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Title: Ballades & Rhymes from Ballades in Blue China and Rhymes a la Mode

Author: Andrew Lang

Release date: March 1, 2002 [eBook #3138]

Most recently updated: February 9, 2016

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the 1911 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLADES & RHYMES FROM BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA AND RHYMES A LA MODE ***

Transcribed from the 1911 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

BALLADES & RHYMES

From Ballades in Blue China

and Rhymes à la Mode

BY

A. LANG

“Hom, c’est une ballade!”—VADIUS.

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1911

All rights reserved

“Rondeaux, BALLADES,

Chansons dizains, propos menus,

Compte moy qu’ilz sont devenuz:

Se faict il plus rien de nouveau?”

CLEMENT MAROT, Dialogue de deux Amoureux.

“I love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.”

A Winter’s Tale, Act iv. sc. 3.

CONTENTS.

BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA.

PAGE

Ballade of Theocritus

15

Ballade of Cleopatra’s Needle

17

Ballade of Roulette

19

Ballade of Sleep

21

Ballade of the Midnight Forest

24

Ballade of the Tweed

27

Ballade of the Book-hunter

29

Ballade of the Voyage to Cythera

31

Ballade of the Summer Term

34

Ballade of the Muse

36

Ballade against the Jesuits

38

Ballade of Dead Cities

40

Ballade of the Royal Game of Golf

42

Double Ballade of Primitive Man

44

Ballade of Autumn

47

Ballade of True Wisdom

49

Ballade of Worldly Wealth

51

Ballade of Life

53

Ballade of Blue China

55

Ballade of Dead Ladies

57

Villon’s Ballade of Good Counsel

59

Ballade of the Bookworm

61

Valentine in form of Ballade

63

Ballade of Old Plays

65

Ballade of his Books

67

Ballade of the Dream

69

Ballade of the Southern Cross

71

Ballade of Aucassin

73

Ballade Amoureuse

75

Ballade of Queen Anne

77

Ballade of Blind Love

79

Ballade of his Choice of a Sepulchre

81

Dizain

83

VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS.

A Portrait of 1783

87

The Moon’s Minion

90

In Ithaca

92

Homer

93

The Burial of Molière

94

Bion

95

Spring

96

Before the Snow

97

Villanelle

98

Natural Theology

100

The Odyssey

102

Ideal

103

The Fairy’s Gift

105

Benedetta Ramus

107

Partant pour la Scribie

110

St. Andrews Bay

112

Woman and the Weed

114

RHYMES À LA MODE

BALLADE DEDICATORY

123

THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS

125

ALMAE MATRES

139

DESIDERIUM

143

RHYMES À LA MODE

145

Ballade of Middle Age

147

The Last Cast

140

Twilight

153

Ballade of Summer

154

Ballade of Christmas Ghosts

156

Love’s Easter

158

Ballade of the Girton Girl

159

Ronsard’s Grave

161

San Terenzo

164

Romance

166

Ballade of his own Country

168

Villanelle

171

Triolets after Moschus

173

Ballade of Cricket

175

The Last Maying

177

Homeric Unity

181

In Tintagel

182

Pisidicê

184

From the East to the West

187

Love the Vampire

188

Ballade of the Book-man’s Paradise

190

Ballade of a Friar

192

Ballade of Neglected Merit

194

Ballade of Railway Novels

196

The Cloud Chorus

198

Ballade of Literary Fame

201

Νήνεμος Αἰών

203

SCIENCE

205

The Barbarous Bird-Gods

207

Man and the Ascidian

212

Ballade of the Primitive Jest

215

CAMEOS

217

Cameos

217

Helen on the Walls

220

The Isles of the Blessed

221

Death

223

Nysa

224

Colonus (I.)

225

,, (II.)

226

The Passing of Œdipous

227

The Taming of Tyro

228

To Artemis

229

Criticism of Life

230

Amaryllis

231

The Cannibal Zeus

232

Invocation of Isis

234

The Coming of Isis

235

THE SPINET

236

NOTES

237

INTRODUCTION

THIRTY years have passed, like a watch in the night, since the earlier of the two sets of verses here reprinted, Ballades in Blue China, was published.  At first there were but twenty-two Ballades; ten more were added later.  They appeared in a little white vellum wrapper, with a little blue Chinese singer copied from a porcelain jar; and the frontispiece was a little design by an etcher now famous.

Thirty years ago blue china was a kind of fetish in some circles, æsthetic circles, of which the balladist was not a member.

The ballade was an old French form of verse, in France revived by Théodore de Banville, and restored to an England which had long forgotten the Middle Ages, by my friends Mr. Austin Dobson and Mr. Edmund Gosse.  They, so far as I can trust my memory, were the first to reintroduce these pleasant old French nugae, while an anonymous author let loose upon the town a whole winged flock of ballades of amazing dexterity.  This unknown balladist was Mr. Henley; perhaps he was the first Englishman who ever burst into a double ballade, and his translations of two of Villon’s ballades into modern thieves’ slang were marvels of dexterity.  Mr. Swinburne wrote a serious ballade, but the form, I venture to think, is not ‘wholly serious,’ of its nature, in modern days; and he did not persevere.  Nor did the taste for these trifles long endure.  A good ballade is almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as easily written as the majority of sonnets.  Either form readily becomes mechanical, cheap and facile.  I have heard Mr. George Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to the rules, without pen and paper.  He spoke ‘and the numbers came’; he sonneted as easily as a living poet, in his Eton days, improvised Latin elegiacs and Greek hexameters.

The sonnet endures.  Mr. Horace Hutchinson wrote somewhere: “When you have read a sonnet, you feel that though there does not seem to be much of it, you have done a good deal, as when you have eaten a cold hard-boiled egg.”  Still people keep on writing sonnets, because the sonnet is wholly serious.  In an English sonnet you cannot easily be flippant of pen.  A few great poets have written immortal sonnets—among them are Milton, Wordsworth, and Keats.  Thus the sonnet is a thing which every poet thinks it worth while to try at; like Felix Arvers, he may be made immortal by a single sonnet.  Even I have written one too many!  Every anthologist wants to anthologise it (The Odyssey); it never was a favourite of my own, though it had the honour to be kindly spoken of by Mr. Matthew Arnold.

On the other hand, no man since François Villon has been immortalised by a single ballade—Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

To speak in any detail about these poor ballades would be to indite a part of an autobiography.  Looking back at the little book, ‘what memories it stirs’ in one to whom

‘Fate has done this wrong,

That I should write too much and live too long.’

The Ballade of the Tweed, and the Rhymes à la Mode, were dedicated to the dearest of kinsmen, a cricketer and angler.  The Ballade of Roulette was inscribed to R. R., a gallant veteran of the Indian Mutiny, a leader of Light Horse, whose father was a friend of Sir Walter Scott.  He was himself a Borderer, in whose defeats on the green field of Roulette I often shared, long, long ago.

So many have gone ‘into the world of light’ that it is a happiness to think of him to whom The Ballade of Golf was dedicated, and to remember that he is still capable of scoring his double century at cricket, and of lifting the ball high over the trees beyond the boundaries of a great cricket-field.  Perhaps Mr. Leslie Balfour-Melville will pardon me for mentioning his name, linked as it is with so many common memories.  ‘One is taken and another left.’

A different sort of memory attaches itself to A Ballade of Dead Cities.  It was written in a Theocritean amoebean way, in competition with Mr. Edmund Gosse; he need not be ashamed of the circumstance, for another shepherd, who was umpire, awarded the prize (two kids just severed from their dams) to his victorious muse.

The Ballade of the Midnight Forest, the Ballade of the Huntress Artemis, was translated from Théodore de Banville, whose beautiful poem came so near the Greek, that when the late Provost of Oriel translated a part of its English shadow into Greek hexameters, you might suppose, as you read, that they were part of a lost Homeric Hymn.

I never wrote a double ballade, and stanzas four and five of the Double Ballade of Primitive Man were contributed by the learned doyen of Anthropology, Mr. E. B. Tylor, author of Primitive Culture.

À tout seigneur tout honneur!

In Ballade of his Choice of a Sepulchre, the Windburg is a hill in Teviotdale.  A Portrait of 1783 was written on a French engraving after Morland, and Benedetta Ramus was addressed to a mezzotint (an artist’s proof, ‘very rare’).  It is after Romney and is ‘My Beauty,’ as Charles Lamb said (once, unluckily, to a Scot) of an engraving, after Lionardo, of some fair dead lady.

The sonnet, Natural Theology, is the germ of what the author has since written, in The Making of Religion, on the long neglected fact that many of the lowest savages known share the belief in a benevolent All Father and Judge of men.

Concerning verses in Rhymes à la Mode, visitors to St. Andrews may be warned not to visit St. Leonard’s Chapel, described in the second stanza of Almae Matres.  In the writer’s youth, and even in middle age,

He loitered idly where the tall

Fresh-budded mountain-ashes blow

Within its desecrated wall.

The once beautiful ruins carpeted with grass and wild flowers have been doubly desecrated by persons, academic persons, having authority and a plentiful lack of taste.  The slim mountain-ashes, fair as the young palm-tree that Odysseus saw beside the shrine of Apollo in Delos, have been cut down by the academic persons to whom power is given.  The grass and flowers have been rooted up.  Hideous little wooden fences enclose the grave slabs: a roof of a massive kind has been dumped down on the old walls, and the windows, once so graceful in their airy lines, have been glazed in a horrible manner, while the ugly iron gate precludes entrance to a shrine which is now a black and dismal dungeon.

“Oh, be that roof as lead to lead

Above the dull Restorer’s head,

A Minstrel’s malison is said!”

Notes explanatory are added to the Rhymes, and their information, however valuable, need not here be repeated.

BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA

Tout

par

Soullas

A BALLADE OF XXXII BALLADES.

Friend, when you bear a care-dulled eye,

And brow perplexed with things of weight,

And fain would bid some charm untie

The bonds that hold you all too strait,

Behold a solace to your fate,

Wrapped in this cover’s china blue;

These ballades fresh and delicate,

This dainty troop of Thirty-two!

The mind, unwearied, longs to fly

And commune with the wise and great;

But that same ether, rare and high,

Which glorifies its worthy mate,

To breath forspent is disparate:

Laughing and light and airy-new

These come to tickle the dull pate,

This dainty troop of Thirty-two.

Most welcome then, when you and I,

Forestalling days for mirth too late,

To quips and cranks and fantasy

Some choice half-hour dedicate,

They weave their dance with measured rate

Of rhymes enlinked in order due,

Till frowns relax and cares abate,

This dainty troop of Thirty-two.

ENVOY.

Princes, of toys that please your state

Quainter are surely none to view

Than these which pass with tripping gait,

This dainty troop of Thirty-two.

F. P.

TO

AUSTIN DOBSON.

Un Livre est un ami qui change—quelquefois.

1880.

1888

BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER.

ἐσορῶν τὰν Σικελὰν ἐς ἅλα.

Id. viii. 56.

Ah! leave the smoke, the wealth, the roar

Of London, and the bustling street,

For still, by the Sicilian shore,

The murmur of the Muse is sweet.

Still, still, the suns of summer greet

The mountain-grave of Helikê,

And shepherds still their songs repeat

Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.

What though they worship Pan no more,

That guarded once the shepherd’s seat,

They chatter of their rustic lore,

They watch the wind among the wheat:

Cicalas chirp, the young lambs bleat,

Where whispers pine to cypress tree;

They count the waves that idly beat

Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.

Theocritus! thou canst restore

The pleasant years, and over-fleet;

With thee we live as men of yore,

We rest where running waters meet:

And then we turn unwilling feet

And seek the world—so must it be—

We may not linger in the heat

Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!

ENVOY.

Master,—when rain, and snow, and sleet

And northern winds are wild, to thee

We come, we rest in thy retreat,

Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!

BALLADE OF CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE.

Ye giant shades of RA and TUM,

Ye ghosts of gods Egyptian,

If murmurs of our planet come

To exiles in the precincts wan

Where, fetish or Olympian,

To help or harm no more ye list,

Look down, if look ye may, and scan

This monument in London mist!

