The poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed. [selected]

by Winthrop Mackworth Praed

IV.

Yet not the less, dear Friend, thy guiding light
Shines through the secret chambers of my thought;
Or when I waken, with revived delight,
The lute young Fancy to my cradle brought,
Or when I visit with a studious brow
The less-loved task, to which I turn me now.

THE LEGEND OF THE TEUFEL-HAUS.

The way was lone, and the hour was late,
And Sir Rudolph was far from his castle gate.
The night came down by slow degrees
On the river stream, and the forest trees;
And by the heat of the heavy air,
And by the lightning’s distant glare,
And by the rustling of the woods,
And by the roaring of the floods,
In half-an-hour, a man might say,
The Spirit of Storm would ride that way.
But little he cared, that stripling pale,
For the sinking sun, or the rising gale;
For he, as he rode, was dreaming now,
Poor youth, of a woman’s broken vow,
Of the cup dashed down, ere the wine was tasted,
Of elegant speeches sadly wasted,
Of a gallant heart all burnt to ashes,
And the Baron of Katzberg’s long mustaches.
So the earth below, and the heaven above,
He saw them not;—those dreams of love,
As some have found, and some will find,
Make men extremely deaf and blind.
At last he opened his great blue eyes,
And looking about in vast surprise,
Found that his hunter had turned his back
An hour ago on the beaten track,
And now was threading a forest hoar,
Where steed had never stepped before.
“By Cæsar’s head,” Sir Rudolph said,
“It were a sorry joke,
If I to-night should make my bed
On the turf, beneath an oak!
Poor Roland reeks from head to hoof;
Now for thy sake, good roan,
I would we were beneath a roof,
Were it the foul fiend’s own!”

Ere the tongue could rest, ere the lips could close,
The sound of a listener’s laughter rose.
It was not the scream of a merry boy
When Harlequin waves his wand of joy;
Nor the shout from a serious curate, won
By a bending bishop’s annual pun;
Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no!
It was a gentle laugh, and low;
Half uttered, perhaps, and stifled half,
A good old-gentlemanly laugh;
Such as my uncle Peter’s are,
When he tells you his tales of Dr. Parr.
The rider looked to the left and the right,
With something of marvel, and more of fright;
But brighter gleamed his anxious eye,
When a light shone out from a hill hard by.
Thither he spurred, as gay and glad
As Mr. Macquill’s delighted lad,
When he turns away from the Pleas of the Crown,
Or flings, with a yawn, old Saunders down,
And flies, at last, from all the mysteries
Of Plaintiff’s and Defendant’s histories,
To make himself sublimely neat,
For Mrs. Camac’s in Mansfield Street.
At a lofty gate Sir Rudolph halted;
Down from his seat Sir Rudolph vaulted:
And he blew a blast with might and main,
On a bugle that hung by an iron chain.
The sound called up a score of sounds;—
The screeching of owls, and the baying of hounds,
The hollow toll of the turret bell,
The call of the watchful sentinel,
And a groan at last, like a peal of thunder,
As the huge old portals rolled asunder,
And gravely from the castle hall
Paced forth the white-robed seneschal.
He stayed not to ask of what degree
So fair and famished a knight might be;
But knowing that all untimely question
Ruffles the temper, and mars the digestion,
He laid his hand upon the crupper,
And said—“You’re just in time for supper!”

They led him to the smoking board,
And placed him next the Castle’s Lord.
He looked around with a hurried glance:
You may ride from the border to fair Penzance,
And nowhere, but at Epsom Races,
Find such a group of ruffian faces
As thronged that chamber: some were talking
Of feats of hunting and of hawking,
And some were drunk, and some were dreaming,
And some found pleasure in blaspheming.
He thought, as he gazed on the fearful crew,
That the lamps that burned on the walls burned blue.
They brought him a pasty of mighty size,
To cheer his heart, and to charm his eyes;
They brought the wine, so rich and old,
And filled to the brim the cup of gold;
The knight looked down, and the knight looked up,
But he carved not the meat, and he drained not the cup.

“Ho, ho,” said his host, with angry brow,
“I wot our guest is fine;
Our fare is far too coarse, I trow,
For such nice taste as thine:
Yet trust me I have cooked the food,
And I have filled the can,
Since I have lived in this old wood,
For many a nobler man.”—

“The savoury buck and the ancient cask
To a weary man are sweet;
But ere he taste, it is fit he ask
For a blessing on bowl and meat.
Let me pray but a minute’s space,
And bid me pledge ye then;
I swear to ye, by our Lady’s grace,
I shall eat and drink like ten!”

The Lord of the Castle in wrath arose,
He frowned like a fiery dragon;
Indignantly he blew his nose,
And overturned a flagon.
And “Away,” quoth he, “with the canting priest,
Who comes uncalled to a midnight feast,
And breathes through a helmet his holy benison,
To sour my hock, and spoil my venison!”
That moment all the lights went out;
And they dragged him forth, that rabble rout,
With oath, and threat, and foul scurrility,
And every sort of incivility.
They barred the gates; and the peal of laughter,
Sudden and shrill, that followed after,
Died off into a dismal tone,
Like a parting spirit’s painful moan.
“I wish,” said Rudolph, as he stood
On foot in the deep and silent wood;
“I wish, good Roland, rack and stable
May be kinder to-night than their master’s table!”

By this the storm had fleeted by;
And the moon with a quiet smile looked out
From the glowing arch of a cloudless sky,
Flinging her silvery beams about
On rock, tree, wave, and gladdening all
With just as miscellaneous bounty
As Isabel’s, whose sweet smiles fall
In half-an-hour on half the county.
Less wild Sir Rudolph’s pathway seemed,
As he turned from that discourteous tower.
Small spots of verdure gaily gleamed
On either side; and many a flower,
Lily, and violet, and heart’s-ease,
Grew by the way, a fragrant border;
And the tangled bows of the hoary trees
Were twined in picturesque disorder:
And there came from the grove, and there came from the hill
The loveliest sounds he had ever heard,
The cheerful voice of the dancing rill,
And the sad sad song of the lonely bird.
And at last he stared with wondering eyes,
As well he might, on a large pavilion:
’Twas clothed with stuffs of a hundred dyes,
Blue, purple, orange, pink, vermilion;
And there were quaint devices traced
All round in the Saracenic manner;
And the top, which gleamed like gold, was graced
With the drooping folds of a silken banner;
And on the poles, in silent pride,
There sat small doves of white enamel;
And the veil from the entrance was drawn aside,
And flung on the humps of a silver camel.
In short it was the sweetest thing
For a weary youth in a wood to light on;
And finer far than what a King
Built up, to prove his taste, at Brighton.

The gilded gate was all unbarred;
And, close beside it, for a guard,
There lay two dwarfs with monstrous noses,
Both fast asleep upon some roses.
Sir Rudolph entered; rich and bright
Was all that met his ravished sight;
Soft tapestries from far countries brought,
Rare cabinets with gems inwrought,
White vases of the finest mould,
And mirrors set in burnished gold.
Upon a couch a greyhound slumbered;
And a small table was encumbered
With paintings, and an ivory lute,
And sweetmeats, and delicious fruit.
Sir Rudolph lost no time in praising;
For he, I should have said, was gazing,
In attitude extremely tragic,
Upon a sight of stranger magic;
A sight, which, seen at such a season,
Might well astonish Mistress Reason,
And scare Dame Wisdom from her fences
Of rules and maxims, moods and tenses.

Beneath a crimson canopy,
A lady, passing fair, was lying;
Deep sleep was on her gentle eye,
And in her slumber she was sighing
Bewitching sighs, such sighs as say
Beneath the moonlight, to a lover,
Things which the coward tongue by day
Would not, for all the world, discover:
She lay like a shape of sculptured stone,
So pale, so tranquil:—she had thrown,
For the warm evening’s sultriness,
The bordered coverlet aside;
And nothing was there to deck or hide
The glory of her loveliness,
But a scarf of gauze so light and thin
You might see beneath the dazzling skin,
And watch the purple streamlets go
Through the valleys of white and stainless snow,
Or here and there a wayward tress,
Which wandered out with vast assurance
From the pearls that kept the rest in durance,
And fluttered about, as if ’twould try
To lure a zephyr from the sky.

“Bertha!” large drops of anguish came
On Rudolph’s brow, as he breathed that name—
“Oh, fair and false one, wake, and fear!
I, the betrayed, the scorned, am here.”
The eye moved not from its dull eclipse,
The voice came not from the fast-shut lips;
No matter! well that gazer knew
The tone of bliss, and the eyes of blue,

Sir Rudolph hid his burning face
With both his hands, for a minute’s space,
And all his frame, in awful fashion,
Was shaken by some sudden passion.
What guilty fancies o’er him ran?
Oh! pity will be slow to guess them;
And never, save to the holy man,
Did good Sir Rudolph e’er confess them.
But soon his spirit you might deem
Came forth from the shade of the fearful dream;
His cheek, though pale, was calm again,
And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain:

“Not mine! not mine! now Mary, mother,
Aid me the sinful hope to smother!
Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long,
Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong;
But pure the heart of a knight should be—
Sleep on, sleep on! thou art safe for me:
Yet shalt thou know by a certain sign
Whose lips have been so near to thine,
Whose eyes have looked upon thy sleep,
And turned away, and longed to weep,
Whose heart—mourn—madden as it will—
Has spared thee, and adored thee still!”

His purple mantle, rich and wide,
From his neck the trembling youth untied,
And flung it o’er those dangerous charms,
The swelling neck, and the rounded arms.
Once more he looked, once more he sighed;
And away, away from the perilous tent,
Swift as the rush of an eagle’s wing,
Or the flight of a shaft from Tartar string,
Into the wood Sir Rudolph went:
Not with more joy the schoolboys run
To the gay green fields, when their task is done;—
Not with more haste the members fly,
When Hume has caught the Speaker’s eye.

At last the daylight came; and then
A score or two of serving men,
Supposing that some sad disaster
Had happened to their lord and master,
Went out into the wood, and found him
Unhorsed, and with no mantle round him.
Ere he could tell his tale romantic,
The leech pronounced him clearly frantic,
So ordered him at once to bed,
And clapped a blister on his head.

Within the sound of the Castle clock
There stands a huge and rugged rock;
And I have heard the peasants say,
That the grieving groom at noon that day
Found gallant Roland cold and stiff,
At the base of the black and beetling cliff.

