After Tennyson
The Bather’s Dirge
BREAK, break, break,
On thy cold, hard stones, O sea!
And I hope that my tongue won’t utter
The curses that rise in me.
Oh, well for the fisherman’s boy,
If he likes to be soused with the spray!
Oh, well for the sailor lad,
As he paddles about in the bay!
And the ships swim happily on,
To their haven under the hill;
But O for a clutch of that vanished hand,
And a kick—for I’m catching a chill!
Break, break, break,
At my poor bare feet, O sea!
But the artful scamp who has collar’d my clothes
Will never come back to me.
Tennyson Minor.
Little Miss Muffet
(Reset as an Arthurian Idyl)
UPON a tuffet of most soft and verdant moss,
Beneath the spreading branches of an ancient oak,
Miss Muffet sat, and upward gazed,
To where a linnet perched and sung,
And rocked him gently, to and fro.
Soft blew the breeze
And mildly swayed the bough,
Loud sung the bird,
And sweetly dreamed the maid;
Dreamed brightly of the days to come—
The golden days, with her fair future blent.
When one—some wondrous stately knight—
Of our great Arthur’s “Table Round;”
One, brave as Launcelot, and
Spotless as the pure Sir Galahad,
Should come, and coming, choose her
For his love, and in her name,
And for the sake of her fair eyes,
Should do most knightly deeds.
And as she dreamed and softly sighed,
She pensively began to stir,
With a tiny golden spoon
Within an antique dish upon her lap,
Some snow-white milky curds;
Soft were they, full of cream and rich,
And floated in translucent whey;
And as she stirred, she smiled,
Then gently tasted them.
And smiling, ate, nor sighed no more.
Lo! as she ate—nor harbored thought of ill—
Near and nearer yet, there to her crept,
A monster great and terrible,
With huge, misshapen body—leaden eyes—
Full many a long and hairy leg,
And soft and stealthy footstep.
Nearer still he came—Miss Muffet yet,
All unwitting his dread neighborhood,
Did eat her curds and dream.
Blithe, on the bough, the linnet sung—
All terrestrial natures, sleeping, wrapt
In a most sweet tranquillity.
Closer still the spider drew, and—
Paused beside her—lifted up his head
And gazed into her face.
Miss Muffet then, her consciousness alive
To his dread eyes upon her fixed,
Turned and beheld him.
Loud screamed she, frightened and amazed,
And straightway sprung upon her feet,
And, letting fall her dish and spoon,
She—shrieking—turned and fled.
Anonymous.
The Musical Pitch
BREAK, break, break,
O voice!—let me urge thy plea!
Oh, lower the Pitch, lest utter
Despair be the end of me!
’Tis well for the fiddles to squeak,
The bassoon to grunt in its play;
’Twere well had I lungs of brass,
Or that nothing but strings give way!
Break, break, break,
O voice! I must urge thy plea,
For the tender skin of my larynx is torn,
And I fail in my upper G!
Anonymous.
To an Importunate Host
(During dinner and after Tennyson)
ASK me no more: I’ve had enough Chablis;
The wine may come again and take the shape
From glass to glass of “Mountain” or of “Cape,”
But my dear boy, when I have answered thee,
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: what answer should I give,
I love not pickled pork, nor partridge pie;
I feel if I took whiskey I should die!
Ask me no more—for I prefer to live:
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: unless my fate is sealed,
And I have striven against you all in vain.
Let your good butler bring me “Hock” again;
Then rest, dear boy. If for this once I yield,
Ask me no more.
Anonymous.
The Village Choir
HALF a bar, half a bar,
Half a bar onward!
Into an awful ditch
Choir and precentor hitch,
Into a mess of pitch,
They led the Old Hundred.
Trebles to right of them,
Tenors to left of them,
Basses in front of them,
Bellowed and thundered.
Oh, that precentor’s look,
When the sopranos took
Their own time and hook
From the Old Hundred!
Screeched all the trebles here,
Boggled the tenors there,
Raising the parson’s hair,
While his mind wandered;
Theirs not to reason why
This psalm was pitched too high:
Theirs but to gasp and cry
Out the Old Hundred.
Trebles to right of them,
Tenors to left of them,
Basses in front of them,
Bellowed and thundered.
Stormed they with shout and yell,
Not wise they sang nor well,
Drowning the sexton’s bell,
While all the church wondered.
Dire the precentor’s glare,
Flashed his pitchfork in air
Sounding fresh keys to bear
Out the Old Hundred.
Swiftly he turned his back,
Reached he his hat from rack,
Then from the screaming pack,
Himself he sundered.
