Ban and Arriere Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes

Transcribed from the 1894 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
A RALLY OF FUGITIVE RHYMES
BY ANDREW LANG
LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16TH STREET 1894
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
‘ Ban and Arrière Ban !’ a host Broken , beaten , all unled , They return as doth a ghost From the dead .
Sad or glad my rallied rhymes , Sought our dusty papers through , For the sake of other times Come to you .
Times and places new we know , Faces fresh and seasons strange But the friends of long ago Do not change .
Many of the verses in this collection have appeared in Magazines: ‘How they held the Bass’ was in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’; the ‘Ballad of the Philanthropist’ in ‘Punch’; ‘Calais Sands’ in ‘The Magazine of Art’ (Messrs. Cassell and Co.); and others are recaptured from ‘Longman’s Magazine,’ ‘Scribner’s,’ ‘The Illustrated London News,’ ‘The English Illustrated Magazine,’ ‘Wit and Wisdom’ (lines from Omar Khayyam), ‘The St. James’s Gazette,’ and possibly other serials. Some pieces are from commendatory verses for books, as for Mr. Jacobs’s ‘Æsop’; some are from Mr. Rider Haggard’s ‘World’s Desire,’ and ‘Cleopatra,’ two are from Kirk’s ‘Secret Commonwealth’ (Nutt, 1893), and ‘Neiges d’Antan,’ are from the author’s ‘Ballads and Lyrics of Old France,’ now long out of print.
Reader, a blot hath escaped the watchfulness of the setter forth: if thou wilt thou mayst amend it. The sonnet on the forty-fourth page, against all right Italianate laws, hath but thirteen lines withal: add another to thy liking, if thou art a Maker; or, if thou art none, even be content with what is set before thee. If it be scant measure, be sure it is choicely good.
Dark Lily without blame, Not upon us the shame, Whose sires were to the Auld Alliance true, They, by the Maiden’s side, Victorious fought and died, One stood by thee that fiery torment through, Till the White Dove from thy pure lips had passed, And thou wert with thine own St. Catherine at the last.