Beside the rock there is an oak,
Tall, blasted by the thunder-stroke;
And I have heard the peasants say,
That there Sir Rudolph’s mantle lay,
And coiled in many a deadly wreath,
A venomous serpent slept beneath.

THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE.

“Deep is the bliss of the belted Knight,
When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And goes, in his glittering armour dight,
To shiver a lance for his lady-love!

Lightly he couches the beaming spear;
His mistress sits with her maidens by,
Watching the speed of his swift career,
With a whispered prayer, and a murmured sigh.

Far from me is the gazing throng,
The blazoned shield, and the nodding plume;
Nothing is mine but a worthless song,
A joyless life, and a nameless tomb.”

“Nay, dearest Wilfred, lay like this,
On such an eve, is much amiss;
Our mirth beneath the new May moon
Should echoed be by livelier tune.
What need to thee of mail and crest,
Or foot in stirrup, spear in rest?
Over far mountains and deep seas,
Earth hath no fairer fields than these;
And who, in Beauty’s gaudiest bowers,
Can love thee with more love than ours?”

The Minstrel turned with a moody look
From that sweet scene of guiltless glee;
From the old who talked beside the brook,
And the young who danced beneath the tree.
Coldly he shrank from the gentle maid,
From the chiding look and the pleading tone;
And he passed from the old elm’s hoary shade,
And followed the forest path alone.
One little sigh, one pettish glance,—
And the girl comes back to her playmates now,
And takes her place in the merry dance,
With a slower step and a sadder brow.

“My soul is sick,” saith the wayward boy,
“Of the peasant’s grief, and the peasant’s joy.
I cannot breathe on from day to day,
Like the insects, which our wise men say
In the crevice of the cold rock dwell,
Till their shape is the shape of their dungeon cell;
In the dull repose of our changeless life,
I long for passion, I long for strife,
As in the calm the mariner sighs
For rushing waves and groaning skies.
Oh for the lists, the lists of fame!
Oh for the herald’s glad acclaim!
For floating pennon, and prancing steed,
And Beauty’s wonder at Manhood’s deed!”

Beneath an ancient oak he lay;
More years than man can count, they say,
On the verge of the dun and solemn wood,
Through sunshine and storm that oak had stood.
Many a loving, laughing sprite,
Tended the branches by day and by night,
And the leaves of its age were as fresh and as green
As the leaves of its early youth had been.
Pure of thought should the mortal be
Who sleeps beneath the Haunted Tree.
That night the Minstrel laid him down
Ere his brow relaxed its sullen frown;
And slumber had bound his eyelids fast,
Ere the evil wish from his soul had passed.

A song on the sleeper’s ear descended,
A song it was pain to hear, and pleasure,
So strangely wrath and love were blended
In every note of the mystic measure.

“I know thee, child of earth;
The morning of thy birth,
In through the lattice did my chariot glide;
I saw thy father weep
O’er thy first wild sleep,
I rocked thy cradle when thy mother died.

And I have seen thee gaze
Upon these birks and braes,
Which are my kingdoms, with irreverent scorn;
And heard thee pour reproof
Upon the vine-clad roof,
Beneath whose peaceful shelter thou wert born.

I bind thee in the snare
Of thine unholy prayer;
I seal thy forehead with a viewless seal:
I give into thine hand
The buckler and the brand,
And clasp the golden spur upon thy heel.
When thou hast made thee wise
In the sad lore of sighs,
When the world’s visions fail thee and forsake
Return, return to me—
And to my haunted tree;—
The charm hath bound thee now: Sir Knight, awake!”

Sir Isumbras, in doubt and dread,
From his feverish sleep awoke,
And started up from his grassy bed
Under the ancient oak.
And he called the page who held his spear,
And, “Tell me, boy,” quoth he,
“How long have I been slumbering here,
Beneath the greenwood tree?”—

“Ere thou didst sleep, I chanced to throw
A stone into the rill;
And the ripple that disturbed its flow
Is on its surface still.
Ere thou didst sleep, thou bad’st me sing
King Arthur’s favourite lay;
And the first echo of the string
Has hardly died away.”

“How strange is sleep!” the young Knight said,
As he clasped the helm upon his head,
And, mounting again his courser black,
To his gloomy tower rode slowly back:
“How strange is sleep! when his dark spell lies
On the drowsy lids of human eyes,
The years of a life will float along
In the compass of a page’s song.
Methought I lived in a pleasant vale,
The haunt of the lark and the nightingale,
Where the summer rose had a brighter hue,
And the noon-day sky a clearer blue,
And the spirit of man in age and youth
A fonder love, and a firmer truth.
And I lived on, a fair-haired boy,
In that sweet vale of tranquil joy;
Until at last my vain caprice
Grew weary of its bliss and peace.

And one there was, most dear and fair
Of all that smiled around me there,
A gentle maid, with a cloudless face,
And a form so full of fairy grace,
Who, when I turned with scornful spleen,
From feast in bower, or dance on green,
Would humour all my wayward will,
And love me, and forgive me still.
Even now, methinks, her smile of light
Is there before me, mild and bright;
And I hear her voice of fond reproof
Between the beats of my palfrey’s hoof.
’Tis idle all: but I could weep;—
Alas!” said the Knight, “how strange is sleep!”

He struck with his spear the brazen plate
That gleamed before the castle gate;
The torch threw high its waves of flame,
As forth the watchful menials came;
They lighted the way to the banquet-hall;
They hung the shield upon the wall;
They spread the board, and they filled the bowl,
And the phantoms passed from his troubled soul.

Sir Isumbras was ever found
Where blows were struck for glory;
There sate not at the Table Round
A Knight more famed in story.
The King on his throne would turn about
To see his courser prancing;
And when Sir Launcelot was out,
The Queen would praise his dancing.

He quite wore out his father’s spurs,
Performing valour’s duties;
Destroying mighty sorcerers,
Avenging injured beauties,
And crossing many a trackless sand,
And rescuing people’s daughters
From dragons that infest the land,
And whales that walk the waters.
He throttled lions by the score,
And giants by the dozen;
And, for his skill in lettered lore,
They called him “Merlin’s Cousin.”

A score of steeds, with bit and rein,
Stood ready in his stable;
An ox was every morning slain,
And roasted for his table:
And he had friends, all brave and tall,
And crowned with praise and laurel,
Who kindly feasted in his hall,
And tilted in his quarrel;
And minstrels came and sang his fame
In very rugged verses;
And they were paid with wine, and game,
And rings, and cups, and purses.

And he loved a lady of high degree,
Faith’s fortress, Beauty’s flower;
A countess for her maid had she,
And a kingdom for her dower;
And a brow whose frowns were vastly grand,
And an eye of sunlit brightness;
And a swan-like neck, and an arm and hand
Of most bewitching whiteness;
And a voice of music, whose sweet tones
Could most divinely prattle
Of battered casques, and broken bones,
And all the bliss of battle.
He wore her scarf in many a fray,
He trained her hawks and ponies,
And filled her kitchen every day
With leverets and conies;
He loved, and he was loved again:—
I won’t waste time in proving,
There is no pleasure like the pain
Of being loved, and loving.

Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind, and often tipsy;
Sometimes for years and years together,
She’ll bless you with the sunniest weather,
Bestowing honour, pudding, pence,
You can’t imagine why or whence;—
Then in a moment—Presto, pass!—
Your joys are withered like the grass;
You find your constitution vanish,
Almost as quickly as the Spanish;
The murrain spoils your flocks and fleeces;
The dry-rot pulls your house to pieces;
Your garden raises only weeds;
Your agent steals your title-deeds;
Your banker’s failure stuns the city;
Your father’s will makes Sugden witty;
Your daughter, in her beauty’s bloom,
Goes off to Gretna with the groom;
And you, good man, are left alone,
To battle with the gout and stone.

Ere long, Sir Isumbras began
To be a sad and thoughtful man:
They said the glance of an evil eye
Had been on the Knight’s prosperity:
Less swift on the quarry his falcon went,
Less true was his hound on the wild deer’s scent,
And thrice in the lists he came to the earth
By the luckless chance of a broken girth.
And Poverty soon in her rags was seen
At the board where Plenty erst had been;
And the guests smiled not as they smiled before,
And the song of the minstrel was heard no more;
And a base ingrate, who was his foe,
Because, a little month ago,
He had cut him down, with friendly ardour,
From a rusty hook in an ogre’s larder,
Invented an atrocious fable,
And libelled his fame at the royal table:
And she at last, the worshipped one,
For whom his valorous deeds were done,
Who had heard his vows, and worn his jewels,
And made him fight so many duels—
She too, when Fate’s relentless wheel
Deprived him of the Privy Seal,
Bestowed her smiles upon another,
And gave his letters to her mother.

Fortune and fame—he had seen them depart,
With the silent pride of a valiant heart:
Traitorous friends—he had passed them by,
With a haughty brow and a stifled sigh.
Boundless and black might roll the sea,
O’er which the course of his bark must be;
But he saw, through the storms that frowned above,
One guiding light, and the light was Love.
Now all was dark; the doom was spoken!
His wealth all spent, and his heart half broken;
Poor youth! he had no earthly hope,
Except in laudanum, or a rope.

He ordered out his horse, and tried,
As the leech advised, a gentle ride;
A pleasant path he took,
Where the turf, all bright with the April showers,
Was spangled with a hundred flowers,
Beside a murmuring brook.
Never before had he roved that way;
And now, on a sunny first of May,
He chose the turning, you may guess,
Not for the laughing loveliness
Of turf, or flower, or stream; but only
Because it looked extremely lonely.

He had wandered, musing, scarce a mile,
In his melancholy mood,
When, peeping over a rustic stile,
He saw a little village smile,
Embowered in thick wood.
There were small cottages, arrayed
In the delicate jasmine’s fragrant shade;
And gardens, whence the rose’s bloom
Loaded the gale with rich perfume;
And there were happy hearts; for all
In that bright nook kept festival,
And welcomed in the merry May
With banquet and with roundelay.
Sir Isumbras sate gazing there,
With folded arms and mournful air;
He fancied—’twas an idle whim—
That the village looked like a home to him.

And now a gentle maiden came,
Leaving her sisters and their game,
And wandered up the vale;
Sir Isumbras had never seen
A thing so fair except the Queen;—
But out on Passion’s doubts and fears!
Her beautiful eyes were full of tears;
Her cheeks were wan and pale.
None courted her stay of the joyous throng,
As she passed from the group alone;
And he listened,—which was very wrong,—
And heard her singing a lively song
In a very dismal tone:

“Deep is the bliss of the belted Knight,
When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And goes in his glittering armour dight,
To shiver a lance for his lady-love!”

