Chapter 2
And years have past, and I have gazed once more On blue lakes glistening beneath mountains blue; And all seemed sadder, lovelier than before— For all awakened memories of you. Oh! had I had you by my side, in lieu Of that red matron, whom the flies would worry, (Flies in those parts unfortunately do,) Who walked so slowly, talked in such a hurry, And with such wild contempt for stops and Lindley Murray!
O Isabel, the brightest, heavenliest theme That ere drew dreamer on to poësy, Since “Peggy’s locks” made Burns neglect his team, And Stella’s smile lured Johnson from his tea— I may not tell thee what thou art to me! But ever dwells the soft voice in my ear, Whispering of what Time is, what Man might be, Would he but “do the duty that lies near,” And cut clubs, cards, champagne, balls, billiard-rooms, and beer.
DIRGE.
“Dr. Birch’s young friends will reassemble to-day, Feb. 1st.”
WHITE is the wold, and ghostly The dank and leafless trees; And ‘M’s and ‘N’s are mostly Pronounced like ‘B’s and ‘D’s: ’Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted, The sheep stands, mute and stolid: And ducks find out, disgusted, That all the ponds are solid.
Many a stout steer’s work is (At least in this world) finished; The gross amount of turkies Is sensibly diminished: The holly-boughs are faded, The painted crackers gone; Would I could write, as Gray did, An Elegy thereon!
For Christmas-time is ended: Now is “our youth” regaining Those sweet spots where are “blended Home-comforts and school-training.” Now they’re, I dare say, venting Their grief in transient sobs, And I am “left lamenting” At home, with Mrs. Dobbs.
O Posthumus! “Fugaces Labuntur anni” still; Time robs us of our graces, Evade him as we will. We were the twins of Siam: Now _she_ thinks _me_ a bore, And I admit that _I_ am Inclined at times to snore.
I was her own Nathaniel; With her I took sweet counsel, Brought seed-cake for her spaniel, And kept her bird in groundsel: We’ve murmured, “How delightful A landscape, seen by night, is,”— And woke next day in frightful Pain from acute bronchitis.
* * *
But ah! for them, whose laughter We heard last New Year’s Day,— (They reeked not of Hereafter, Or what the Doctor’d say,)— For those small forms that fluttered Moth-like around the plate, When Sally brought the buttered Buns in at half-past eight!
Ah for the altered visage Of her, our tiny Belle, Whom my boy Gus (at his age!) Said was a “deuced swell!” P’raps now Miss Tickler’s tocsin Has caged that pert young linnet; Old Birch perhaps is boxing My Gus’s ears this minute.
Yet, though your young ears be as Red as mamma’s geraniums, Yet grieve not! Thus ideas Pass into infant craniums. Use not complaints unseemly; Tho’ you must work like bricks; And it _is_ cold, extremely, Rising at half-past six.
Soon sunnier will the day grow, And the east wind not blow so; Soon, as of yore, L’Allegro Succeed Il Penseroso: Stick to your Magnall’s Questions And Long Division sums; And come—with good digestions— Home when next Christmas comes.
LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.
DARKNESS succeeds to twilight: Through lattice and through skylight The stars no doubt, if one looked out, Might be observed to shine: And sitting by the embers I elevate my members On a stray chair, and then and there Commence a Valentine.
Yea! by St. Valentinus, Emma shall not be minus What all young ladies, whate’er their grade is, Expect to-day no doubt: Emma the fair, the stately— Whom I beheld so lately, Smiling beneath the snow-white wreath Which told that she was “out.”
Wherefore fly to her, swallow, And mention that I’d “follow,” And “pipe and trill,” et cetera, till I died, had I but wings: Say the North’s “true and tender,” The South an old offender; And hint in fact, with your well-known tact, All kinds of pretty things.
Say I grow hourly thinner, Simply abhor my dinner— Tho’ I do try and absorb some viand Each day, for form’s sake merely: And ask her, when all’s ended, And I am found extended, With vest blood-spotted and cut carotid, To think on Her’s sincerely.
