"A QUIET PIPE."
"One touch of nature" kins To-day
With classical Arcadia.
This faun-like "nipper,"
Tree-perched, is tootling, tootling on,
Though Pan be dead, Arcadia gone,
And wild "Kazoos" are played upon
By the cheap tripper.
Half imp, half animal, behold
The 'Arry of the Age of Gold
In this young satyr!
Lover of pleasure and of "lush"
(Silenus at the slang might blush),
Of haunted Nature's holy hush
Irreverent hater.
Mischief and music, mockery,
Swift eyes oblique in goblin glee,
And nimble finger;
Sardonic lips that slide with speed
Athwart the rangéd pastoral reed;
Upon these things will fancy feed,
And memory linger.
Imp-urchin of the budding horn,
Native to Nature's nascent morn,
The same quaint pranks
You played 'midst the Arcadian shade,
By satyrs of to-day are played;
Their nether limbs in "tweeds" arrayed
Not shaggy shanks.
Not cheap tan kids and Kino's best
Can hide the frolic faun confest,
Or coarse Silenus;
Like Spenser's satyrs, they attack us,
With rompings rouse, with noises rack us,
Brutes in the train of beery Bacchus,
And vulgar Venus.
'Arry's mouth-organ is, indeed,
Far shriekier than your shrilling reed,
Pan-fathered piper;
While his tin-whistle!—a wood-god,
Whose tympanum that sound should prod,
Would start, and shriek, as though he trod
Upon a viper.
Ah, yes, my little satyr-friend,
Better Arcadia than Southend
On a Bank-Holiday!
You and your Pan-pipe might appear,
And tootle, yet not rend my ear.
Or with a novel Panic fear
Upset a jolly day.
Aperch upon your branch, you carry
A certain likeness to our 'Arry,
Yet 'tis but slight.
He could not sit, the noisy brute!
And natural music mildly flute,
Till the assembled nymphs were mute
With sheer delight.
He'd want the banjo and the bones,
And rowdy words, and raucous tones,
And roaring chorus.
Urchin, I've done you grievous wrong!
No echoes of Arcadian song
Sound in the screech the holiday throng
Rattle and roar us.
To your shrill flutings I could listen
When on the grass-blades dewdrops glisten,
And morn is ripe.
Could sit and hear your pastoral reed,
In peace, and do myself, indeed
(Fair laden with "the fragrant weed"),
"A Quiet Pipe!"