Chapter 2
When big trout late in the twilight leap, When cuckoo clamoureth far and near, When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap, Then comes in the sweet o’ the year! And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer, Where kine knee deep in the water stand, On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!
ENVOY.
Friend, with the fops while we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o’ the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!
BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS GHOSTS.
BETWEEN the moonlight and the fire In winter twilights long ago, What ghosts we raised for your desire To make your merry blood run slow! How old, how grave, how wise we grow! No Christmas ghost can make us chill, Save _those_ that troop in mournful row, The ghosts we all can raise at will!
The beasts can talk in barn and byre On Christmas Eve, old legends know, As year by year the years retire, We men fall silent then I trow, Such sights hath Memory to show, Such voices from the silence thrill, Such shapes return with Christmas snow,— The ghosts we all can raise at will.
Oh, children of the village choir, Your carols on the midnight throw, Oh bright across the mist and mire Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas glow! Beat back the dread, beat down the woe, Let’s cheerily descend the hill; Be welcome all, to come or go, The ghosts we all can raise at will!
ENVOY.
Friend, _sursum corda_, soon or slow We part, like guests who’ve joyed their fill; Forget them not, nor mourn them so, The ghosts we all can raise at will!
LOVE’S EASTER.
SONNET
LOVE died here Long ago;— O’er his bier, Lying low, Poppies throw; Shed no tear; Year by year, Roses blow!
Year by year, Adon—dear To Love’s Queen— Does not die! Wakes when green May is nigh!
BALLADE OF THE GIRTON GIRL.
SHE has just “put her gown on” at Girton, She is learned in Latin and Greek, But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on That the prudish remark with a shriek. In her accents, perhaps, she is weak (Ladies _are_, one observes with a sigh), But in Algebra—_there_ she’s unique, But her forte’s to evaluate π.
She can talk about putting a “spirt on” (I admit, an unmaidenly freak), And she dearly delighteth to flirt on A punt in some shadowy creek; Should her bark, by mischance, spring a leak, She can swim as a swallow can fly; She can fence, she can put with a cleek, But her forte’s to evaluate π.
She has lectured on Scopas and Myrton, Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique, Old tiles with the secular dirt on, Old marbles with noses to seek. And her Cobet she quotes by the week, And she’s written on κεν and on καὶ, And her service is swift and oblique, But her forte’s to evaluate π.
ENVOY.
Princess, like a rose is her cheek, And her eyes are as blue as the sky, And I’d speak, had I courage to speak, But—her forte’s to evaluate pi.
RONSARD’S GRAVE.
YE wells, ye founts that fall From the steep mountain wall, That fall, and flash, and fleet With silver feet,
Ye woods, ye streams that lave The meadows with your wave, Ye hills, and valley fair, Attend my prayer!
When Heaven and Fate decree My latest hour for me, When I must pass away From pleasant day,
I ask that none my break The marble for my sake, Wishful to make more fair My sepulchre.
Only a laurel tree Shall shade the grave of me, Only Apollo’s bough Shall guard me now!
Now shall I be at rest Among the spirits blest, The happy dead that dwell— Where,—who may tell?
The snow and wind and hail May never there prevail, Nor ever thunder fall Nor storm at all.
But always fadeless there The woods are green and fair, And faithful ever more Spring to that shore!
There shall I ever hear Alcaeus’ music clear, And sweetest of all things There SAPPHO sings.
SAN TERENZO.
(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the wreck of the Don Juan.)
MID April seemed like some November day, When through the glassy waters, dull as lead, Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead, Slipped down the long shores of the Spezian bay, Rounded a point,—and San Terenzo lay Before us, that gay village, yellow and red, The roof that covered Shelley’s homeless head,— His house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.
The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again. Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free, When suddenly the forest glades were stirred With waving pinions, and a great sea bird Flew forth, like Shelley’s spirit, to the sea!
1880.
ROMANCE.
MY Love dwelt in a Northern land. A grey tower in a forest green Was hers, and far on either hand The long wash of the waves was seen, And leagues on leagues of yellow sand, The woven forest boughs between!
And through the silver Northern night The sunset slowly died away, And herds of strange deer, lily-white, Stole forth among the branches grey; About the coming of the light, They fled like ghosts before the day!
I know not if the forest green Still girdles round that castle grey; I know not if the boughs between The white deer vanish ere the day; Above my Love the grass is green, My heart is colder than the clay!
BALLADE OF HIS OWN COUNTRY.
I SCRIBBLED on a fly-book’s leaves Among the shining salmon-flies; A song for summer-time that grieves I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves. Between grey sea and golden sheaves, Beneath the soft wet Morvern skies, I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves Among the shining salmon-flies.
