Part 1

POEMS FROM PUNCH

1909-1920

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY W. B. DRAYTON HENDERSON

_REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE PROPRIETORS_

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1922

COPYRIGHT

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

Preface

Of "Singing masons building roofs of gold." _King Henry V._ I. 11.

The following poems from 'Punch' are brought together to represent a larger number which amid much delightful but, as is fitting, ephemeral verse, serve the permanent interest of the Comic Spirit. They cover the period between 1908, when the last collection of the sort was published, and the end of 1920. The latter date I have accepted as a terminus, because it seems to mark, as nearly as it can be marked, the end of a period that is distinct from other periods, and the commencement of a new one.

Odd happenings tell us that this new cycle has arrived--old names, questions, and problems begin to turn up again: and not exactly as they were. Just now, for instance, harsh news comes roaring out of Printing House Square, pounding ragged holes in the gentle noise of Fleet Street. The Australians have added more thorns to our cricket laurel. Before the next 'bus bound prayerfully to Paul's wipes out the horrid spot with its smooth low singing, rampant patriotism is at work compelling indolent youth from "pat-ball" to the manly "willow." In a little while there will be fresh ardours on the village greens--and cartoons of the ardours: arduous as ever, even if diminished somewhat of the pride of 1909. We have come from strike to strike also. And sales-people, who were then growing to oily perfection, whence they slipped and fell, are once more polite. The war the messes hoped would come between the polo and the huntin' proved strangely accommodating, and so came. The cause of women--dear ever to the Comic Spirit--presses on to new supremacies. Their goals of the decade are now matters of antiquarian interest. But new illumine the future--and in their light the Comic Spirit, no doubt, smiles her Mona Lisa smile as she wanders in the churches of sainted women who converted wild Saxons or suchlike, and made them sit down orderly in their thousands,--from St. Materiana's to St. Editha's, and beyond. For there she reads firm protests of modern incapacity for such spiritualities, and sees spaces provided for the signatures of incapable, modest females; sees them--if she wanders where I did--unfilled, unsigned!

The difficulties of this last decade, if they were different difficulties from those of other decades, gave some individuality to the comedy of the time: using 'comedy' in its broadest sense, as indicating the behaviour of the Comic Spirit. For comedy as such is for the most part the encounter of the Comic Spirit with difficulties, and its triumph over them. Not the struggle, mark it; for Struggle and Agonies, properties of the Tragic Spirit or whomever else, are no belongings of the Comic. Neither is victory deferred, or partial victory which suits the pathetic; or unworthy victory, which may suit the burlesque. The Comic Spirit encounters, and it overthrows. _Veni_, _vidi_, _vixi_, is its record--with 'vidi' and all intervening delays left out. It does its seeing as it comes, and when it arrives it is already victor--with laurels and a Triumph.

Also, it is a victor without expectation. It did not look like a victor. You would not have picked it in the paddock--not even to place. Its appearance at the start is, characteristically, insignificant. The course set appears to be impossible for it. Yet it romps in a winner, and its very life becomes the doing of the impossible, the overturning of something big by something very little. Put it tersely, high comedy is the immediate Triumph of a seemingly minor over a seemingly major value.

To this end the Comic Spirit makes use of all sorts of properties, simple and subtle, animate and inanimate. It could man a rush and overcome Othello, if it had the mind, or in Mercutio overcome battalions of Fates. It does actually begin even more simply and terminate quite as high; and since the height is where we wish to come, it may be useful to follow the progress, through some typical situations.

At the start may come some simple slipperiness, tropical or arctic, playful underneath the impressed dignity of a greatness of the flesh or the church or the state; upsetting it completely, and winning a laughter that would be incredible if the victim were less great or the offence more so. Not much above would come some small folly--a mole on Cyrano's nose, or, say, the spectacles that crown Dostoievsky's Government official in _An Unfortunate Incident_. This minor property, steadfast on the head of the official at the instant of his complete disappearance down the throat of a very major crocodile, draws, quite understandably, the uproarious laughter of his friend and wife-widow. Next might come a spider, as in the historical case of Miss Muffet. Solidly seated upon a tuffet, fortified with curds and whey inside and outside, and embellished, no doubt, with implements suiting her occupation, no one could have been more formidable than that person. In comparison, the spider was the most obvious minor. Yet no sooner did he arrive, having done his seeing as he came, than his now well-known victory was allowed by the most bigoted strategical-retirement war correspondents. And since then he has retained his fame, without contest, as a veritable instrument of comedy.

