Chapter 2
Yes, a Vice with her lips full of laughter, A Vice with a rose in her hair, You condemn in the present and after, To darkness of utter despair: But a sin, if no rapture redeem it, But a passion that’s pale and played out, Or in surgical hands—you esteem it Worth scribbling about!
What is sauce for the goose, for the gander Is sauce, ye inconsequent fair! It is better to laugh than to maunder, And better is mirth than despair; And though Life’s not all beer and all skittles, Yet the Sun, on occasion, can shine, And, _mon Dieu_! he’s a fool who belittles This cosmos of Thine!
There are cakes, there is ale—ay, and ginger Shall be hot in the mouth, as of old: And a villain, with cloak and with whinger, And a hero, in armour of gold, And a maid with a face like a lily, With a heart that is stainless and gay, Make a tale worth a world of the silly Sad trash of to-day!
_Rhyme of Rhymes_.
WILD on the mountain peak the wind Repeats its old refrain, Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned, And fain would sin again.
For “wind” I do not rhyme to “mind,” Like many mortal men, “Again” (when one reflects) ’twere kind To rhyme as if “agen.”
I never met a single soul Who _spoke_ of “wind” as “wined,” And yet we use it, on the whole, To rhyme to “find” and “blind.”
We _say_, “Now don’t do that _agen_,” When people give us pain; In poetry, nine times in ten, It rhymes to “Spain” or “Dane.”
Oh, which are wrong or which are right? Oh, which are right or wrong? The sounds in prose familiar, quite, Or those we meet in song?
To hold that “love” can rhyme to “prove” Requires some force of will, Yet in the ancient lyric groove We meet them rhyming still.
This was our learned fathers’ wont In prehistoric times, We follow it, or if we don’t, We oft run short of rhymes.
_Rhyme of Oxford Cockney Rhymes_.
(Exhibited in the _Oxford Magazine_.)
THOUGH Keats rhymed “ear” to “Cytherea,” And Morris “dawn” to “morn,” A worse example, it is clear, By Oxford Dons is “shorn.” G—y, of Magdalen, goes beyond These puny Cockneys far, And to “Magrath” rhymes—Muse despond!— “Magrath” he rhymes to “star”!
Another poet, X. Y. Z., Employs the word “researcher,” And then,—his blood be on his head,— He makes it rhyme to “nurture.” Ah, never was the English tongue So flayed, and racked, and tortured, Since one I love (who should be hung) Made “tortured” rhyme to “orchard.”
Unkindly G—y’s raging pen Next craves a rhyme to “sooner;” Rejecting “Spooner,” (best of men,) He fastens on _lacuna_(_r_). Nay, worse, in his infatuate mind He ends a line “explainer,” Nor any rhyme can G—y find Until he reaches Jena(r).
Yes, G—y shines the worst of all, He needs to rhyme “embargo;” The man had “Margot” at his call, He had the good ship _Argo_; Largo he had; yet doth he seek Further, and no embargo Restrains him from the odious, weak, And Cockney rhyme, “Chicago”!
Ye Oxford Dons that Cockneys be, Among your gardens tidy, If you would ask a maid to tea, D’ye call the girl “a lydy”? And if you’d sing of Mr. Fry, And need a rhyme to “swiper,” Are you so cruel as to try To fill the blank with “paper”?
Oh, Hoxford was a pleasant plice To many a poet dear, And Saccharissa had the grice In Hoxford to appear. But Waller, if to Cytherea He prayed at any time, Did not implore “her friendly ear,” And think he had a rhyme.
Now, if you ask to what are due The horrors which I mention, I think we owe them to the U- Niversity extension. From Hoxton and from Poplar come The ’Arriets and ’Arries, And so the Oxford Muse is dumb, Or, when she sings, miscarries.
_Rococo_.
(“My name is also named ‘Played Out.’”)
_When first we heard Rossetti sing_, _We twanged the melancholy lyre_, _We sang like this_, _like anything_, _When first we heard Rossetti sing_. _And all our song was faded Spring_, _And dead delight and dark desire_, _When first we heard Rossetti sing_, _We twanged the melancholy lyre_.