“HIC _VIR_, HIC EST.”
OFTEN, when o’er tree and turret, Eve a dying radiance flings, By that ancient pile I linger Known familiarly as “King’s.” And the ghosts of days departed Rise, and in my burning breast All the undergraduate wakens, And my spirit is at rest.
What, but a revolting fiction, Seems the actual result Of the Census’s enquiries Made upon the 15th ult.? Still my soul is in its boyhood; Nor of year or changes recks. Though my scalp is almost hairless, And my figure grows convex.
Backward moves the kindly dial; And I’m numbered once again With those noblest of their species Called emphatically ‘Men’: Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime, Through the streets, with tranquil mind, And a long-backed fancy-mongrel Trailing casually behind:
Past the Senate-house I saunter, Whistling with an easy grace; Past the cabbage-stalks that carpet Still the beefy market-place; Poising evermore the eye-glass In the light sarcastic eye, Lest, by chance, some breezy nursemaid Pass, without a tribute, by.
Once, an unassuming Freshman, Through these wilds I wandered on, Seeing in each house a College, Under every cap a Don: Each perambulating infant Had a magic in its squall, For my eager eye detected Senior Wranglers in them all.
By degrees my education Grew, and I became as others; Learned to court delirium tremens By the aid of Bacon Brothers; Bought me tiny boots of Mortlock, And colossal prints of Roe; And ignored the proposition That both time and money go.
Learned to work the wary dogcart Artfully through King’s Parade; Dress, and steer a boat, and sport with Amaryllis in the shade: Struck, at Brown’s, the dashing hazard; Or (more curious sport than that) Dropped, at Callaby’s, the terrier Down upon the prisoned rat.
I have stood serene on Fenner’s Ground, indifferent to blisters, While the Buttress of the period Bowled me his peculiar twisters: Sung ‘We won’t go home till morning’; Striven to part my backhair straight; Drunk (not lavishly) of Miller’s Old dry wines at 78:—
When within my veins the blood ran, And the curls were on my brow, I did, oh ye undergraduates, Much as ye are doing now. Wherefore bless ye, O beloved ones:— Now unto mine inn must I, Your ‘poor moralist,’ {51a} betake me, In my ‘solitary fly.’
BEER.
IN those old days which poets say were golden— (Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves: And, if they did, I’m all the more beholden To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves, Who talk to me “in language quaint and olden” Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves, Pans with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards, And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds:)
In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette (Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born. They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet, No fashions varying as the hues of morn. Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate, Sang hymns to Ceres (their John Barleycorn) And danced unchaperoned, and laughed unchecked, And were no doubt extremely incorrect.
Yet do I think their theory was pleasant: And oft, I own, my ‘wayward fancy roams’ Back to those times, so different from the present; When no one smoked cigars, nor gave At-homes, Nor smote a billiard-ball, nor winged a pheasant, Nor ‘did’ their hair by means of long-tailed combs, Nor migrated to Brighton once a-year, Nor—most astonishing of all—drank Beer.
No, they did not drink Beer, “which brings me to” (As Gilpin said) “the middle of my song.” Not that “the middle” is precisely true, Or else I should not tax your patience long: If I had said ‘beginning,’ it might do; But I have a dislike to quoting wrong: I was unlucky—sinned against, not sinning— When Cowper wrote down ‘middle’ for ‘beginning.’
So to proceed. That abstinence from Malt Has always struck me as extremely curious. The Greek mind must have had some vital fault, That they should stick to liquors so injurious— (Wine, water, tempered p’raps with Attic salt)— And not at once invent that mild, luxurious, And artful beverage, Beer. How the digestion Got on without it, is a startling question.
Had they digestions? and an actual body Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on? Were they abstract ideas—(like Tom Noddy And Mr. Briggs)—or men, like Jones and Jackson? Then Nectar—was that beer, or whiskey-toddy? Some say the Gaelic mixture, _I_ the Saxon: I think a strict adherence to the latter Might make some Scots less pigheaded, and fatter.
Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shews That the real beverage for feasting gods on Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose And also to the palate, known as ‘Hodgson.’ I know a man—a tailor’s son—who rose To be a peer: and this I would lay odds on, (Though in his Memoirs it may not appear,) That that man owed his rise to copious Beer.
O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsop, Bass! Names that should be on every infant’s tongue! Shall days and months and years and centuries pass, And still your merits be unrecked, unsung? Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass, And wished that lyre could yet again be strung Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her Misguided sons that “the best drink was water.”
How would he now recant that wild opinion, And sing—as would that I could sing—of you! I was not born (alas!) the “Muses’ minion,” I’m not poetical, not even blue: And he (we know) but strives with waxen pinion, Whoe’er he is that entertains the view Of emulating Pindar, and will be Sponsor at last to some now nameless sea.
Oh! when the green slopes of Arcadia burned With all the lustre of the dying day, And on Cithæron’s brow the reaper turned, (Humming, of course, in his delightful way, How Lycidas was dead, and how concerned The Nymphs were when they saw his lifeless clay; And how rock told to rock the dreadful story That poor young Lycidas was gone to glory:)
What would that lone and labouring soul have given, At that soft moment, for a pewter pot! How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven, And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot! If his own grandmother had died unshriven, In two short seconds he’d have recked it not; Such power hath Beer. The heart which Grief hath canker’d Hath one unfailing remedy—the Tankard.
Coffee is good, and so no doubt is cocoa; Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen: When ‘Dulce et desipere in loco’ Was written, real Falernian winged the pen. When a rapt audience has encored ‘Fra Poco’ Or ‘Casta Diva,’ I have heard that then The Prima Donna, smiling herself out, Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout.
But what is coffee, but a noxious berry, Born to keep used-up Londoners awake? What is Falernian, what is Port or Sherry, But vile concoctions to make dull heads ache? Nay stout itself—(though good with oysters, very)— Is not a thing your reading man should take. He that would shine, and petrify his tutor, Should drink draught Allsop in its “native pewter.”
But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear— A soft and silvery sound—I know it well. Its tinkling tells me that a time is near Precious to me—it is the Dinner Bell. O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer, Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell: Seared is (of course) my heart—but unsubdued Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.
I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen: But on one statement I may safely venture; That few of our most highly gifted men Have more appreciation of the trencher. I go. One pound of British beef, and then What Mr. Swiveller called a “modest quencher;” That home-returning, I may ‘soothly say,’ “Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.”
ODE TO TOBACCO.
THOU who, when fears attack, Bid’st them avaunt, and Black Care, at the horseman’s back Perching, unseatest; Sweet when the morn is grey; Sweet, when they’ve cleared away Lunch; and at close of day Possibly sweetest:
I have a liking old For thee, though manifold Stories, I know, are told, Not to thy credit; How one (or two at most) Drops make a cat a ghost— Useless, except to roast— Doctors have said it:
How they who use fusees All grow by slow degrees Brainless as chimpanzees, Meagre as lizards; Go mad, and beat their wives; Plunge (after shocking lives) Razors and carving knives Into their gizzards.
Confound such knavish tricks! Yet know I five or six Smokers who freely mix Still with their neighbours; Jones—who, I’m glad to say, Asked leave of Mrs. J.)— Daily absorbs a clay After his labours.
Cats may have had their goose Cooked by tobacco-juice; Still why deny its use Thoughtfully taken? We’re not as tabbies are: Smith, take a fresh cigar! Jones, the tobacco-jar! Here’s to thee, Bacon!
DOVER TO MUNICH.
FAREWELL, farewell! Before our prow Leaps in white foam the noisy channel, A tourist’s cap is on my brow, My legs are cased in tourists’ flannel:
Around me gasp the invalids— (The quantity to-night is fearful)— I take a brace or so of weeds, And feel (as yet) extremely cheerful.
The night wears on:—my thirst I quench With one imperial pint of porter; Then drop upon a casual bench— (The bench is short, but I am shorter)—
Place ’neath my head the _harve-sac_ Which I have stowed my little all in, And sleep, though moist about the back, Serenely in an old tarpaulin.