That thrilling voice, so soft and clear,
Was it familiar to his ear?
And those delicious drooping eyes,
As blue and as pure as the summer skies;
Had he, indeed, in other days,
Been blessed in the light of their holy rays?

He knew not; but his knee he bent
Before her in most knightly fashion,
And grew superbly eloquent
About her beauty, and his passion.
He said that she was very fair,
And that she warbled like a linnet,
And that he loved her, though he ne’er
Had looked upon her till that minute;
He grieved to mention that a Jew
Had seized for debt his grand pavilion,
And he had little now, ’twas true,
To offer, but a heart and pillion.

But what of that? In many a fight,—
Though he who shouldn’t say it, said it,—
He still had borne him like a knight,
And had his share of blows and credit;
And if she would but condescend
To meet him at the priest’s to-morrow,
And be henceforth his guide, his friend,
In every toil, in every sorrow,
They’d sail instanter from the Downs;
His hands just now were quite at leisure;
And if she fancied foreign crowns,
He’d win them,—with the greatest pleasure.

“A year is gone,” the damsel sigh’d,
But blushed not, as she so replied,—
“Since one I loved,—alas, how well
He knew not, knows not,—left our dell.
Time brings to his deserted cot
No tidings of his after lot;
But his weal or woe is still the theme
Of my daily thought, and my nightly dream.
Poor Alice is not proud or coy;
But her heart is with her minstrel boy.”

Away from his arms the damsel bounded,
And left him more and more confounded.
He mused of the present, he mused of the past,
And he felt that a spell was o’er him cast;
He shed hot tears, he knew not why,
And talked to himself and made reply;
Till a calm o’er his troubled senses crept,
And, as the daylight waned, he slept.
Poor gentleman!—I need not say
Beneath an ancient oak he lay.

“He is welcome,”—o’er his bed
Thus the bounteous Fairy said:

“He has conned the lesson now;
He has read the book of pain:
There are furrows on his brow,
I must make it smooth again.

Lo, I knock the spurs away;
Lo, I loosen belt and brand;
Hark, I hear the courser neigh
For his stall in Fairy-land.

Bring the cap, and bring the vest;
Buckle on his sandal shoon;
Fetch his memory from the chest
In the treasury of the moon.

I have taught him to be wise,
For a little maiden’s sake;—
Lo, he opens his bright eyes,
Softly, slowly:—Minstrel, wake!”

The sun has risen, and Wilfred is come
To his early friends, and his cottage home.
His hazel eyes and his locks of gold
Are just as they were in the time of old;
But a blessing has been on the soul within,
For that is won from its secret sin,
More loving now, and worthier love
Of men below, and of saints above.
He reins a steed with a lordly air,
Which makes his country cousins stare;
And he speaks in a strange and courtly phrase,
Though his voice is the voice of other days:
But where he has learned to talk and ride,
He will tell to none but his bonny Bride.

THE BRIDAL OF BELMONT.
A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine,
Many a ruin, wan and grey,
O’erlooks the corn-field and the vine,
Majestic in its dark decay.
Among their dim clouds, long ago,
They mocked the battles that raged below,
And greeted the guests in arms that came,
With hissing arrow and scalding flame.
But there is not one of the homes of pride
That frown on the breast of the peaceful tide,
Whose leafy walls more proudly tower
Than these, the walls of Belmont Tower.

Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine,
Many a fierce and fiery lord
Did carve the meat, and pour the wine,
For all that revelled at his board.
Father and son, they were all alike,
Firm to endure, and fast to strike;
Little they loved but a frou or a feast,
Nothing they feared but a prayer or a priest.
But there was not one in all the land
More trusty of heart, more stout of hand;
More valiant in field, or more courteous in bower,
Than Otto, the Lord of Belmont Tower.

Are you rich, single, and “your Grace?”
I pity your unhappy case.
Before you leave your travelling carriage,
The women have arranged your marriage;
Where’er your weary wit may lead you,
They pet you, praise you, fret you, feed you;
Consult your taste in wreaths and laces,
And make you make their book at races:
Your little pony, Tam O’Shanter,
Is found to have the sweetest canter;
Your curricle is quite reviving,
And Jane’s so bold when you are driving!

Some recollect your father’s habits,
And know the warren, and the rabbits!
The place is really princely—only
They’re sure you’ll find it vastly lonely:
You go to Cheltenham for the waters,
And meet the Countess and her daughters;
You take a cottage at Geneva—
Lo! Lady Anne and Lady Eva.
In horror of another session,
You just surrender at discretion,
And live to curse the frauds of mothers,
And envy all your younger brothers.

Count Otto bowed, Count Otto smiled,
When my Lady praised her darling child;
Count Otto smiled, Count Otto bowed,
When the child those praises disavowed;
As a knight should gaze, Count Otto gazed,
Where Bertha in all her beauty blazed;
As a knight should hear, Count Otto heard,
When Liba sang like a forest bird;
But he thought, I trow, about as long
Of Bertha’s beauty and Liba’s song,
As the sun may think of the clouds that play
O’er his radiant path on a summer day.
Many a maid had dreams of state,
As the Count rode up to her father’s gate;
Many a maid shed tears of pain,
As the Count rode back to his tower again;
But little he cared, as it should seem,
For the sad, sad tear, or the fond, fond dream;
Alone he lived—alone and free
As the owl that dwells in the hollow tree;
And the Baroness said and the Baron swore,
That never was knight so shy before.

It was almost the first of May:
The sun, all smiles, had passed away;
The moon was beautifully bright;
Earth, heaven, as usual in such cases,
Looked up and down with happy faces;—
In short it was a charming night.

And all alone, at twelve o’clock,
The young Count clambered down the rock,
Unfurled the sail, unchained the oar,
And pushed the shallop from the shore.
The holiness that sweet time flings
Upon all human thoughts and things,
When Sorrow checks her idle sighs,
And Care shuts fast her wearied eyes,—
The splendour of the hues that played
Fantastical o’er hill and glade,
As verdant slopes and barren cliff
Seemed darting by the tiny skiff,—
The flowers, whose faint tips, here and there,
Breathed out such fragrance, you might swear
That every soundless gale that fanned
The tide came fresh from fairy-land,—
The music of the mountain rill,
Leaping in glee from hill to hill,
To which some wild bird, now and then,
Made answer from her darksome glen,—
All this to him had rarer pleasure
Than jester’s wit or minstrel’s measure;
And, if you ever loved romancing,
Or felt extremely tired of dancing,
You’ll hardly wonder that Count Otto
Left Lady Hildegonde’s ridotto.

What melody glides o’er the starlit stream?
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Angels of grace! does the young Count dream?
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Or is the scene indeed so fair
That a nymph of the sea or a nymph of the air
Has left the home of her own delight,
To sing to our roses and rocks to-night?
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Words there are none; but the waves prolong
The notes of that mysterious song:
He listens, he listens; and all around
Ripples the echo of that sweet sound,
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
No form appears on the river side;
No boat is borne on the wandering tide;
And the tones ring on, with nought to show
Or whence they come or whither they go;
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
As fades one murmur on the ear,
There comes another, just as clear;
And the present is like to the parted strain,
As link to link of a golden chain:
“Lurley!—Lurley!”
Whether the voice be sad or gay,
’Twere very hard for the Count to say;
But pale are his cheeks, and pained his brow,
And the boat drifts on, he recks not how;
His pulse is quick, and his heart is wild,
And he weeps, he weeps, like a little child.

O mighty music! they who know
The witchery of thy wondrous bow,
Forget, when thy strange spells have bound them,
The visible world that lies around them.
When Lady Mary sings Rossini,
Or stares at spectral Paganini,
To Lady Mary does it matter
Who laugh, who love, who fawn, who flatter?
Oh no! she cannot heed or hear
Reason or rhyme from prince or peer:
In vain for her Sir Charles denounces
The horror of the last new flounces;
In vain the Doctor does his duty
By doubting of her rival’s beauty;
And if my Lord as usual raves
About the sugar or the slaves;
Predicts the nation’s future glories,
And chants the requiem of the Tories,
Good man,—she minds him just as much
As Marshal Gerard minds the Dutch.

Hid was the bright heaven’s loveliness
Beneath a sudden cloud,
As a bride might doff her bridal dress
To don her funeral shroud;
And over flood and over fell,
With a wild and wicked shout,
From the secret cell where in chains they dwell,
The joyous winds rushed out;
And, the tall hills through, the thunder flew,
And down the fierce hail came;
And from peak to peak the lightning threw
Its shafts of liquid flame.
The boat went down; without delay,
The luckless boatman swooned away;
And when, as a clear spring morning rose,
He woke in wonder from repose,
The river was calm as the river could be,
And the thrush was awake on the gladsome tree,
And there he lay, in a sunny cave,
On the margin of the tranquil wave,
Half deaf with that infernal din,
And wet, poor fellow, to the skin.

He looked to the left, and he looked to the right:
Why hastened he not, the noble Knight,
To dry his aged nurse’s tears,
To calm his hoary butler’s fears,
To listen to the prudent speeches
Of half-a-dozen loquacious leeches,
To swallow cordials circumspectly,
And change his dripping cloak directly?
With foot out-stretched, with hand up-raised,
In vast surprise he gazed and gazed.
Within a deep and damp recess
A maiden lay in her loveliness.
Lived she?—in sooth, ’twere hard to tell,
Sleep counterfeited Death so well.
A shelf of the rock was all her bed;
A ceiling of crystal was o’er her head;
Silken veil, nor satin vest,
Shrouded her form in its silent rest;
Only her long, long golden hair
About her lay like a thin robe there.
Up to her couch the young knight crept:
How very sound the maiden slept!
Fearful and faint the young knight sighed:
The echoes of the cave replied.
He leaned to look upon her face;
He clasped her hand in a wild embrace;
Never was form of such fine mould;
But the hands and the face were as white and cold
As they of the Parian stone were made
To which, in great Minerva’s shade,
The Athenian sculptor’s toilsome knife
Gave all of loveliness but life.
On her fair neck there seemed no stain
Where the pure blood coursed through the delicate vein;
And her breath, if breath indeed it were,
Flowed in a current so soft and rare,
It would scarcely have stirred the young moth’s wing
On the path of his noonday wandering—Never
on earth a creature trod
Half so lovely, or half so odd.

