Henry Duff Traill
Vers de Société
(Locker-Lampson)
There, pay it, James! ’tis cheaply earned;
My conscience! how one’s cabman charges!
But never mind, so I’m returned
Safe to my native street of Clarges.
I’ve just an hour for one cigar
(What style these Reinas have, and what ash!)
One hour to watch the evening star
With just one Curaçao-and-potash.
Ah me! that face beneath the leaves
And blossoms of its piquant bonnet!
Who would have thought that forty thieves
Of years had laid their fingers on it!
Could you have managed to enchant
At Lord’s to-day old lovers simple,
Had Robber Time not played gallant,
And spared you every youthful dimple!
That Robber bold, like courtier Claude,
Who danced the gay coranto jesting,
By your bright beauty charmed and awed,
Has bowed and passed you unmolesting.
No feet of many-wintered crows
Have traced about your eyes a wrinkle;
Your sunny hair has thawed the snows
That other heads with silver sprinkle.
I wonder if that pair of gloves
I won of you you’ll ever pay me!
I wonder if our early loves
Were wise or foolish, cousin Amy?
I wonder if our childish tiff
Now seems to you, like me, a blunder!
I wonder if you wonder if
I ever wonder if you wonder.
I wonder if you’d think it bliss
Once more to be the fashion’s leader!
I wonder if the trick of this
Escapes the unsuspecting reader!
And as for him who does or can
Delight in it, I wonder whether
He knows that almost any man
Could reel it off by yards together!
I wonder if— What’s that? a knock?
Is that you, James? Eh? What? God bless me!
How time has flown! It’s eight o’clock,
And here’s my fellow come to dress me.
Be quick, or I shall be the guest
Whom Lady Mary never pardons;
I trust you, James, to do your best
To save the soup at Grosvenor Gardens.
From ‘The Puss and the Boots.’
(Browning)
Put case I circumvent and kill him: good.
Good riddance—wipes at least from book o’ th’ world
The ugly admiration-note-like blot—
Gives honesty more elbow-room by just
The three dimensions of one wicked knave.
But then slips in the plaguy After-voice.
‘Wicked? Holloa! my friend, whither away
So fast? Who made you, Moses-like, a judge
And ruler over men to spare or slay?
A blot wiped off forsooth! Produce forthwith
Credentials of your mission to erase
The ink-spots of mankind—t’ abolish ill
For being what it is, is bound to be,
Its nature being so—cut wizards off
In flower of their necromantic lives
For being wizards, when ’tis plain enough
That they have no more wrought their wizardship
Than cats their cathood.’ Thus the plaguy Voice,
Puzzling withal not overmuch, for thus
I turn the enemy’s flank: ‘Meseems, my friend,
Your argument’s a thought too fine of mesh,
And catches what you would not. Every mouse
Trapped i’ the larder by the kitchen wench
Might reason so—but scarcely with effect.
Methinks ’twould little serve the captured thief
To plead, “The fault’s Dame Nature’s, guiltless I.
Am I to blame that in the parcelling-out
Of my ingredients the Great Chemist set
Just so much here, there so much, and no more
(Since ’tis but question, after all is said,
Of mere proportion ’twixt the part that feels
And that which guides), so much proclivity
To nightly cupboard-breaking, so much lust
Of bacon-scraps, such tendency to think
Old Stilton-rind the noblest thing on earth?
Then the per contra—so much power to choose
The right and shun the wrong; so much of force
Of uncorrupted will to stoutly bar
The sensory inlets of the murine soul,
And, when by night the floating rare-bit fume
Lures like a siren’s song, stop nostrils fast
With more than Odusseian sailor-wax:
Lastly so much of wholesome fear of trap
To keep self-abnegation sweet. Then comes
The hour of trial, when lo! the suadent scale
Sinks instant, the deterrent kicks the beam,
The heavier falls, the lighter mounts (as much
A thing of law with motives as with plums),
And I, forsooth, must die simply because
Dame Nature, having chosen so to load
The dishes, did not choose suspend for me
The gravitation of the moral world.”