Tenors to right of him,
Tenors to left of him,
Discords behind him,
Bellowed and thundered.
Oh, the wild howls they wrought:
Right to the end they fought!
Some tune they sang, but not,
Not the Old Hundred.
Anonymous.
The Biter Bit
THE sun is in the sky, mother, the flowers are springing fair;
And the melody of woodland birds is stirring in the air;
The river, smiling to the sky, glides onward to the sea,
And happiness is everywhere, oh, mother, but with me!
They are going to the church, mother—I hear the marriage bell
It booms along the upland—Oh! it haunts me like a knell;
He leads her on his arm, mother, he cheers her faltering step,
And closely to his side she clings—she does, the demirep!
They are crossing by the stile, mother, where we so oft have stood,
The stile beside the shady thorn, at the corner of the wood;
And the boughs, that wont to murmur back the words that won my ear,
Wave their silver branches o’er him, as he leads his bridal fere.
He will pass beside the stream, mother, where first my hand he pressed,
By the meadow where, with quivering lip, his passion he confessed;
And down the hedgerows where we’ve strayed again and yet again;
But he will not think of me, mother, his broken-hearted Jane!
He said that I was proud, mother, that I looked for rank and gold,
He said I did not love him—he said my words were cold;
He said I kept him off and on, in hopes of higher game—
And it may be that I did, mother; who hasn’t done the same?
I did not know my heart, mother—I know it now too late;
I thought that I without a pang could wed some nobler mate;
But no nobler suitor sought me—and he has taken wing,
And my heart is gone, and I am left a lone and blighted thing.
You may lay me in my bed, mother—my head is throbbing sore;
And, mother, prithee, let the sheets be duly aired before;
And, if you’d please, my mother dear, your poor desponding child,
Draw me a pot of beer, mother, and mother, draw it mild!
William Aytoun.
The Laureate
WHO would not be
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket his gold?
’Tis I would be the Laureate bold!
When the days are hot, and the sun is strong,
I’d lounge in the gateway all the day long
With her Majesty’s footmen in crimson and gold.
I’d care not a pin for the waiting-lord,
But I’d lie on my back on the smooth greensward
With a straw in my mouth, and an open vest,
And the cool wind blowing upon my breast,
And I’d vacantly stare at the clear blue sky,
And watch the clouds that are listless as I,
Lazily, lazily!
And I’d pick the moss and the daisies white,
And chew their stalks with a nibbling bite;
And I’d let my fancies roam abroad
In search of a hint for a birthday ode,
Crazily, crazily!
Oh, that would be the life for me,
With plenty to get and nothing to do,
But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue,
And whistle all day to the Queen’s cockatoo,
Trance-somely, trance-somely!
Then the chambermaids, that clean the rooms,
Would come to the windows and rest on their brooms,
With their saucy caps and their crispéd hair,
And they’d toss their heads in the fragrant air,
And say to each other—“Just look down there,
At the nice young man, so tidy and small,
Who is paid for writing on nothing at all,
Handsomely, handsomely!”
They would pelt me with matches and sweet pastilles,
And crumpled-up balls of the royal bills,
Giggling and laughing, and screaming with fun,
As they’d see me start, with a leap and a run,
From the broad of my back to the points of my toes,
When a pellet of paper hit my nose,
Teasingly, sneezingly!
Then I’d fling them bunches of garden flowers,
And hyacinths plucked from the Castle bowers;
And I’d challenge them all to come down to me,
And I’d kiss them all till they kissed me,
Laughingly, laughingly.
Oh, would not that be a merry life,
Apart from care and apart from strife,
With the Laureate’s wine, and the Laureate’s pay,
And no deductions at quarter-day?
Oh, that would be the post for me!
With plenty to get and nothing to do,
But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue,
And whistle a tune to the Queen’s cockatoo,
And scribble of verses remarkably few,
And empty at evening a bottle or two,
Quaffingly, quaffingly!
’Tis I would be
The Laureate bold,
With my butt of sherry
To keep me merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket my gold!
William Aytoun.
The Lay of the Lovelorn
COMRADES, you may pass the rosy. With permission of the chair,
I shall leave you for a little, for I’d like to take the air.
Whether ’twas the sauce at dinner, or that glass of ginger-beer,
Or these strong cheroots, I know not, but I feel a little queer.
Let me go. Nay, Chuckster, blow me, ’pon my soul, this is too bad!
When you want me, ask the waiter; he knows where I’m to be had.
Whew! This is a great relief now! Let me but undo my stock;
Resting here beneath the porch, my nerves will steady like a rock.
