THE HAUNTED LIMBO.
A May-Night Vision, after a Visit to the Grosvenor Gallery. (With acknowledgment of a hint from HOOD.)
I.
A WORLD of whim I wandered in of late,
A limbo all unknown to common mortals;
But in the drear night-watches 'twas my fate
To pass within its portals.
Dusk warders, dim and drowsy, drew aside
What seemed a shadowy unsubstantial curtain,
And pointed onwards as with pain or pride,
But which appeared uncertain.
I entered, and an opiate influence stole,
Like semi-palsy, over thought and feeling,
And with inebriate haziness my soul
Seemed rapt almost to reeling.
For over all there hung a glamour queer,
A sense of something odd the spirit daunted,
And said, like a witch-whisper in the ear,
"The place is haunted!"
II.
Those women, ah, those women! They were white,
Blue, green, and grey,—all hues, save those of nature,
Bony of frame, and dim and dull of sight,
And parlous tall of stature.
Ars longa est,—aye, very long indeed,
And long as Art were all these High-Art ladies,
And wan, and weird; one might suppose the breed
A cross 'twixt earth and Hades.
If poor Persephone to the Dark King
Had children borne, after that rape from Enna,
Much so might they have looked, when suffering
From too much salts and senna.
Many their guises, but no various grace
Or changeful charm relieved their sombre sameness;
Of form contorted, and cadaverous face,
And limp lopsided lameness.
Venus was there; at least, they called her so:
A pallid person with a jaw protrusive,
Who palpably had found all passion slow,
And all delight delusive.
No marvel she looked passé, peevish, pale,
Unlovely, languid, and with doldrums laden.
To cheer her praise of knights might not avail,
Nor chaunt of moon-eyed maiden.
Laus Veneris! they sang; the music rose
More like a requiem than a gladsome pæan.
With sullen lip and earth-averted nose
Listened the Cytherean.
This Aphrodite? Then methought I heard
Loud laughter of the Queen of Love, full scornful
Of this dull simulacrum, strained, absurd,
Green-sick, and mutely mournful.
A solid Psyche and a Podgy Pan,
A pulpy Cupid crying on a column,
A skew-limbed Luna, a Peona wan,
A Man and Mischief solemn;
A moonlight-coloured maiden—she was hight
Ophelia, but poor Hamlet would have frightened—
A wondrous creature called the Shulamite,
With vesture quaintly tightened;
These and such other phantasms seemed to fill
Those silk-hung vistas, which, though fair and roomy,
Nathless seemed straitened, close, oppressive, still,
And gogglesome and gloomy.
For over all there hung a glamour queer,
A sense of something odd the spirit daunted;
And said, like a witch-whisper in the ear.
"The place is haunted!"
III.
I could no more; I veiled my wearied eyes.
I said, "Is this indeed the High Ideal?
If so, give me plain faces, common skies,
The homely and the real."
But no, this limbo is not that fair land,
Beloved of soaring fancies, hearts ecstatic;
'Tis the Fools' Paradise of a small band,
Queer, crude, absurd, erratic.
I turned, and murmured, as I passed away,
"Such limbos of mimetic immaturity
Have no abiding hold e'en on to-day,
Of fame no calm security."
For over all there hung a glamour queer,
A sense of something odd the spirit daunted,
And said, like a witch-whisper in the ear,
"This place is haunted!"
Punch, May 18, 1878.
———♦———
Bret Harte.
The humorous writings of this author are as widely read, and as keenly appreciated, in England as in the United States, and when the prose portion of this collection is reached his Sensation Novels Condensed will be fully considered. In these he has admirably hit off the peculiarities of style of such varied writers as Miss Braddon, Victor Hugo, Charles Lever, Lord Lytton, Alexander Dumas, F. Cooper, Captain Marryat, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Wilkie Collins; whilst in Lothaw he produced a clever little parody of Lord Beaconsfield's Lothair.
Bret Harte has ably described both the comic and the pathetic sides of the wild life of the Californian miners, with which he is thoroughly familiar; and his best known poems deal with phases of life in that part of the world, where the Chinese element enters largely into the population. For convenience of comparison, the original "Heathen Chinee" is given below, followed by the parodies:—