Count Otto stares till his eyelids ache,
And wonders when she’ll please to wake;
While fancy whispers strange suggestions,
And wonder prompts a score of questions.
Is she a nymph of another sphere?
How came she hither? What doth she here?
Or if the morning of her birth
Be registered on this our earth,
Why hath she fled from her father’s halls?
And where hath she left her cloaks and shawls?
There was no time for reason’s lectures,
There was no time for wit’s conjectures;
He threw his arm with timid haste
Around the maiden’s slender waist,
And raised her up, in a modest way,
From the cold bare rock on which she lay:
He was but a mile from his castle gate,
And the lady was scarcely five stone weight;
He stopped in less than half-an-hour,
With his beauteous burden, at Belmont Tower.

Gay, I ween, was the chamber drest,
As the Count gave order for his guest;
But scarcely on the couch, ’tis said,
That gentle guest was fairly laid,
When she opened at once her great blue eyes,
And, after a glance of brief surprise,
Ere she had spoken, and ere she had heard
Of wisdom or wit a single word,
She laughed so long, and laughed so loud,
That Dame Ulrica often vowed
A dirge is a merrier thing by half
Than such a senseless, soulless laugh.
Around the tower the elfin crew
Seemed shouting in mirthful concert too;
And echoed roof, and trembled rafter,
With that unsentimental laughter.
As soon as that droll tumult passed
The maiden’s tongue, unchained at last,
Asserted all its female right.
And talked and talked with all its might.
Oh, how her low and liquid voice
Made the rapt hearer’s soul rejoice!
’Twas full of those clear tones that start
From innocent childhood’s happy heart,
Ere passion and sin disturb the well
In which their mirth and music dwell.
But man nor master could make out
What the eloquent maiden talked about;
The things she uttered like did seem
To the bubbling waves of a limpid stream;
For the words of her speech, if words they might be,
Were the words of the speech of a far countrie;
And when she had said them o’er and o’er,
Count Otto understood no more
Than you or I of the slang that falls
From the dukes and dupes at Tattersall’s,
Of Hebrew from a bearded Jew,
Of metaphysics from a Blue.

Count Otto swore,—Count Otto’s reading
Might well have taught his better breeding,—
That, whether the maiden should fume or fret,
The maiden should not leave him yet;
And so he took prodigious pains
To make her happy in her chains.
From Paris came a pair of cooks,
From Göttingen a load of books,
From Venice stores of gorgeous suits,
From Florence minstrels and their lutes:
The youth himself had special pride
In breaking horses for his bride;
And his old tutor, Dr. Hermann,
Was brought from Bonn to teach her German.

And there in her beauty and her grace
The wayward maiden grew;
And every day of her form and face
Some charm seemed fresh and new.
Over her cold and colourless cheek
The blush of the rose was shed,
And her quickened pulse began to speak
Of human hope and dread;
And soon she grasped the learned lore
The grey old pedant taught,
And turned from the volume to explore
The hidden mine of thought.
Alas! her bliss was not the same
As it was in other years,
For with new knowledge sorrow came,
And with new passion tears.
Oft, till the Count came up from wine,
She would sit by the lattice high,
And watch the windings of the Rhine
With a very wistful eye;
And oft on some rude cliff she stood,
Her light harp in her hand,
And still, as she looked on the gurgling flood,
She sang of her native land.

And when Count Otto pleaded well
For priest, and ring, and vow,
She heard the knight that fond tale tell,
With a pale and pensive brow:
“Henceforth my spirit may not sleep,
As ever till now it has slept;
Henceforth mine eyes have learned to weep,
As never till now they wept.
Twelve months, dear Otto, let me grieve
For my own, my childhood’s home,
Where the sun at noon, or the frost at eve,
Did never dare to come;
And when the spring its smiles recalls,
Thy maiden will resign
The holy hush of her father’s halls
For the stormy joys of thine.”
But where that father’s halls?—vain, vain;
She threw her sad eyes down;
And if you dared to ask again,
She answered with a frown.
Some people have a knack, we know
Of saying things mal à propos,
And making all the world reflect
On what it hates to recollect.
They talk to misers of their heir,
To women of the times that were,
To ruined gamblers of the box,
To thin defaulters of the stocks,
To cowards of their neighbours’ duels;
To Hayne of Lady H.’s jewels,
To poets of the wrong Review,
And to the French of Waterloo.
The Count was not of these; he never
Was half so clumsy, half so clever;
And when he found the girl had rather
Say nothing more about her father,
He changed the subject—told a fable—
Believed that dinner was on table—
Or whispered, with an air of sorrow,
That it would surely rain to-morrow.

The winter storms went darkly by,
And, from a blue and cloudless sky,
Again the sun looked cheerfully
Upon the rolling Rhine;
And spring brought back to the budding flowers
Its genial light and freshening showers,
And music to the shady bowers,
And verdure to the vine.
And now it is the first of May;
For twenty miles round all is gay:
Cottage and Castle keep holiday;
For how should sorrow lower
On brow of rustic or of knight,
When heaven itself looks all so bright,
Where Otto’s wedding feast is dight
In the hall of Belmont Tower?

Stately matron and warrior tall
Come to the joyous festival;
Good Count Otto welcomes all,
As through the gate they throng;
He fills to the brim the wassail cup:
In the bright wine pleasure sparkles up,
And draughts and tales grow long;
But grizzly knights are still and mute,
And dames set down the untasted fruit,
When the bride takes up her golden lute,
And sings her solemn song.

“A voice ye hear not, in mine ear is crying:—
What does the sad voice say?
‘Dost thou not heed thy weary father’s sighing?
Return, return to-day!
Twelve moons have faded now:
My daughter, where art thou?’

Peace! in the silent evening we will meet thee,
Grey ruler of the tide!
Must not the lover with the loved one greet thee,
The bridegroom with his bride?
Deck the dim couch aright,
The Bridal couch, to-night.”

The nurses to the children say
That, as the maiden sang that day,
The Rhine to the heights of the beetling tower
Sent up a cry of fiercer power,
And again the maiden’s cheek was grown
As white as ever was marble stone,
And the bridesmaid her hand could hardly hold,
Its fingers were so icy cold.

Rose Count Otto from the feast,
As entered the hall the hoary Priest.
A stalwart warrior, well I ween,
That hoary Priest in his youth had been,
But the might of his manhood he had given
To peace and prayer, the Church and Heaven.
For he had travelled o’er land and wave;
He had kneeled on many a martyr’s grave;
He had prayed in the meek St. Jerome’s cell,
And had tasted St. Anthony’s blessed well;
And reliques round his neck had he,
Each worth a haughty kingdom’s fee;
Scrapings of bones, and points of spears,
And vials of authentic tears,
From a prophet’s coffin a hallowed nail,
And a precious shred of our Lady’s veil.
And therefore at his awful tread
The powers of darkness shrank with dread;
And Satan felt that no disguise
Could hide him from those chastened eyes.
He looked on the bridegroom, he looked on the bride,
The young Count smiled, but the old Priest sighed.

“Fields with the father I have won;
I am come in my cowl to bless the son.
Count Otto, ere thou bend the knee,
What shall the hire of my service be?”

“Greedy hawk must gorge his prey;
Pious priest must grasp his pay.
Name the guerdon, and so to the task;
Thine it is, ere thy lips can ask!”

He frowned as he answered—“Gold and gem,
Count Otto, little I reck of them;
But your bride has skill of the lute, they say;
Let her sing me the song I shall name to-day.”

Loud laughed the Count: “And if she refuse
The ditty, Sir Priest, thy whim shall choose,
Row back to the house of old St. Goar:
I never bid priest to a bridal more.”

Beside the maiden he took his stand;
He gave the lute to her trembling hand;
She gazed around with a troubled eye;
The guests all shuddered, and knew not why;
It seemed to them as if a gloom
Had shrouded all the banquet-room,
Though over its boards and over its beams
Sunlight was glowing in merry streams.

The stern Priest throws an angry glance
On that pale creature’s countenance;
Unconsciously her white hand flings
Its soft touch o’er the answering strings;
The good man starts with a sudden thrill,
And half relents from his purposed will;
But he signs the cross on his aching brow,
And arms his soul for its warfare now.

“Mortal maid, or goblin fairy,
Sing me, I pray thee, an Ave Mary!”

Suddenly the maiden bent
O’er the gorgeous instrument;
But of song the listeners heard
Only one wild mournful word—
“Lurley,—Lurley!”
And when the sound in the liquid air
Of that brief hymn had faded,
Nothing was left of the nymph who there
For a year had masqueraded,
But the harp in the midst of the wide hall set
Where her last strange word was spoken;—
The golden frame with tears was wet,
And all the strings were broken.

---

POEMS, Etc.

CHIVALRY AT A DISCOUNT.

“Des traditions étrangeres,
En parlant sans obscurité
Mais dans ces sources mensongères,
Necherchons point la vérité.”—Gresset.

“Nous avons changé tout cela.”—Moliere.

Lily, I’ve made a sketch, to show
How all the world will alter
The tournament in Ivanhoe,
As painted by Sir Walter;
Those jousting days have all gone by,
And heaven be praised they’re over!
“When brains were out, the man would die,”
A swain may now recover!

Yet, Lily! Love has still his darts,
And Beauty still her glances;
Her trophies now are wounded hearts,
Instead of broken lances!
Soft tales are told, though not with flowers,
But in a simple letter,
And on the whole, this world of ours
Is altered for the better!

Your stalwart chiefs, and men of might,
Though fine poetic sketches,
Contrasted with a modern knight,
Were sad, unpolished wretches;
They learned, indeed, to poise a dart,
Or breathe a bold defiance,
But “reading” was a mystic art,
And “writing” quite a science!

Our heroes still wear spur on heel,
And falchion, cap, and feather;
But for your surcoats made of steel,
And doublets made of leather,—
Good heavens! just fancy, at a ball,
How very incommodious!
And then, they never shaved at all—
’Twas positively odious!

A warrior wasted half his life
In wild crusades to Mecca,
In previous penance for a wife,
Like Jacob for Rebecca!
Or captive, held some twenty years
At Tunis or Aleppo,
Came back, perchance, without his ears,
A yellow fright, like Beppo!

Then heads were made to carry weight,
And not to carry knowledge;
Boys were not “brought up for the state,”
Girls were not sent to college;
Now (oh! how this round world improves!)
We’ve “Essays” by mechanics,
“Courses” of wisdom with removes,
And ladies’ calisthenics!

In the olden time, when youth had fled,
A lady’s life was over;
For might she not as well be dead
As live without a lover?
But now, no foolish date we fix,
So brisk our Hymen’s trade is,
Ladies are now at fifty-six
But “elderly young ladies.”