Of higher but parallel significance is a certain apple in Mr. Augustus John's picture--"Down to the Sea": at least, I always feel it so. An unquestionable procession of weird women and strange children moves along a headland. They are of a world where there is nothing that one knows. It might easily be intolerable. But one of the women holds an apple in her hand. It gleams amongst the unknown, an offering to the Intelligence; and propitiatory, so that the bewildered deity, finding something so insignificant and familiar so much more than holding its own against strangeness, shares in the triumph, first in anticipation through sympathy, then actually using the apple as a sort of _point-d'appui_ whence to search out the unknown:--as Eve did.

Raise the level yet higher, and instead of simple meanings overcoming strange people it is the microcosmic simple human who triumphs against scarcely conceivable cosmic splendour. Remember Sirius rising with Procyon attendant and the unlooseable glittering bands of Orion--suns and suns and the white wonder of nebula. It is only recalled, not seen, the time being day, but recalled so as to present the true magnitude. Somewhere beneath it walk Dr. Middleton, of Meredith's _The Egoist_, with his daughter Clara but this moment self-withdrawn from immolation before the pattern of Patternes, and with no reason to be grateful to her unshriven parent. "Clara linked her arm with her father's and said, on a sudden brightness, 'Sirius, papa!'

"He repeated it in the profoundest manner. 'Sirius! And is there,' he asked, 'a feminine scintilla of sense in that?'

"It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa.

"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in Aulis. You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigenia, you have not a father who will insist on sacrificing you!

"Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?

"Dr. Middleton humphed.

"'Verily the dog star rages in many heads,' he responded."

That is all the apology Clara ever got or, indeed, ever needed. Against cosmic brightness her microcosmic affair lifted itself, and proved (as Hardy proved in another connection), "that of the two contrasting magnitudes the latter was, for us, the more important": proved it immediately, with an opulence of light against any doubtful interpretation, like that of Sirius itself, preserved against "a night of frost and strong moonlight."

The human triumph can be intenser also, as a last illustration will show from Tchaikovski's "Trio in A minor"--To the memory of a great artist. The second movement, as near as can be, presents the drama of the artistic effort under stress of the imminence of death. _Ars longa, vita brevis_ is the theme--the uncertainty of which is carried on the strings, while the sombre certainty, the sombre sense of mortality moves upon the muffled pianoforte, a sort of dead march:

Comes death on shadowy and resistless feet; Death is the end, the end.

Against this opposition, and commentary, the theme of the artist's life seems to develop: to strengthen. It heeds. Then it takes swift possession. The actual theme from the piano is appropriated by the strings, and in a glory of technical as well as moral triumph minor absorbs major: and death, become not the foe but an actual material of art, is swallowed up in victory.

All comedy--even high comedy--is not necessarily as intent as this last: nor all--even low--so simple as the nursery rhyme. Yet all, worth the name, has sympathy with both--from Menander to Shakespeare or Molière or Meredith. The apparent major may be age and tallow-dripping corpulence, as in the case of Falstaff, and the triumph that of the mere suppressed voice of the Comic Spirit breaking through in his shout on Gadshill,--"They hate us, youth." More often it is no physical defeat, but a moral one. It is convention without meaning, learning without significance, mode without kindliness, show without reason: every sort of sham and hardening of mind or heart against the unformulated fact of fluid life. And comedy is, so, life's victory.

This victory, of course, is not confined to art. Living that is worth the name must be a succession of such instances, becoming, as culture ripens, of greater range, and surer.