Behold, the hieroglyphs are dumb

That once were read of him that ran

When seistron, cymbal, trump, and drum

Wild music of the Bull began;

When through the chanting priestly clan

Walk’d Ramses, and the high sun kiss’d

This stone, with blessing scored and ban—

This monument in London mist.

The stone endures though gods be numb;

Though human effort, plot, and plan

Be sifted, drifted, like the sum

Of sands in wastes Arabian.

What king may deem him more than man,

What priest says Faith can Time resist

While this endures to mark their span—

This monument in London mist?

ENVOY.

Prince, the stone’s shade on your divan

Falls; it is longer than ye wist:

It preaches, as Time’s gnomon can,

This monument in London mist!

BALLADE OF ROULETTE.

TO R. R.

This life—one was thinking to-day,

In the midst of a medley of fancies—

Is a game, and the board where we play

Green earth with her poppies and pansies.

Let manque be faded romances,

Be passe remorse and regret;

Hearts dance with the wheel as it dances—

The wheel of Dame Fortune’s roulette.

The lover will stake as he may

His heart on his Peggies and Nancies;

The girl has her beauty to lay;

The saint has his prayers and his trances;

The poet bets endless expanses

In Dreamland; the scamp has his debt:

How they gaze at the wheel as it glances—

The wheel of Dame Fortune’s roulette!

The Kaiser will stake his array

Of sabres, of Krupps, and of lances;

An Englishman punts with his pay,

And glory the jeton of France is;

Your artists, or Whistlers or Vances,

Have voices or colours to bet;

Will you moan that its motion askance is—

The wheel of Dame Fortune’s roulette?

ENVOY.

The prize that the pleasure enhances?

The prize is—at last to forget

The changes, the chops, and the chances—

The wheel of Dame Fortune’s roulette.

BALLADE OF SLEEP.

The hours are passing slow,

I hear their weary tread

Clang from the tower, and go

Back to their kinsfolk dead.

Sleep! death’s twin brother dread!

Why dost thou scorn me so?

The wind’s voice overhead

Long wakeful here I know,

And music from the steep

Where waters fall and flow.

Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep?

All sounds that might bestow

Rest on the fever’d bed,

All slumb’rous sounds and low

Are mingled here and wed,

And bring no drowsihed.

Shy dreams flit to and fro

With shadowy hair dispread;

With wistful eyes that glow,

And silent robes that sweep.

Thou wilt not hear me; no?

Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep?

What cause hast thou to show

Of sacrifice unsped?

Of all thy slaves below

I most have labourèd

With service sung and said;

Have cull’d such buds as blow,

Soft poppies white and red,

Where thy still gardens grow,

And Lethe’s waters weep.

Why, then, art thou my foe?

Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep?

ENVOY.

Prince, ere the dark be shred

By golden shafts, ere low

And long the shadows creep:

Lord of the wand of lead,

Soft-footed as the snow,

Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep!

BALLADE OF THE MIDNIGHT FOREST.

AFTER THÉODORE DE BANVILLE.

Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old,

Beneath the shade of thorn and holly-tree;

The west wind breathes upon them, pure and cold,

And wolves still dread Diana roaming free

In secret woodland with her company.

’Tis thought the peasants’ hovels know her rite

When now the wolds are bathed in silver light,

And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey,

Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright,

And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.

With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold

The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee,

Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold

Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be,

The wild red dwarf, the nixies’ enemy;

Then ’mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright,

The sudden Goddess enters, tall and white,

With one long sigh for summers pass’d away;

The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright

And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.

She gleans her silvan trophies; down the wold

She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee

Mixed with the music of the hunting roll’d,

But her delight is all in archery,

And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she

More than her hounds that follow on the flight;

The goddess draws a golden bow of might

And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay.

She tosses loose her locks upon the night,

And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.

ENVOY.

Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite,

The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight:

Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray

There is the mystic home of our delight,

And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.

BALLADE OF THE TWEED.

(LOWLAND SCOTCH.)

TO T. W. LANG.

The ferox rins in rough Loch Awe,

A weary cry frae ony toun;

The Spey, that loups o’er linn and fa’,

They praise a’ ither streams aboon;

They boast their braes o’ bonny Doon:

Gie me to hear the ringing reel,

Where shilfas sing, and cushats croon

By fair Tweed-side, at Ashiesteel!

There’s Ettrick, Meggat, Ail, and a’,

Where trout swim thick in May and June;

Ye’ll see them take in showers o’ snaw

Some blinking, cauldrife April noon:

Rax ower the palmer and march-broun,

And syne we’ll show a bonny creel,

In spring or simmer, late or soon,

By fair Tweed-side, at Ashiesteel!

There’s mony a water, great or sma’,

Gaes singing in his siller tune,

Through glen and heugh, and hope and shaw,

Beneath the sun-licht or the moon:

But set us in our fishing-shoon

Between the Caddon-burn and Peel,

And syne we’ll cross the heather broun

By fair Tweed-side at Ashiesteel!

ENVOY.

Deil take the dirty, trading loon

Wad gar the water ca’ his wheel,

And drift his dyes and poisons doun

By fair Tweed-side at Ashiesteel!

BALLADE OF THE BOOK-HUNTER.

In torrid heats of late July,

In March, beneath the bitter bise,

He book-hunts while the loungers fly,—

He book-hunts, though December freeze;

In breeches baggy at the knees,

And heedless of the public jeers,

For these, for these, he hoards his fees,—

Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

No dismal stall escapes his eye,

He turns o’er tomes of low degrees,

There soiled romanticists may lie,

Or Restoration comedies;

Each tract that flutters in the breeze

For him is charged with hopes and fears,

In mouldy novels fancy sees

Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

With restless eyes that peer and spy,

Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees,

In dismal nooks he loves to pry,

Whose motto evermore is Spes!

But ah! the fabled treasure flees;

Grown rarer with the fleeting years,

In rich men’s shelves they take their ease,—

Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!

ENVOY.

Prince, all the things that tease and please,—

Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears,

What are they but such toys as these—

Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?

BALLADE OF THE VOYAGE TO CYTHERA.

AFTER THÉODORE DE BANVILLE.

I know Cythera long is desolate;

I know the winds have stripp’d the gardens green.

Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun’s weight

A barren reef lies where Love’s flowers have been,

Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!

So be it, but we seek a fabled shore,

To lull our vague desires with mystic lore,

To wander where Love’s labyrinths beguile;

There let us land, there dream for evermore:

“It may be we shall touch the happy isle.”

The sea may be our sepulchre.  If Fate,

If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene

We watch the bolt of heaven, and scorn the hate

Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen.

Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen

That veils the fairy coast we would explore.

Come, though the sea be vex’d, and breakers roar,

Come, for the air of this old world is vile,

Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar;

“It may be we shall touch the happy isle.”

Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate

Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen,

And ruined is the palace of our state;

But happy Loves flit round the mast, and keen

The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.

Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,

Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar,

Yet haste, light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;

Love’s panthers sleep ’mid roses, as of yore:

“It may be we shall touch the happy isle!”

ENVOY.

Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.

Ah, singing birds your happy music pour!

Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;

Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:

“It may be we shall touch the happy isle!”

BALLADE OF THE SUMMER TERM.

(Being a Petition, in the form of a Ballade, praying the University Commissioners to spare the Summer Term.)

When Lent and Responsions are ended,

When May with fritillaries waits,

When the flower of the chestnut is splendid,

When drags are at all of the gates

(Those drags the philosopher “slates”

With a scorn that is truly sublime), [35]

Life wins from the grasp of the Fates

Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!

When wickets are bowl’d and defended,

When Isis is glad with “the Eights,”

When music and sunset are blended,

When Youth and the summer are mates,

When Freshmen are heedless of “Greats,”

And when note-books are cover’d with rhyme,

Ah, these are the hours that one rates—

Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!

When the brow of the Dean is unbended

At luncheons and mild tête-à-têtes,

When the Tutor’s in love, nor offended

By blunders in tenses or dates;

When bouquets are purchased of Bates,

When the bells in their melody chime,

When unheeded the Lecturer prates—

Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!

ENVOY.

Reformers of Schools and of States,

Is mirth so tremendous a crime?

Ah! spare what grim pedantry hates—

Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!

BALLADE OF THE MUSE.

Quem tu, Melpomene, semel.

The man whom once, Melpomene,

Thou look’st on with benignant sight,

Shall never at the Isthmus be

A boxer eminent in fight,

Nor fares he foremost in the flight

Of Grecian cars to victory,

Nor goes with Delian laurels dight,

The man thou lov’st, Melpomene!

Not him the Capitol shall see,

As who hath crush’d the threats and might

Of monarchs, march triumphantly;

But Fame shall crown him, in his right

Of all the Roman lyre that smite

The first; so woods of Tivoli

Proclaim him, so her waters bright,

The man thou lov’st, Melpomene!

The sons of queenly Rome count me,

Me too, with them whose chants delight,—

The poets’ kindly company;

Now broken is the tooth of spite,

But thou, that temperest aright

The golden lyre, all, all to thee

He owes—life, fame, and fortune’s height—

The man thou lov’st, Melpomene!

ENVOY.

Queen, that to mute lips could’st unite

The wild swan’s dying melody!

Thy gifts, ah! how shall he requite—

The man thou lov’st, Melpomene?

BALLADE AGAINST THE JESUITS.

AFTER LA FONTAINE.

Rome does right well to censure all the vain

Talk of Jansenius, and of them who preach

That earthly joys are damnable!  ’Tis plain

We need not charge at Heaven as at a breach;

No, amble on!  We’ll gain it, one and all;

The narrow path’s a dream fantastical,

And Arnauld’s quite superfluously driven

Mirth from the world.  We’ll scale the heavenly wall,

Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!

He does not hold a man may well be slain

Who vexes with unseasonable speech,

You may do murder for five ducats gain,

Not for a pin, a ribbon, or a peach;

He ventures (most consistently) to teach

That there are certain cases that befall

When perjury need no good man appal,

And life of love (he says) may keep a leaven.

Sure, hearing this, a grateful world will bawl,

“Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!”

“For God’s sake read me somewhat in the strain

Of his most cheering volumes, I beseech!”

Why should I name them all? a mighty train—

So many, none may know the name of each.

Make these your compass to the heavenly beach,

These only in your library instal:

Burn Pascal and his fellows, great and small,

Dolts that in vain with Escobar have striven;

I tell you, and the common voice doth call,

Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!

ENVOY.

Satan, that pride did hurry to thy fall,

Thou porter of the grim infernal hall—

Thou keeper of the courts of souls unshriven!

To shun thy shafts, to ‘scape thy hellish thrall,

Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!

BALLADE OF DEAD CITIES.

TO E. W. GOSSE.

The dust of Carthage and the dust

Of Babel on the desert wold,

The loves of Corinth, and the lust,

Orchomenos increased with gold;

The town of Jason, over-bold,

And Cherson, smitten in her prime—

What are they but a dream half-told?

Where are the cities of old time?

In towns that were a kingdom’s trust,

In dim Atlantic forests’ fold,

The marble wasteth to a crust,

The granite crumbles into mould;

O’er these—left nameless from of old—

As over Shinar’s brick and slime,

One vast forgetfulness is roll’d—

Where are the cities of old time?

The lapse of ages, and the rust,

The fire, the frost, the waters cold,

Efface the evil and the just;

From Thebes, that Eriphyle sold,

To drown’d Caer-Is, whose sweet bells toll’d

Beneath the wave a dreamy chime

That echo’d from the mountain-hold,—

“Where are the cities of old time?”

ENVOY.

Prince, all thy towns and cities must

Decay as these, till all their crime,

And mirth, and wealth, and toil are thrust

Where are the cities of old time.

BALLADE OF THE ROYAL GAME OF GOLF.

(EAST FIFESHIRE.)

There are laddies will drive ye a ba’

To the burn frae the farthermost tee,

But ye mauna think driving is a’,

Ye may heel her, and send her ajee,

Ye may land in the sand or the sea;

And ye’re dune, sir, ye’re no worth a preen,

Tak’ the word that an auld man ’ll gie,

Tak’ aye tent to be up on the green!

