III Poems Written Under the Influence of Wordsworth
Mist
Mist, though I love thee not, who puttest down
Trout in the Lochs, (they feed not, as a rule,
At least on fly, in mere or river-pool
When fogs have fallen, and the air is lown,
And on each Ben, a pillow not a crown,
The fat folds rest,) thou, Mist, hast power to cool
The blatant declamations of the fool
Who raves reciting through the heather brown.
Much do I bar the matron, man, or lass
Who cries ‘How lovely!’ and who does not spare
When light and shadow on the mountain pass,—
Shadow and light, and gleams exceeding fair,
O’er rock, and glade, and glen,—to shout, the Ass,
To me, to me the Poet, ‘Oh, look there!’
Lines
Written under the influence of Wordsworth, with a slate-pencil on a window of the dining-room at the Lowood Hotel, Windermere, while waiting for tea, after being present at the Grasmere Sports on a very wet day, and in consequence of a recent perusal of Belinda, a Novel, by Miss Broughton, whose absence is regretted.
How solemn is the front of this Hotel,
When now the hills are swathed in modest mist,
And none can speak of scenery, nor tell
Of ‘tints of amber,’ or of ‘amethyst.’
Here once thy daughters, young Romance, did dwell,
Here Sara flirted with whoever list,
Belinda loved not wisely but too well,
And Mr. Ford played the Philologist!
Haunted the house is, and the balcony
Where that fond Matron knew her Lover near,
And here we sit, and wait for tea, and sigh,
While the sad rain sobs in the sullen mere,
And all our hearts go forth into the cry,
Would that the teller of the tale were here!
Lines
Written on the window pane of a railway carriage after reading an advertisement of sunlight soap, and Poems, by William Wordsworth.
I passed upon the wings of Steam
Along Tay’s valley fair,
The book I read had such a theme
As bids the Soul despair.
A tale of miserable men
Of hearts with doubt distraught,
Wherein a melancholy pen
With helpless problems fought.
Where many a life was brought to dust,
And many a heart laid low,
And many a love was smirched with lust—
I raised mine eyes, and, oh!—
I marked upon a common wall,
These simple words of hope,
That mute appeal to one and all,
Cheer up! Use Sunlight Soap!
Our moral energies have range
Beyond their seeming scope,
How tonic were the words, how strange,
Cheer up! Use Sunlight Soap!
‘Behold,’ I cried, ‘the inner touch
That lifts the Soul through cares!’
I loved that Soap-boiler so much
I blessed him unawares!
Perchance he is some vulgar man,
Engrossed in £ s. d.
But, ah! through Nature’s holy plan
He whispered hope to me!
Ode to Golf
‘Delusive Nymph, farewell!’
How oft we’ve said or sung,
When balls evasive fell,
Or in the jaws of ‘Hell,’
Or salt sea-weeds among,
’Mid shingle and sea-shell!
How oft beside the Burn,
We play the sad ‘two more’;
How often at the turn,
The heather must we spurn;
How oft we’ve ‘topped and swore,’
In bent and whin and fern!
Yes, when the broken head
Bounds further than the ball,
The heart has inly bled.
Ah! and the lips have said
Words we would fain recall—
Wild words, of passion bred!
In bunkers all unknown,
Far beyond ‘Walkinshaw,
Where never ball had flown—
Reached by ourselves alone—
Caddies have heard with awe
The music of our moan!
Yet, Nymph, if once alone,
The ball hath featly fled—
Not smitten from the bone—
That drive doth still atone;
And one long shot laid dead
Our grief to the winds hath blown!
So, still beside the tee,
We meet in storm or calm,
Lady, and worship thee;
While the loud lark sings free,
Piping his matin psalm
Above the grey sad sea!
Freshman’s Term
Return again, thou Freshman’s year,
When bloom was on the rye,
When breakfast came with bottled beer,
When Pleasure walked the High;
When Torpid Bumps were more by far
To every opening mind
Than Trade, or Shares, or Peace, or War,
To senior humankind;
When ribbons of outrageous hues
Were worn with honest pride,
When much was talked of boats and crews,
When Proctors were defied:
When Tick was in its early bloom,
When Schools were far away,
As vaguely distant as the tomb,
Nor more regarded—they!
When arm was freely linked with arm
Beneath the College limes,
When Sunday grinds possessed a charm
Denied to College Rhymes:
When ices were in much request
Beside the April fire,
When men were very strangely dressed
By Standen or by Prior.