In comparison with earlier times this larger embrace shows itself now and then--a quality of our time or race: particularly in the front we present to circumstances or events that people quite unmoved by the Comic Spirit might find anything but attractive, except as an occasion for martyrdom or some such hardening of mind quite opposed to the immediately accessible Comic Spirit. We can enjoy the hidden beauty, or the very fact of opposition, behind the forbiddingness of things--even though the forbiddingness destroys body and body-comfort at a stroke. Enjoy it, too, not in the negative way of _Non dolets_, but actively and radiantly. To one so gifted, the forbiddingness of forbidden cities becomes as nothing, and the shadow of their golden watch-towers everything, as it falls, mingling with lotus blossom, in the moat. The Antarctic, blowing its cheeks off with storm and promise of immediate destruction, is of little account--and the "splendid pirate" of Sir Ernest Shackleton's last expedition buys matches in the face of it and pays for them in futures--a bottle of champagne per match, to be handed over at a dream 'pub' in a most improbable future. The war furnished other illustrations. This spirit was one of its very few virtues, without which it could not have carried on at all. Simple and daily life has them too, with the same result. For the spirit of comedy is the hope within and the light upon it, its shelter and its power to dare. It is the urge to a radiant beauty in the house of life we build, and the metal by which the roof, as it were, of that common house becomes a roof of gold.

If our comedy is the golden roof we raise, the shining triumph of the small matter of man's spirit over frowning great difficulties, something must be exacted of the builders who, if it is reared at all, must rear it. True comedy is essentially social. It reflects truth, and its servants building it constantly and immaterially must be servants of the truest social good. Satirists and cynics, tragedians and farceurs, may be as remote from life as they please and as individualistic. The servant of the Comic Spirit knows his kind, moves with them and loves them. He could be strong without this love no more than Antaeus without earth. It puts him in possession of the strength of the whole. Allow for the necessary semi-detachment of the artist, and it gives to all who serve the Comic Spirit that sense of more than equalness to the task which makes men sing as they work and of that work otherwise perhaps uninspired, makes the true _domus aurea_.

Doubtless such love can be intense, and foster comedy, where there is little to love. But it goes beyond intensity where there is much. It becomes diverse, many-coloured, passionate yet urbane, robust yet fanciful; and comedy, responsive to all its moods, becomes as various.

The pages of _Punch_, to apply what has been said, are an illustration of such Comedy. In obvious and in subtler ways, of fine jocoserie or of fine courage, they show the unrecorded minor besting the plausible major. Sometimes, if not mountains, then sizable hills are brought to labour, and the _ridiculus mus_ which ultimately appears proves to be of quite different maternity, putting them to the blush: as in Mr. Hilton Brown's "To an Early Daffodil," or Mr. Chalmers's "To a Bank of England Pigeon," where the modern instance, modest Scillies or drab Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, wins the prize from the epic Cyclades or from Cypris-not-to-be-outdone. Mr. Chalmers gives an even more natural example of it in "Little Cow Hay." Here the good story of the wholesome doings of the Culpeppers, fit and famous, is piled high--only to have an insignificant ribald moment, regardless of them all, flutter with proud crowing to its very crown:

But that must be nigh Sixty seasons away, When things was all different D'ye see--an' to-day There ain't no Culpeppers At Little Cow Hay.

Sometimes the minor human makes the triumph. Opposed by a full-grown if incomplete planet, he takes it up, without effort, as a very little thing: Smith, M.A., Oxon., for instance, of Mr. Bretherton's poem; or the hero of "The Desert Optimist," who, if history went so far, would doubtless be Piccadillyish in Penang and urban in the Gobi.

Most often, however, it is no particular coup of the Comic Spirit that these poems celebrate. It is the Comic Spirit preparing itself for any, by making sure of the strong social life, in all its disciplines or humours, from which its strength springs. It contemplates the towers which whisper to Smith in Mesopotamy the smooth, cool enchantments of the Middle Age. It regards London--Fleet Street levying tribute from all romance, Charing Cross Road and the ancient kingdom of books, people and zoo and parks--and from all this it gathers the comfort "of no mean city," so that our gentlemen adventurers at the end of things may possess that, and with it give a genuinely comic overturn to alien unpleasantnesses at time of need. Such help is precious, and Mr. Symns is not the first to record it.

"Urbs errat ante oculos;" Then Fortune, send me where you list, I care not, London holds me close An exile, yet an optimist.