TO C. H. ARKCOLL
Let them boast of Arabia, oppressed By the odour of myrrh on the breeze; In the isles of the East and the West That are sweet with the cinnamon trees Let the sandal-wood perfume the seas; Give the roses to Rhodes and to Crete, We are more than content, if you please, With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!
Though Dan Virgil enjoyed himself best With the scent of the limes, when the bees Hummed low ’round the doves in their nest, While the vintagers lay at their ease, Had he sung in our northern degrees, He’d have sought a securer retreat, He’d have dwelt, where the heart of us flees, With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!
Oh, the broom has a chivalrous crest And the daffodil’s fair on the leas, And the soul of the Southron might rest, And be perfectly happy with these; But _we_, that were nursed on the knees Of the hills of the North, we would fleet Where our hearts might their longing appease With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!
ENVOY.
Ah Constance, the land of our quest It is far from the sounds of the street, Where the Kingdom of Galloway’s blest With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!
VILLANELLE
(TO M. JOSEPH BOULMIER, AUTHOR OF “LES VILLANELLES.”)
VILLANELLE, why art thou mute? Hath the singer ceased to sing? Hath the Master lost his lute?
Many a pipe and scrannel flute On the breeze their discords fling; Villanelle, why art _thou_ mute?
Sound of tumult and dispute, Noise of war the echoes bring; Hath the Master lost his lute?
Once he sang of bud and shoot In the season of the Spring; Villanelle, why art thou mute?
Fading leaf and falling fruit Say, “The year is on the wing, Hath the Master lost his lute?”
Ere the axe lie at the root, Ere the winter come as king, Villanelle, why art thou mute? Hath the Master lost his lute?
TRIOLETS AFTER MOSCHUS.
Αίαῖ ταὶ μαλάχαι μέν ἐπὰν κατὰ κᾱπον ὄλωνται ὕστερον άυ ζώοντι καὶ εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο φύοντι άμμες δ’ οι μεγάλοι καὶ χαρτερί οι σοφοὶ ἄνδρες ὁππότε πρᾱτα θάνωμες άνάχοοι ἔν χθονὶ χοίλα ‘εύδομες ἔυ μάλα μαχρὸν ἀπέμονα νήγρετον ‘ύπνον.
ALAS, for us no second spring, Like mallows in the garden-bed, For these the grave has lost his sting, Alas, for _us_ no second spring, Who sleep without awakening, And, dead, for ever more are dead, Alas, for us no second spring, Like mallows in the garden-bed!
Alas, the strong, the wise, the brave That boast themselves the sons of men! Once they go down into the grave— Alas, the strong, the wise, the brave,— They perish and have none to save, They are sown, and are not raised again; Alas, the strong, the wise, the brave, That boast themselves the sons of men!
BALLADE OF CRICKET.
TO T. W. LANG.
THE burden of hard hitting: slog away! Here shalt thou make a “five” and there a “four,” And then upon thy bat shalt lean, and say, That thou art in for an uncommon score. Yea, the loud ring applauding thee shall roar, And thou to rival THORNTON shalt aspire, When lo, the Umpire gives thee “leg before,”— “This is the end of every man’s desire!”
The burden of much bowling, when the stay Of all thy team is “collared,” swift or slower, When “bailers” break not in their wonted way, And “yorkers” come not off as here-to-fore, When length balls shoot no more, ah never more, When all deliveries lose their former fire, When bats seem broader than the broad barn-door,— “This is the end of every man’s desire!”
The burden of long fielding, when the clay Clings to thy shoon in sudden shower’s downpour, And running still thou stumblest, or the ray Of blazing suns doth bite and burn thee sore, And blind thee till, forgetful of thy lore, Thou dost most mournfully misjudge a “skyer,” And lose a match the Fates cannot restore,— “This is the end of every man’s desire!”
ENVOY.
Alas, yet liefer on Youth’s hither shore Would I be some poor Player on scant hire, Than King among the old, who play no more,— “_This_ is the end of every man’s desire!”
THE LAST MAYING.
“It is told of the last Lovers which watched May-night in the forest, before men brought the tidings of the Gospel to this land, that they beheld no Fairies, nor Dwarfs, nor no such Thing, but the very Venus herself, who bade them ‘make such cheer as they might, for’ said she, ‘I shall live no more in these Woods, nor shall ye endure to see another May time.’”—EDMUND GORLIOT, “Of Phantasies and Omens,” p. 149. (1573.)
“WHENCE do ye come, with the dew on your hair? From what far land are the boughs ye bear, The blossoms and buds upon breasts and tresses, The light burned white in your faces fair?”
“In a falling fane have we built our house, With the dying Gods we have held carouse, And our lips are wan from their wild caresses, Our hands are filled with their holy boughs.
As we crossed the lawn in the dying day No fairy led us to meet the May, But the very Goddess loved by lovers, In mourning raiment of green and grey.