In my ears I hear the singing of a lot of favourite tunes—
Bless my heart, how very odd! Why surely there’s a brace of moons!
See! the stars! how bright they twinkle, winking with a frosty glare,
Like my faithless cousin Amy when she drove me to despair.
Oh, my cousin, spider-hearted! Oh, my Amy! No, confound it,
I must wear the mournful willow,—all around my heart I’ve bound it!
Falser than the bank of fancy, frailer than a shining glove,
Puppet to a father’s anger, minion to a nabob’s love!
Is it well to wish thee happy? Having known me, could you ever
Stoop to marry half a heart, and a little more than half a liver?
Happy! Damme! Thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
Changing from the best of china to the commonest of clay.
As the husband is, the wife is,—he is stomach-plagued and old;
And his curry soups will make thy cheek the color of his gold.
When his feeble love is sated, he will hold thee surely then
Something lower than his hookah,—something less than his cayenne.
What is this? His eyes are pinky. Was ’t the claret? Oh, no, no,—
Bless your soul! it was the salmon,—salmon always makes him so.
Take him to thy dainty chamber—soothe him with thy lightest fancies;
He will understand thee, won’t he?—pay thee with a lover’s glances?
Louder than the loudest trumpet, harsh as harshest ophicleide,
Nasal respirations answer the endearments of his bride.
Sweet repose, delightful music! Gaze upon thy noble charge,
Till the spirit fill thy bosom that inspired the meek Laffarge.
Better thou wert dead before me,—better, better that I stood,
Looking on thy murdered body, like the injured Daniel Good!
Better thou and I were lying, cold and timber-stiff and dead,
With a pan of burning charcoal underneath our nuptial bed!
Cursed be the Bank of England’s notes, that tempt the soul to sin!
Cursed be the wants of acres,—doubly cursed the want of tin!
Cursed be the marriage-contract, that enslaved thy soul to greed!
Cursed be the sallow lawyer that prepared and drew the deed!
Cursed be his foul apprentice, who the loathsome fees did earn!
Cursed be the clerk and parson,—cursed be the whole concern!
Oh, ’tis well that I should bluster,—much I’m like to make of that;
Better comfort have I found in singing “All Around my Hat.”
But that song, so wildly plaintive, palls upon my British ears.
’Twill not do to pine for ever,—I am getting up in years.
Can’t I turn the honest penny, scribbling for the weekly press,
And in writing Sunday libels drown my private wretchedness?
Oh, to feel the wild pulsation that in manhood’s dawn I knew,
When my days were all before me, and my years were twenty-two!
When I smoked my independent pipe along the Quadrant wide,
With the many larks of London flaring up on every side;
When I went the pace so wildly, caring little what might come;
Coffee-milling care and sorrow with a nose-adapted thumb;
Felt the exquisite enjoyment, tossing nightly off, oh, heavens!
Brandies at the Cider Cellars, kidneys smoking hot at Evans’!
Or in the Adelphi sitting, half in rapture, half in tears,
Saw the glorious melodrama conjure up the shades of years!
Saw Jack Sheppard, noble stripling, act his wondrous feats again,
Snapping Newgate’s bars of iron, like an infant’s daisy chain.
Might was right, and all the terrors, which had held the world in awe,
Were despised, and priggings prospered, spite of Laurie, spite of law.
In such scenes as these I triumphed, ere my passion’s edge was rusted,
And my cousin’s cold refusal left me very much disgusted!
Since, my heart is sere and withered, and I do not care a curse
Whether worse shall be the better, or the better be the worse.
Hark! my merry comrades call me, bawling for another jorum;
They would mock me in derision, should I thus appear before ’em.
Womankind shall no more vex me, such at least as go arrayed
In the most expensive satins and the newest silk brocade.
I’ll to Afric, lion-haunted, where the giant forest yields
Rarer robes and finer tissue than are sold at Spitalfields.
Or to burst all chains of habit, flinging habit’s self aside
I shall walk the tangled jungle in mankind’s primeval pride;
Feeding on the luscious berries and the rich cassava root,
Lots of dates and lots of guavas, clusters of forbidden fruit.
Never comes the trader thither, never o’er the purple main
Sounds the oath of British commerce, or the accent of Cockaigne.
There, methinks, would be enjoyment, where no envious rule prevents;
Sink the Steamboats! cuss the railways! rot, oh, rot the Three per Cents!
There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have space to breathe, my cousin!
I will wed some savage woman—nay, I’ll wed at least a dozen.