The greatest of such times of need has (we hope) come and gone. And not a little of the activity of the Comic Spirit while it lasted was just such a gathering, on a larger scale, and such a distribution of the gathered strength. The khaki flood covered up accounted landmarks. Even among the priests of the Ideal, the Ideal was not seldom lost. The Comic Spirit remembered both, and quietly recalled some things that were continuous beneath all change. The resulting poems as they appeared in _Punch_ dealt with traditional themes, fairies and fancies and symbols of the spiritual ripening of the land under generations of love; but with a new tenderness, accented by the need, and also a new scope that included in the magic circle actual work-a-day doings, especially those of ships and sea. Of these, Miss Farjeon's "Nursery Rhymes of London Town" come first to thought, with Miss Fyleman's fairy poems and Miss Fox Smith's marines, all three represented here, and, fortunately, available complete in separate volumes as well.

It is needless to speak of the strength which came from such accounting of our spiritual possession. Col. McCrae's "In Flanders Fields," and Mrs. Robertson Glasgow's "Dulce et Decorum," antiphonal one to the other, are both included here. They answer for those who

...with the flame of their bright youth unspent Went shouting up the pathway to the sun.

And history can take care of the rest. It is necessary to complete the tale of possession, however, by noting, in addition to the "Nimphidia" and poems of sentiment, those in memory of great servants of the Social Good, and hence of the Comic Spirit, or of that spirit itself most immediately, which _Punch_ admitting in its scheme from the start, makes possible to include here. And finally, there are the poems on sport. There is an obvious difference between the tenderness and fancy of the 'Nimphidia' and the rollicking certainty of the last. Yet the two are complementary as flowers and earth. Oberon was first cousin to Robin Hood before Robin had become a myth, and now may be half your fairy music is the echo of yesterday's or yester-year's hunting horn. Half your fairy flowers grow on fields that have known harsh ploughing--Flanders fields will bear them among their poppies. So, if the noting of national sentiment contributes to the Comic Spirit, this noting of national discipline (which has a sentiment of its own now, as well as that it may help to create) does so also. It may be war, or hunting, or cricket, or

When eight strong fellows are out to row With a slip of a lad to guide them:

from it all comes to the individual the strength of the group--and a knowledge too of those peculiar delights of comedy, a genuine sincerity of technique and a constant opposition of the best laid plans to a trifle--a ball or a fox or a rapid feather--with the certainty that out of that situation laughter may spring.

W. B. DRAYTON HENDERSON.

Prefatory Note

The poems in this collection are reprinted by permission of their proprietors, the proprietors of _Punch_. They are used with the added consent of their authors, or their representatives except in one case, of death, and two where present addresses are unknown. In some cases the consent of book-publishers has been superadded. All this we acknowledge gratefully. It would be gratifying if, in return, this use might add to the fame of the poets represented. The wish is, however, presumptuous, seeing that most of them are known, even outside the pages of _Punch_ by many readers: C. K. Burrow through his _In Time of Peace_, etc. (Collins); Hartley Carrick, through _The Muse in Motley_ (Bowes); P. R. Chalmers, _Green Days_, etc. (Maunsel); Mrs. Eden, _Coal and Candlelight_, etc. (Lane), etc.; Miss Farjeon, _Nursery Rhymes of London Town_, etc. (Duckworth); Miss Fyleman, _Fairies and Chimneys_, etc. (Methuen); Miss Fox Smith, _Sailor Town_, etc. (Matthews), _Rhymes of the Red Ensign_ (Hodder and Stoughton), etc.; Crosbie Garstin, _Vagabond Verses_ (Sidgwick and Jackson), with which will be coupled a new volume (Heinemann) including poems from _Punch_ reprinted here; A. P. Herbert, _Play Hours with Pegasus_, etc. (Blackwell); A. L. Jenkins, _Forlorn Adventures_ (Sidgwick and Jackson); E. V. Knox, _The Brazen Lyre_ (Murray), etc.; R. C. Lehmann, _The Vagabond_ (Lane); W. H. Ogilvie, _Rainbows and Witches_, etc. (Matthews), _Hearts of Gold_, etc. (Oxford); R. K. Risk, _Songs of the Links_ (Duckworth); Sir Owen Seaman, _In Cap and Bells_, etc. (Lane), and _A Harvest of Chaff_, etc. (Constable).