* * *
Bed at Ostend at 5 A.M. Breakfast at 6, and train 6.30. Tickets to Königswinter (mem. The seats objectionably dirty).
And onward through those dreary flats We move, with scanty space to sit on, Flanked by stout girls with steeple hats, And waists that paralyse a Briton;—
By many a tidy little town, Where tidy little Fraus sit knitting; (The men’s pursuits are, lying down, Smoking perennial pipes, and spitting;)
And doze, and execrate the heat, And wonder how far off Cologne is, And if we shall get aught to eat, Till we get there, save raw polonies:
Until at last the “grey old pile” Is seen, is past, and three hours later We’re ordering steaks, and talking vile Mock-German to an Austrian waiter.
* * *
Königswinter, hateful Königswinter! Burying-place of all I loved so well! Never did the most extensive printer Print a tale so dark as thou could’st tell!
In the sapphire West the eve yet lingered, Bathed in kindly light those hill-tops cold; Fringed each cloud, and, stooping rosy-fingered, Changed Rhine’s waters into molten gold;—
While still nearer did his light waves splinter Into silvery shafts the streaming light; And I said I loved thee, Königswinter, For the glory that was thine that night.
And we gazed, till slowly disappearing, Like a day-dream, passed the pageant by, And I saw but those lone hills, uprearing Dull dark shapes against a hueless sky.
Then I turned, and on those bright hopes pondered Whereof yon gay fancies were the type; And my hand mechanically wandered Towards my left-hand pocket for a pipe.
Ah! why starts each eyeball from its socket, As, in Hamlet, start the guilty Queen’s? There, deep-hid in its accustomed pocket, Lay my sole pipe, smashed to smithereens!
* * *
On, on the vessel steals; Round go the paddle-wheels, And now the tourist feels As he should; For king-like rolls the Rhine, And the scenery’s divine, And the victuals and the wine Rather good.
From every crag we pass’ll Rise up some hoar old castle; The hanging fir-groves tassel Every slope; And the vine her lithe arms stretches O’er peasants singing catches— And you’ll make no end of sketches, I should hope.
We’ve a nun here (called Therèse), Two couriers out of place, One Yankee, with a face Like a ferret’s: And three youths in scarlet caps Drinking chocolate and schnapps— A diet which perhaps Has its merits.
And day again declines: In shadow sleep the vines, And the last ray through the pines Feebly glows, Then sinks behind yon ridge; And the usual evening midge Is settling on the bridge Of my nose.
And keen’s the air and cold, And the sheep are in the fold, And Night walks sable-stoled Through the trees; And on the silent river The floating starbeams quiver;— And now, the saints deliver Us from fleas.
* * *
Avenues of broad white houses, Basking in the noontide glare;— Streets, which foot of traveller shrinks from, As on hot plates shrinks the bear;—
Elsewhere lawns, and vista’d gardens, Statues white, and cool arcades, Where at eve the German warrior Winks upon the German maids;—
Such is Munich:—broad and stately, Rich of hue, and fair of form; But, towards the end of August, Unequivocally _warm_.
There, the long dim galleries threading, May the artist’s eye behold, Breathing from the “deathless canvass” Records of the years of old:
Pallas there, and Jove, and Juno, “Take” once more “their walks abroad,” Under Titian’s fiery woodlands And the saffron skies of Claude:
There the Amazons of Rubens Lift the failing arm to strike, And the pale light falls in masses On the horsemen of Vandyke;
And in Berghem’s pools reflected Hang the cattle’s graceful shapes, And Murillo’s soft boy-faces Laugh amid the Seville grapes;
And all purest, loveliest fancies That in poets’ souls may dwell Started into shape and substance At the touch of Raphael.—
Lo! her wan arms folded meekly, And the glory of her hair Falling as a robe around her, Kneels the Magdalene in prayer;
And the white-robed Virgin-mother Smiles, as centuries back she smiled, Half in gladness, half in wonder, On the calm face of her Child:—
And that mighty Judgment-vision Tells how man essayed to climb Up the ladder of the ages, Past the frontier-walls of Time;
Heard the trumpet-echoes rolling Through the phantom-peopled sky, And the still voice bid this mortal Put on immortality.