She was not decked as for glee and game, She was not veiled with the veil of flame, The saffron veil of the Bride that covers The face that is flushed with her joy and shame.
On the laden branches the scent and dew Mingled and met, and as snow to strew The woodland rides and the fragrant grasses, White flowers fell as the night wind blew.
Tears and kisses on lips and eyes Mingled and met amid laughter and sighs For grief that abides, and joy that passes, For pain that tarries and mirth that flies.
It chanced as the dawning grew to grey Pale and sad on our homeward way, With weary lips, and palled with pleasure The Goddess met us, farewell to say.
“Ye have made your choice, and the better part, Ye chose” she said, “and the wiser art; In the wild May night drank all the measure, The perfect pleasure of heart and heart.
“Ye shall walk no more with the May,” she said, “Shall your love endure though the Gods be dead? Shall the flitting flocks, mine own, my chosen, Sing as of old, and be happy and wed?
“Yea, they are glad as of old; but you, Fair and fleet as the dawn or the dew, Abide no more, for the springs are frozen, And fled the Gods that ye loved and knew.
Ye shall never know Summer again like this; Ye shall play no more with the Fauns, I wis, No more in the nymphs’ and dryads’ playtime Shall echo and answer kiss and kiss.
“Though the flowers in your golden hair be bright, Your golden hair shall be waste and white On faded brows ere another May time Bring the spring, but no more delight.”
HOMERIC UNITY.
THE sacred keep of Ilion is rent By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow Through plains where Simois and Scamander went To war with Gods and heroes long ago. Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low In rich Mycenæ, do the Fates relent: The bones of Agamemnon are a show, And ruined is his royal monument.
The dust and awful treasures of the Dead, Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee, Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead, And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see The crown that burns on thine immortal head Of indivisible supremacy!
IN TINTAGEL.
LUI.
AH lady, lady, leave the creeping mist, And leave the iron castle by the sea!
ELLE.
Nay, from the sea there came a ghost that kissed My lips, and so I cannot come to thee!
LUI.
Ah lady, leave the cruel landward wind That crusts the blighted flowers with bitter foam!
ELLE.
Nay, for his arms are cold and strong to bind, And I must dwell with him and make my home!
LUI.
Come, for the Spring is fair in Joyous Guard And down deep alleys sweet birds sing again.
ELLE.
But I must tarry with the winter hard, And with the bitter memory of pain, Although the Spring be fair in Joyous Guard, And in the gardens glad birds sing again!
PISIDICÊ.
The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island allied with Troy.
THE daughter of the Lesbian king Within her bower she watched the war, Far off she heard the arrows ring, The smitten harness ring afar; And, fighting from the foremost car, Saw one that smote where all must flee; More fair than the Immortals are He seemed to fair Pisidicê!
She saw, she loved him, and her heart Before Achilles, Peleus’ son, Threw all its guarded gates apart, A maiden fortress lightly won! And, ere that day of fight was done, No more of land or faith recked she, But joyed in her new life begun,— Her life of love, Pisidicê!
She took a gift into her hand, As one that had a boon to crave; She stole across the ruined land Where lay the dead without a grave, And to Achilles’ hand she gave Her gift, the secret postern’s key. “To-morrow let me be thy slave!” Moaned to her love Pisidicê.
Ere dawn the Argives’ clarion call Rang down Methymna’s burning street; They slew the sleeping warriors all, They drove the women to the fleet, Save one, that to Achilles’ feet Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he: “For her no doom but death is meet,” And there men stoned Pisidicê.
In havens of that haunted coast, Amid the myrtles of the shore, The moon sees many a maiden ghost Love’s outcast now and evermore. The silence hears the shades deplore Their hour of dear-bought love; but _thee_ The waves lull, ’neath thine olives hoar, To dreamless rest, Pisidicê!
FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.
RETURNING from what other seas Dost thou renew thy murmuring, Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of these To tell, the shores where float and cling My love, my hope, my memories?
Say does my lady wake to note The gold light into silver die? Or do thy waves make lullaby, While dreams of hers, like angels, float Through star-sown spaces of the sky?
Ah, would such angels came to me That dreams of mine might speak with hers, Nor wake the slumber of the sea With words as low as winds that be Awake among the gossamers!
LOVE THE VAMPIRE.
Ο ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ’Σ ΤΟΝ ΤΑΦΟ.
THE level sands and grey, Stretch leagues and leagues away, Down to the border line of sky and foam, A spark of sunset burns, The grey tide-water turns, Back, like a ghost from her forbidden home!
Here, without pyre or bier, Light Love was buried here, Alas, his grave was wide and deep enough, Thrice, with averted head, We cast dust on the dead, And left him to his rest. An end of Love.