And husbands now, with bolts and springs,
Ne’er cage and frighten Cupid,
They know that if they clip his wings,
They only make him stupid;
Their married ladies had no lutes
To sigh beneath their windows,
They treated them, those ancient brutes,
As cruelly as Hindoos!

They moped away their lives, poor souls!
By no soft vision brightened,
Perched up in castle pigeon-holes,
Expecting to be frightened!
Or hauled away through field, or fray,
To dungeon, or to tower;
They ne’er were neat for half a day,
Or safe for half an hour.

’Twas easy too, by fraud or force,
A wife’s complaints to stifle;
To starve her was a thing of course,—
To poison her a trifle!
Their wrongs remain no longer dumb,
For now the laws protect them;
And canes “no thicker than one’s thumb”
Are suffered to correct them.

Then dwell not, Lily! on an age
Of Fancy’s wild creation,
Our own presents a fairer page
For Beauty’s meditation;
Though you share no Bois Guilbert’s bed,
No Front de Bœuf’s vagaries,
You may be comfortably wed
Some morning at St. Mary’s!

THE CONJURER.
“Marry come up! I can see as far into a wall as another!”

If you’ll tell me the reason why Lucy de Vere
Thinks no more of her silks, or her satins;
If you’ll tell me the reason why, cloudy or clear,
She goes both to vespers and matins:
Then I think I can tell why young Harry de Vaux,
Who once cared for naught but his wine, has
Been seen, like a saint, for a fortnight or so,
In a niche, at St. Thomas Aquinas!

If you’ll tell me the reason Sir Rowland will ride
As though he’d a witch on his crupper,
Whenever he hopes to join Rosalie’s side,
Or is going to meet her at supper;
Then I think I can tell how it is that his groom,
With a horse that is better and faster,
Though the coaches make way, and the people make room,
Can never keep up with his master!

If you’ll tell me the reason why Isabel’s eyes
Sparkle brighter than Isabel’s rubies;
If you’ll tell me the reason why Isabel’s sighs
Turn sensible men into boobies:
Then I think I can tell,—when she promised last night
To waltz, and my eye turned to thank hers,—
Why it was that my heart felt so wondrously light,
Though I hadn’t a sou at my bankers!

If you’ll tell me the reason a maiden must sigh
When she looks at a star or a planet;
If you’ll tell me the reason she flings her book by,
When you know she has hardly began it;
If her cheek has grown pale, and if dim is her eye,
And her breathing both fevered and faint is,
Then think it exceedingly likely that I
Can tell what that maiden’s complaint is!

COUSINS.
“L’Hymen, dit-on, craint les petits Cousins.”—Scribe.

Had you ever a Cousin, Tom?
Did your Cousin happen to sing?
Sisters we’ve all by the dozen, Tom,
But a Cousin’s a different thing:
And you’d find, if you ever had kissed her, Tom,
(But let this be a secret between us,)
That your lips would have been a blister, Tom,
For they’re not of the Sister genus.

There is something, Tom, in a Sister’s lip,
When you give her a good-night kiss,
That savours so much of relationship
That nothing occurs amiss;
But a Cousin’s lip if you once unite
With yours, in the quietest way,
Instead of sleeping a week that night,
You’ll be dreaming the following day.

And people think it no harm, Tom,
With a Cousin to hear you talk;
And no one feels any alarm, Tom,
At a quiet, cousinly walk;—
But, Tom, you’ll soon find what I happen to know,
That such walks often grow into straying,
And the voices of Cousins are sometimes so low,
Heaven only knows what you’ll be saying!

And then there happen so often, Tom,
Soft pressures of hands and fingers,
And looks that were moulded to soften, Tom,
And tones on which memory lingers;
That long ere the walk is half over, those strings
Of your heart are all put in play,
By the voice of those fair, demi-sisterly things,
In not quite the most brotherly way.

And the song of a Sister may bring to you, Tom,
Such tones as the angels woo,
But I fear if your Cousin should sing to you, Tom,
You’ll take her for an angel, too;
For so curious a note is that note of theirs,
That you’ll fancy the voice that gave it
Has been all the while singing the National Airs,
Instead of the Psalms of David.

I once had a Cousin who sung, Tom,
And her name may be nameless now,
But the sound of those songs is still young, Tom,
Though we are no longer so:
’Tis folly to dream of a bower of green
When there is not a leaf on the tree;—
But ’twixt walking and singing, that Cousin has been,
God forgive her! the ruin of me.

And now I care nought for society, Tom,
And lead a most anchorite life,
For I’ve loved myself into sobriety, Tom,
And out of the wish for a wife;
But oh! if I said but half what I might say,
So sad were the lesson ’twould give,
That ’twould keep you from loving for many a day,
And from Cousins—as long as you live.

BAGATELLES!

I saw one day, near Paphos’ bowers,
In a glass—sweet Fancy’s own—
A boy lie down among the flowers
That circled Beauty’s throne.
Poor youth! it moved my pity quite,
He looked so very sad;—
Apollo said “his head was light,”
But Pallas called him “mad.”
A little sylphid, hiding near,
Flew out from some blue-bells,
And whispered in the pale youth’s ear,
“Pray, try our Bagatelles!

“You’ve pondered over those musty books
Till half your locks are grey;—
You’ve dimmed your eyes, you’ve spoiled your looks,
You’ve worn yourself away!
Leave Wisdom’s leaden page awhile,
And take your lute again,
And Beauty’s eyes shall round you smile,
And Love’s repay the strain:
Leave politics to dull M.P.’s,
Philosophy to cells,—
Good youth!—you’ll ne’er succeed in these—
So try our Bagatelles!

“We’ve cures in these enchanted bowers
For every sort of ill,—
Our only medicines are flowers,
Sweet flowers that never kill!
Our leeches, too, are wondrous wise
In mixing simples up,—
We’ve frozen dew-drops from the skies
For the fevered lover’s cup;
We’ve moonbeams gathered on the hills,
And star-drops in the dells;
And we never send you in our bills—
Pray, try our Bagatelles!

“And youths from every court and clime
Come here to seek advice,
And maids who have misspent their time
Are kept preserved—in ice!
Bright fountains in our gardens play,
And each has magic in it,—
We cure blue devils every day,
Blue stockings every minute:
And heartaches when they’re worst, and when
No other medicine tells,
In maids or matrons, youths or men,
Yield to our—Bagatelles!

“Last week a statesman came, whose eyes
Scarce knew what sweet repose is,
We gave one draught of Beauty’s sighs,—
Look there—how calm he dozes!
A lawyer called the week before,
Who talked of naught but Blackstone,
We took him to our sylphid store,
And a pair of wings we waxed on;
And if you’ll look in yonder grove,—
Just by that grot of shells,—
You’ll find him making shocking love,
And talking—Bagatelles!”

The sick youth raised his drooping head
As the sylphid ceased to speak,—
“Hush, hush,” she cried, “you must to bed,
And be quiet for a week!”
And soon a Muse, with rainbow wings,
And looks of laughing joy,
Came with a lute of silver strings;
And she sat beside the boy:
And when I saw them last they lay
Far up those flowery dells,
And the boy was growing glad and gay
As she sung him—Bagatelles!

THERE’S NOTHING NEW BENEATH THE SUN.
(The Brazen Head.)

The world pursues the very track
Which it pursued at its creation;
And mortals shrink in horror back
From any hint of innovation;
From year to year the children do
Exactly what their sires have done;
Time is! time was!—there’s nothing new,—
There’s nothing new beneath the sun!

Still lovers hope to be believed,
Still clients hope to win their causes;
Still plays and farces are received
With most encouraging applauses;
Still dancers have fantastic toes,
Still dandies shudder at a dun;
Still diners have their fricandeaus,—
There’s nothing new beneath the sun!

Still cooks torment the hapless eels,
Still boys torment the dumb cockchafers;
Lord Eldon still adores the seals,
Lord Clifford still adores the wafers;
Still asses have enormous ears,
Still gambling bets are lost and won;
Still opera dancers marry peers,—
There’s nothing new beneath the sun!

Still women are absurdly weak,
Still infants dote upon a rattle;
Still Mr. Martin cannot speak
Of anything but beaten cattle;
Still brokers swear the shares will rise,
Still Cockneys boast of Manton’s gun;
Still listeners swallow monstrous lies,—
There’s nothing new beneath the sun!

Still genius is a jest to earls,
Still honesty is down to zero;
Still heroines have spontaneous curls,
Still novels have a handsome hero;
Still Madame Vestris plays a man,
Still fools adore her, I for one;
Still youths write sonnets to a fan,—
There’s nothing new beneath the sun!

Still people make a plaguey fuss,
About all things that don’t concern them,
As if it matters aught to us,
What happens to our grandsons, burn them!
Still life is nothing to the dead,
Still Folly’s toil is Wisdom’s fun;
And still, except the Brazen Head,—
There’s nothing new beneath the sun!

PEACE BE THINE.

When Sorrow moves with silent tread
Around some mortal’s buried dust,
And muses on the mouldering dead
Who sleep beneath their crumbling bust,
Though all unheard and all unknown
The name on that sepulchral stone,
She looks on its recording line,
And whispers kindly, “Peace be thine!”

O Lady! me thou knowest not,
And what I am, or am to be;
The pain and pleasure of my lot
Are nought, and must be nought, to thee;
Thou seest not my hopes and fears;
Yet thou, perhaps, in other years,
Wilt look on this recording line,
And whisper kindly, “Peace be thine!”

THE CONFESSION OF DON CARLOS.[1]
(Imitated from the Spanish.)

O tell me not of broken vow—
I speak a firmer passion now;
O tell me not of shattered chain—
The link shall never burst again!
My soul is fixed as firmly here
As the red sun in his career,
As victory on Mina’s crest
Or tenderness in Rosa’s breast;
Then do not tell me, while we part,
Of fickle flame and roving heart;
While youth shall bow at beauty’s shrine,
That flame shall glow—that heart be thine.

Then wherefore dost thou bid me tell
The fate thy malice knows so well?
I may not disobey thee!—yes!
Thou bidst me—and I will confess:
See how adoringly I kneel:
Hear how my folly I reveal:
My folly!—chide me if thou wilt,
Thou shalt not, canst not, call it guilt:—
And when my faithlessness is told,
Ere thou hast time to play the scold,
I’ll haste the fond rebuke to check,
And lean upon the snowy neck,
Play with its glossy auburn hair,
And hide the blush of falsehood there.

