BEAU AUSTIN

_By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson_, _Haymarket Theatre_, _November_ 3, 1890.

Spoken by Mr. TREE in the character of Beau Austin.

'To all and singular,' as _DRYDEN_ says, We bring a fancy of those Georgian days, Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom: When speech was elegant and talk was fit, For slang had not been canonised as wit; When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall, And Women--yes!--were ladies first of all; When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness, And man--though Man!--was not ashamed to dress. A brave formality, a measured ease Were his--and hers--whose effort was to please. And to excel in pleasing was to reign, And, if you sighed, never to sigh in vain.

But then, as now--it may be, something more-- Woman and man were human to the core. The hearts that throbbed behind that brave attire Burned with a plenitude of essential fire. They too could risk, they also could rebel: They could love wisely--they could love too well. In that great duel of Sex, that ancient strife Which is the very central fact of life, They could--and did--engage it breath for breath, They could--and did--get wounded unto death. As at all times since time for us began Woman was truly woman, man was man, And joy and sorrow were as much at home In trifling _TUNBRIDGE_ as in mighty _ROME_.

Dead--dead and done with! Swift from shine to shade The roaring generations flit and fade. To this one, fading, flitting, like the rest, We come to proffer--be it worst or best-- A sketch, a shadow, of one brave old time; A hint of what it might have held sublime; A dream, an idyll, call it what you will, Of man still Man, and woman--Woman still!

II. RICHARD SAVAGE

_By J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson_, _Criterion Theatre_, _April_ 16, 1891.

To other boards for pun and song and dance! Our purpose is an essay in romance: An old-world story where such old-world facts As hate and love and death, through four swift acts-- Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues, From the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse!-- So shine and sound that, as we fondly deem, They may persuade you to accept our dream: Our own invention, mainly--though we take, Somewhat for art but most for interest's sake One for our hero who goes wandering still In the long shadow of _PARNASSUS HILL_; Scarce within eyeshot; but his tragic shade Compels that recognition due be made, When he comes knocking at the student's door, Something as poet, if as blackguard more.

Poet and blackguard. Of the first--how much? As to the second, in quite perfect touch With folly and sorrow, even shame and crime, He lived the grief and wonder of his time! Marked for reproaches from his life's beginning; Extremely sinned against as well as sinning; Hack, spendthrift, starveling, duellist in turn; Too cross to cherish yet too fierce to spurn; Begrimed with ink or brave with wine and blood; Spirit of fire and manikin of mud; Now shining clear, now fain to starve and skulk; Star of the cellar, pensioner of the bulk; At once the child of passion and the slave; Brawling his way to an unhonoured grave-- That was _DICK SAVAGE_! Yet, ere his ghost we raise For these more decent and less desperate days, It may be well and seemly to reflect That, howbeit of so prodigal a sect, Since it was his to call until the end Our greatest, wisest Englishman his friend, 'Twere all-too fatuous if we cursed and scorned The strange, wild creature _JOHNSON_ loved and mourned.

Nature is but the oyster--Art's the pearl: Our _DICK_ is neither sycophant nor churl. Not as he was but as he might have been Had the Unkind Gods been poets of the scene, Fired with our fancy, shaped and tricked anew To touch your hearts with love, your eyes with rue, He stands or falls, ere he these boards depart, Not as dead Nature but as living Art.

III. ADMIRAL GUINEA

_By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson_, _Avenue Theatre_, _Monday_, _November_ 29, 1897.

Spoken by Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS.

Once was an Age, an Age of blood and gold, An Age of shipmen scoundrelly and bold-- _BLACKBEARD_ and _AVORY_, _SINGLETON_, _ROBERTS_, _KIDD_: An Age which seemed, the while it rolled its quid, Brave with adventure and doubloons and crime, Rum and the Ebony Trade: when, time on time, Real Pirates, right Sea-Highwaymen, could mock The carrion strung at _EXECUTION DOCK_; And the trim Slaver, with her raking rig, Her cloud of sails, her spars superb and trig, Held, in a villainous ecstasy of gain, Her musky course from _BENIN_ to the _MAIN_, And back again for niggers: When, in fine, Some thought that _EDEN_ bloomed across the Line, And some, like _COWPER'S NEWTON_, lived to tell That through those parallels ran the road to Hell.

Once was a pair of Friends, who loved to chance Their feet in any by-way of Romance: They, like two vagabond schoolboys, unafraid Of stark impossibilities, essayed To make these Penitent and Impenitent Thieves, These _PEWS_ and _GAUNTS_, each man of them with his sheaves Of humour, passion, cruelty, tyranny, life, Fit shadows for the boards; till in the strife Of dream with dream, their Slaver-Saint came true, And their Blind Pirate, their resurgent _PEW_ (A figure of deadly farce in his new birth), Tap-tapped his way from _ORCUS_ back to earth; And so, their Lover and his Lass made one, In their best prose this _Admiral_ here was done.

One of this Pair sleeps till the crack of doom Where the great ocean-rollers plunge and boom: The other waits and wonders what his Friend, Dead now, and deaf, and silent, were the end Revealed to his rare spirit, would find to say If you, his lovers, loved him for this Play.

IV. EPICEDIA

TWO DAYS (_February_ 15--_September_ 28, 1894)

_To_ V. G.

That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie In the green peace within your gates, he came To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy, And, stricken as we were, we blessed his name: Yet, like the Creature of Light that had been ours, Soon of the sweet Earth disinherited, He too must join, even with the Year's old flowers, The unanswering generations of the Dead. So stand we friends for you, who stood our friend Through him that day; for now through him you know That though where love was, love is till the end, Love, turned of death to longing, like a foe, Strikes: when the ruined heart goes forth to crave Mercy of the high, austere, unpitying Grave.

IN MEMORIAM THOMAS EDWARD BROWN

(_Ob. October_ 30, 1897)

He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint, Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see, And old-world whiskers. You found him cynic, saint, Salt, humourist, Christian, poet; with a free, Far-glancing, luminous utterance; and a heart Large as _ST. FRANCIS'S_: withal a brain Stored with experience, letters, fancy, art, And scored with runes of human joy and pain. Till six-and-sixty years he used his gift, His gift unparalleled, of laughter and tears, And left the world a high-piled, golden drift Of verse: to grow more golden with the years, Till the Great Silence fallen upon his ways Break into song, and he that had Love have Praise.

IN MEMORIAM GEORGE WARRINGTON STEEVENS

_London_, _December_ 10, 1869. _Ladysmith_, _January_ 15, 1900.

We cheered you forth--brilliant and kind and brave. Under your country's triumphing flag you fell. It floats, true Heart, over no dearer grave-- Brave and brilliant and kind, hail and farewell!

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