Return, ye Freshman’s Terms! They do
Return, and much the same,
To boys, who, just like me and you,
Play the absurd old game!
A Toast
Kate Kennedy is the Patron Saint of St. Leonard’s and St. Salvator. Her history is quite unknown.
The learned are all ‘in a swither,’
(They don’t very often agree,)
They know not her ‘whence’ nor her ‘whither,’
The Maiden we drink to together,
The College’s Kate Kennedie!
Did she shine in days early or later?
Did she ever achieve a degree?
Was she pretty or plain? Did she mate, or
Live lonely? And who was the pater
Of mystical Kate Kennedie?
The learned may scorn her and scout her,
But true to her colours are we,
The learned may mock her and flout her,
But surely we’ll rally about her,
In the College that stands by the Sea!
So here’s to her memory! here to
The mystical Maiden drink we,
We pledge her, and we’ll persevere too,
Though the reason is not very clear to
The critical mind, nor to me.
Here’s to Kate! she’s our own, and she’s dear to
The College that stands by the Sea.
Death in June
FOR CRICKETERS ONLY
June is the month of Suicides
Why do we slay ourselves in June,
When life, if ever, seems so sweet?
When “Moon,” and “tune,” and “afternoon,”
And other happy rhymes we meet,
When strawberries are coming soon?
Why do we do it?’ you repeat!
Ah, careless butterfly, to thee
The strawberry seems passing good;
And sweet, on Music’s wings, to flee
Amid the waltzing multitude,
And revel late—perchance till three—
For Love is monarch of thy mood!
Alas! to us no solace shows
For sorrows we endure—at Lord’s,
When Oxford’s bowling always goes
For ‘fours,’ for ever to the cords—
Or more, perhaps, with ‘overthrows’;—
These things can pierce the heart like swords!
And thus it is though woods are green,
Though mayflies down the Test are rolling,
Though sweet, the silver showers between,
The finches sing in strains consoling,
We cut our throats for very spleen,
And very shame of Oxford’s bowling!
To Correspondents
My Postman, though I fear thy tread,
And tremble as thy foot draws nearer,
’Tis not the Christmas Dun I dread,
My mortal foe is much severer,—
The Unknown Correspondent, who,
With undefatigable pen,
And nothing in the world to do,
Perplexes literary men.
From Pentecost and Ponder’s End
They write: from Deal, and from Dacotah,
The people of the Shetlands send
No inconsiderable quota;
They write for autographs; in vain,
In vain does Phyllis write, and Flora,
They write that Allan Quatermain
Is not at all the book for Brora.
They write to say that they have met
This writer ‘at a garden party,
And though’ this writer ‘may forget,’
Their recollection’s keen and hearty.
‘And will you praise in your reviews
A novel by our distant cousin?’
These letters from Provincial Blues
Assail us daily by the dozen!
O friends with time upon your hands,
O friends with postage-stamps in plenty,
O poets out of many lands,
O youths and maidens under twenty,
Seek out some other wretch to bore,
Or wreak yourselves upon your neighbours,
And leave me to my dusty lore
And my unprofitable labours!
Ballade of Difficult Rhymes
With certain rhymes ’tis hard to deal;
For ‘silver’ we have ne’er a rhyme.
On ‘orange’ (as on orange peel)
The bard has slipped full many a time.
With ‘babe’ there’s scarce a sound will chime,
Though ‘astrolabe’ fits like a glove;
But, ye that on Parnassus climb,
Why, why are rhymes so rare to Love?
A rhyme to ‘cusp,’ to beg or steal,
I’ve sought, from evensong to prime,
But vain is my poetic zeal,
There’s not one sound is worth a ‘dime’:
‘Bilge,’ ‘coif,’ ‘scarf,’ ‘window’—deeds of crime
I’d do to gain the rhymes thereof;
Nor shrink from acts of moral grime—
Why, why are rhymes so rare to Love?
To ‘dove’ my fancies flit, and wheel
Like butterflies on banks of thyme.
‘Above’?—or ‘shove’—alas! I feel,
They’re too much used to be sublime.
I scorn with angry pantomime,
The thought of ‘move’ (pronounced as muv).
Ah, in Apollo’s golden clime
Why, why are rhymes so rare to Love?