The auld folk are crouse, and they craw

That their putting is pawky and slee;

In a bunker they’re nae gude ava’,

But to girn, and to gar the sand flee.

And a lassie can putt—ony she,—

Be she Maggy, or Bessie, or Jean,

But a cleek-shot’s the billy for me,

Tak’ aye tent to be up on the green!

I hae play’d in the frost and the thaw,

I hae play’d since the year thirty-three,

I hae play’d in the rain and the snaw,

And I trust I may play till I dee;

And I tell ye the truth and nae lee,

For I speak o’ the thing I hae seen—

Tom Morris, I ken, will agree—

Tak’ aye tent to be up on the green!

ENVOY.

Prince, faith you’re improving a wee,

And, Lord, man, they tell me you’re keen;

Tak’ the best o’ advice that can be,

Tak’ aye tent to be up on the green!

DOUBLE BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN.

TO J. A. FARRER.

He lived in a cave by the seas,

He lived upon oysters and foes,

But his list of forbidden degrees,

An extensive morality shows;

Geological evidence goes

To prove he had never a pan,

But he shaved with a shell when he chose,—

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

He worshipp’d the rain and the breeze,

He worshipp’d the river that flows,

And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees,

And bogies, and serpents, and crows;

He buried his dead with their toes

Tucked-up, an original plan,

Till their knees came right under their nose,—

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

His communal wives, at his ease,

He would curb with occasional blows;

Or his State had a queen, like the bees

(As another philosopher trows):

When he spoke, it was never in prose,

But he sang in a strain that would scan,

For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

On the coasts that incessantly freeze,

With his stones, and his bones, and his bows;

On luxuriant tropical leas,

Where the summer eternally glows,

He is found, and his habits disclose

(Let theology say what she can)

That he lived in the long, long agos,

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

From a status like that of the Crees,

Our society’s fabric arose,—

Develop’d, evolved, if you please,

But deluded chronologists chose,

In a fancied accordance with Mos

es, 4000 B.C. for the span

When he rushed on the world and its woes,—

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

But the mild anthropologist,—he’s

Not recent inclined to suppose

Flints Palæolithic like these,

Quaternary bones such as those!

In Rhinoceros, Mammoth and Co.’s,

First epoch, the Human began,

Theologians all to expose,—

’Tis the mission of Primitive Man.

ENVOY.

MAX, proudly your Aryans pose,

But their rigs they undoubtedly ran,

For, as every Darwinian knows,

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man! [46]

BALLADE OF AUTUMN.

We built a castle in the air,

In summer weather, you and I,

The wind and sun were in your hair,—

Gold hair against a sapphire sky:

When Autumn came, with leaves that fly

Before the storm, across the plain,

You fled from me, with scarce a sigh—

My Love returns no more again!

The windy lights of Autumn flare:

I watch the moonlit sails go by;

I marvel how men toil and fare,

The weary business that they ply!

Their voyaging is vanity,

And fairy gold is all their gain,

And all the winds of winter cry,

“My Love returns no more again!”

Here, in my castle of Despair,

I sit alone with memory;

The wind-fed wolf has left his lair,

To keep the outcast company.

The brooding owl he hoots hard by,

The hare shall kindle on thy hearth-stane,

The Rhymer’s soothest prophecy,—[48]

My Love returns no more again!

ENVOY.

Lady, my home until I die

Is here, where youth and hope were slain;

They flit, the ghosts of our July,

My Love returns no more again!

BALLADE OF TRUE WISDOM.

While others are asking for beauty or fame,

Or praying to know that for which they should pray,

Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame,

Or chasing the Muses the weary and grey,

The sage has found out a more excellent way—

To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers,

And his humble petition puts up day by day,

For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Inventors may bow to the God that is lame,

And crave from the fire on his stithy a ray;

Philosophers kneel to the God without name,

Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they;

The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay,

The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours;

But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay,

For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Oh! grant me a life without pleasure or blame

(As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day

With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame)!

O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,

Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play

With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!

And I’d leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,

For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

ENVOY.

Gods, grant or withhold it; your “yea” and your “nay”

Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours:

But life is worth living, and here we would stay

For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

BALLADE OF WORLDLY WEALTH.

(OLD FRENCH.)

Money taketh town and wall,

Fort and ramp without a blow;

Money moves the merchants all,

While the tides shall ebb and flow;

Money maketh Evil show

Like the Good, and Truth like lies:

These alone can ne’er bestow

Youth, and health, and Paradise.

Money maketh festival,

Wine she buys, and beds can strow;

Round the necks of captains tall,

Money wins them chains to throw,

Marches soldiers to and fro,

Gaineth ladies with sweet eyes:

These alone can ne’er bestow

Youth, and health, and Paradise.

Money wins the priest his stall;

Money mitres buys, I trow,

Red hats for the Cardinal,

Abbeys for the novice low;

Money maketh sin as snow,

Place of penitence supplies:

These alone can ne’er bestow

Youth, and health, and Paradise.

BALLADE OF LIFE.

“‘Dead and gone,’—a sorry burden of the Ballad of Life.”

Death’s Jest Book.

Say, fair maids, maying

In gardens green,

In deep dells straying,

What end hath been

Two Mays between

Of the flowers that shone

And your own sweet queen—

“They are dead and gone!”

Say, grave priests, praying

In dule and teen,

From cells decaying

What have ye seen

Of the proud and mean,

Of Judas and John,

Of the foul and clean?—

“They are dead and gone!”

Say, kings, arraying

Loud wars to win,

Of your manslaying

What gain ye glean?

“They are fierce and keen,

But they fall anon,

On the sword that lean,—

They are dead and gone!”

ENVOY.

Through the mad world’s scene,

We are drifting on,

To this tune, I ween,

“They are dead and gone!”

BALLADE OF BLUE CHINA.

There’s a joy without canker or cark,

There’s a pleasure eternally new,

’Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark

Of china that’s ancient and blue;

Unchipp’d all the centuries through

It has pass’d, since the chime of it rang,

And they fashion’d it, figure and hue,

In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

These dragons (their tails, you remark,

Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),—

When Noah came out of the ark,

Did these lie in wait for his crew?

They snorted, they snapp’d, and they slew,

They were mighty of fin and of fang,

And their portraits Celestials drew

In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

Here’s a pot with a cot in a park,

In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,

Where the lovers eloped in the dark,

Lived, died, and were changed into two

Bright birds that eternally flew

Through the boughs of the may, as they sang:

’Tis a tale was undoubtedly true

In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

ENVOY.

Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do,

Kind critic, your “tongue has a tang”

But—a sage never heeded a shrew

In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

BALLADE OF DEAD LADIES.

(AFTER VILLON.)

Nay, tell me now in what strange air

The Roman Flora dwells to-day.

Where Archippiada hides, and where

Beautiful Thais has passed away?

Whence answers Echo, afield, astray,

By mere or stream,—around, below?

Lovelier she than a woman of clay;

Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?

Where is wise Héloïse, that care

Brought on Abeilard, and dismay?

All for her love he found a snare,

A maimed poor monk in orders grey;

And where’s the Queen who willed to slay

Buridan, that in a sack must go

Afloat down Seine,—a perilous way—

Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?

Where’s that White Queen, a lily rare,

With her sweet song, the Siren’s lay?

Where’s Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice fair?

Alys and Ermengarde, where are they?

Good Joan, whom English did betray

In Rouen town, and burned her?  No,

Maiden and Queen, no man may say;

Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?

ENVOY.

Prince, all this week thou need’st not pray,

Nor yet this year the thing to know.

One burden answers, ever and aye,

“Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?”

VILLON’S BALLADE

OF GOOD COUNSEL, TO HIS FRIENDS OF EVIL LIFE.

Nay, be you pardoner or cheat,

Or cogger keen, or mumper shy,

You’ll burn your fingers at the feat,

And howl like other folks that fry.

All evil folks that love a lie!

And where goes gain that greed amasses,

By wile, and trick, and thievery?

’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

Rhyme, rail, dance, play the cymbals sweet,

With game, and shame, and jollity,

Go jigging through the field and street,

With myst’ry and morality;

Win gold at gleek,—and that will fly,

Where all you gain at passage passes,—

And that’s?  You know as well as I,

’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

Nay, forth from all such filth retreat,

Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry,

Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat,

If you’ve no clerkly skill to ply;

You’ll gain enough, with husbandry,

But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses,

And where goes all you take thereby?—

’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

ENVOY.

Your clothes, your hose, your broidery,

Your linen that the snow surpasses,

Or ere they’re worn, off, off they fly,

’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

BALLADE OF THE BOOKWORM.

Far in the Past I peer, and see

A Child upon the Nursery floor,

A Child with books upon his knee,

Who asks, like Oliver, for more!

The number of his years is IV,

And yet in Letters hath he skill,

How deep he dives in Fairy-lore!

The Books I loved, I love them still!

One gift the Fairies gave me: (Three

They commonly bestowed of yore)

The Love of Books, the Golden Key

That opens the Enchanted Door;

Behind it BLUEBEARD lurks, and o’er

And o’er doth JACK his Giants kill,

And there is all ALADDIN’S store,—

The Books I loved, I love them still!

Take all, but leave my Books to me!

These heavy creels of old we bore

We fill not now, nor wander free,

Nor wear the heart that once we wore;

Not now each River seems to pour

His waters from the Muses’ hill;

Though something’s gone from stream and shore,

The Books I loved, I love them still!

ENVOY.

Fate, that art Queen by shore and sea,

We bow submissive to thy will,

Ah grant, by some benign decree,

The Books I loved—to love them still.

VALENTINE IN FORM OF BALLADE.

The soft wind from the south land sped,

He set his strength to blow,

From forests where Adonis bled,

And lily flowers a-row:

He crossed the straits like streams that flow,

The ocean dark as wine,

To my true love to whisper low,

To be your Valentine.

The Spring half-raised her drowsy head,

Besprent with drifted snow,

“I’ll send an April day,” she said,

“To lands of wintry woe.”

He came,—the winter’s overthrow

With showers that sing and shine,

Pied daisies round your path to strow,

To be your Valentine.

Where sands of Egypt, swart and red,

’Neath suns Egyptian glow,

In places of the princely dead,

By the Nile’s overflow,

The swallow preened her wings to go,

And for the North did pine,

And fain would brave the frost her foe,

To be your Valentine.

ENVOY.

Spring, Swallow, South Wind, even so,

Their various voice combine;

But that they crave on me bestow,

To be your Valentine.

BALLADE OF OLD PLAYS.

(Les Œuvres de Monsieur Molière.  A Paris,

chez Louys Billaine, à la Palme.

M.D.C. LXVI.)

LA COUR.

When these Old Plays were new, the King,

Beside the Cardinal’s chair,

Applauded, ’mid the courtly ring,

The verses of Molière;

Point-lace was then the only wear,

Old Corneille came to woo,

And bright Du Parc was young and fair,

When these Old Plays were new!

LA COMÉDIE.

How shrill the butcher’s cat-calls ring,

How loud the lackeys swear!

Black pipe-bowls on the stage they fling,

At Brécourt, fuming there!

The Porter’s stabbed! a Mousquetaire

Breaks in with noisy crew—

’Twas all a commonplace affair

When these Old Plays were new!

LA VILLE.

When these Old Plays were new!  They bring

A host of phantoms rare:

Old jests that float, old jibes that sting,

Old faces peaked with care:

Ménage’s smirk, de Visé’s stare,

The thefts of Jean Ribou,—[66]

Ah, publishers were hard to bear

When these Old Plays were new.

ENVOY.

Ghosts, at your Poet’s word ye dare

To break Death’s dungeons through,

And frisk, as in that golden air,

When these Old Plays were new!

BALLADE OF HIS BOOKS.

Here stand my books, line upon line

They reach the roof, and row by row,

They speak of faded tastes of mine,

And things I did, but do not, know:

Old school books, useless long ago,

Old Logics, where the spirit, railed in,

Could scarcely answer “yes” or “no”—

The many things I’ve tried and failed in!

