MRS. HEMANS’s “FORGERIES.”
A gentleman having requested Mrs. Hemans to furnish him with some authorities from the old English writers for the use of the word “barb,” as applied to a steed, she very shortly supplied him with the following imitations, which she was in the habit of calling her “forgeries.” The mystification succeeded completely, and was not discovered for some time afterwards:—
The warrior donn’d his well-worn garb
And proudly waved his crest;
Be mounted on his jet-black barb
And put his lance in rest.
Percy, Reliques.
Eftsoons the wight withouten more delay
Spurr’d his brown barb, and rode full swiftly on his way.
Spenser.
Hark! was it not the trumpet’s voice I heard?
The soul of battle is awake within me!
The fate of ages and of empires hangs
On this dread hour. Why am I not in arms?
Bring my good lance, caparison my steed!
Base, idle grooms! are ye in league against me?
Haste with my barb, or by the holy saints,
Ye shall not live to saddle him to-morrow.
Massinger.
No sooner had the pearl-shedding fingers of the young Aurora tremulously unlocked the oriental portals of the golden horizon, than the graceful flower of chivalry, and the bright cynosure of ladies eyes—he of the dazzling breast-plate and swanlike plume—sprang impatiently from the couch of slumber, and eagerly mounted the noble barb presented to him by the Emperor of Aspromontania.
Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia.
See’st thou yon chief whose presence seems to rule
The storm of battle? Lo! where’er he moves
Death follows. Carnage sits upon his crest—
Fate on his sword is throned—and his white barb,
As a proud courser of Apollo’s chariot,
Seems breathing fire.
Potter, Æschylus.
Oh! bonnie looked my ain true knight,
His barb so proudly reining;
I watched him till my tearfu’ sight
Grew amaist dim wi’ straining.
Border Minstrelsy.
Why, he can heel the lavolt and wind a fiery barb as well as any gallant in Christendom. He’s the very pink and mirror of accomplishment.
Shakspeare.
Fair star of beauty’s heaven! to call thee mine,
All other joy’s I joyously would yield;
My knightly crest, my bounding barb resign
For the poor shepherd’s crook and daisied field!
For courts, or camps, no wish my soul would prove,
So thou would’st live with me and be my love.
Earl of Surrey, Poems.
For thy dear love my weary soul hath grown
Heedless of youthful sports: I seek no more
Or joyous dance, or music’s thrilling tone,
Or joys that once could charm in minstrel lore,
Or knightly tilt where steel-clad champions meet,
Borne on impetuous barbs to bleed at beauty’s feet!
Shakspeare, Sonnets.
As a warrior clad
In sable arms, like chaos dull and sad,
But mounted on a barb as white
As the fresh new-born light,—
So the black night too soon
Came riding on the bright and silver moon
Whose radiant heavenly ark
Made all the clouds beyond her influence seem
E’en more than doubly dark,
Mourning all widowed of her glorious beam.
Cowley.