“No stone to roll away, No seal of snow or clay, Only soft dust above his wearied eyes, But though the sudden sound Of Doom should shake the ground, And graves give up their ghosts, he will not rise!”
So each to each we said! Ah, but to either bed Set far apart in lands of North and South, Love as a Vampire came With haggard eyes aflame, And kissed us with the kisses of his mouth!
Thenceforth in dreams must we Each other’s shadow see Wand’ring unsatisfied in empty lands, Still the desirèd face Fleets from the vain embrace, And still the shape evades the longing hands.
BALLADE OF THE BOOK-MAN’S PARADISE.
THERE _is_ a Heaven, or here, or there,— A Heaven there is, for me and you, Where bargains meet for purses spare, Like ours, are not so far and few. Thuanus’ bees go humming through The learned groves, ’neath rainless skies, O’er volumes old and volumes new, Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There treasures bound for Longepierre Keep brilliant their morocco blue, There Hookes’ _Amanda_ is not rare, Nor early tracts upon Peru! Racine is common as Rotrou, No Shakespeare Quarto search defies, And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew, Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There’s Eve,—not our first mother fair,— But Clovis Eve, a binder true; Thither does Bauzonnet repair, Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup! But never come the cropping crew That dock a volume’s honest size, Nor they that “letter” backs askew, Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
ENVOY.
Friend, do not Heber and De Thou, And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise, _La chasse au bouquin_ still pursue Within that Book-man’s Paradise?
BALLADE OF A FRIAR.
(Clement Marot’s _Frère Lubin_, though translated by Longfellow and others, has not hitherto been rendered into the original measure, of _ballade à double refrain_.)
SOME ten or twenty times a day, To bustle to the town with speed, To dabble in what dirt he may,— Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! But any sober life to lead Upon an exemplary plan, Requires a Christian indeed,— Le Frère Lubin is _not_ the man!
Another’s wealth on his to lay, With all the craft of guile and greed, To leave you bare of pence or pay,— Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! But watch him with the closest heed, And dun him with what force you can,— He’ll not refund, howe’er you plead,— Le Frère Lubin is _not_ the man!
An honest girl to lead astray, With subtle saw and promised meed, Requires no cunning crone and grey,— Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! He preaches an ascetic creed, But,—try him with the water can— A dog will drink, whate’er his breed,— Le Frère Lubin is _not_ the man!
ENVOY.
In good to fail, in ill succeed, Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! In honest works to lead the van, Le Frère Lubin is _not_ the man!
BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. {78}
I HAVE scribbled in verse and in prose, I have painted “arrangements in greens,” And my name is familiar to those Who take in the high class magazines; I compose; I’ve invented machines; I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”; For my county I played, in my teens, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows; I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens; I have climbed the Caucasian snows; I abstain, like the ancients, from beans,— I’ve a guess what Pythagoras means, When he says that to eat them’s a crime,— I have lectured upon the Essenes, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s, I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,” I have breasted the river that flows Through the land of the wild Gadarenes; I can gossip with Burton on _skenes_, I can imitate Irving (the Mime), And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
ENVOY.
So the tower of mine eminence leans Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime; I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS.
LET others praise analysis And revel in a “cultured” style, And follow the subjective Miss {80} From Boston to the banks of Nile, Rejoice in anti-British bile, And weep for fickle hero’s woe, These twain have shortened many a mile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.
These damsels of “Democracy’s,” How long they stop at every stile! They smile, and we are told, I wis, Ten subtle reasons _why_ they smile. Give _me_ your villains deeply vile, Give me Lecoq, Jottrat, and Co., Great artists of the ruse and wile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!
Oh, novel readers, tell me this, Can prose that’s polished by the file, Like great Boisgobey’s mysteries, Wet days and weary ways beguile, And man to living reconcile, Like these whose every trick we know? The agony how high they pile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!
ENVOY.
Ah, friend, how many and many a while They’ve made the slow time fleetly flow, And solaced pain and charmed exile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.
THE CLOUD CHORUS.
(FROM ARISTOPHANES.)
_Socrates speaks_.
Hither, come hither, ye Clouds renowned, and unveil yourselves here; Come, though ye dwell on the sacred crests of Olympian snow, Or whether ye dance with the Nereid choir in the gardens clear, Or whether your golden urns are dipped in Nile’s overflow, Or whether you dwell by Mæotis mere Or the snows of Mimas, arise! appear! And hearken to us, and accept our gifts ere ye rise and go.
_The Clouds sing_.
Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore Of the father of streams, from the sounding sea, Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar. Dewy and gleaming, and fleet are we! Let us look on the tree-clad mountain crest, On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice, On the waters that murmur east and west On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice, For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air, And the bright rays gleam; Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere From the height of the heaven, on the land and air, And the Ocean stream.