Here’s Villon, in morocco fine,

(The Poet starved, in mud and snow,)

Glatigny does not crave to dine,

And René’s tears forget to flow.

And here’s a work by Mrs. Crowe,

With hosts of ghosts and bogies jailed in;

Ah, all my ghosts have gone below—

The many things I’ve tried and failed in!

He’s touched, this mouldy Greek divine,

The Princess D’Este’s hand of snow;

And here the arms of D’Hoym shine,

And there’s a tear-bestained Rousseau:

Here’s Carlyle shrieking “woe on woe”

(The first edition, this, he wailed in);

I once believed in him—but oh,

The many things I’ve tried and failed in!

ENVOY.

Prince, tastes may differ; mine and thine

Quite other balances are scaled in;

May you succeed, though I repine—

“The many things I’ve tried and failed in!”

BALLADE OF THE DREAM.

Swift as sound of music fled

When no more the organ sighs,

Sped as all old days are sped,

So your lips, love, and your eyes,

So your gentle-voiced replies

Mine one hour in sleep that seem,

Rise and flit when slumber flies,

Following darkness like a dream!

Like the scent from roses red,

Like the dawn from golden skies,

Like the semblance of the dead

From the living love that hies,

Like the shifting shade that lies

On the moonlight-silvered stream,

So you rise when dreams arise,

Following darkness like a dream!

Could some spell, or sung or said,

Could some kindly witch and wise,

Lull for aye this dreaming head

In a mist of memories,

I would lie like him who lies

Where the lights on Latmos gleam,—

Wake not, find not Paradise

Following darkness like a dream!

ENVOY.

Sleep, that giv’st what Life denies,

Shadowy bounties and supreme,

Bring the dearest face that flies

Following darkness like a dream!

BALLADE OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

Fair islands of the silver fleece,

Hoards of unsunned, uncounted gold,

Whose havens are the haunts of Peace,

Whose boys are in our quarrel bold;

Our bolt is shot, our tale is told,

Our ship of state in storms may toss,

But ye are young if we are old,

Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!

Ay, we must dwindle and decrease,

Such fates the ruthless years unfold;

And yet we shall not wholly cease,

We shall not perish unconsoled;

Nay, still shall Freedom keep her hold

Within the sea’s inviolate fosse,

And boast her sons of English mould,

Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!

All empires tumble—Rome and Greece—

Their swords are rust, their altars cold!

For us, the Children of the Seas,

Who ruled where’er the waves have rolled,

For us, in Fortune’s books enscrolled,

I read no runes of hopeless loss;

Nor—while ye last—our knell is tolled,

Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!

ENVOY.

Britannia, when thy hearth’s a-cold,

When o’er thy grave has grown the moss,

Still Rule Australia shall be trolled

In Islands of the Southern Cross!

BALLADE OF AUCASSIN

Where smooth the southern waters run

By rustling leagues of poplars grey,

Beneath a veiled soft southern sun,

We wandered out of yesterday,

Went maying through that ancient May

Whose fallen flowers are fragrant yet,

And loitered by the fountain spray

With Aucassin and Nicolette.

The grass-grown paths are trod of none

Where through the woods they went astray.

The spider’s traceries are spun

Across the darkling forest way.

There come no knights that ride to slay,

No pilgrims through the grasses wet,

No shepherd lads that sang their say

With Aucassin and Nicolette!

’Twas here by Nicolette begun

Her bower of boughs and grasses gay;

’Scaped from the cell of marble dun

’Twas here the lover found the fay,

Ah, lovers fond! ah, foolish play!

How hard we find it to forget

Who fain would dwell with them as they,

With Aucassin and Nicolette.

ENVOY.

Prince, ’tis a melancholy lay!

For youth, for love we both regret.

How fair they seem, how far away,

With Aucassin and Nicolette!

BALLADE AMOUREUSE.

AFTER FROISSART.

Not Jason nor Medea wise,

I crave to see, nor win much lore,

Nor list to Orpheus’ minstrelsies;

Nor Her’cles would I see, that o’er

The wide world roamed from shore to shore;

Nor, by St. James, Penelope,—

Nor pure Lucrece, such wrong that bore:

To see my Love suffices me!

Virgil and Cato, no man vies

With them in wealth of clerkly store;

I would not see them with mine eyes;

Nor him that sailed, sans sail nor oar,

Across the barren sea and hoar,

And all for love of his ladye;

Nor pearl nor sapphire takes me more:

To see my Love suffices me!

I heed not Pegasus, that flies

As swift as shafts the bowmen pour;

Nor famed Pygmalion’s artifice,

Whereof the like was ne’er before;

Nor Oléus, that drank of yore

The salt wave of the whole great sea:

Why? dost thou ask?  ’Tis as I swore—

To see my Love suffices me!

BALLADE OF QUEEN ANNE.

The modish Airs,

The Tansey Brew,

The Swains and Fairs

In curtained Pew;

Nymphs KNELLER drew,

Books BENTLEY read,—

Who knows them, who?

QUEEN ANNE is dead!

We buy her Chairs,

Her China blue,

Her red-brick Squares

We build anew;

But ah! we rue,

When all is said,

The tale o’er-true,

QUEEN ANNE is dead!

Now Bulls and Bears,

A ruffling Crew,

With Stocks and Shares,

With Turk and Jew,

Go bubbling through

The Town ill-bred:

The World’s askew,

QUEEN ANNE is dead!

ENVOY.

Friend, praise the new;

The old is fled:

Vivat FROU-FROU!

QUEEN ANNE is dead!

BALLADE OF BLIND LOVE.

(AFTER LYONNET DE COISMES.)

Who have loved and ceased to love, forget

That ever they loved in their lives, they say;

Only remember the fever and fret,

And the pain of Love, that was all his pay;

All the delight of him passes away

From hearts that hoped, and from lips that met—

Too late did I love you, my love, and yet

I shall never forget till my dying day.

Too late were we ‘ware of the secret net

That meshes the feet in the flowers that stray;

There were we taken and snared, Lisette,

In the dungeon of La Fausse Amistié;

Help was there none in the wide world’s fray,

Joy was there none in the gift and the debt;

Too late we knew it, too long regret—

I shall never forget till my dying day!

We must live our lives, though the sun be set,

Must meet in the masque where parts we play,

Must cross in the maze of Life’s minuet;

Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay:

But while snows of winter or flowers of May

Are the sad year’s shroud or coronet,

In the season of rose or of violet,

I shall never forget till my dying day!

ENVOY.

Queen, when the clay is my coverlet,

When I am dead, and when you are grey,

Vow, where the grass of the grave is wet,

“I shall never forget till my dying day!”

BALLADE OF HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE.

Here I’d come when weariest!

Here the breast

Of the Windburg’s tufted over

Deep with bracken; here his crest

Takes the west,

Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

Silent here are lark and plover;

In the cover

Deep below the cushat best

Loves his mate, and croons above her

O’er their nest,

Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

Bring me here, Life’s tired-out guest,

To the blest

Bed that waits the weary rover,

Here should failure be confessed;

Ends my quest,

Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!

ENVOY.

Friend, or stranger kind, or lover,

Ah, fulfil a last behest,

Let me rest

Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!

DIZAIN.

As, to the pipe, with rhythmic feet

In windings of some old-world dance,

The smiling couples cross and meet,

Join hands, and then in line advance,

So, to these fair old tunes of France,

Through all their maze of to-and-fro,

The light-heeled numbers laughing go,

Retreat, return, and ere they flee,

One moment pause in panting row,

And seem to say—Vos plaudite!

A. D.

VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS.

ORONTE—Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux,

Mais de petits vers!

“Le Misanthrope,” Acte i., Sc. 2.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.

Your hair and chin are like the hair

And chin Burne-Jones’s ladies wear;

You were unfashionably fair

In ’83;

And sad you were when girls are gay,

You read a book about Le vrai

Mérite de l’homme, alone in May.

What can it be,

Le vrai mérite de l’homme?  Not gold,

Not titles that are bought and sold,

Not wit that flashes and is cold,

But Virtue merely!

Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know),

You bade the crowd of foplings go,

You glanced severely,

Dreaming beneath the spreading shade

Of ‘that vast hat the Graces made;’ [88]

So Rouget sang—while yet he played

With courtly rhyme,

And hymned great Doisi’s red perruque,

And Nice’s eyes, and Zulmé’s look,

And dead canaries, ere he shook

The sultry time

With strains like thunder.  Loud and low

Methinks I hear the murmur grow,

The tramp of men that come and go

With fire and sword.

They war against the quick and dead,

Their flying feet are dashed with red,

As theirs the vintaging that tread

Before the Lord.

O head unfashionably fair,

What end was thine, for all thy care?

We only see thee dreaming there:

We cannot see

The breaking of thy vision, when

The Rights of Man were lords of men,

When virtue won her own again

In ’93.

THE MOON’S MINION.

(FROM THE PROSE OF C. BAUDELAIRE.)

Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear,

The wand’ring waters, green and grey;

Thine eyes are wonderful and clear,

And deep, and deadly, even as they;

The spirit of the changeful sea

Informs thine eyes at night and noon,

She sways the tides, and the heart of thee,

The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!

The Moon came down the shining stair

Of clouds that fleck the summer sky,

She kissed thee, saying, “Child, be fair,

And madden men’s hearts, even as I;

Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet,

That know me and are known of me;

The lover thou shalt never meet,

The land where thou shalt never be!”

She held thee in her chill embrace,

She kissed thee with cold lips divine,

She left her pallor on thy face,

That mystic ivory face of thine;

And now I sit beside thy feet,

And all my heart is far from thee,

Dreaming of her I shall not meet,

And of the land I shall not see!

IN ITHACA.

“And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.”—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso.  Luciani Vera Historia.

’Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o’er

With all the waves and wars, a weary while,

Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,

And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,

Go down the ways of gold, and evermore

His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,

Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,

Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet

To look across the sad and stormy space,

Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,

Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,

Because, within a fair forsaken place

The life that might have been is lost to thee.

HOMER.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea

With all the notes of music in its tone,

With tides that wash the dim dominion

Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee

Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me

Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown

That glasses Egypt’s temples overthrown

In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore

To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;

Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,

As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast

His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore

Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

THE BURIAL OF MOLIÈRE.

(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)

Dead—he is dead!  The rouge has left a trace

On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,

Even while the people laughed that held him dear

But yesterday.  He died,—and not in grace,

And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace

To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear,

And gold must win a passage for his bier,

And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.

Ah, Molière, for that last time of all,

Man’s hatred broke upon thee, and went by,

And did but make more fair thy funeral.

Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily,

Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall,

For torch, the stars along the windy sky!

BION.

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying

The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;

They heard the hollows of the hills replying,

They heard the weeping water’s overflow;

They winged the sacred strain—the song undying,

The song that all about the world must go,—

When poets for a poet dead are sighing,

The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping

For Adonais by the summer sea,

The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping

Far from ‘the forest ground called Thessaly’),

These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,

And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

SPRING.

(AFTER MELEAGER.)

Now the bright crocus flames, and now

The slim narcissus takes the rain,

And, straying o’er the mountain’s brow,

The daffodilies bud again.

The thousand blossoms wax and wane

On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough,

But fairer than the flowers art thou,

Than any growth of hill or plain.

Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown,

That my Love’s feet may tread it down,

Like lilies on the lilies set;

My Love, whose lips are softer far

Than drowsy poppy petals are,

And sweeter than the violet!

BEFORE THE SNOW.

(AFTER ALBERT GLATIGNY.)

The winter is upon us, not the snow,

The hills are etched on the horizon bare,

The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,

The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.

One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,

Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.

Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where

The black trees seem to shiver as you go.

Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old

And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,

A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,

Yet up that path, in summer of the year,

And past that melancholy pile we strolled

To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.

VILLANELLE.

TO LUCIA.

Apollo left the golden Muse

And shepherded a mortal’s sheep,

Theocritus of Syracuse!

To mock the giant swain that woo’s

The sea-nymph in the sunny deep,

Apollo left the golden Muse.

Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,

Where Milon and where Battus reap,

Theocritus of Syracuse!