Inez, the innocent and young,
First shared my heart, and waked my song;
We were both harmless, and untaught
To love as fashionables ought;
With all the modesty of youth
We talked of constancy and truth,
Grew fond of music and the moon,
And wandered on the nights of June
To sit beneath the chesnut tree,
While the lonely stars shone mellowly,
Shedding a pale and dancing beam
On the wave of Guadalquivir’s stream.
And aye we talked of faith and feelings,
With no distrustings, no concealings;
And aye we joyed in stolen glances,
And sighed, and blushed, and read romances.
Our love was ardent and sincere,
And lasted, Rosa—half a-year!
And then the maid grew fickle-hearted,—
Married Don Josè—so we parted.
At twenty-one I’ve often heard
My bashfulness was quite absurd;
For, with a squeamishness uncommon,
I feared to love a married woman.

Fair Leonora’s laughing eye
Again awaked my song and sigh:
A gay intriguing dame was she,
And fifty Dons of high degree,
That came and went as they were bid,
Dubbed her the Beauty of Madrid.
Alas! what constant pains I took
To merit one approving look!
I courted valour and the muse,
Wrote challenges and billets-doux;
Paid for sherbet and serenade,
Fenced with Pegru and Alvarade;
Fought all the bull-fights like a hero,
Studied small talk and the Bolero:
Played the guitar—and played the fool,
That out of tune—this out of rule.
I oft at midnight wandered out,
Wrapt up in love and my capoté,
To muse on beauty and the skies,
Cold winds—and Leonora’s eyes.

Alas! when all my gains were told,
I’d caught a Tartar—and a cold.
And yet, perchance, that lovely brow
Had still detained my captive vow—
That clear blue eye’s enchanting roll
Had still enthralled my yielding soul,—
But suddenly a vision bright
Came o’er me in a veil of light,
And burst the bonds whose fetters bound me,
And brake the spell that hung around me,
Recalled the heart that madly roved,
And bade me love, and be beloved.
Who was it broke the chain and spell?
Dark-eyed Castilian! thou canst tell!

And am I faithless!—woe the while!
What vow but melts at Rosa’s smile?
For broken vows, and faith betrayed,
The guilt is thine, Castilian maid!

The tale is told, and I am gone:
Think of me, loved and only one,
When none on earth shall care beside
How Carlos lived, or loved, or died!
Thy love on earth shall be to me
A bird upon a leafless tree,
A bark upon a hopeless wave,
A lily on a tombless grave,
A cheering hope, a living ray,
To light me on a weary way.

And thus is love’s confession done:
Give me thy parting benison;
And, ere I rise from bended knee,
To wander o’er a foreign sea
Alone and friendless,—ere I don
My pilgrim’s hat and sandal shoon,
Dark-eyed Castilian! let me win
Forgiveness sweet for venial sin;
Let lonely sighs, and dreams of thee,
Be penance for my perjury!

MARRIAGE.

What, what is Marriage? Harris, Priscian!
Assist me with a definition.—
“Oh!” cries a charming silly fool,
Emerging from her boarding-school—
“Marriage is—love without disguises,
It is a—something that arises
From raptures and from stolen glances,
To be the end of all romances;
Vows—quarrels—moonshine—babes—but hush!
I mustn’t have you see me blush.”

“Pshaw!” says a modern modish wife,
“Marriage is splendour, fashion, life;
A house in town, and villa shady,
Balls, diamond bracelets, and ‘my lady;’
Then for finale, angry words,
Some people’s—‘obstinate’s—‘absurds!’
And peevish hearts, and silly heads,
And oaths, and bêtes, and separate beds.”

An aged bachelor, whose life
Has just been sweetened with a wife,
Tells out the latent grievance thus:
“Marriage is—odd! for one of us
’Tis worse a mile than rope or tree,
Hemlock, or sword, or slavery;
An end at once to all our ways,
Dismission to the one-horse chaise;
Adieu to Sunday car, and pig,
Adieu to wine, and whist, and wig;
Our friends turn out,—our wife’s are clapt in;
’Tis ‘Exit crony,’—‘Enter captain!’
Then hurry in a thousand thorns,—
Quarrels, and compliments,—and horns.
This is the yoke, and I must wear it;
Marriage is—hell, or something near it!”

“Why, marriage,” says an exquisite,
Sick from the supper of last night,
“Marriage is—after one by me!
I promised Tom to ride at three.—
Marriage is—’gad! I’m rather late;
La Fleur—my stays! and chocolate!—
Marriage is—really, though, ’twas hard
To lose a thousand on a card;
Sink the old Duchess!—three revokes!
’Gad! I must fell the abbey oaks:
Mary has lost a thousand more!—
Marriage is—’gad! a cursed bore!”

Hymen, who hears the blockheads groan,
Rises indignant from his throne,
And mocks their self-reviling tears,
And whispers thus in Folly’s ears:
“O frivolous of heart and head!
If strifes infest your nuptial bed,
Not Hymen’s hand, but guilt and sin,
Fashion and folly, force them in;
If on your couch is seated Care,
I did not bring the scoffer there;
If Hymen’s torch is feebler grown,
The hand that quenched it was your own;
And what I am, unthinking elves,
Ye all have made me for yourselves!”

THE BACHELOR.[2]
T. QUINCE, ESQ., TO THE REV. MATTHEW PRINGLE.

You wonder that your ancient friend
Has come so near his journey’s end,
And borne his heavy load of ill
O’er Sorrow’s slough, and Labour’s hill,
Without a partner to beguile
The toilsome way with constant smile,
To share in happiness and pain,
To guide, to comfort, to sustain,
And cheer the last long weary stage
That leads to Death through gloomy Age!
To drop these metaphoric jokes,
And speak like reasonable folks,
It seems you wonder, Mr. Pringle,
That old Tom Quince is living single!

Since my old crony and myself
Laid crabbed Euclid on the shelf,
And made our congé to the Cam,
Long years have passed; and here I am
With nerves and gout, but yet alive,
A Bachelor, and fifty-five.—
Sir, I’m a Bachelor, and mean
Until the closing of the scene,
Or be it right, or be it wrong,
To play the part I’ve played so long,
Nor be the rat that others are,
Caught by a ribbon or a star.

“As years increase,” your worship cries,
“All troubles and anxieties
Come swiftly on: you feel vexation
About your neighbours, or the nation;
The gout in fingers or in toes
Awakes you from your first repose;
You’ll want a clever nurse, when life
Begins to fail you—take a wife!
Believe me, from the mind’s disease
Her soothing voice might give you ease,
And, when the twinge comes shooting through you,
Her care might be of service to you!”
Sir, I’m not dying, though I know
You charitably think me so;—
Not dying yet, though you, and others,
In augury your learned brothers,
Take pains to prophesy events
Which lie some twenty winters hence.
Some twenty?—look! you shake your head
As if I were insane or dead,
And tell your children and your wife—
“Old men grow very fond of life!”
Alas! you prescience never ends
As long as it concerns your friends;
But your own fifty-third December
Is what you never can remember!
And when I talk about my health
And future hopes of weal or wealth,
With something ’twixt a grunt and groan
You mutter in an undertone—
“Hark! how the dotard chatters still![3]
He’ll not believe he’s old or ill!
He goes on forming great designs,—
Has just laid in a stock of wines,—
And promises his niece a ball,
As if grey hairs would never fall!
I really think he’s all but mad.”
Then, with a wink and sigh, you add,
“Tom is a friend I dearly prize,
But—never thought him over wise!”

You—who are clever to foretell
Where ignorance might be as well—
Would marvel how my health has stood:
My pulse is firm, digestion good,
I walk to see my turnips grow,
Manage to ride a mile or so,
Get to the village church to pray,
And drink my pint of wine a day;
And often, in an idle mood,
Emerging from my solitude,
Look at my sheep, and geese, and fowls,
And scare the sparrows and the owls,
Or talk with Dick about my crops,
And learn the price of malt and hops.

You say that when you saw me last
My appetite was going fast,
My eye was dim, my cheek was pale,
My bread—and stories—both were stale;
My wine and wit were growing worse,
And all things else,—except my purse;
In short, the very blind might see
I was not what I used to be.

My glass (which I believe before ye)
Will teach me quite another story;
My wrinkles are not many yet,
My hair is still as black as jet;
My legs are full, my cheeks are ruddy,
My eyes, though somewhat weak by study,
Retain a most vivacious ray,
And tell no stories of decay;
And then my waist, unvexed, unstayed,
By fetters of the tailor’s trade,
Tells you, as plain as waist can tell,
I’m most unfashionably well.

And yet you think I’m growing thinner!—
You’d stare to see me eat my dinner!
You know that I was held by all
The greatest epicure in Hall,
And that the voice of Granta’s sons
Styled me the Gourmand of St. John’s:—
I have not yet been found unable
To do my duty to my table,
Though at its head no lady gay
Hath driven British food away,
And made her hapless husband bear
Alike her fury and her fare.
If some kind-hearted chum calls in,
An extra dish and older bin
And John in all his finery drest
Do honour to the welcome guest;
And then we talk of other times,
Of parted friends, and distant climes,
And lengthened converse, tale, and jest,
Lull every anxious care to rest;
And when unwillingly I rise
With newly wakened sympathies
From conversation—and the bowl,
The feast of stomach—and of soul,
I lay me down, and seem to leap
O’er forty summers in my sleep;
And youth, with all its joy and pain,
Comes rushing on my soul again.
I rove where’er my boyhood roved—
I love whate’er my boyhood loved—
And rocks, and vales, and woods, and streams,
Fleet o’er my pillow in my dreams.

