William Edmondstoune Aytoun
The Massacre of the Macpherson. (‘From the Gaelic’)
Fhairshon swore a feud
Against the clan M’Tavish;
Marched into their land
To murder and to rafish;
For he did resolve
To extirpate the vipers,
With four-and-twenty men
And five-and-thirty pipers.
But when he had gone
Half-way down Strath Canaan,
Of his fighting tail
Just three were remainin’.
They were all he had,
To back him in ta battle;
All the rest had gone
Off, to drive ta cattle.
‘Fery coot!’ cried Fhairshon,
‘So my clan disgraced is;
Lads, we’ll need to fight
Pefore we touch the peasties.
Here’s Mhic-Mac-Methusaleh
Coming wi’ his fassals,
Gillies seventy-three
And sixty Dhuinéwassails!’
‘Coot tay to you, sir;
Are you not ta Fhairshon?
Was you coming here
To fisit any person?
You are a plackguard, sir!
It is now six hundred
Coot long years, and more,
Since my glen was plunder’d.’
‘Fat is tat you say?
Dare you cock your peaver?
I will teach you, sir,
Fat is coot pehaviour!
You shall not exist
For another day more;
I will shoot you, sir,
Or stap you with my claymore!’
‘I am fery glad
To learn what you mention,
Since I can prevent
Any such intention.’
So Mhic-Mac-Methusaleh
Gave some warlike howls,
Trew his skhian-dhu,
An’ stuck it in his powels.
In this fery way
Tied ta faliant Fhairshon,
Who was always thought
A superior person.
Fhairshon had a son,
Who married Noah’s daughter,
And nearly spoil’d ta Flood,
By trinking up ta water:
Which he would have done,
I at least believe it,
Had ta mixture peen
Only half Glenlivet.
This is all my tale:
Sirs, I hope ’tis new t’ye!
Here’s your fery good healths,
And tamn ta whusky duty!
A Midnight Meditation
(Bulwer Lytton)
Fill me once more the foaming pewter up!
Another board of oysters, ladye mine!
To-night Lucullus with himself shall sup.
These mute inglorious Miltons are divine!
And as I here in slipper’d ease recline,
Quaffing of Perkins’s Entire my fill,
I sigh not for the lymph of Aganippe’s rill.
A nobler inspiration fires my brain,
Caught from Old England’s fine time-hallow’d drink;
I snatch the pot again, and yet again,
And as the foaming fluids shrink and shrink,
Fill me once more, I say, up to the brink!
This makes strong hearts—strong heads attest its charm—
This nerves the might that sleeps in Britain’s brawny arm!
But these remarks are neither here nor there.
Where was I? Oh, I see—old Southey’s dead!
They’ll want some bard to fill the vacant chair,
And drain the annual butt—and oh, what head
More fit with laurel to be garlanded
Than this, which, curled in many a fragrant coil,
Breathes of Castalia’s streams, and best Macassar oil?
I know a grace is seated on my brow,
Like young Apollo’s with his golden beams
There should Apollo’s bays be budding now:—
And in my flashing eyes the radiance beams
That marks the poet in his waking dreams,
When, as his fancies cluster thick and thicker,
He feels the trance divine of poesy and liquor.
They throng around me now, those things of air,
That from my fancy took their being’s stamp:
There Pelham sits and twirls his glossy hair,
There Clifford leads his pals upon the tramp;
There pale Zanoni, bending o’er his lamp,
Roams through the starry wilderness of thought,
Where all is everything, and everything is nought.
Yes, I am he who sang how Aram won
The gentle ear of pensive Madeline!
How love and murder hand in hand may run,
Cemented by philosophy serene,
And kisses bless the spot where gore has been!
Who breathed the melting sentiment of crime,
And for the assassin waked a sympathy sublime!
Yes, I am he, who on the novel shed
Obscure philosophy’s enchanting light!
Until the public, ‘wildered as they read,
Believed they saw that which was not in sight—
Of course ’twas not for me to set them right;
For in my nether heart convinced I am,
Philosophy’s as good as any other bam.
Novels three-volumed I shall write no more—
Somehow or other now they will not sell;
And to invent new passions is a bore—
I find the Magazines pay quite as well.
Translating’s simple, too, as I can tell,
Who’ve hawked at Schiller on his lyric throne,
And given the astonish’d bard a meaning all my own.
Moore, Campbell, Wordsworth, their best days are grass’d:
Batter’d and broken are their early lyres.
Rogers, a pleasant memory of the past,
Warm’d his young hands at Smithfield’s martyr fires,
And, worth a plum, nor bays nor butt desires.
But these are things would suit me to the letter,
For though this Stout is good, old Sherry’s greatly better.
A fico for your small poetic ravers,
Your Hunts, your Tennysons, your Milnes, and these!
Shall they compete with him who wrote ‘Maltravers,’
Prologue to ‘Alice or the Mysteries’?
No! Even now my glance prophetic sees
My own high brow girt with the bays about.
What ho! within there, ho! another pint of Stout!
The Husband’s Petition
(Aytoun)
Come hither, my heart’s darling,
Come, sit upon my knee,
And listen, while I whisper
A boon I ask of thee.
You need not pull my whiskers
So amorously, my dove;
’Tis something quite apart from
The gentle cares of love.
I feel a bitter craving—
A dark and deep desire,
That glows beneath my bosom
Like coals of kindled fire.
The passion of the nightingale,
When singing to the rose,
Is feebler than the agony
That murders my repose!
Nay, dearest! do not doubt me,
Though madly thus I speak—
I feel thy arms about me,
Thy tresses on my cheek:
I know the sweet devotion
That links thy heart with mine,—
I know my soul’s emotion
Is doubly felt by thine:
And deem not that a shadow
Hath fallen across my love:
No, sweet, my love is shadowless,
As yonder heaven above.
These little taper fingers—
Ah, Jane! how white they be!—
Can well supply the cruel want
That almost maddens me.
Thou wilt not sure deny me
My first and fond request;
I pray thee, by the memory
Of all we cherish best—
By all the dear remembrance
Of those delicious days
When, hand in hand, we wander’d
Along the summer braes;
By all we felt, unspoken,
When ’neath the early moon,
We sat beside the rivulet,
In the leafy month of June;
And by the broken whisper
That fell upon my ear,
More sweet than angel music,
When first I woo’d thee, dear!
By that great vow which bound thee
For ever to my side,
And by the ring that made thee
My darling and my bride!
Thou wilt not fail nor falter,
But bend thee to the task—
A boiled sheep’s head on Sunday
Is all the boon I ask!