Ballades and Verses Vain

CONTENTS.
To the Reader — Austin Dobson
Laughter and song the poet brings , And lends them form and gives them-wings; Then sets his chirping squadron free To post at will by land or sea , And find their home, if that may be . Laughter and song this poet, too , O Western brothers, sends to you : With doubtful flight the darting train Have crossed the bleak Atlantic main ,— Now warm them in your hearts again! A. D .
Mr. Austin Dobson has been so kind as to superintend the making of the following selection from Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880, 1881, 1883), and from verses previously unprinted or not collected .
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, The 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!
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 were fond of, 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 long words 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 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!