To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise

Below the dim Sicilian steep

Apollo left the golden Muse.

Ye twain did loiter in the dews,

Ye slept the swain’s unfever’d sleep,

Theocritus of Syracuse!

That Time might half with his confuse

Thy songs,—like his, that laugh and leap,—

Theocritus of Syracuse,

Apollo left the golden Muse!

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισιν

ἔυχεσθαι·.  Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.

OD. III. 47.

“Once CAGN was like a father, kind and good,

But He was spoiled by fighting many things;

He wars upon the lions in the wood,

And breaks the Thunder-bird’s tremendous wings;

But still we cry to Him,—We are thy brood—

O Cagn, be merciful! and us He brings

To herds of elands, and great store of food,

And in the desert opens water-springs.”

So Qing, King Nqsha’s Bushman hunter, spoke,

Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,

When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke

Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:

And suddenly in each man’s heart there woke

A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.

THE ODYSSEY.

As one that for a weary space has lain

Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine

In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,

Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,

And only the low lutes of love complain,

And only shadows of wan lovers pine,

As such an one were glad to know the brine

Salt on his lips, and the large air again,—

So gladly, from the songs of modern speech

Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free

Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,

And through the music of the languid hours,

They hear like ocean on a western beach

The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

IDEAL.

Suggested by a female head in wax, of unknown date, but supposed to be either of the best Greek age, or a work of Raphael or Leonardo.  It is now in the Lille Museum.

Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,

Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,

A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,

Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!

Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,

While magical his fingers o’er thee strayed,

Or that great pupil taught of Verrocchio

Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade

That hides all fair things lost, and things unborn,

Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace,

And that grave tenderness of thine awhile;

Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her face

Is pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn,

And only on thy lips I find her smile.

THE FAIRY’S GIFT.

“Take short views.”—SYDNEY SMITH.

The Fays that to my christ’ning came

(For come they did, my nurses taught me),

They did not bring me wealth or fame,

’Tis very little that they brought me.

But one, the crossest of the crew,

The ugly old one, uninvited,

Said, “I shall be avenged on you,

My child; you shall grow up short-sighted!”

With magic juices did she lave

Mine eyes, and wrought her wicked pleasure.

Well, of all gifts the Fairies gave,

Hers is the present that I treasure!

The bore whom others fear and flee,

I do not fear, I do not flee him;

I pass him calm as calm can be;

I do not cut—I do not see him!

And with my feeble eyes and dim,

Where you see patchy fields and fences,

For me the mists of Turner swim—

My “azure distance” soon commences!

Nay, as I blink about the streets

Of this befogged and miry city,

Why, almost every girl one meets

Seems preternaturally pretty!

“Try spectacles,” one’s friends intone;

“You’ll see the world correctly through them.”

But I have visions of my own,

And not for worlds would I undo them.

BENEDETTA RAMUS.

AFTER ROMNEY.

Mysterious Benedetta! who

That Reynolds or that Romney drew

Was ever half so fair as you,

Or is so well forgot?

These eyes of melancholy brown,

These woven locks, a shadowy crown,

Must surely have bewitched the town;

Yet you’re remembered not.

Through all that prattle of your age,

Through lore of fribble and of sage

I’ve read, and chiefly Walpole’s page,

Wherein are beauties famous;

I’ve haunted ball, and rout, and sale;

I’ve heard of Devonshire and Thrale,

And all the Gunnings’ wondrous tale,

But nothing of Miss Ramus.

And yet on many a lattice pane

‘Fair Benedetta,’ scrawled in vain

By lovers’ diamonds, must remain

To tell us you were cruel. [108]

But who, of all that sighed and swore—

Wits, poets, courtiers by the score—

Did win and on his bosom wore

This hard and lovely jewel?

Why, dilettante records say

An Alderman, who came that way,

Woo’d you and made you Lady Day;

You crowned his civic flame.

It suits a melancholy song

To think your heart had suffered wrong,

And that you lived not very long

To be a City dame!

Perchance you were a Mourning Bride,

And conscious of a heart that died

With one who fell by Rodney’s side

In blood-stained Spanish bays.

Perchance ’twas no such thing, and you

Dwelt happy with your knight and true,

And, like Aurora, watched a crew

Of rosy little Days!

Oh, lovely face and innocent!

Whatever way your fortunes went,

And if to earth your life was lent

For little space or long,

In your kind eyes we seem to see

What Woman at her best may be,

And offer to your memory

An unavailing song!

PARTANT POUR LA SCRIBIE.

[Scribie, on the north-east littoral of Bohemia, is the land of stage conventions.  It is named after the discoverer, M. Scribe.]

A pleasant land is Scribie, where

The light comes mostly from below,

And seems a sort of symbol rare

Of things at large, and how they go,

In rooms where doors are everywhere

And cupboards shelter friend or foe.

This is a realm where people tell

Each other, when they chance to meet,

Of things that long ago befell—

And do most solemnly repeat

Secrets they both know very well,

Aloud, and in the public street!

A land where lovers go in fours,

Master and mistress, man and maid;

Where people listen at the doors

Or ’neath a table’s friendly shade,

And comic Irishmen in scores

Roam o’er the scenes all undismayed:

A land where Virtue in distress

Owes much to uncles in disguise;

Where British sailors frankly bless

Their limbs, their timbers, and their eyes;

And where the villain doth confess,

Conveniently, before he dies!

A land of lovers false and gay;

A land where people dread a “curse;”

A land of letters gone astray,

Or intercepted, which is worse;

Where weddings false fond maids betray,

And all the babes are changed at nurse.

Oh, happy land, where things come right!

We of the world where things go ill;

Where lovers love, but don’t unite;

Where no one finds the Missing Will—

Dominion of the heart’s delight,

Scribie, we’ve loved, and love thee still!

ST. ANDREW’S BAY.

NIGHT.

Ah, listen through the music, from the shore,

The “melancholy long-withdrawing roar”;

Beneath the Minster, and the windy caves,

The wide North Ocean, marshalling his waves

Even so forlorn—in worlds beyond our ken—

May sigh the seas that are not heard of men;

Even so forlorn, prophetic of man’s fate,

Sounded the cold sea-wave disconsolate,

When none but God might hear the boding tone,

As God shall hear the long lament alone,

When all is done, when all the tale is told,

And the gray sea-wave echoes as of old!

MORNING.

This was the burden of the Night,

The saying of the sea,

But lo! the hours have brought the light,

The laughter of the waves, the flight

Of dipping sea-birds, foamy white,

That are so glad to be!

“Forget!” the happy creatures cry,

“Forget Night’s monotone,

With us be glad in sea and sky,

The days are thine, the days that fly,

The days God gives to know him by,

And not the Night alone!”

WOMAN AND THE WEED.

(FOUNDED ON A NEW ZEALAND MYTH.)

In the Morning of Time, when his fortunes began,

How bleak, how un-Greek, was the Nature of Man!

From his wigwam, if ever he ventured to roam,

There was nobody waiting to welcome him home;

For the Man had been made, but the woman had not,

And Earth was a highly detestable spot.

Man hated his neighbours; they met and they scowled,

They did not converse but they struggled and howled,

For Man had no tact—he would ne’er take a hint,

And his notions he backed with a hatchet of flint.

So Man was alone, and he wished he could see

On the Earth some one like him, but fairer than he,

With locks like the red gold, a smile like the sun,

To welcome him back when his hunting was done.

And he sighed for a voice that should answer him still,

Like the affable Echo he heard on the hill:

That should answer him softly and always agree,

And oh, Man reflected, how nice it would be!

So he prayed to the Gods, and they stooped to his prayer,

And they spoke to the Sun on his way through the air,

And he married the Echo one fortunate morn,

And Woman, their beautiful daughter, was born!

The daughter of Sunshine and Echo she came

With a voice like a song, with a face like a flame;

With a face like a flame, and a voice like a song,

And happy was Man, but it was not for long!

For weather’s a painfully changeable thing,

Not always the child of the Echo would sing;

And the face of the Sun may be hidden with mist,

And his child can be terribly cross if she list.

And unfortunate Man had to learn with surprise

That a frown’s not peculiar to masculine eyes;

That the sweetest of voices can scold and can sneer,

And cannot be answered—like men—with a spear.

So Man went and called to the Gods in his woe,

And they answered him—“Sir, you would needs have it so:

And the thing must go on as the thing has begun,

She’s immortal—your child of the Echo and Sun.

But we’ll send you another, and fairer is she,

This maiden with locks that are flowing and free.

This maiden so gentle, so kind, and so fair,

With a flower like a star in the night of her hair.

With her eyes like the smoke that is misty and blue,

With her heart that is heavenly, and tender, and true.

She will die in the night, but no need you should mourn,

You shall bury her body and thence shall be born

A weed that is green, that is fragrant and fair,

With a flower like the star in the night of her hair.

And the leaves must ye burn till they offer to you

Soft smoke, like her eyes that are misty and blue.

“And the smoke shall ye breathe and no more shall ye fret,

But the child of the Echo and Sun shall forget:

Shall forget all the trouble and torment she brings,

Shall bethink ye of none but delectable things;

And the sound of the wars with your brethren shall cease,

While ye smoke by the camp-fire the great pipe of peace.”

So the last state of Man was by no means the worst,

The second gift softened the sting of the first.

Nor the child of the Echo and Sun doth he heed

When he dreams with the Maid that was changed to the weed;

Though the Echo be silent, the Sun in a mist,

The Maid is the fairest that ever was kissed.

And when tempests are over and ended the rain,

And the child of the Sunshine is sunny again,

He comes back, glad at heart, and again is at one

With the changeable child of the Echo and Sun.

RHYMES À LA MODE

BALLADE DEDICATORY,

TO

MRS. ELTON

OF WHITE STAUNTON.

THE painted Briton built his mound,

And left his celts and clay,

On yon fair slope of sunlit ground

That fronts your garden gay;

The Roman came, he bore the sway,

He bullied, bought, and sold,

Your fountain sweeps his works away

Beside your manor old!

But still his crumbling urns are found

Within the window-bay,

Where once he listened to the sound

That lulls you day by day;—

The sound of summer winds at play,

The noise of waters cold

To Yarty wandering on their way,

Beside your manor old!

The Roman fell: his firm-set bound

Became the Saxon’s stay;

The bells made music all around

For monks in cloisters grey,

Till fled the monks in disarray

From their warm chantry’s fold,

Old Abbots slumber as they may,

Beside your manor old!

ENVOY.

Creeds, empires, peoples, all decay,

Down into darkness, rolled;

May life that’s fleet be sweet, I pray,

Beside your manor old.

THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS.

THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS.

A DREAM IN JUNE.

IN twilight of the longest day

I lingered over Lucian,

Till ere the dawn a dreamy way

My spirit found, untrod of man,

Between the green sky and the grey.

Amid the soft dusk suddenly

More light than air I seemed to sail,

Afloat upon the ocean sky,

While through the faint blue, clear and pale,

I saw the mountain clouds go by:

My barque had thought for helm and sail,

And one mist wreath for canopy.

Like torches on a marble floor

Reflected, so the wild stars shone,

Within the abysmal hyaline,

Till the day widened more and more,

And sank to sunset, and was gone,

And then, as burning beacons shine

On summits of a mountain isle,

A light to folk on sea that fare,

So the sky’s beacons for a while

Burned in these islands of the air.

Then from a starry island set

Where one swift tide of wind there flows,

Came scent of lily and violet,

Narcissus, hyacinth, and rose,

Laurel, and myrtle buds, and vine,

So delicate is the air and fine:

And forests of all fragrant trees

Sloped seaward from the central hill,

And ever clamorous were these

With singing of glad birds; and still

Such music came as in the woods

Most lonely, consecrate to Pan,

The Wind makes, in his many moods,

Upon the pipes some shepherd Man,

Hangs up, in thanks for victory!

On these shall mortals play no more,

But the Wind doth touch them, over and o’er,

And the Wind’s breath in the reeds will sigh.

