BALLADE OF BURIAL.
The sunlight sways the summer sky,
Quivers with breath each quicken'd blade,
The birds with one another vie
To move to mirth the grove and glade,
While yonder solemn cavalcade
Winds o'er the glebe in gloom august,
Chanting a dead man's serenade,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
A smile is mated to a sigh,
One flashes ere the other fade,
Farce arm-in-arm with tragedy,
So struts the motley masquerade.
Youth deems for joy the world is made,
Till disappointment deals disgust,
Disease defiles the last decade,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dast.
Within the grave our earnest eye
Beholds a brother's body laid,
Around us sombre hirelings ply
The unctuous usage of their trade.
Beneath the hedgerow laughs a maid,
Held in a lover's arm robust;
One day for her it shall be said,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Envoi.
Life, dost thou still possess the shade
Of him in earth so rudely thrust?
Canst thou the sentence yet evade,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
Cotsford Dick.
A BALLAD TO QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Of the Spanish Armada.
King Philip had vaunted his claims;
He had sworn for a year he would sack us;
With an army of heathenish names
He was coming to fagot and stack us;
Like the thieves of the sea he would track us,
And shatter our ships on the main;
But we had bold Neptune to back us,—
And where are the galleons of Spain?
His carackes were christened of dames
To the kirtles whereof he would tack us;
With his saints and his gilded stern-frames,
He had thought like an egg-shell to crack us:
Now Howard may get to his Flaccus,
And Drake to his Devon again,
And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus,—
For where are the galleons of Spain?
Let his Majesty hang to St. James
The axe that he whetted to hack us;
He must play at some lustier games
Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us;
To his mines of Peru he would pack us
To tug at his bullet and chain;
Alas that his Greatness should lack us!—
But where are the galleons of Spain?
Envoy.
Gloriana!—the Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;
He must reach us before he can rack us, ...
And where are the galleons of Spain?
Austin Dobson.