ENVOI
Prince of the lute and lyre, reveal
New rhymes, fresh minted, from above,
Nor still be deaf to our appeal.
Why, why are rhymes so rare to Love?
Ballant o’ Ballantrae
TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Written in wet weather, this conveyed to the Master of Ballantrae a wrong idea of a very beautiful and charming place, with links, a river celebrated by Burns, good sea-fishing, and, on the river, a ruined castle at every turn of the stream. ‘Try Ballantrae’ is a word of wisdom.
Whan suthern wunds gar spindrift flee
Abune the clachan, faddums hie,
Whan for the cluds I canna see
The bonny lift,
I’d fain indite an Ode to thee
Had I the gift!
Ken ye the coast o’ wastland Ayr?
Oh mon, it’s unco bleak and bare!
Ye daunder here, ye daunder there,
And mak’ your moan,
They’ve rain and wund eneuch to tear
The suthern cone!
Ye’re seekin’ sport! There’s nane ava’,
Ye’ll sit and glower ahint the wa’
At bleesin’ breakers till ye staw,
If that’s yer wush;
‘There’s aye the Stinchar.’ Hoot awa’,
She wunna fush!
She wunna fush at ony gait,
She’s roarin’ reid in wrathfu’ spate;
Maist like yer kimmer when ye’re late
Frae Girvan Fair!
Forbye to speer for leave I’m blate
For fushin’ there!
O Louis, you that writes in Scots,
Ye’re far awa’ frae stirks and stots,
Wi’ drookit hurdies, tails in knots,
An unco way!
My mirth’s like thorns aneth the pots
In Ballantrae!
Song by the Sub-Conscious Self
RHYMES MADE IN A DREAM
I know not what my secret is,
I know but it is mine;
I know to dwell with it were bliss,
To die for it divine.
I cannot yield it in a kiss,
Nor breathe it in a sigh.
I know that I have lived for this;
For this, my love, I die.
The Haunted Homes of England
The Haunted Homes of England,
How eerily they stand,
While through them flit their ghosts—to wit,
The Monk with the Red Hand,
The Eyeless Girl—an awful spook—
To stop the boldest breath,
The boy that inked his copybook,
And so got ‘wopped’ to death!
Call them not shams—from haunted Glamis
To haunted Woodhouselea,
I mark in hosts the grisly ghosts
I hear the fell Banshie!
I know the spectral dog that howls
Before the death of Squires;
In my ‘Ghosts’-guide’ addresses hide
For Podmore and for Myers!
I see the Vampire climb the stairs
From vaults below the church;
And hark! the Pirate’s spectre swears!
O Psychical Research,
Canst thou not hear what meets my ear,
The viewless wheels that come?
The wild Banshie that wails to thee?
The Drummer with his drum?
O Haunted Homes of England,
Though tenantless ye stand,
With none content to pay the rent,
Through all the shadowy land,
Now, Science true will find in you
A sympathetic perch,
And take you all, both Grange and Hall,
For Psychical Research!
The Disappointment
A house I took, and many a spook
Was deemed to haunt that House,
I bade the glum Researchers come
With Bogles to carouse.
That House I’d sought with anxious thought,
’Twas old, ’twas dark as sin,
And deeds of bale, so ran the tale,
Had oft been done therein.
Full many a child its mother wild,
Men said, had strangled there,
Full many a sire, in heedless ire,
Had slain his daughter fair!
’Twas rarely let: I can’t forget
A recent tenant’s dread,
This widow lone had heard a moan
Proceeding from her bed.
The tenants next were chiefly vexed
By spectres grim and grey.
A Headless Ghost annoyed them most,
And so they did not stay.
The next in turn saw corpse lights burn,
And also a Banshie,
A spectral Hand they could not stand,
And left the House to me.
Then came my friends for divers ends,
Some curious, some afraid;
No direr pest disturbed their rest
Than a neat chambermaid.
The grisly halls were gay with balls,
One melancholy nook
Where ghosts galore were seen before
Now yielded ne’er a spook.
When man and maid, all unafraid,
‘Sat out’ upon the stairs,
No spectre dread, with feet of lead,
Came past them unawares.
I know not why, but alway I
Have found that it is so,
That when the glum Researchers come
The brutes of bogeys—go!
To the Gentle Reader
‘A French writer (whom I love well) speaks of three kinds of companions,—men, women, and books.’