* * *
Thence we turned, what time the blackbird Pipes to vespers from his perch, And from out the clattering city Pass’d into the silent church;
Marked the shower of sunlight breaking Thro’ the crimson panes o’erhead, And on pictured wall and window Read the histories of the dead:
Till the kneelers round us, rising, Cross’d their foreheads and were gone; And o’er aisle and arch and cornice, Layer on layer, the night came on.
CHARADES.
I.
SHE stood at Greenwich, motionless amid The ever-shifting crowd of passengers. I marked a big tear quivering on the lid Of her deep-lustrous eye, and knew that hers Were days of bitterness. But, “Oh! what stirs” I said “such storm within so fair a breast?” Even as I spoke, two apoplectic curs Came feebly up: with one wild cry she prest Each singly to her heart, and faltered, “Heaven be blest!”
Yet once again I saw her, from the deck Of a black ship that steamed towards Blackwall. She walked upon _my first_. Her stately neck Bent o’er an object shrouded in her shawl: I could not see the tears—the glad tears—fall, Yet knew they fell. And “Ah,” I said, “not puppies, Seen unexpectedly, could lift the pall From hearts who _know_ what tasting misery’s cup is, As Niobe’s, or mine, or Mr. William Guppy’s.”
* * *
Spake John Grogblossom the coachman to Eliza Spinks the cook: “Mrs. Spinks,” says he, “I’ve foundered: ‘Liza dear, I’m overtook. Druv into a corner reglar, puzzled as a babe unborn; Speak the word, my blessed ‘Liza; speak, and John the coachman’s yourn.”
Then Eliza Spinks made answer, blushing, to the coachman John: “John, I’m born and bred a spinster: I’ve begun and I’ll go on. Endless cares and endless worrits, well I knows it, has a wife: Cooking for a genteel family, John, it’s a goluptious life!
“I gets £20 per annum—tea and things o’ course not reckoned,— There’s a cat that eats the butter, takes the coals, and breaks _my second_: There’s soci’ty—James the footman;—(not that I look after him; But he’s aff’ble in his manners, with amazing length of limb;)—
“Never durst the missis enter here until I’ve said ‘Come in’: If I saw the master peeping, I’d catch up the rolling-pin. Christmas-boxes, that’s a something; perkisites, that’s something too; And I think, take all together, John, I won’t be on with you.”
John the coachman took his hat up, for he thought he’d had enough; Rubbed an elongated forehead with a meditative cuff; Paused before the stable doorway; said, when there, in accents mild, “She’s a fine young ’oman, cook is; but that’s where it is, she’s spiled.”
* * *
I have read in some not marvellous tale, (Or if I have not, I’ve dreamed) Of one who filled up the convivial cup Till the company round him seemed
To be vanished and gone, tho’ the lamps upon Their face as aforetime gleamed: And his head sunk down, and a Lethe crept O’er his powerful brain, and the young man slept.
Then they laid him with care in his moonlit bed: But first—having thoughtfully fetched some tar— Adorned him with feathers, aware that the weather’s Uncertainty brings on at nights catarrh.
They staid in his room till the sun was high: But still did the feathered one give no sign Of opening a peeper—he might be a sleeper Such as rests on the Northern or Midland line.
At last he woke, and with profound Bewilderment he gazed around; Dropped one, then both feet to the ground, But never spake a word:
Then to my _whole_ he made his way; Took one long lingering survey; And softly, as he stole away, Remarked, “By Jove, a bird!”
II.
IF you’ve seen a short man swagger tow’rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out “Heave aho! my hearties,” and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his pleased companion’s face;
If he preluded with hornpipes each successive thing he did, From a sun-browned cheek extracting still an ostentatious quid; And expectorated freely, and occasionally cursed:— Then have you beheld, depicted by a master’s hand, _my first_.