Chapter 3
O my countryman! if ever from thy arm the bolster sped, In thy school-days, with precision at a young companion’s head; If ’twas thine to lodge the marble in the centre of the ring, Or with well-directed pebble make the sitting hen take wing:
Then do thou—each fair May morning, when the blue lake is as glass, And the gossamers are twinkling star-like in the beaded grass; When the mountain-bee is sipping fragrance from the bluebell’s lip, And the bathing-woman tells you, Now’s your time to take a dip:
When along the misty valleys fieldward winds the lowing herd, And the early worm is being dropped on by the early bird; And Aurora hangs her jewels from the bending rose’s cup, And the myriad voice of Nature calls thee to _my second_ up:—
Hie thee to the breezy common, where the melancholy goose Stalks, and the astonished donkey finds that he is really loose; There amid green fern and furze-bush shalt thou soon _my whole_ behold, Rising ‘bull-eyed and majestic’—as Olympus queen of old:
Kneel,—at a respectful distance,—as they kneeled to her, and try With judicious hand to put a ball into that ball-less eye: Till a stiffness seize thy elbows, and the general public wake— Then return, and, clear of conscience, walk into thy well-earned steak.
III.
ERE yet “knowledge for the million” Came out “neatly bound in boards;” When like Care upon a pillion Matrons rode behind their lords: Rarely, save to hear the Rector, Forth did younger ladies roam; Making pies, and brewing nectar From the gooseberry-trees at home.
They’d not dreamed of Pan or Vevay; Ne’er should into blossom burst At the ball or at the levée; Never come, in fact, _my first_: Nor illumine cards by dozens With some labyrinthine text, Nor work smoking-caps for cousins Who were pounding at _my next_.
Now have skirts, and minds, grown ampler; Now not all they seek to do Is create upon a sampler Beasts which Buffon never knew: But their venturous muslins rustle O’er the cragstone and the snow, Or at home their biceps muscle Grows by practising the bow.
Worthier they those dames who, fable Says, rode “palfreys” to the war With gigantic Thanes, whose “sable Destriers caracoled” before; Smiled, as—springing from the war-horse As men spring in modern ‘cirques’— They plunged, ponderous as a four-horse Coach, among the vanished Turks:—
In the good times when the jester Asked the monarch how he was, And the landlady addrest her Guests as ‘gossip’ or as ‘coz’; When the Templar said, “Gramercy,” Or, “’Twas shrewdly thrust, i’ fegs,” To Sir Halbert or Sir Percy As they knocked him off his legs:
And, by way of mild reminders That he needed coin, the Knight Day by day extracted grinders From the howling Israelite: And _my whole_ in merry Sherwood Sent, with preterhuman luck, Missiles—not of steel but firwood— Thro’ the two-mile-distant buck.
IV.
EVENING threw soberer hue Over the blue sky, and the few Poplars that grew just in the view Of the hall of Sir Hugo de Wynkle: “Answer me true,” pleaded Sir Hugh, (Striving to woo no matter who,) “What shall I do, Lady, for you? ’Twill be done, ere your eye may twinkle. Shall I borrow the wand of a Moorish enchanter, And bid a decanter contain the Levant, or The brass from the face of a Mormonite ranter? Shall I go for the mule of the Spanish Infantar— (That _r_, for the sake of the line, we must grant her,)— And race with the foul fiend, and beat in a canter, Like that first of equestrians Tam o’ Shanter? I talk not mere banter—say not that I can’t, or By this _my first_—(a Virginia planter Sold it me to kill rats)—I will die instanter.” The Lady bended her ivory neck, and Whispered mournfully, “Go for—_my second_.” She said, and the red from Sir Hugh’s cheek fled, And “Nay,” did he say, as he stalked away The fiercest of injured men: “Twice have I humbled my haughty soul, And on bended knee I have pressed _my whole_— But I never will press it again!”
V.
ON pinnacled St. Mary’s Lingers the setting sun; Into the street the blackguards Are skulking one by one: Butcher and Boots and Bargeman Lay pipe and pewter down; And with wild shout come tumbling out To join the Town and Gown.
And now the undergraduates Come forth by twos and threes, From the broad tower of Trinity, From the green gate of Caius: The wily bargeman marks them, And swears to do his worst; To turn to impotence their strength, And their beauty to _my first_.
But before Corpus gateway _My second_ first arose, When Barnacles the freshman Was pinned upon the nose: Pinned on the nose by Boxer, Who brought a hobnailed herd From Barnwell, where he kept a van, Being indeed a dogsmeat man, Vendor of terriers, blue or tan, And dealer in _my third_.
’Twere long to tell how Boxer Was ‘countered’ on the cheek, And knocked into the middle Of the ensuing week: How Barnacles the Freshman Was asked his name and college; And how he did the fatal facts Reluctantly acknowledge.
He called upon the Proctor Next day at half-past ten; Men whispered that the Freshman cut A different figure then:— That the brass forsook his forehead, The iron fled his soul, As with blanched lip and visage wan Before the stony-hearted Don He kneeled upon _my whole_.
VI.
SIKES, housebreaker, of Houndsditch, Habitually swore; But so surpassingly profane He never was before, As on a night in winter, When—softly as he stole In the dim light from stair to stair, Noiseless as boys who in her lair Seek to surprise a fat old hare— He barked his shinbone, unaware Encountering _my whole_.