How would the kitchen-wench reply? Why thus
(If given, as scullions use, to logic-fence
And keen retorsion of dilemmata
In speeches of a hundred lines or so):
“Grant your plea valid. Good. There’s mine to hear.
’Twas Nature made you? well: and me, no less;
You she by forces past your own control
Made a cheese-stealer? Be it so: of me
By forces as resistless and her own
She made a mouse-killer. Thus, either plays
A rôle in no wise chosen of himself,
But takes what part the great Stage Manager
Cast him for, when, the play was set afoot.
Remains we act ours—without private spite,
But still with spirit and fidelity,
As fits good actors: you I blame no whit
For nibbling cheese—simply I throw you down
Unblamed—nay, even morally assoiled,
To pussy there: blame thou not me for that.”
Or say perhaps the girl is slow of wit,
Something inapt at ethics—why, then thus.
“Enough of prating, little thief! This talk
Of ‘fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,’
Is hugely out of place! What next indeed,
If all the casuistry of the schools
Be prayed in aid by every pilfering mouse
That’s caught i’ th’ trap? See here, my thieving friend,
Thus I resolve the problem. We prefer
To keep our cheeses for our own behoof,
And eat them with our proper jaws; and so,
Having command of mouse-traps, we will catch
Whatever mice we can, and promptly kill
Whatever mice we catch. Entendez vous?
Aye, and we will, though all the mice on earth
Pass indignation votes, obtest the faith
Of gods and men, and make the welkin ring
With world-resounding dissonance of squeak!”’
But hist! here comes my wizard! Ready then
My nerves—and talons—for the trial of strength!
A stout heart, feline cunning, and—who knows?
After Dilettante Concetti
(Rossetti)
‘Why do you wear your hair like a man,
Sister Helen?
This week is the third since you began.’
‘I’m writing a ballad; be still if you can,
Little brother.
(O Mother Carey, mother!
What chickens are these between sea and heaven?)’
‘But why does your figure appear so lean,
Sister Helen?
And why do you dress in sage, sage green?’
‘Children should never be heard, if seen,
Little brother.
(O Mother Carey, mother!
What fowls are a-wing in the stormy heaven!)’
‘But why is your face so yellowy white,
Sister Helen?
And why are your skirts so funnily tight?’
‘Be quiet, you torment, or how can I write,
Little brother?
(O Mother Carey, mother!
How gathers thy train to the sea from the heaven!)’
‘And who’s Mother Carey, and what is her train,
Sister Helen?
And why do you call her again and again?’
‘You troublesome boy, why that’s the refrain,
Little brother.
(O Mother Carey, mother!
What work is toward in the startled heaven?)’
‘And what’s a refrain? What a curious word,
Sister Helen!
Is the ballad you’re writing about a sea-bird?’
‘Not at all; why should it be? Don’t be absurd,
Little brother.
(O Mother Carey, mother!
Thy brood flies lower as lowers the heaven.)’
(A big brother speaketh:)
‘The refrain you’ve studied a meaning had,
Sister Helen!
It gave strange force to a weird ballàd.
But refrains have become a ridiculous “fad,”
Little brother.
And Mother Carey, mother,
Has a bearing on nothing in earth or heaven.
‘But the finical fashion has had its day,
Sister Helen.
And let’s try in the style of a different lay
To bid it adieu in poetical way,
Little brother.
So, Mother Carey, mother!
Collect your chickens and go to—heaven.’
(A pause. Then the big brother singeth, accompanying
himself in a plaintive wise on the triangle:)
‘Look in my face. My name is Used-to-was,
I am also called Played-out and Done-to-death,
And It-will-wash-no-more. Awakeneth
Slowly, but sure awakening it has,
The common-sense of man; and I, alas!
The ballad-burden trick, now known too well,
Am turned to scorn, and grown contemptible—
A too transparent artifice to pass.
‘What a cheap dodge I am! The cats who dart
Tin-kettled through the streets in wild surprise
Assail judicious ears not otherwise;
And yet no critics praise the urchin’s “art,”
Who to the wretched creature’s caudal part
Its foolish empty-jingling “burden” ties.’