Sir John Davys.
Three kinds of companions, men, women, and books,
Were enough, said the elderly Sage, for his ends.
And the women we deem that he chose for their looks,
And the men for their cellars: the books were his friends:
‘Man delights me not,’ often, ‘nor woman,’ but books
Are the best of good comrades in loneliest nooks.
For man will be wrangling—for woman will fret
About anything infinitesimal small:
Like the Sage in our Plato, I’m ‘anxious to get
On the side’—on the sunnier side—‘of a wall.’
Let the wind of the world toss the nations like rooks,
If only you’ll leave me at peace with my Books.
And which are my books? why, ’tis much as you please,
For, given ’tis a book, it can hardly be wrong,
And Bradshaw himself I can study with ease,
Though for choice I might call for a Sermon or Song;
And Locker on London, and Sala on Cooks,
‘Tom Brown,’ and Plotinus, they’re all of them Books.
There’s Fielding to lap one in currents of mirth;
There’s Herrick to sing of a flower or a fay;
Or good Maître Françoys to bring one to earth,
If Shelley or Coleridge have snatched one away:
There’s Müller on Speech, there is Gurney on Spooks,
There is Tylor on Totems, there’s all sorts of Books.
There’s roaming in regions where every one’s been,
Encounters where no one was ever before,
There’s ‘Leaves’ from the Highlands we owe to the Queen,
There’s Holly’s and Leo’s adventures in Kôr:
There’s Tanner who dwelt with Pawnees and Chinooks,
You can cover a great deal of country in Books.
There are books, highly thought of, that nobody reads,
There is Geusius’ dearly delectable tome
Of the Cannibal—he on his neighbour who feeds—
And in blood-red morocco ’tis bound, by Derome;
There’s Montaigne here (a Foppens), there’s Roberts (on Flukes),
There’s Elzevirs, Aldines, and Gryphius’ Books.
There’s Bunyan, there’s Walton, in early editions,
There’s many a quarto uncommonly rare;
There’s quaint old Quevedo adream with his visions,
There’s Johnson the portly, and Burton the spare;
There’s Boston of Ettrick, who preached of the ‘Crooks
In the Lots’ of us mortals, who bargain for Books.
There’s Ruskin to keep one exclaiming ‘What next?’
There’s Browning to puzzle, and Gilbert to chaff,
And Marcus Aurelius to soothe one if vexed,
And good Marcus Tvainus to lend you a laugh;
There be capital tomes that are filled with fly-hooks,
And I’ve frequently found them the best kind of Books.
The Sonnet
Poet, beware! The sonnet’s primrose path
Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread.
Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,
Because the sated reader roars in wrath:
‘Little indeed to say the singer hath,
And little sense in all that he hath said;
Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read,
And naught but stubble is his aftermath!’
Then shall he cast that bonny book of thine
Where the extreme waste-paper basket gapes,
There shall thy futile fancies peak and pine,
With other minor poets, pallid shapes,
Who come a long way short of the divine,
Tormented souls of imitative apes.
The Tournay of the Heroes
Ho, warders, cry a tournay! ho, heralds, call the knights!
What gallant lance for old Romance ’gainst modern fiction fights?
The lists are set, the Knights are met, I ween, a dread array,
St. Chad to shield, a stricken field shall we behold to-day!
First to the Northern barriers pricks Roland of Roncesvaux,
And by his side, in knightly pride, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,
The Templar rideth by his rein, two gallant foes were they;
And proud to see, le brave Bussy his colours doth display.
Ready at need he comes with speed, William of Deloraine,
And Hereward the Wake himself is pricking o’er the plain.
The good knight of La Mancha’s here, here is Sir Amyas Leigh,
And Eric of the gold hair, pride of Northern chivalry.
There shines the steel of Alan Breck, the sword of Athos shines,
Dalgetty on Gustavus rides along the marshalled lines,
With many a knight of sunny France the Cid has marched from Spain,
And Götz the Iron-handed leads the lances of Almain.
But who upon the Modern side are champions? With the sleeve
Adorned of his false lady-love, rides glorious David Grieve,
A bookseller sometime was he, in a provincial town,
But now before his iron mace go horse and rider down.
Ho, Robert Elsmere! count thy beads; lo, champion of the fray,
With brandished colt, comes Felix Holt, all of the Modern day.
And Silas Lapham’s six-shooter is cocked: the Colonel’s spry!