(_And this is how we twanged it_)—
_The New Orpheus to his Eurydice_.
WHY wilt thou woo, ah, strange Eurydice, A languid laurell’d Orpheus in the shades, For here is company of shadowy maids, Hero, and Helen and Psamathoë:
And life is like the blossom on the tree, And never tumult of the world invades, The low light wanes and waxes, flowers and fades, And sleep is sweet, and dreams suffice for me;
“Go back, and seek the sunlight,” as of old, The wise ghost-mother of Odysseus said, Here am I half content, and scarce a-cold, But one light fits the living, one the dead; Good-bye, be glad, forget! thou canst not hold In thy kind arms, alas! this powerless head.
_When first we heard Rossetti sing_, _We also wrote this kind of thing_!
_The Food of Fiction_.
TO breakfast, dinner, or to lunch My steps are languid, once so speedy; E’en though, like the old gent in _Punch_, “Not hungry, but, thank goodness! greedy.” I gaze upon the well-spread board, And have to own—oh, contradiction! Though every dainty it afford, There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
“The better half”—how good the sound! Of Scott’s or Ainsworth’s “venison pasty,” In cups of old Canary drowned, (Which probably was very nasty). The beefsteak pudding made by Ruth To cheer Tom Pinch in his affliction, Ah me, in all the world of truth, There’s nothing like the food of fiction!
The cakes and ham and buttered toast That graced the board of Gabriel Varden, In Bracebridge Hall the Christmas roast, Fruits from the Goblin Market Garden. And if you’d eat of luscious sweets And yet escape from gout’s infliction, Just read “St. Agnes’ Eve” by Keats— There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
What cups of tea were ever brewed Like Sairey Gamp’s—the dear old sinner? What savoury mess was ever stewed Like that for Short’s and Codlin’s dinner? What was the flavour of that “poy”— To use the Fotheringay’s own diction— Pendennis ate, the love-sick boy? There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
Prince, you are young—but you will find After life’s years of fret and friction, That hunger wanes—but never mind! There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
“_A Highly Valuable chain of Thoughts_.”
HAD cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn, No man would be a funker Of whin, or burn, or bunker. There were no need for mashies, The turf would ne’er be torn, Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn.
Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn, The big trout would not ever Escape into the river. No gut the salmon smashes Would leave us all forlorn, Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn.
But ’tis an unideal, Sad world in which we’re born, And things will “go contrairy” With Martin and with Mary: And every day the real Comes bleakly in with morn, And cigarettes have ashes, And every rose a thorn.
_Matrimony_.
(Matrimony—Advertiser would like to hear from well-educated Protestant lady, under thirty, fair, with view to above, who would have no objection to work Remington type-writer, at home. Enclose photo. T. 99. This Office. Cork newspaper.)
T. 99 would gladly hear From one whose years are few, A maid whose doctrines are severe, Of Presbyterian blue, Also—with view to the above— Her photo he would see, And trusts that she may live and love His Protestant to be! But ere the sacred rites are done (And by no Priest of Rome) He’d ask, if she a Remington Type-writer works—at home?
If she have no objections to This task, and if her hair— In keeping with her eyes of blue— Be delicately fair, Ah, _then_, let her a photo send Of all her charms divine, To him who rests her faithful friend, Her own T. 99.
_Piscatori Piscator_.
IN MEMORY OF THOMAS TOD STODDART.
AN angler to an angler here, To one who longed not for the bays, I bring a little gift and dear, A line of love, a word of praise, A common memory of the ways, By Elibank and Yair that lead; Of all the burns, from all the braes, That yield their tribute to the Tweed.
His boyhood found the waters clean, His age deplored them, foul with dye; But purple hills, and copses green, And these old towers he wandered by, Still to the simple strains reply Of his pure unrepining reed, Who lies where he was fain to lie, Like Scott, within the sound of Tweed.
_The Contented Angler_.