Between the daylight and the dark

That island lies in silver air,

And suddenly my magic barque

Wheeled, and ran in, and grounded there;

And by me stood the sentinel

Of them who in the island dwell;

All smiling did he bind my hands,

With rushes green and rosy bands,

They have no harsher bonds than these

The people of the pleasant lands

Within the wash of the airy seas!

Then was I to their city led:

Now all of ivory and gold

The great walls were that garlanded

The temples in their shining fold,

(Each fane of beryl built, and each

Girt with its grove of shadowy beech,)

And all about the town, and through,

There flowed a River fed with dew,

As sweet as roses, and as clear

As mountain crystals pure and cold,

And with his waves that water kissed

The gleaming altars of amethyst

That smoke with victims all the year,

And sacred are to the Gods of old.

There sat three Judges by the Gate,

And I was led before the Three,

And they but looked on me, and straight

The rosy bonds fell down from me

Who, being innocent, was free;

And I might wander at my will

About that City on the hill,

Among the happy people clad

In purple weeds of woven air

Hued like the webs that Twilight weaves

At shut of languid summer eves

So light their raiment seemed; and glad

Was every face I looked on there!

There was no heavy heat, no cold,

The dwellers there wax never old,

Nor wither with the waning time,

But each man keeps that age he had

When first he won the fairy clime.

The Night falls never from on high,

Nor ever burns the heat of noon.

But such soft light eternally

Shines, as in silver dawns of June

Before the Sun hath climbed the sky!

Within these pleasant streets and wide,

The souls of Heroes go and come,

Even they that fell on either side

Beneath the walls of Ilium;

And sunlike in that shadowy isle

The face of Helen and her smile

Makes glad the souls of them that knew

Grief for her sake a little while!

And all true Greeks and wise are there;

And with his hand upon the hair

Of Phaedo, saw I Socrates,

About him many youths and fair,

Hylas, Narcissus, and with these

Him whom the quoit of Phoebus slew

By fleet Eurotas, unaware!

All these their mirth and pleasure made

Within the plain Elysian,

The fairest meadow that may be,

With all green fragrant trees for shade

And every scented wind to fan,

And sweetest flowers to strew the lea;

The soft Winds are their servants fleet

To fetch them every fruit at will

And water from the river chill;

And every bird that singeth sweet

Throstle, and merle, and nightingale

Brings blossoms from the dewy vale,—

Lily, and rose, and asphodel—

With these doth each guest twine his crown

And wreathe his cup, and lay him down

Beside some friend he loveth well.

There with the shining Souls I lay

When, lo, a Voice that seemed to say,

In far-off haunts of Memory,

Whoso doth taste the Dead Men’s bread,

Shall dwell for ever with these Dead,

Nor ever shall his body lie

Beside his friends, on the grey hill

Where rains weep, and the curlews shrill

And the brown water wanders by!

Then did a new soul in me wake,

The dead men’s bread I feared to break,

Their fruit I would not taste indeed

Were it but a pomegranate seed.

Nay, not with these I made my choice

To dwell for ever and rejoice,

For otherwhere the River rolls

That girds the home of Christian souls,

And these my whole heart seeks are found

On otherwise enchanted ground.

Even so I put the cup away,

The vision wavered, dimmed, and broke,

And, nowise sorrowing, I woke

While, grey among the ruins grey

Chill through the dwellings of the dead,

The Dawn crept o’er the Northern sea,

Then, in a moment, flushed to red,

Flushed all the broken minster old,

And turned the shattered stones to gold,

And wakened half the world with me!

L’ENVOI.

To E. W. G.

(Who also had rhymed on the Fortunate Islands of Lucian).

Each in the self-same field we glean

The field of the Samosatene,

Each something takes and something leaves

And this must choose, and that forego

In Lucian’s visionary sheaves,

To twine a modern posy so;

But all my gleanings, truth to tell,

Are mixed with mournful asphodel,

While yours are wreathed with poppies red,

With flowers that Helen’s feet have kissed,

With leaves of vine that garlanded

The Syrian Pantagruelist,

The sage who laughed the world away,

Who mocked at Gods, and men, and care,

More sweet of voice than Rabelais,

And lighter-hearted than Voltaire.

ALMAE MATRES.

ALMAE MATRES.

(ST. ANDREWS, 1862.  OXFORD, 1865.)

ST. Andrews by the Northern sea,

A haunted town it is to me!

A little city, worn and grey,

The grey North Ocean girds it round.

And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,

The long sea-rollers surge and sound.

And still the thin and biting spray

Drives down the melancholy street,

And still endure, and still decay,

Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.

Ghost-like and shadowy they stand

Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.

St. Leonard’s chapel, long ago

We loitered idly where the tall

Fresh budded mountain ashes blow

Within thy desecrated wall:

The tough roots rent the tomb below,

The April birds sang clamorous,

We did not dream, we could not know

How hardly Fate would deal with us!

O, broken minster, looking forth

Beyond the bay, above the town,

O, winter of the kindly North,

O, college of the scarlet gown,

And shining sands beside the sea,

And stretch of links beyond the sand,

Once more I watch you, and to me

It is as if I touched his hand!

And therefore art thou yet more dear,

O, little city, grey and sere,

Though shrunken from thine ancient pride

And lonely by thy lonely sea,

Than these fair halls on Isis’ side,

Where Youth an hour came back to me!

A land of waters green and clear,

Of willows and of poplars tall,

And, in the spring time of the year,

The white may breaking over all,

And Pleasure quick to come at call.

And summer rides by marsh and wold,

And Autumn with her crimson pall

About the towers of Magdalen rolled;

And strange enchantments from the past,

And memories of the friends of old,

And strong Tradition, binding fast

The “flying terms” with bands of gold,—

All these hath Oxford: all are dear,

But dearer far the little town,

The drifting surf, the wintry year,

The college of the scarlet gown,

St. Andrews by the Northern sea,

That is a haunted town to me!

DESIDERIUM.

IN MEMORIAM S. F. A.

THE call of homing rooks, the shrill

Song of some bird that watches late,

The cries of children break the still

Sad twilight by the churchyard gate.

And o’er your far-off tomb the grey

Sad twilight broods, and from the trees

The rooks call on their homeward way,

And are you heedless quite of these?

The clustered rowan berries red

And Autumn’s may, the clematis,

They droop above your dreaming head,

And these, and all things must you miss?

Ah, you that loved the twilight air,

The dim lit hour of quiet best,

At last, at last you have your share

Of what life gave so seldom, rest!

Yes, rest beyond all dreaming deep,

Or labour, nearer the Divine,

And pure from fret, and smooth as sleep,

And gentle as thy soul, is thine!

So let it be!  But could I know

That thou in this soft autumn eve,

This hush of earth that pleased thee so,

Hadst pleasure still, I might not grieve.

RHYMES À LA MODE.

BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE.

OUR youth began with tears and sighs,

With seeking what we could not find;

Our verses all were threnodies,

In elegiacs still we whined;

Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,

We sought and knew not what we sought.

We marvel, now we look behind:

Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!

Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!

What? not content with seas and skies,

With rainy clouds and southern wind,

With common cares and faces kind,

With pains and joys each morning brought?

Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find

Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”

To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;

We set our souls on salmon flies,

We whistle where we once repined.

Confound the woes of human-kind!

By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;

Who hum, contented or resigned,

“Life’s more amusing than we thought”!

ENVOY.

O nate mecum, worn and lined

Our faces show, but that is naught;

Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:

Life’s more amusing than we thought!

THE LAST CAST.

THE ANGLER’S APOLOGY.

JUST one cast more! how many a year

Beside how many a pool and stream,

Beneath the falling leaves and sere,

I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!

Dreamed of the sport since April first

Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,

Adown the pastoral valleys burst

Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.

Dreamed of the singing showers that break,

And sting the lochs, or near or far,

And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”

From Urigil to Lochinvar.

Dreamed of the kind propitious sky

O’er Ari Innes brooding grey;

The sea trout, rushing at the fly,

Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!

* * * * *

Brief are man’s days at best; perchance

I waste my own, who have not seen

The castled palaces of France

Shine on the Loire in summer green.

And clear and fleet Eurotas still,

You tell me, laves his reedy shore,

And flows beneath his fabled hill

Where Dian drave the chase of yore.

And “like a horse unbroken” yet

The yellow stream with rush and foam,

’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,

Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!

I may not see them, but I doubt

If seen I’d find them half so fair

As ripples of the rising trout

That feed beneath the elms of Yair.

Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,

And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,

And Autumn in that lonely vale

Where wedded Avons westward sweep,

Or where, amid the empty fields,

Among the bracken of the glen,

Her yellow wreath October yields,

To crown the crystal brows of Ken.

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,

Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,

You never heard the ringing reel,

The music of the water side!

Though Gods have walked your woods among,

Though nymphs have fled your banks along;

You speak not that familiar tongue

Tweed murmurs like my cradle song.

My cradle song,—nor other hymn

I’d choose, nor gentler requiem dear

Than Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,

Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!

TWILIGHT.

SONNET.

(AFTER RICHEPIN.)

LIGHT has flown!

Through the grey

The wind’s way

The sea’s moan

Sound alone!

For the day

These repay

And atone!

Scarce I know,

Listening so

To the streams

Of the sea,

If old dreams

Sing to me!

BALLADE OF SUMMER.

TO C. H. ARKCOLL.

WHEN strawberry pottles are common and cheap,

Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,

When midnight dances are murdering sleep,

Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!

And far from Fleet Street, far from here,

The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,

And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,

When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When clamour that doves in the lindens keep

Mingles with musical plash of the weir,

Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,

Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!

And better a crust and a beaker of beer,

With rose-hung hedges on either hand,

Than a palace in town and a prince’s cheer,

When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

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 π.

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 may 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.

Αιαῖ ταὶ μαλάχαι μὲν ἐπὰν κατὰ κᾶπον ὄλωντα

ὕστερον αὖ ζώοντι καὶ εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο φύοντι

ἄμμες δ’ ὁι μεγάλοι καὶ καρτεροί, οἱ σοφοὶ ἄνδες

ὁππότε πρᾶτα θάνωμες, ἀνάκοοι ἐν χθονὶ κοίλᾳ,

εὕδομες εὖ μάλα μακρὸν ἀτέρμονα νήγρετον ὕπνον.

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. [194]

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 [196]

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.

Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Rain,

Let us gaze on Pallas’ citadel,

In the country of Cecrops, fair and dear

The mystic land of the holy cell,

Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,

And the gifts of the Gods that know not stain

And a people of mortals that know not fear.

For the temples tall, and the statues fair,

And the feasts of the Gods are holiest there,

The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers

And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring,

And the musical voices that fill the hours,

And the dancing feet of the Maids that sing!

BALLADE OF LITERARY FAME.

“All these for Fourpence.”

OH, where are the endless Romances

Our grandmothers used to adore?

The Knights with their helms and their lances,

Their shields and the favours they wore?

And the Monks with their magical lore?

They have passed to Oblivion and Nox,

They have fled to the shadowy shore,—

They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

And where the poetical fancies

Our fathers rejoiced in, of yore?

The lyric’s melodious expanses,

The Epics in cantos a score?

They have been and are not: no more

Shall the shepherds drive silvery flocks,

Nor the ladies their languors deplore,—

They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

And the Music!  The songs and the dances?

The tunes that Time may not restore?

And the tomes where Divinity prances?

And the pamphlets where Heretics roar?

They have ceased to be even a bore,—

The Divine, and the Sceptic who mocks,—

They are “cropped,” they are “foxed” to the core,—

They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

ENVOY.

Suns beat on them; tempests downpour,

On the chest without cover or locks,

Where they lie by the Bookseller’s door,—

They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

Νήνεμος Αἰών.

I WOULD my days had been in other times,

A moment in the long unnumbered years

That knew the sway of Horus and of hawk,

In peaceful lands that border on the Nile.

I would my days had been in other times,

Lulled by the sacrifice and mumbled hymn

Between the Five great Rivers, or in shade

And shelter of the cool Himâlayan hills.

I would my days had been in other times,

That I in some old abbey of Touraine

Had watched the rounding grapes, and lived my life,

Ere ever Luther came or Rabelais!