As pours the Anio plainward, When rains have swollen the dykes, So, with such noise, poured down _my first_, Stirred by the shins of Sikes. The Butler Bibulus heard it; And straightway ceased to snore, And sat up, like an egg on end, While men might count a score: Then spake he to Tigerius, A Buttons bold was he: “Buttons, I think there’s thieves about; Just strike a light and tumble out; If you can’t find one, go without, And see what you may see.”
But now was all the household, Almost, upon its legs, Each treading carefully about As if they trod on eggs. With robe far-streaming issued Paterfamilias forth; And close behind him,—stout and true And tender as the North,— Came Mrs. P., supporting On her broad arm her fourth.
Betsy the nurse, who never From largest beetle ran, And—conscious p’raps of pleasing caps— The housemaids, formed the van: And Bibulus the Butler, His calm brows slightly arched; (No mortal wight had ere that night Seen him with shirt unstarched;) And Bob, the shockhaired knifeboy, Wielding two Sheffield blades, And James Plush of the sinewy legs, The love of lady’s maids: And charwoman and chaplain Stood mingled in a mass, And “Things,” thought he of Houndsditch, “Is come to a pretty pass.”
Beyond all things a Baby Is to the schoolgirl dear; Next to herself the nursemaid loves Her dashing grenadier; Only with life the sailor Parts from the British flag; While one hope lingers, the cracksman’s fingers Drop not his hard-earned ‘swag.’
But, as hares do _my second_ Thro’ green Calabria’s copses, As females vanish at the sight Of short-horns and of wopses; So, dropping forks and teaspoons, The pride of Houndsditch fled, Dumbfoundered by the hue and cry He’d raised up overhead.
* * * *
They gave him—did the Judges— As much as was his due. And, Saxon, should’st thou e’er be led To deem this tale untrue; Then—any night in winter, When the cold north wind blows, And bairns are told to keep out cold By tallowing the nose: When round the fire the elders Are gathered in a bunch, And the girls are doing crochet, And the boys are reading Punch:— Go thou and look in Leech’s book; There haply shalt thou spy A stout man on a staircase stand, With aspect anything but bland, And rub his right shin with his hand, To witness if I lie.
PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.
Introductory.
ART thou beautiful, O my daughter, as the budding rose of April? Are all thy motions music, and is poetry throned in thine eye? Then hearken unto me; and I will make the bud a fair flower, I will plant it upon the bank of Elegance, and water it with the water of Cologne; And in the season it shall “come out,” yea bloom, the pride of the parterre; Ladies shall marvel at its beauty, and a Lord shall pluck it at the last.
Of Propriety.
Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Polestar Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair; Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society; The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros. Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked; Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice: And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not herself again.— I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the Yew, Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade; Then I pass’d into the citizen’s garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape, (The giant’s locks had been shorn by the Dalilahshears of Decorum;) And I said, “Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!” I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky, And my foolish heart went after him, and lo! I blessed him as he rose; Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bulfinch, Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up water: And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder, Must yield to him that danceth and ‘moveth in the circles’ at Astley’s. For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade, And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another: A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards, And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety: He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure, Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.
Of Friendship.
Choose judiciously thy friends; for to discard them is undesirable, Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daughter, than to drop thy ‘H’s’. Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light? Hath she a position? and a title? and are her parties in the Morning Post? If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind; Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding: So shalt thou become like unto her; and thy manners shall be “formed,” And thy name shall be a Sesame, at which the doors of the great shall fly open: Thou shalt know every Peer, his arms, and the date of his creation, His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove: Thou shalt kiss the hand of Royalty, and lo! in next morning’s papers, Side by side with rumours of wars, and stories of shipwrecks and sieges, Shall appear thy name, and the minutiæ of thy head-dress and petticoat, For an enraptured public to muse upon over their matutinal muffin.
Of Reading.
Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life; Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yet intelligible: Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer who flattereth not: Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldest not dream, but do. Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler than he of old, Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime and Beautiful: Likewise study the “creations” of “the Prince of modern Romance;” Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham the puppy: Learn how “love is the dram-drinking of existence;” And how we “invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets, The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand of the pen.” Listen how Maltravers and the orphan “forgot all but love,” And how Devereux’s family chaplain “made and unmade kings:” How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, and a murderer, Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind. So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes and master-spirits; And if thou canst not realise the Ideal, thou shalt at least idealise the Real.
TRANSLATIONS. {105}
LYCIDAS.
YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, sisters, of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may some gentle muse With lucky words favour my destined urn, And, as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud: For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield, and both together heard What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the star that rose, at evening, bright, Toward Heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Tempered to the oaten flute; Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel From the glad sound would not be absent long, And old Damætas loved to hear our song. But oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel copses green, Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep, Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie; Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream: Ay me! I fondly dream! Had ye been there, for what could that have done? What could the muse herself that Orpheus bore, The muse herself for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd’s trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neæra’s hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days, But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. “But not the praise,” Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; “Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.” O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, That strain I heard was of a higher mood: But now my oat proceeds, And listens to the herald of the sea That came in Neptune’s plea; He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, What hard mishap had doomed this gentle swain? And questioned every gust of rugged wings, That blows from off each beaked promontory: They knew not of his story, And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed, The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. It was that fatal and perfidious bark Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge, Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. “Ah! who hath reft,” quoth he, “my dearest pledge?” Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake: “How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearer’s feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least That to the faithful herdsman’s art belongs! What reeks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said. But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.” Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To strow the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old, Where the great vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold; Look homeward, angel now, and melt with ruth: And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walked the waves, Where other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. There entertain him all the saints above, In solemn troops, and sweet societies, That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, While the still morn went out with sandals gray, He touched the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, And now was dropped into the western bay; At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue, Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
LYCIDAS.