THE Angler hath a jolly life Who by the rail runs down, And leaves his business and his wife, And all the din of town. The wind down stream is blowing straight, And nowhere cast can he: Then lo, he doth but sit and wait In kindly company.
The miller turns the water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne’er a rise may see; For why, there are not any flies To bear him company.
Or, if he mark a rising trout, He straightway is caught up, And then he takes his flasket out, And drinks a rousing cup. Or if a trout he chance to hook, Weeded and broke is he, And then he finds a godly book Instructive company.
_Off My Game_.
“I’M of my game,” the golfer said, And shook his locks in woe; “My putter never lays me dead, My drives will never go; Howe’er I swing, howe’er I stand, Results are still the same, I’m in the burn, I’m in the sand— I’m off my game!
“Oh, would that such mishaps might fall On Laidlay or Macfie, That they might toe or heel the ball, And sclaff along like me! Men hurry from me in the street, And execrate my name, Old partners shun me when we meet— I’m off my game!
“Why is it that I play at all? Let memory remind me How once I smote upon my ball, And bunkered it—_behind me_. I mostly slice into the whins, And my excuse is lame— It cannot cover half my sins— I’m off my game!
“I hate the sight of all my set, I grow morose as Byron; I never loved a brassey yet, And now I hate an iron. My cleek seems merely made to top, My putting’s wild or tame; It’s really time for me to stop— I’m off my game!”
_The Property of a Gentleman who has given up Collecting_.
OH blessed be the cart that takes Away my books, my curse, my clog, Blessed the auctioneer who makes Their inefficient catalogue.
Blessed the purchasers who pay However little—less were fit— Blessed the rooms, the rainy day, The knock-out and the end of it.
For I am weary of the sport, That seemed a while agone so sweet, Of Elzevirs an inch too short, And First Editions—incomplete.
Weary of crests and coats of arms, “Attributed to Padeloup” The sham Deromes have lost their charms, The things Le Gascon did not do.
I never read the catalogues Of rubbish that come thick as rooks, But most I loathe the dreary dogs That write in prose, or worse, on books.
Large paper surely cannot hide Their grammar, nor excuse their rhyme, The anecdotes that they provide Are older than the dawn of time.
Ye bores, of every shape and size, Who make a tedium of delight, Good-bye, the last of my good-byes. Good night, to all your clan good night!
* * * *
Thus in a sullen fit we swore, But on mature reflection, Went on collecting more and more, And kept our old collection!
_The Ballade of the Subconscious Self_.
WHO suddenly calls to our ken The knowledge that should not be there; Who charms Mr. Stead with the pen, Of the Prince of the Powers of the Air; Who makes Physiologists stare— Is he ghost, is he demon, or elf, Who fashions the dream of the fair? It is just the Subconscious Self.
He’s the ally of Medicine Men Who consult the Australian bear, And ’tis he, with his lights on the fen, Who helps Jack o’ Lanthorn to snare The peasants of Devon, who swear Under Commonwealth, Stuart, or Guelph, That they never had half such a scare— It is just the Subconscious Self.
It is he, from his cerebral den, Who raps upon table and chair, Who frightens the housemaid, and then Slinks back, like a thief, to his lair: ’Tis the Brownie (according to Mair) Who rattles the pots on the shelf, But the Psychical sages declare “It is just the Subconscious Self.”
Prince, each of us all is a pair— The Conscious, who labours for pelf, And the other, who charmed Mr. Blair, It is just the Subconscious Self.
_Ballade of the Optimist_.
HEED not the folk who sing or say In sonnet sad or sermon chill, “Alas, alack, and well-a-day, This round world’s but a bitter pill.” Poor porcupines of fretful quill! Sometimes we quarrel with our lot: We, too, are sad and careful; still We’d rather be alive than not.
What though we wish the cats at play Would some one else’s garden till; Though Sophonisba drop the tray And all our worshipped Worcester spill, Though neighbours “practise” loud and shrill, Though May be cold and June be hot, Though April freeze and August grill, We’d rather be alive than not.