’Tis true, some ugly foes arise,
E’en in this earthly paradise,
Which you, good Pringle, may beguile,
By Mrs. P’s unceasing smile;
I am an independent elf,
And keep my comforts in myself.
If my best sheep have got the rot—
Or if the Parson hits a blot—
Or if young witless prates of laurel—
Or if my tithe produces quarrel—
Or if my roofing wants repairs—
Or if I’m angry with my heirs—
Or if I’ve nothing else to do—
I grumble for an hour or two;
Riots or rumours unrepressed,
My niece—or knuckle—over-drest,
The lateness of a wished-for post,
Miss Mackrell’s story of the ghost,
New wine, new fashions, or new faces,
New bills, new taxes, or new places,
Or Mr. Hume’s enumeration
Of all the troubles of the nation,
Will sometimes wear my patience out!
Then, as I said before, the gout—
Well, well, my heart was never faint!
And yet it might provoke a saint.
A rise of bread, or fall of rain,
Sometimes unite to give me pain;
And oft my lawyer’s bag of papers
Gives me a taste of spleen and vapours.
Angry or sad, alone or ill,
I have my senses with me still;
Although my eyes are somewhat weak,
Yet can I dissipate my pique,
By Poem, Paper, or Review;
And though I’m dozy in my pew
At Dr. Poundtext’s second leaf,
I am not yet so very deaf
As to require the rousing noise
Of screaming girls and roaring boys.
Thrice—thrice accursed be the day
When I shall fling my bliss away,
And, to disturb my quiet life,
Take discord in the shape of wife!
Time, in his endless muster-roll,
Shall mark the hour with blackest coal,
When old Tom Quince shall cease to see
The Chronicle with toast and tea,
Confine his rambles to his park,
And never dine till after dark,
And change his comfort and his crony
For crowd and conversazione.

If every aiding thought is vain,
And momentary grief and pain
Urge the old man to frown and fret,
He has another comfort yet;
This earth has thorns, as poets sing,
But not for ever can they sting;
Our sand from out its narrow glass
Rapidly passes!—let it pass!
I seek not, I, to check or stay
The progress of a single day,
But rather cheer my hours of pain,
Because so few of them remain.
Care circles every mortal head,—
The dust will be a calmer bed!
From Life’s alloy no life is free,
But—Life is not Eternity!

When that unerring day shall come
To call me, from my wandering, home,—
The dark and still and painful day
When breath shall fleet in groans away,
When comfort shall be vainly sought,
And doubt shall be in every thought,
When words shall fail th’ unuttered vow,
And fever heat the burning brow,
When the dim eye shall gaze, and fear
To close the glance that lingers here,
Snatching the faint departing light
That seems to flicker in its flight,
When the lone heart, in that long strife,
Shall cling unconsciously to life,—
I’ll have no shrieking female by
To shed her drops of sympathy;
To listen to each smothered throe,
To feel, or feign, officious woe,
To bring me every useless cup,
And beg “dear Tom” to drink it up,
To turn my oldest servants off,
E’en as she hears my gurgling cough;
And then expectantly to stand,
And chafe my temples with her hand,
And pull a cleaner night-cap o’er ’em,
That I may die with due decorum;
And watch the while my ebbing breath,
And count the tardy steps of death;
Grudging the leech his growing bill,
And wrapt in dreams about the will.
I’ll have no Furies round my bed!—
They shall not plague me—till I’m dead.

Believe me! ill my dust would rest,
If the plain marble o’er my breast,
That tells, in letters large and clear,
“The bones of Thomas Quince lie here!”
Should add a talisman of strife,
“Also the bones of Joan, his wife!”
No! while beneath this simple stone
Old Quince shall sleep, and sleep alone,
Some village Oracle, who well
Knows how to speak, and read, and spell,
Shall slowly construe, bit by bit,
My “Natus” and my “Obiit,”
And then, with sage discourse and long,
Recite my virtues to the throng:—

“The Gentleman came straight from College:
A most prodigious man for knowledge!
He used to pay all men their due,
Hated a miser—and a Jew;
But always opened wide his door
To the first knocking of the poor.
None, as the grateful parish knows,
Save the Churchwardens, were his foes;
They could not bear the virtuous pride
Which gave the sixpence they denied.
If neighbours had a mind to quarrel,
He used to treat them to a barrel;
And that, I think, was sounder law
Than any book I ever saw.
The ladies never used to flout him;
But this was rather strange about him:
That, gay or thoughtful, young or old,
He took no wife for love or gold;
Women he called ‘a pretty thing,’
But never could abide a ring!”

Good Mr. Pringle!—you must see
Your arguments are light with me;
They buzz like feeble flies around me,
But leave me firm, as first they found me.
Silence your logic! burn your pen!
The poet says, “We all are men;”
And all “condemned alike to groan”—
You with a wife, and I with none.
Well! yours may be a happier lot,
But it is one I envy not;
And you’ll allow me, Sir, to pray
That, at some near-approaching day,
You may not have to wince and whine,
And find some cause to envy mine!

HOW TO RHYME FOR LOVE.

At the last hour of Fannia’s rout,
When Dukes walked in, and lamps went out,
Fair Chloe sat; a sighing crowd
Of high adorers round her bowed,
And ever flattery’s incense rose
To lull the idol to repose.
Sudden some Gnome that stood unseen,
Or lurked disguised in mortal mien,
Whispered in Beauty’s trembling ear
The word of bondage and of fear—
“Marriage!”—her lips their silence broke,
And smiled on Vapid as they spoke,—
“I hate a drunkard or a lout,
I hate the the sullens and the gout;
If e’er I wed—let danglers know it—
I wed with no one but a poet.”

And who but feels a poet’s fire
When Chloe’s smiles, as now, inspire?
Who can the bidden verse refuse
When Chloe is his verse and Muse?
Thus Flattery whispered round;
And straight the humorous fancy grew,
That lyres are sweet when hearts are true;
And all who feel a lover’s flame
Must rhyme to-night on Chloe’s name;
And he’s unworthy of the dame
Who silent here is found.
Since head must plead the cause of heart,
Some put their trust in answer smart
Or pointed repartee;
Some joy that they have hoarded up
Those genii of the jovial cup,
Chorus, and catch, and glee;
And for one evening all prepare
To be “Apollo’s chiefest care.”

Then Vapid rose—no Stentor this,
And his no Homer’s lay;
Meek victim of antithesis,
He sighed and died away:—
“Despair my sorrowing bosom rives,
And anguish on me lies
Chloe may die, while Vapid lives,
Or live while Vapid dies!
You smile!—the horrid vision flies,
And Hope this promise gives;
I cannot live while Chloe dies,
Nor die while Chloe lives!”

Next, Snaffle, foe to tears and sadness,
Drew fire from Chloe’s eyes;
And warm with drunkenness and madness,
He started for the prize.
“Let the glad cymbals loudly clash,
Full bumpers let’s be quaffing!
No poet I!—Hip, hip!—here goes!
Blow,—blow the trumpet, blow the——”
Here he was puzzled for a rhyme,
And Lucy whispered “nose” in time,
And so they fell a-laughing.

“Gods!” cried a minister of State,
“You know not, Empress of my fate,
How long my passion would endure,
If passion were a sinecure;
But since, in Love’s despotic clime,
Fondness is taxed, and pays in rhyme,
Glad to retire, I shun disgrace,
And make my bow, and quit my place.”

And thus the jest went circling round,
And ladies smiled and sneered,
As smooth fourteen and weak fourscore
Professed they ne’er had rhymed before,
And drunkards blushed, and doctors swore,
And soldiers owned they feared;
Unwonted Muses were invoked
By pugilists and whips,
And many a belle looked half provoked,
When favoured swains stood dumb and choked;
And warblers whined, and punsters joked,
And dandies bit their lips.

At last an old Ecclesiastic,
Who looked half kind and half sarcastic,
And seemed in every transient look
At once to flatter and rebuke,
Cut off the sport with “Pshaw! enough:”
And then took breath,—and then took snuff:
“Chloe,” he said, “you’re like the moon;
You shine as bright, you change as soon;
Your wit is like the moon’s fair beam,
In borrowed light ’tis over us thrown;
Yet, like the moon’s, that sparkling stream
To careless eyes appears your own;
Your cheek by turns is pale and red,
And then to close the simile,
(From which methinks you turn your head,
As half in anger, half in glee,)
Dark would the night appear without you,
And—twenty fools have rhymed about you!”

SURLY HALL.

“Mercy o’ me, what a multitude are here!
They grow still, too; from all parts they are coming,
As if we kept a fair here.”
—Shakespeare.

The sun hath shed a mellower beam,
Fair Thames, upon thy silver stream,
And air and water, earth and heaven,
Lie in the calm repose of even.
How silently the breeze moves on,
Flutters, and whispers, and is gone!
How calmly does the quiet sky
Sleep in its cold serenity!
Alas! how sweet a scene were here
For shepherd or for sonnetteer;
How fit the place, how fit the time,
For making love, or making rhyme!
But though the sun’s descending ray
Smiles warmly on the close of day,
’Tis not to gaze upon his light
That Eton’s sons are here to-night;
And though the river, calm and clear,
Makes music to the poet’s ear,
’Tis not to listen to the sound
That Eton’s sons are thronging round:
The sun unheeded may decline—
Blue eyes send out a brighter shine;
The wave may cease its gurgling moan—
Glad voices have a sweeter tone;
For in our calendar of bliss
We have no hour so gay as this,
When the kind hearts and brilliant eyes
Of those we know, and love, and prize,
Are come to cheer the captive’s thrall,
And smile upon his festival.

Stay, Pegasus!—and let me ask
Ere I go onward in my task,—
Pray, reader, were you ever here,
Just at this season of the year?
No!—then the end of next July
Should bring you, with admiring eye,
To hear us row, and see us row,
And cry, “How fast them boys does go!”
For Father Thames beholds to-night
A thousand visions of delight;
Tearing and swearing, jeering, cheering,
Lame steeds to right and left careering,
Displays, dismays, disputes, distresses,
Ruffling of temper and of dresses;
Wounds on the heart—and on the knuckles;
Losing of patience—and of buckles.
An interdict is laid on Latin,
And scholars smirk in silk and satin,
And dandies start their thinnest pumps,
And Michael Oakley’s in the dumps;
And there is nought beneath the sun
But dash, and splash, and falls, and fun.

Lord! what would be the Cynic’s mirth,
If fate would lift him to the earth,
And set his tub, with magic jump,
Squat down beside the Brocas Clump!
What scoffs the sage would utter there
From his unpolished elbow-chair,
To see the sempstress’ handiwork,
The Greek confounded with the Turk,
Parisian mixed with Piedmontese,
And Persian joined to Portuguese;
And mantles short, and mantles long,
And mantles right, and mantles wrong,
Mis-shaped, mis-coloured, and mis-placed
With what the tailor calls a taste!
And then the badges and the boats,
The flags, the drums, the paint, the coats;
But more than these, and more than all,
The puller’s intermitted call—
“Easy!”—“Hard all!”—“Now pick her up!”—
“Upon my life, how I shall sup!”
Would be a fine and merry matter
To wake the sage’s love of satire.
Kind readers, at my laughing age
I thank my stars I’m not a sage;
I, an unthinking, scribbling elf,
Love to please others—and myself;
Therefore I fly a malo joco,
But like desipere in loco.
Excuse me, that I wander so;
All modern pens digress, you know.
Now to my theme! Thou Being gay,
Houri or goddess, nymph or fay,
Whoe’er—whate’er—where’er thou art—
Who, with thy warm and kindly heart,
Hast made these blest abodes thy care,—
Being of water, earth, or air,—
Beneath the moonbeam hasten hither,
Enjoy thy blessings ere they wither,
And witness with thy gladdest face
The glories of thy dwelling-place!