I would my days had been in other times,

When quiet life to death not terrible

Drifted, as ashes of the Santhal dead

Drift down the sacred Rivers to the Sea!

SCIENCE.

THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.

In the Aves of Aristophanes, the Bird Chorus declare that they are older than the Gods, and greater benefactors of men.  This idea recurs in almost all savage mythologies, and I have made the savage Bird-gods state their own case.

The Birds sing:

WE would have you to wit, that on eggs though we sit, and are spiked on the spit, and are baked in the pan,

Birds are older by far than your ancestors are, and made love and made war ere the making of Man!

For when all things were dark, not a glimmer nor spark, and the world like a barque without rudder or sail

Floated on through the night, ’twas a Bird struck a light, ’twas a flash from the bright feather’d Tonatiu’s [207] tail!

Then the Hawk [208a] with some dry wood flew up in the sky, and afar, safe and high, the Hawk lit Sun and Moon,

And the Birds of the air they rejoiced everywhere, and they recked not of care that should come on them soon.

For the Hawk, so they tell, was then known as Pundjel, [208b] and a-musing he fell at the close of the day;

Then he went on the quest, as we thought, of a nest, with some bark of the best, and a clawful of clay. [208c]

And with these did he frame two birds lacking a name, without feathers (his game was a puzzle to all);

Next around them he fluttered a-dancing, and muttered; and, lastly, he uttered a magical call:

Then the figures of clay, as they featherless lay, they leaped up, who but they, and embracing they fell,

And this was the baking of Man, and his making; but now he’s forsaking his Father, Pundjel!

Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire, and to crown their desire who was found but the Wren?

To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he flame, and for this has a name in the memory of men! [209a]

And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men brought it through without falter or fail?

Why the Hawk ’twas again, and great Indra to men would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,

While the Thlinkeet’s delight is the Bird of the Night, the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl. [209b]

And who for man’s need brought the famed Suttung’s mead? why ’tis told in the creed of the Sagamen strong,

’Twas the Eagle god who brought the drink from the blue, and gave mortals the brew that’s the fountain of song. [210a]

Next, who gave men their laws? and what reason or cause the young brave overawes when in need of a squaw,

Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, and his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law?

For you still hold it wrong if a lubra [210b] belong to the self-same kobong [210c] that is Father of you,

To take her as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too.

For her father, you know, is your father, the Crow, and no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring.

Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum shade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow was the King. [210d]

Thus on Earth’s little ball to the Birds you owe all, yet your gratitude’s small for the favours they’ve done,

And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will, yes, you plunder and kill the bright birds one by one;

There’s a price on their head, and the Dodo is dead, and the Moa has fled from the sight of the sun!

MAN AND THE ASCIDIAN.

A MORALITY.

“THE Ancestor remote of Man,”

Says Darwin, “is th’ Ascidian,”

A scanty sort of water-beast

That, ninety million years at least

Before Gorillas came to be,

Went swimming up and down the sea.

Their ancestors the pious praise,

And like to imitate their ways;

How, then, does our first parent live,

What lesson has his life to give?

Th’ Ascidian tadpole, young and gay,

Doth Life with one bright eye survey,

His consciousness has easy play.

He’s sensitive to grief and pain,

Has tail, and spine, and bears a brain,

And everything that fits the state

Of creatures we call vertebrate.

But age comes on; with sudden shock

He sticks his head against a rock!

His tail drops off, his eye drops in,

His brain’s absorbed into his skin;

He does not move, nor feel, nor know

The tidal water’s ebb and flow,

But still abides, unstirred, alone,

A sucker sticking to a stone.

And we, his children, truly we

In youth are, like the Tadpole, free.

And where we would we blithely go,

Have brains and hearts, and feel and know.

Then Age comes on!  To Habit we

Affix ourselves and are not free;

Th’ Ascidian’s rooted to a rock,

And we are bond-slaves of the clock;

Our rocks are Medicine—Letters—Law,

From these our heads we cannot draw:

Our loves drop off, our hearts drop in,

And daily thicker grows our skin.

Ah, scarce we live, we scarcely know

The wide world’s moving ebb and flow,

The clanging currents ring and shock,

But we are rooted to the rock.

And thus at ending of his span,

Blind, deaf, and indolent, does Man

Revert to the Ascidian.

BALLADE OF THE PRIMITIVE JEST.

“What did the dark-haired Iberian laugh at before the tall blonde

Aryan drove him into the corners of Europe?”—Brander Matthews.

I AM an ancient Jest!

Palæolithic man

In his arboreal nest

The sparks of fun would fan;

My outline did he plan,

And laughed like one possessed,

’Twas thus my course began,

I am a Merry Jest!

I am an early Jest!

Man delved, and built, and span;

Then wandered South and West

The peoples Aryan,

I journeyed in their van;

The Semites, too, confessed,—

From Beersheba to Dan,—

I am a Merry Jest!

I am an ancient Jest,

Through all the human clan,

Red, black, white, free, oppressed,

Hilarious I ran!

I’m found in Lucian,

In Poggio, and the rest,

I’m dear to Moll and Nan!

I am a Merry Jest!

ENVOY.

Prince, you may storm and ban—

Joe Millers are a pest,

Suppress me if you can!

I am a Merry Jest!

CAMEOS.

SONNETS FROM THE ANTIQUE.

These versions from classical passages are pretty close to the original, except where compression was needed, as in the sonnets from Pausanias and Apuleius, or where, as in the case of fragments of Æschylus and Sophocles, a little expansion was required.

CAMEOS.

THE graver by Apollo’s shrine,

Before the Gods had fled, would stand,

A shell or onyx in his hand,

To copy there the face divine,

Till earnest touches, line by line,

Had wrought the wonder of the land

Within a beryl’s golden band,

Or on some fiery opal fine.

Ah! would that as some ancient ring

To us, on shell or stone, doth bring,

Art’s marvels perished long ago,

So I, within the sonnet’s space,

The large Hellenic lines might trace,

The statue in the cameo!

HELEN ON THE WALLS.

(Iliad, iii. 146.)

FAIR Helen to the Scæan portals came,

Where sat the elders, peers of Priamus,

Thymoetas, Hiketaon, Panthöus,

And many another of a noble name,

Famed warriors, now in council more of fame.

Always above the gates, in converse thus

They chattered like cicalas garrulous;

Who marking Helen, swore “it is no shame

That armed Achæan knights, and Ilian men

For such a woman’s sake should suffer long.

Fair as a deathless goddess seemeth she.

Nay, but aboard the red-prowed ships again

Home let her pass in peace, not working wrong

To us, and children’s children yet to be.”

THE ISLES OF THE BLESSED.

Pindar, Fr., 106, 107 (95): B. 4, 129–130, 109 (97): B. 4, 132.

NOW the light of the sun, in the night of the Earth, on the souls of the True

Shines, and their city is girt with the meadow where reigneth the rose;

And deep is the shade of the woods, and the wind that flits o’er them and through

Sings of the sea, and is sweet from the isles where the frankincense blows:

Green is their garden and orchard, with rare fruits golden it glows,

And the souls of the Blessed are glad in the pleasures on Earth that they knew,

And in chariots these have delight, and in dice and in minstrelsy those,

And the savour of sacrifice clings to the altars and rises anew.

But the Souls that Persephone cleanses from ancient pollution and stain,

These at the end of the age, be they prince, be they singer, or seer;

These to the world shall be born as of old, shall be sages again;

These of their hands shall be hardy, shall live, and shall die, and shall hear

Thanks of the people, and songs of the minstrels that praise them amain,

And their glory shall dwell in the land where they dwelt, while year calls unto year!

DEATH.

(Æsch., Fr., 156.)

OF all Gods Death alone

Disdaineth sacrifice:

No man hath found or shown

The gift that Death would prize.

In vain are songs or sighs,

Pæan, or praise, or moan,

Alone beneath the skies

Hath Death no altar-stone!

There is no head so dear

That men would grudge to Death;

Let Death but ask, we give

All gifts that we may live;

But though Death dwells so near,

We know not what he saith.

NYSA.

(Soph., Fr., 235; Æsch., Fr., 56.)

ON these Nysæan shores divine

The clusters ripen in a day.

At dawn the blossom shreds away;

The berried grapes are green and fine

And full by noon; in day’s decline

They’re purple with a bloom of grey,

And e’er the twilight plucked are they,

And crushed, by nightfall, into wine.

But through the night with torch in hand

Down the dusk hills the Mænads fare;

The bull-voiced mummers roar and blare,

The muffled timbrels swell and sound,

And drown the clamour of the band

Like thunder moaning underground.

COLONUS.

(Œd. Col., 667–705.)

I.

HERE be the fairest homes the land can show,

The silvery-cliffed Colonus; always here

The nightingale doth haunt and singeth clear,

For well the deep green gardens doth she know.

Groves of the God, where winds may never blow,

Nor men may tread, nor noontide sun may peer

Among the myriad-berried ivy dear,

Where Dionysus wanders to and fro.

For here he loves to dwell, and here resort

These Nymphs that are his nurses and his court,

And golden eyed beneath the dewy boughs

The crocus burns, and the narcissus fair

Clusters his blooms to crown thy clustered hair,

Demeter, and to wreathe the Maiden’s brows!

II.

YEA, here the dew of Heaven upon the grain

Fails never, nor the ceaseless water-spring,

Near neighbour of Cephisus wandering,

That day by day revisiteth the plain.

Nor do the Goddesses the grove disdain,

But chiefly here the Muses quire and sing,

And here they love to weave their dancing ring,

With Aphrodite of the golden rein.

And here there springs a plant that knoweth not

The Asian mead, nor that great Dorian isle,

Unsown, untilled, within our garden plot

It dwells, the grey-leaved olive; ne’er shall guile

Nor force of foemen root it from the spot:

Zeus and Athene guarding it the while!

THE PASSING OF ŒDIPOUS.

(Œd. Col., 1655–1666.)

HOW Œdipous departed, who may tell

Save Theseus only? for there neither came

The burning bolt of thunder, and the flame

To blast him into nothing, nor the swell

Of sea-tide spurred by tempest on him fell.

But some diviner herald none may name

Called him, or inmost Earth’s abyss became

The painless place where such a soul might dwell.

Howe’er it chanced, untouched of malady,

Unharmed by fear, unfollowed by lament,

With comfort on the twilight way he went,

Passing, if ever man did, wondrously;

From this world’s death to life divinely rent,

Unschooled in Time’s last lesson, how we die.

THE TAMING OF TYRO.

(Soph., Fr., 587.)

(Sidero, the stepmother of Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, cruelly entreated her in all things, and chiefly in this, that she let sheer her beautiful hair.)

AT fierce Sidero’s word the thralls drew near,

And shore the locks of Tyro,—like ripe corn

They fell in golden harvest,—but forlorn

The maiden shuddered in her pain and fear,

Like some wild mare that cruel grooms in scorn

Hunt in the meadows, and her mane they sheer,

And drive her where, within the waters clear,

She spies her shadow, and her shame doth mourn.

Ah! hard were he and pitiless of heart

Who marking that wild thing made weak and tame,

Broken, and grieving for her glory gone,

Could mock her grief; but scornfully apart

Sidero stood, and watched a wind that came

And tossed the curls like fire that flew and shone!

TO ARTEMIS.

(Hippol., Eurip., 73–87.)

FOR thee soft crowns in thine untrampled mead

I wove, my lady, and to thee I bear;

Thither no shepherd drives his flocks to feed,

Nor scythe of steel has ever laboured there;

Nay, through the spring among the blossoms fair

The brown bee comes and goes, and with good heed

Thy maiden, Reverence, sweet streams doth lead

About the grassy close that is her care!

Souls only that are gracious and serene

By gift of God, in human lore unread,

May pluck these holy blooms and grasses green

That now I wreathe for thine immortal head,

I that may walk with thee, thyself unseen,

And by thy whispered voice am comforted.

CRITICISM OF LIFE.

(Hippol., Eurip., 252–266.)

LONG life hath taught me many things, and shown

That lukewarm loves for men who die are best,

Weak wine of liking let them mix alone,

Not Love, that stings the soul within the breast;

Happy, who wears his love-bonds lightliest,

Now cherished, now away at random thrown!