There spurs the wary Egoist, defiance in his eye;
There Zola’s ragged regiment comes, with dynamite in hand,
And Flaubert’s crew of country doctors devastate the land.
On Robert Elsmere Friar Tuck falls with his quarter-staff,
Nom Dé! to see the clerics fight might make the sourest laugh!
They meet, they shock, full many a knight is smitten on the crown,
So keep us good St. Geneviève, Umslopogaas is down!
About the mace of David Grieve his blood is flowing red,
Alas for ancient chivalry, le brave Bussy is sped!
Yet where the sombre Templar rides the Modern caitiffs fly,
The Mummer (of The Mummer’s Wife) has got it in the eye,
From Felix Holt his patent Colt hath not averted fate,
And Silas Lapham’s smitten fair, right through his gallant pate.
There Dan Deronda reels and falls, a hero sore surprised;
Ha, Beauséant! still may such fate befall the Circumcised!
The Egoist is flying fast from him of Ivanhoe:
Beneath the axe of Skalagrim fall prigs at every blow:
The ragged Zolaists have fled, screaming ‘We are betrayed,’
But loyal Alan Breck is shent, stabbed through the Stuart plaid;
In sooth it is a grimly sight, so fast the heroes fall,
Three volumes fell could scarcely tell the fortunes of them all.
At length but two are left on ground, and David Grieve is one.
Ma foy, what deeds of derring-do that bookseller hath done!
The other, mark the giant frame, the great portentous fist!
’Tis Porthos! David Grieve may call on Kuenen an he list.
The swords are crossed; Doublez, dégagez, vite! great Porthos calls,
And David drops, that secret botte hath pierced his overalls!
And goodly Porthos, as of old the famed Orthryades,
Raises the trophy of the fight, then falling on his knees,
He writes in gore upon his shield, ‘Romance, Romance, has won!’
And blood-red on that stricken field goes down the angry sun.
Night falls upon the field of death, night on the darkling lea:
Oh send us such a tournay soon, and send me there to see!
Ballad of the Philanthropist
Pomona Road and Gardens, N.,
Were pure as they were fair—
In other districts much I fear,
That vulgar language shocks the ear,
But brawling wives or noisy men
Were never heard of there.
No burglar fixed his dread abode
In that secure retreat,
There were no public-houses nigh,
But chapels low and churches high,
You might have thought Pomona Road
A quite ideal beat!
Yet that was not at all the view
Taken by B. 13.
That active and intelligent
Policeman deemed that he was meant
Profound detective deeds to do,
And that repose was mean.
Now there was nothing to detect
Pomona Road along—
None faked a cly, nor cracked a crib,
Nor prigged a wipe, nor told a fib,—
Minds cultivated and select
Slip rarely into wrong!
Thus bored to desolation went
The Peeler on his beat;
He know not Love, he did not care,
If Love be born on mountains bare;
Nay, crime to punish, or prevent,
Was more than dalliance sweet!
The weary wanderer, day by day,
Was marked by Howard Fry—
A neighbouring philanthropist,
Who saw what that Policeman missed—
A sympathetic ‘Well-a-day’
He’d moan, and pipe his eye.
‘What can I do,’ asked Howard Fry,
‘To soothe that brother’s pain?
His glance when first we met was keen,
Most martial and erect his mien’
(What mien may mean, I know not I)
‘But he must joy again.’
‘I’ll start on a career of crime,
I will,’ said Howard Fry—
He spake and acted! Deeds of bale
(With which I do not stain my tale)
He wrought like mad time after time,
Yet wrought them blushfully.
And now when ’buses night by night
Were stopped, conductors slain,
When youths and men, and maids unwed,
Were stabbed or knocked upon the head,
Then B. 13 grew sternly bright,
And was himself again!
Pomona Road and Gardens, N.,
Are now a name of fear.
Commercial travellers flee in haste,
Revolvers girt about the waist
Are worn by city gentlemen
Who have their mansions near.
But B. 13 elated goes,
Detection in his eye;
While Howard Fry does deeds of bale
(With which I do not stain my tale)
To lighten that Policeman’s woes,
But does them blushfully.
Moral
Such is Philanthropy, my friends,
Too often such her plan,
She shoots, and stabs, and robs, and flings
Bombs, and all sorts of horrid things.
Ah, not to serve her private ends,
But for the good of Man!