A LAUREATE'S LOG.
(Rough Weather Notes from the New Berth-day 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 t'wards 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 spec
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!
It is now somewhat more than fifty years since a young, and comparatively obscure writer addressed some presumptious lines to a lady of noble family, in which he sneered at her claims of long descent, ridiculed nobility generally, and concluded by advising her to go out amongst the poor, to teach the children, and to feed the beggars.
The tone of the poem was censorious and offensive; but Lady Clara Vere de Vere, to whom it was addressed, let it pass unnoticed by, knowing that "Everything comes to those who know how to wait," and now this last daughter of a hundred Earls has written a good-humoured rejoinder to the first Baron Tennyson, in which she playfully assumes her age to have remained what it was fifty years ago:—
Baron Alfred T. de T.,
Are we at last in sweet accord?
I learn—excuse my girlish glee—
That you've become a noble Lord;
So now that time to think you've had
Of what it is makes charming girls,
Perhaps you find they're not so bad—
Those daughters of a hundred earls.
Baron Alfred T. de T.,
When last your face I chanced to see,
You had the passion of your kind,
You said some horrid things to me;
And then—"we parted," you to sail
For Oshkosh, in the simple steerage,
But now—excuse my girlish glee—
You reappear, and in the peerage!
Baron Alfred T. de T.,
Were you indeed misunderstood
That other day I heard you say,
"'Tis only noble to be good?"
I really thought you then affirmed—
'Tis so the words come back to me,
"Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."
Baron Alfred T. de T.,
There stand twin-spectres in your hall,
And as they found you were a Lord
Two wholesome hearts were changed to gall;
The two, an humble couple they,
I think I see them, on my life,
The while they read of "Baron" T.,
The grand old Adam, and his wife!
Trust me, Baron T. de T.,
From yon blue heaven above us bent,
This simple granger and his spouse
Smile as you read your long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
Nor must you think my language cruel,
It seems—excuse my girlish glee—
Consistency's a lovely jewel.
Baron Alfred T. de T.,
I know you're proud your name to own;
Your pride is yet no mate for mine,
My blood is bluer than your own.
Don't bid me break your heart again
For pastime, ere to town I go;
I'll not do that, my noble Lord,
But give you something that I owe.
Baron Alfred T. de T.,
When you were in that angry fit
You turned to me and thundered out,
"Go, teach the orphan girl to knit."
I am an orphan girl myself,
And that my knitting you may see,
Here is a mitten that I've knit—
Excuse my gushing, girlish glee.
Now, there was another young lady who was treated with scant courtesy by the author of Locksley Hall, and she, too, has written a reply to the love-sick ravings of the young poet:—