And, sometimes on a summer’s day To self and every mortal ill We give the slip, we steal away, To walk beside some sedgy rill: The darkening years, the cares that kill, A little while are well forgot; When deep in broom upon the hill, We’d rather be alive than not.
Pistol, with oaths didst thou fulfil The task thy braggart tongue begot, We eat our leek with better will, We’d rather be alive than not.
_Zimbabwe_.
(The ruined Gold Cities of Rhodesia. The Ophir of Scripture.)
INTO the darkness whence they came, They passed, their country knoweth none, They and their gods without a name Partake the same oblivion. Their work they did, their work is done, Whose gold, it may be, shone like fire About the brows of Solomon, And in the House of God’s Desire.
Hence came the altar all of gold, The hinges of the Holy Place, The censer with the fragrance rolled Skyward to seek Jehovah’s face; The golden Ark that did encase The Law within Jerusalem, The lilies and the rings to grace The High Priest’s robe and diadem.
The pestilence, the desert spear, Smote them; they passed, with none to tell The names of them who laboured here: Stark walls and crumbling crucible, Strait gates, and graves, and ruined well, Abide, dumb monuments of old, We know but that men fought and fell, Like us, like us, for love of Gold.
_Love’s Cryptogram_.
[The author (if he can be so styled) awoke from a restless sleep, with the first stanza of the following piece in his mind. He has no memory of composing it, either awake or asleep. He had long known the perhaps Pythagorean fable of the bean-juice, but certainly never thought of applying it to an amorous correspondence! The remaining verses are the contribution of his Conscious Self!]
ELLE.
I CANNOT write, I may not write, I dare not write to thee, But look on the face of the moon by night, And my letters shalt thou see. For every letter that lovers write, By their loves on the moon is seen, If they pen their thought on the paper white, With the magic juice of the bean!
LUI.
Oh, I had written this many a year, And my letters you had read. Had you only told me the spell, my dear, Ere ever we twain were wed! But I have a lady and you have a lord, And their eyes are of the green, And we dared not trust to the written word, Lest our long, long love be seen!
ELLE.
“Oh, every thought that your heart has thought, Since the world came us between, The birds of the air to my heart have brought, With no word heard or seen.” ’_Twas thus in a dream we spoke and said_ _Myself and my love unseen_, _But I woke and sighed on my weary bed_, _For the spell of the juice of the bean_!
_Tusitala_.
WE spoke of a rest in a fairy knowe of the North, but he, Far from the firths of the East, and the racing tides of the West, Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite Southern Sea, Weary and well content in his grave on the Vaëa crest.
Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales, Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world’s delight, Looks o’er the labours of men in the plain and the hill; and the sails Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night.
Winds of the West and the East in the rainy season blow Heavy with perfume, and all his fragrant woods are wet, Winds of the East and West as they wander to and fro, Bear him the love of the land he loved, and the long regret.
Once we were kindest, he said, when leagues of the limitless sea Flowed between us, but now that no wash of the wandering tides Sunders us each from each, yet nearer we seem to be, Whom only the unbridged stream of the river of Death divides.
_Disdainful Diaphenia_.
THERE is no venom in the Rose That any bee should shrink from it; No poison from the Lily flows, She hath not a disdainful wit; But thou, that Rose and Lily art, Thy tongue doth poison Cupid’s dart!
Nature herself to deadly flowers Refuseth beauty lest the vain Insects that hum through August hours With beauty should suck in their bane; But thou, as Rose or Lily fair, Art circled with envenomed air!
Like Progne didst thou lose thy tongue, Thy lovers might adore and live; Like that witch Circe, oft besung, Thou hast dear gifts, if thou wouldst give; But since thou hast a wicked wit, Thy lovers fade, or flee from it.
_Tall Salmacis_.
WERE an apple tree a pine, Tall and slim, and softly swaying, Then her beauty were like thine, Salmacis, when boune a Maying, Tall as any poplar tree, Sweet as apple blossoms be!
Had the Amazonian Queen Seen thee ’midst thy maiden peers, Thou the Coronel hadst been Of that lady’s Grenadiers; Troy had never mourned her fall, With thine axe to guard her wall.