There I’ll rear my young mulattoes, as no Bond Street brats are reared;
They shall dive for alligators, catch the wild goats by the beard—
Whistle to the cockatoos, and mock the hairy-faced baboon,
Worship mighty Mumbo Jumbo in the Mountains of the Moon.
I myself, in far Timbuctoo, leopard’s blood will daily quaff,
Ride a tiger-hunting, mounted on a thorough-bred giraffe.
Fiercely shall I shout the war-whoop, as some sullen stream he crosses,
Startling from their noonday slumbers iron-bound rhinoceroses.
Fool! again the dream, the fancy! But I know my words are mad,
For I hold the gray barbarian lower than the Christian cad.
I the swell—the city dandy! I to seek such horrid places,—
I to haunt with squalid negroes, blubber-lips, and monkey-faces.
I to wed with Coromantees! I, who managed—very near—
To secure the heart and fortune of the widow Shillibeer!
Stuff and nonsense! let me never fling a single chance away;
Maids ere now, I know, have loved me, and another maiden may.
Morning Post (The Times won’t trust me) help me, as I know you can;
I will pen an advertisement,—that’s a never failing plan.
“Wanted—by a bard, in wedlock, some young interesting woman;
Looks are not so much an object, if the shiners be forthcoming!
“Hymen’s chains the advertiser vows shall be but silken fetters;
Please address to A. T., Chelsea. N. B.—You must pay the letters.”
That’s the sort of thing to do it. Now I’ll go and taste the balmy,—
Rest thee with thy yellow nabob, spider-hearted Cousin Amy!
William Aytoun.
In Immemoriam
WE seek to know, and knowing seek;
We seek, we know, and every sense
Is trembling with the great Intense
And vibrating to what we speak.
We ask too much, we seek too oft,
We know enough, and should no more;
And yet we skim through Fancy’s lore
And look to earth and not aloft.
A something comes from out the gloom;
I know it not, nor seek to know;
I only see it swell and grow,
And more than this world would presume.
Meseems, a circling void I fill,
And I, unchanged where all is changed;
It seems unreal; I own it strange,
Yet nurse the thoughts I cannot kill.
I hear the ocean’s surging tide,
Raise quiring on its carol-tune;
I watch the golden-sickled moon,
And clearer voices call besides.
O Sea! whose ancient ripples lie
On red-ribbed sands where seaweeds shone;
O Moon! whose golden sickle’s gone;
O Voices all! like ye I die!
Cuthbert Bede.
Sir Eggnogg
FORTH from the purple battlements he fared,
Sir Eggnogg of the Rampant Lily, named
From that embrasure of his argent shield
Given by a thousand leagues of heraldry
On snuffy parchments drawn. So forth he fared,
By bosky boles and autumn leaves he fared,
Where grew the juniper with berries black,
The sphery mansions of the future gin.
But naught of this decoyed his mind, so bent
On fair Miasma, Saxon-blooded girl,
Who laughed his loving lullabies to scorn,
And would have snatched his hero-sword to deck
Her haughty brow, or warm her hands withal,
So scornful she; and thence Sir Eggnogg cursed
Between his teeth, and chewed his iron boots
In spleen of love. But ere the morn was high
In the robustious heaven, the postern-tower
Clang to the harsh, discordant, slivering scream
Of the tire-woman, at the window bent
To dress her crispéd hair. She saw, ah, woe!
The fair Miasma, overbalanced, hurled
O’er the flamboyant parapet which ridged
The muffled coping of the castle’s peak,
Prone on the ivory pavement of the court,
Which caught and cleft her fairest skull, and sent
Her rosy brains to fleck the Orient floor.
This saw Sir Eggnogg, in his stirrups poised.
Saw he and cursed, with many a deep-mouthed oath,
And, finding nothing more could reunite
The splintered form of fair Miasma, rode
On his careering palfrey to the wars,
And there found death, another death than hers.
Bayard Taylor.
Godiva
“I WAITED for the Train at Coventry,”
The Train was several hundred years too late
(It had not been invented yet, you see);
Such is the Cold Cast Irony of Fate.
At last the Train arrived, and with it too
Your Book—a Precious Package marked “collect.”
Raptured I read it through and through, and through,
And then I paused in sadness to reflect—
How that same Book had been a priceless boon,
But for a little accident of Date;
If only I had not been born so soon,
Or if you had not gone to press so late.
O Book, if only you had come to me
Ere I rode forth upon that morning sad!
In naught but Faith and Hope and Charity,
And other Vague Abstractions thinly clad;
In whole Editions I would have invested
(I hope you get good Royalties therefrom),
To keep the naughty townfolk interested
And most Particularly, Peeping Tom.