Grievous it is for other’s grief to moan,

Hard that my soul for thine should lose her rest!

Wise ruling this of life: but yet again

Perchance too rigid diet is not well;

He lives not best who dreads the coming pain

And shunneth each delight desirable:

Flee thou extremes, this word alone is plain,

Of all that God hath given to Man to spell!

AMARYLLIS.

(Theocritus, Idyll, iii.)

FAIR Amaryllis, wilt thou never peep

From forth the cave, and call me, and be mine?

Lo, apples ten I bear thee from the steep,

These didst thou long for, and all these are thine.

Ah, would I were a honey-bee to sweep

Through ivy, and the bracken, and woodbine;

To watch thee waken, Love, and watch thee sleep,

Within thy grot below the shadowy pine.

Now know I Love, a cruel god is he,

The wild beast bare him in the wild wood drear;

And truly to the bone he burneth me.

But, black-browed Amaryllis, ne’er a tear,

Nor sigh, nor blush, nor aught have I from thee;

Nay, nor a kiss, a little gift and dear.

THE CANNIBAL ZEUS.

A.D. 160.

Καὶ ἔθυσε τὸ βρέφος, καὶ ἔσπεισεν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τὸ αἶμα—έπὶ τούτου βωμοῦ τῷ Δὺ θύoυσιν ἐv ἀπoῤῥήτῳ.—Paus. viii. 38.

NONE elder city doth the Sun behold

Than ancient Lycosura; ’twas begun

Ere Zeus the meat of mortals learned to shun,

And here hath he a grove whose haunted fold

The driven deer seek and huntsmen dread: ’tis told

That whoso fares within that forest dun

Thenceforth shall cast no shadow in the Sun,

Ay, and within the year his life is cold!

Hard by dwelt he [232] who, while the Gods deigned eat

At good men’s tables, gave them dreadful meat,

A child he slew:—his mountain altar green

Here still hath Zeus, with rites untold of me,

Piteous, but as they are let these things be,

And as from the beginning they have been!

INVOCATION OF ISIS.

(Apuleius, Metamorph. XI.)

THOU that art sandalled on immortal feet

With leaves of palm, the prize of Victory;

Thou that art crowned with snakes and blossoms sweet,

Queen of the silver dews and shadowy sky,

I pray thee by all names men name thee by!

Demeter, come, and leave the yellow wheat!

Or Aphrodite, let thy lovers sigh!

Or Dian, from thine Asian temple fleet!

Or, yet more dread, divine Persephone

From worlds of wailing spectres, ah, draw near;

Approach, Selene, from thy subject sea;

Come, Artemis, and this night spare the deer:

By all thy names and rites I summon thee;

By all thy rites and names, Our Lady, hear!

THE COMING OF ISIS.

SO Lucius prayed, and sudden, from afar,

Floated the locks of Isis, shone the bright

Crown that is tressed with berry, snake, and star;

She came in deep blue raiment of the night,

Above her robes that now were snowy white,

Now golden as the moons of harvest are,

Now red, now flecked with many a cloudy bar,

Now stained with all the lustre of the light.

Then he who saw her knew her, and he knew

The awful symbols borne in either hand;

The golden urn that laves Demeter’s dew,

The handles wreathed with asps, the mystic wand;

The shaken seistron’s music, tinkling through

The temples of that old Osirian land.

THE SPINET.

MY heart’s an old Spinet with strings

To laughter chiefly tuned, but some

That Fate has practised hard on, dumb,

They answer not whoever sings.

The ghosts of half-forgotten things

Will touch the keys with fingers numb,

The little mocking spirits come

And thrill it with their fairy wings.

A jingling harmony it makes

My heart, my lyre, my old Spinet,

And now a memory it wakes,

And now the music means “forget,”

And little heed the player takes

Howe’er the thoughtful critic fret.

NOTES.

Page 127.  The Fortunate Islands.  This piece is a rhymed loose version of a passage in the Vera Historia of Lucian.  The humorist was unable to resist the temptation to introduce passages of mockery, which are here omitted.  Part of his description of the Isles of the Blest has a close and singular resemblance to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse.  The clear River of Life and the prodigality of gold and of precious stones may especially be noticed.

Page 133.  Whoso doth taste the Dead Men’s bread, &c.  This belief that the living may visit, on occasion, the dwellings of the dead, but can never return to earth if they taste the food of the departed, is expressed in myths of worldwide distribution.  Because she ate the pomegranate seed, Persephone became subject to the spell of Hades.  In Apuleius, Psyche, when she visits the place of souls, is advised to abstain from food.  Kohl found the myth among the Ojibbeways, Mr. Codrington among the Solomon Islanders; it occurs in Samoa, in the Finnish Kalewala (where Wainamoinen, in Pohjola, refrains from touching meat or drink), and the belief has left its mark on the mediæval ballad of Thomas of Ercildoune.  When he is in Fairy Land, the Fairy Queen supplies him with the bread and wine of earth, and will not suffer him to touch the fruits which grow “in this countrie.”  See also “Wandering Willie” in Redgauntlet.

Page 152.  The latest minstrel.  “The sound of all others dearest to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vii., 394.

Page 161.  Ronsard’s Grave.  This version ventures to condense the original which, like most of the works of the Pleiad, is unnecessarily long.

Page 162.  The snow, and wind, and hail.  Ronsard’s rendering of the famous passage in Odyssey, vi., about the dwellings of the Olympians.  The vision of a Paradise of learned lovers and poets constantly recurs in the poetry of Joachim du Bellay, and of Ronsard.

Page 166.  Romance.  Suggested by a passage in La Faustin, by M. E. de Goncourt, a curious moment of poetry in a repulsive piece of naturalisme.

Page 171.  M. Boulmier, author of Les Villanelles, died shortly after this villanelle was written; he had not published a larger collection on which he had been at work.

Page 177.  Edmund Gorliot.  The bibliophile will not easily procure Gorliot’s book, which is not in the catalogues.  Throughout The Last Maying there is reference to the Pervigilium Veneris.

Page 207.  Bird-Gods.  Apparently Aristophanes preserved, in a burlesque form, the remnants of a genuine myth.  Almost all savage religions have their bird-gods, and it is probable that Aristophanes did not invent, but only used a surviving myth of which there are scarcely any other traces in Greek literature.

Page 236.  Spinet.  The accent is on the last foot, even when the word is written spinnet.  Compare the remarkable Liberty which Pamela took with the 137th Psalm.

My Joys and Hopes all overthrown,

My Heartstrings almost broke,

Unfit my Mind for Melody,

Much more to bear a Joke.

But yet, if from my Innocence

I, even in Thought, should slide,

Then, let my fingers quite forget

The sweet Spinnet to guide!

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, vol. i.,

p. 184., 1785.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.

Edinburgh London

FOOTNOTES.

[35]  Cf. “Suggestions for Academic Reorganization.”

[46]  The last three stanzas are by an eminent Anthropologist.

[48]  Thomas of Ercildoune.

[66]  A knavish publisher.

[88]  Vous y verrez, belle Julie,

Que ce chapeau tout maltraité

Fut, dans un instant de folie,

Par les Grâces même inventé.

‘À Julie.’  Essais en Prose et en Vers, par Joseph Lisle; Paris.  An. V. de la République.

[108]  “I have broken many a pane of glass marked Cruel Parthenissa,” says the aunt of Sophia Western in Tom Jones.

[194]  N.B.  There is only one veracious statement in this ballade, which must not be accepted as autobiographical.

[196]  These lines do not apply to Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller, and her delightful sisters, Gades adituræ mecum, in the pocket edition of Mr. James’s novels, if ever I go to Gades.

[207]  Tonatiu, the Thunder Bird; well known to the Dacotahs and Zulus.

[208a]  The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.

[208b]  Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and “culture-hero” of several Australian tribes.

[208c]  The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.

[209a]   In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros; in Normandy this part is played by the Wren.

[209b] Yehl: the Raven God of the Thlinkeets.

[210a] Indra stole Soma as a Hawk and as a Quail.  For Odin’s feat as a Bird, see Bragi’s Telling in the Younger Edda.

[210b] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, gave Australians their marriage laws.

[210c] Lubra, a woman; kobong, “totem;” or, to please Mr. Max Müller, “otem.”

[210d] The Crow was the Hawk’s rival.

[232]  Lycaon, the first werewolf.

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Table of Contents

BALLADES & RHYMES

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA

A BALLADE OF XXXII BALLADES.

BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER.

BALLADE OF CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE.

BALLADE OF ROULETTE.

BALLADE OF SLEEP.

BALLADE OF THE MIDNIGHT FOREST.

BALLADE OF THE TWEED.

BALLADE OF THE BOOK-HUNTER.

BALLADE OF THE VOYAGE TO CYTHERA.

BALLADE OF THE SUMMER TERM.

BALLADE OF THE MUSE.

BALLADE AGAINST THE JESUITS.

BALLADE OF DEAD CITIES.

BALLADE OF THE ROYAL GAME OF GOLF.

DOUBLE BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN.

BALLADE OF AUTUMN.

BALLADE OF TRUE WISDOM.

BALLADE OF WORLDLY WEALTH.

BALLADE OF LIFE.

BALLADE OF BLUE CHINA.

BALLADE OF DEAD LADIES.

VILLON’S BALLADE OF GOOD COUNSEL, TO HIS FRIENDS OF EVIL LIFE.

BALLADE OF THE BOOKWORM.

VALENTINE IN FORM OF BALLADE.

BALLADE OF OLD PLAYS.

BALLADE OF HIS BOOKS.

BALLADE OF THE DREAM.

BALLADE OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

BALLADE OF AUCASSIN

BALLADE AMOUREUSE.

BALLADE OF QUEEN ANNE.

BALLADE OF BLIND LOVE.

BALLADE OF HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE.

DIZAIN.

VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.

THE MOON’S MINION.

IN ITHACA.

HOMER.

THE BURIAL OF MOLIÈRE.

BION.

SPRING.

BEFORE THE SNOW.

VILLANELLE.

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

THE ODYSSEY.

IDEAL.

THE FAIRY’S GIFT.

BENEDETTA RAMUS.

PARTANT POUR LA SCRIBIE.

ST. ANDREW’S BAY.

WOMAN AND THE WEED.

RHYMES À LA MODE

BALLADE DEDICATORY, TO MRS. ELTON OF WHITE STAUNTON.

THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS.

THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS.

ALMAE MATRES.

ALMAE MATRES.

DESIDERIUM.

RHYMES À LA MODE.

BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE.

THE LAST CAST.

TWILIGHT.

BALLADE OF SUMMER.

BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS GHOSTS.

LOVE’S EASTER.

BALLADE OF THE GIRTON GIRL.

RONSARD’S GRAVE.

SAN TERENZO.

ROMANCE.

BALLADE OF HIS OWN COUNTRY.

VILLANELLE.

TRIOLETS AFTER MOSCHUS.

BALLADE OF CRICKET.

THE LAST MAYING.

HOMERIC UNITY.

IN TINTAGEL.

PISIDICÊ.

FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.

LOVE THE VAMPIRE.

BALLADE OF THE BOOK-MAN’S PARADISE

BALLADE OF A FRIAR.

BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. [194]

BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS.

THE CLOUD CHORUS.

BALLADE OF LITERARY FAME.

Νήνεμος Αἰών.

SCIENCE.

THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.

MAN AND THE ASCIDIAN.

BALLADE OF THE PRIMITIVE JEST.

CAMEOS. SONNETS FROM THE ANTIQUE.

CAMEOS.

HELEN ON THE WALLS.

THE ISLES OF THE BLESSED.

DEATH.

NYSA.

COLONUS.

THE PASSING OF ŒDIPOUS.

THE TAMING OF TYRO.

TO ARTEMIS.

CRITICISM OF LIFE.

AMARYLLIS.

THE CANNIBAL ZEUS.

INVOCATION OF ISIS.

THE COMING OF ISIS.

THE SPINET.

NOTES.

FOOTNOTES.

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