Contents

At Putney

Ballad of the Resurrection Packet, The Ballade of August Bazar Belfries, The Blue Roses Booklover, The Breaking-up Song By the Canal in Flanders By the Roman Road

Cambridge in Kharki Canadian to his Parents, A Child of the Sun, A "Commem." Cornish Lullaby, A Cottage Garden Prayer

Dartymoor, For Defaulters Desert Optimist, The Despair of my Muse, The Devon Men Devil in Devon, The Dream, A Dream Ship, A Dulce Domum "Dulce et Decorum"

Failure of Sympathy, A Fairies in the Malverns Fairy Music Fairy Went A-Marketing, A Farewell to Summer February Trout Fancy, A Figure Head, The First Game, The For Dartymoor Fount of Inspiration

"Gambol" Ghosts of Paper Glad Good-bye, The Golden Valley, The Good-bye, Australians! Guns of Verdun

Herbs of Grace Honey Meadow House in a Wood, A Huntin' Weather Hymn for High Places

Ideal Home, The In Flanders Fields In Memoriam--William Booth In Memoriam--George Meredith In Memoriam--Algernon Charles Swinburne In Winter Inland Golf Inn o' the Sword, The

Jimmy, Killed in Action

Labuntur Anni Lanes leading down to the Thames, The Last Cock Pheasant, The Left Smiling Lighted Way, The Lines to a Mudlark Little Cow Hay "Little Foxes, The" Little Ships, The Lone Hand, The

Medalitis Mixed Shooting, On My First Flight

New Resistance, The North Sea Ground, The Nurse, The Nursery Rhymes of London Town

Old Ships, The On Simon's Stack Oxford Revisited

Pagan Fancies

"Quat' sous Lait"

Ramshackle Room, A Return, The

Saturdays School for Motley, The Seats of the Mighty Sitting Bard, The Sometimes Song of Syrinx, A Southampton Southward Spanish Ledges Spring Cleaning Strange Servant, The Summer and Sorrow

Three Ships, The Time's Revenges To a Bank of England Pigeon To a Cuckoo, Heard on the Links To a Dear Departed To an Early Daffodil To an Egyptian Boy To an Unknown Deer To Santa Claus To Smith in Mesopotamy To the God of Love "Treasure Island"

Vagrant, A Voyage Of H.M.S. "President," The

Watch in the Night, A Whine from a Wooer, A Wild Swan, The Windmill, The Wintry Fires Wireless Woods of France, The

The School for Motley

["It is pessimism which produces wit. Optimism is nearly always dull."]

When I was a feather-brained stripling And new to my frivolous Muse, I parodied AUSTIN and KIPLING And floundered in CALVERLEY'S shoes. With hope as a tonic I primed my internals And sent in my stuff to the various journals

Although the wet blanket of chronic Rejection adhered to my form, I took the above-mentioned tonic And managed to keep myself warm. My verses were light, but my spirits were lighter; Some day, I kept saying, the sky would get brighter.

Years passed, but my lot never varied, And hope seemed to suffer a slump, And life became empty and arid-- In short, I contracted the "hump." Despair filled my heart, once so sanguine and placid; Thenceforward I wrote not with ink, but with acid.

I put away laughter and pleasure, I sought Fortune's arrows and slings, And found what a wonderful treasure Lies hid on the dark side of things; For woe gave me wit, and my bile-begot vapours Procured me the ear of the humorous papers.

And now, when prosperity chases The frown from my forehead, I go And scatter my cash at the races, Or visit a music-hall show; Restored to a decent depression, _instanter_ I turn out a column of exquisite banter.

Sour grapes make the daintiest nectar; I fill up a bumper each night To banish the fatuous spectre Of dull-witted joy from my sight, And, sitting alone in a darkness Cimmerian, I drink to the toast, 'A long life and a weary 'un!'

STANLEY J. FAY. July 5, 1911.

_The Elder Song_

To the God of Love

Come to me, Eros, if you needs must come This year, with milder twinges; Aim not your arrow at the bull's-eye plumb, But let the outer pericardium Be where the point impinges.