Oliver Herford.
A Laureate’s Log
(Rough-weather notes from the New Birthday-Book)
Monday
IF you’re waking, please don’t call me, please don’t call me, Currie dear,
For they tell me that to-morrow toward the open we’re to steer!
No doubt, for you and those aloft, the maddest merriest way,—
But I always feel best in a bay, Currie,
I always feel best in a bay.
Tuesday
Take, take, take?
What will I take for tea?
The thinnest slice—no butter,
And that’s quite enough for me.
Wednesday
It is the little roll within the berth
That, by and by, will put an end to mirth,
And, never ceasing, slowly prostrate all.
Thursday
Let me alone! What pleasure can you have
In chaffing evil? Tell me what’s the fun
Of ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All you, the rest, you know how to behave
In roughish weather! I, for one
Ask for the shore—or death, dark death,
—
I am so done.
Friday
Twelve knots an hour! But what am I?
A poet with no land in sight,
Insisting that he feels “all right,”
With half a smile and half a sigh.
Saturday
Comfort? Comfort scorned of lubbers! Hear this truth the Poet roar,
That a sorrow’s crown of sorrows is remembering days on shore.
Drug his soda lest he learn it when the foreland gleams a speck
In the dead unhappy night, when he can’t sit up on deck!
Sunday
Ah! you’ve called me nice and early, nice and early, Currie dear!
What? Really in? Well, come, the news I’m precious glad to hear;
For though in such good company I willingly would stay—
I’m glad to be back in the bay, Currie,
I’m glad to be back in the bay.
Punch.
The Recognition
HOME they brought her sailor son,
Grown a man across the sea,
Tall and broad and black of beard,
And hoarse of voice as man may be.
Hand to shake and mouth to kiss,
Both he offered ere he spoke;
But she said—“What man is this
Comes to play a sorry joke?”
Then they praised him—call’d him “smart,”
“Tightest lad that ever stept;”
But her son she did not know,
And she neither smiled nor wept.
Rose, a nurse of ninety years,
Set a pigeon-pie in sight;
She saw him eat—“’Tis he! ’tis he!”
She knew him—by his appetite!
William Sawyer.
The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell
ONE, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;
Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.
What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.
Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?
Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;
Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.
Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight;
Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.
Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;
God, once caught in the fact, shews you a fair pair of heels.
Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which;
The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.
One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two;
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.
Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks;
Then the mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox.
Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew.
You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.
Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock;
Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.
God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see;
Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Part I
Timbuctoo —
The situation.
1
IN Africa (a Quarter of the World),
Men’s skins are black, their hair is crisp and curl’d,
And somewhere there, unknown to public view,
A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.
The natural history.
5
There stalks the tiger,—there the lion roars,
Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors;
All that he leaves of them the monster throws
To jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites, and crows;
His hunger thus the forest monster gluts,
10
And then lies down ’neath trees called cocoa-nuts.
The lion hunt.
Quick issue out, with musket, torch, and brand,
The sturdy blackamoors, a dusky band!
The beast is found—pop goes the musketoons—
The lion falls covered with horrid wounds.
Their lives at home.
15
At home their lives in pleasure always flow,
But many have a different lot to know!
Abroad.
They’re often caught and sold as slaves, alas!
Reflections on the foregoing.
Thus men from highest joy to sorrow pass;
Yet though thy monarch and thy nobles boil
20
Rack and molasses in Jamaica’s isle,
Desolate Africa! thou art lovely yet!
One heart yet beats which ne’er thee shall forget.
What though thy maidens are a blackish brown,
Does virtue dwell in whiter breasts alone?
25
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!
It shall not, must not, cannot, e’er be so.
The day shall come when Albion’s self shall feel
Stern Afric’s wrath, and writhe ’neath Afric’s steel.
I see her tribes the hill of glory mount,
30
And sell their sugars on their own account;
While round her throne the prostrate nations come,
Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum!
Notes.—Lines 1 and 2.—See Guthrie’s Geography. The site of Timbuctoo is doubtful; the author has neatly expressed this in the poem, at the same time giving us some slight hints relative to its situation.
Line 5.—So Horace: leonum arida nutrix.
Line 13.—“Pop goes the musketoons.” A learned friend suggested “Bang” as a stronger expression, but as African gunpowder is notoriously bad, the author thought “Pop” the better word.
Lines 15-18.—A concise but affecting description is here given of the domestic habits of the people. The infamous manner in which they are entrapped and sold as slaves is described, and the whole ends with an appropriate moral sentiment. The enthusiasm the author feels is beautifully expressed in lines 25 and 26.
W. M. Thackeray.