As Penthesilea brave Is the maiden (in her dreams); Ilium she well might save, Though Achilles’ armour gleams, ’Midst the Greeks; all vain it is, ’Gainst the glance of Salmacis!
JUBILEE POEMS BY BARDS WHO WERE SILENT
_What Francesco said of the Jubilee_.
BY R. B.
WHAT if we call it fifty years! ’Tis steep! To climb so high a gradient? Prate of Guides? Are we not roped? The Danger? Nay, the Turf, No less nor more than mountain peaks, my friend, Hears talk of Roping,—but the Jubilee! Nay, there you have me: old Francesco once (This was in Milan, in Visconti’s time, Our wild Visconti, with one lip askance, And beard tongue-twisted in the nostril’s nook) Parlous enough,—these times—what? “So are ours”? Or any times, i’fegs, to him who thinks,— Well ’twas in Spring “the frolic myrtle trees There gendered the grave olive stocks,”—you cry “A miracle!”—Sordello writeth thus,— Believe me that indeed ’twas thus, and he, Francesco, you are with me? Well, there’s gloom No less than gladness in your fifty years, “And so,” said he, “to supper as we may.” “Voltairean?” So you take it; but ’tis late, And dinner seven, sharp, at Primrose Hill.
_The Poet and the Jubilee_.
POSCIMUR!
BY A. D.
A _Birthday Ode_ for MEG or NAN, A Rhyme for Lady FLORA’s Fan, A Verse on _Smut_, who’s gone astray, These Things are in the _Poet’s_ way; At Home with praise of JULIA’s Lace, Or DELIA’s Ankles, ROSE’s Face, But “Something _overparted_” He, When asked to rhyme the _jubilee_!
He therefore turns, the _Poet_ wary, And Thumbs his _Carmen Seculare_, To PHŒBUS and to DIAN prays, Who tune Men’s Lyres of Holidays, He reads of the _Sibylline_ Shades, Of Stainless Boys and chosen Maids. He turns, and reads the other Page, Of docile Youth, and placid Age, Then Sings how, in this golden Year _Fides Pudorque_ reappear,— And if they don’t appear, you know it Were quite unjust to blame the Poet!
_On any Beach_.
BY M. A.
YES, in the stream and stress of things, That breaks around us like the sea, There comes to Peasants and to Kings, The solemn Hour of Jubilee. If they, till strenuous Nature give Some fifty harvests, chance to live!
Ah, Fifty harvests! But the corn Is grown beside the barren main, Is salt with sea-spray, blown and borne Across the green unvintaged plain. And life, lived out for fifty years, Is briny with the spray of tears!
Ah, such is Life, to us that live Here, in the twilight of the Gods, Who weigh each gift the world can give, And sigh and murmur, _What’s the odds_ _So long’s you’re happy_? Nay, what Man Finds Happiness since Time began?
_Ode of Jubilee_.
BY A. C. S.
ME, that have sung and shrieked, and foamed in praise of Freedom, _Me_ do you ask to sing Parochial pomps, and waste, the wail of Jubileedom For Queen, or Prince, or King!
* * * * *
Nay, by the foam that fleeting oars have feathered, In Grecian seas; Nay, by the winds that barques Athenian weathered— By all of these I bid you each be mute, Bards tamed and tethered, And fee’d with fees!
For you the laurel smirched, for you the gold, too, Of Magazines; For me the Spirit of Song, unbought, unsold to Pale Priests or Queens!
For you the gleam of gain, the fluttering cheque Of Mr. Knowles, For me, to soar above the ruins and wreck Of Snobs and “Souls”!
When aflush with the dew of the dawn, and the Rose of the Mystical Vision, The spirit and soul of the Men of the Future shall rise and be free, They shall hail me with hymning and harping, With eloquent Art and Elysian,— The Singer who sung not but spurned them, The slaves that could sing “Jubilee;” With pinchbeck lyre and tongue, Praising their tyrant sung, They shall fail and shall fade in derision, As wind on the ways of the sea!
_Jubilee Before Revolution_.
BY W. M.