The boats put off; throughout the crowd
The tumult thickens; wide and loud
The din re-echoes; man and horse
Plunge onward in their mingled course.
Look at the troop! I love to see
Our real Etonian cavalry:
They start in such a pretty trim,
And such sweet scorn of life and limb.
I must confess I never found
A horse much worse for being sound;
I wish my nag not wholly blind,
And like to have a tail behind;
And though he certainly may hear
Correctly with a single ear,
I think, to look genteel and neat,
He ought to have his two complete.
But these are trifles!—off they go
Beside the wondering river’s flow;
And if, by dint of spur and whip,
They shamble on without a trip,
Well have they done! I make no question
They’re shaken into good digestion.

I and my Muse—my Muse and I—
Will follow with the company,
And get to Surly Hall in time
To make a supper, and a rhyme.
Yes! while the animating crowd,
The gay, and fair, and kind, and proud,
With eager voice and eager glance,
Wait till the pageantry advance,
We’ll throw around a hasty view,
And try to get a sketch or two.

First in the race is William Tag,
Thalia’s most industrious fag;
Whate’er the subject he essays
To dress in never-dying lays,
A chief, a cheese, a dearth, a dinner,
A cot, a castle, cards, Corinna,
Hibernia, Baffin’s Bay, Parnassus,
Beef, Bonaparte, beer, Bonassus—
Will hath his ordered words, and rhymes
For various scenes and various times;
Which suit alike for this or that,
And come, like volunteers, quite pat.
He hath his elegy, or sonnet,
For Lucy’s bier, or Lucy’s bonnet;
And celebrates with equal ardour
A monarch’s sceptre, or his larder.
Poor William, when he wants a hint,
All other poet’s are his mint;
He coins his epic or his lyric,
His satire or his panegyric,
From all the gravity and wit
Of what the ancients thought and writ.
Armed with his Ovid and his Flaccus
He comes like thunder to attack us;
In pilfered mail he bursts to view,
The cleverest thief I ever knew.
Thou noble Bard! at any time
Borrow my measure and my rhyme;
Borrow (I’ll cancel all the debt)
An epigram or epithet;
Borrow my mountains, or my trees,
My paintings, or my similes;
Nay, borrow all my pretty names,
My real or my fancied flames;
Eliza, Alice, Leonora,
Mary, Melina, and Medora;
And borrow all my “mutual vows,”
My “ruby lips,” and “cruel brows,”
And all my stupors and my startings,
And all my meetings, and my partings;
Thus far, my friend, you’ll find me willing;
Borrow all things save one—a shilling!

Drunken, and loud, and mad, and rash,
Joe Tarrell wields his ceaseless lash;
The would-be sportsman; o’er the sides
Of the lank charger he bestrides
The foam lies painfully, and blood
Is trickling in a ruddier flood
Beneath the fury of the steel,
Projecting from his armed heel.
E’en from his childhood’s earliest bloom,
All studies that become a groom
Eton’s spes gregis, honest Joe,
Or knows, or would be thought to know;
He picks a hunter’s hoof quite finely,
And spells a horse’s teeth divinely.
Prime terror of molesting duns,
Sole judge of greyhounds and of guns,
A skilful whip, a steady shot,
Joe swears he is!—who says he’s not?
And then he has such knowing faces
For all the week of Ascot races,
And talks with such a mystic speech,
Untangible to vulgar reach,
Of Sultan, Highflyer, and Ranter,
Potatoes, Quiz, and Tam O’Shanter,
Bay colts and brown colts, sires and dams,
Bribings and bullyings, bets and bams;
And how the favourite should have won,
And how the little Earl was done;
And how the filly failed in strength,
And how some faces grew in length;
And how some people—if they’d show—
Know something more than others know.
Such is his talk; and while we wonder
At that interminable thunder,
The undiscriminating snarler
Astounds the ladies in the parlour,
And broaches at his mother’s table
The slang of kennel and of stable.
And when he’s drunk, he roars before ye
One excellent unfailing story,
About a gun, Lord knows how long,
With a discharge, Lord knows how strong,
Which always needs an oath and frown
To make the monstrous dose go down.
O! oft and oft the Muses pray
That wondrous tube may burst some day,
And then the world will ascertain
Whether its master hath a brain!
Then, on the stone that hides his sleep,
These accents shall be graven deep,—
Or “Upton” and “C. B.”[4] between
Shine in the Sporting Magazine;—
“Civil to none, except his brutes;
Polished in nought, except his boots;
Here lie the relics of Joe Tarrell:
Also, Joe Tarrell’s double-barrel!”
Ho!—by the muttered sounds that slip
Unwilling from his curling lip;
By the grey glimmer of his eye,
That shines so unrelentingly;
By the stern sneer upon his snout,
I know the critic, Andrew Crout!
The boy-reviler! amply filled
With venomed virulence, and skilled
To look on what is good and fair
And find or make a blemish there.
For Fortune to his cradle sent
Self-satisfying discontent,
And he hath caught from cold Reviews
The one great talent, to abuse;
And so he sallies sternly forth,
Like the cold Genius of the North,
To check the heart’s exuberant fulness,
And chill good-humour into dulness:
Where’er he comes, his fellows shrink
Before his awful nod and wink;
And wheresoe’er these features plastic
Assume the savage or sarcastic,
Mirth stands abashed, and Laughter flies,
And Humour faints, and Quibble dies.
How sour he seems!—and hark! he spoke;
We’ll stop and listen to the croak;
’Twill charm us, if these happy lays
Are honoured by a fool’s dispraise!—
“You think the boats well manned this year!
To you they may perhaps appear!—
I who have seen those frames of steel,
Tuckfield, and Dixon, and Bulteel,
Can swear—no matter what I swear—
Only things are not as they were!
And then our cricket!—think of that!
We ha’n’t a tolerable bat;
It’s very true, that Mr. Tucker,
Who puts the field in such a pucker,
Contrives to make his fifty runs;—
What then?—we had a Hardinge once!
As for our talents, where are they?
Griffin and Grildrig had their day;
And who’s the star of modern time?
Octosyllabic Peregrine;
Who pirates, puns, and talks sedition,
Without a moment’s intermission;
And if he did not get a lift
Sometimes from me—and Doctor Swift,
I can’t tell what the deuce he’d do!—
But this, you know, is entre nous!
I’ve tried to talk him into taste,
But found my labour quite misplaced;
He nibs his pen, and twists his ear,
And says he’s deaf and cannot hear;
And if I mention right or rule,—
Egad! he takes me for a fool!”

Gazing upon this varied scene
With a new artist’s absent mien,
I see thee silent and alone,
My friend, ingenious Hamilton.
I see thee there—(nay, do not blush!)
Knight of the Pallet and the Brush,
Dreaming of straight and crooked lines,
And planning portraits and designs.
I like him hugely!—well I wis,
No despicable skill is his,
Whether his sportive canvas shows
Arabia’s sands or Zembla’s snows,
A lion, or a bed of lilies,
Fair Caroline, or fierce Achilles;
I love to see him taking down
A schoolfellow’s unconscious frown,
Describing twist, grimace, contortion,
In most becoming disproportion,
While o’er his merry paper glide
Rivers of wit; and by his side
Caricatura takes her stand,
Inspires the thought and guides the hand;
I love to see his honoured books
Adorned with rivulets and brooks;
Troy frowning with her ancient towers,
Or Ida gay with fruit and flowers;
I love to see fantastic shapes,
Dragons and griffins, birds and apes,
And pigmy forms and forms gigantic,
Forms natural, and forms romantic,
Of dwarf and ogres, dames and knights,
Scrawled by the side of Homer’s fights,
And portraits daubed on Maro’s poems,
And profiles penned to Tulley’s Proems;
In short, I view with partial eyes
Whate’er my brother painter tries.
To each belongs his own utensil;
I sketch with pen, as he with pencil;
And each, with pencil or with pen,
Hits off a likeness now and then.
He drew me once—the spiteful creature!
’Twas voted—“like in every feature;”
It might have been so!—(’twas lopsided,
And squinted worse than ever I did:)
However, from that hapless day,
I owed the debt, which here I pay;
And now I’ll give my friend a hint:—
Unless you want to shine in print,
Paint lords and ladies, nymphs and fairies,
And demi-gods, and dromedaries;
But never be an author’s creditor,
Nor paint the picture of an Editor!

Who is the youth with stare confounded,
And tender arms so neatly rounded,
And moveless eyes, and glowing face,
And attitude of studied grace?
Now Venus, pour your lustre o’er us!
Your would-be servant stands before us!
Hail, Corydon! let others blame
The fury of his fictioned flame;
I love to hear the beardless youth
Talking of constancy and truth,
Swearing more darts are in his liver
Than ever gleamed in Cupid’s quiver,
And wondering at those hearts of stone
Which never melted like his own.
Ah! when I look on Fashion’s moth,
Wrapt in his visions and his cloth,
I would not, for a nation’s gold,
Disturb the dream—or spoil the fold!

And who the maid, whose gilded chain,
Hath bound the heart of such a swain?
Oh! look on those surrounding graces!
There is no lack of pretty faces;
M——l, the goddess of the night,
Looks beautiful with all her might;
And M——, in that simple dress,
Enthralls us more by studying less;
D——, in your becoming pride,
Ye march to conquest, side by side;
And A——, thou fleetest by
Bright in thine arch simplicity;
Slight are the links thy power hath wreathed;
Yet, by the tone thy voice hath breathed,
By thy glad smile and ringlets curled,
I would not break them for the world!
But this is idle! Paying court
I know was never yet my forte;
And all I say of nymph and queen,
To cut it short, can only mean
That when I throw my gaze around
I see much beauty on the ground.

Hark! hark! a mellowed note
Over the water seemed to float!
Hark! the note repeated!
A sweet, and soft, and soothing strain
Echoed, and died, and rose again,
As if the Nymphs of Fairy reign
Were holding to-night their revel rout,
And pouring their fragrant voices out,
On the blue water seated.
Hark to the tremulous tones that flow,
And the voice of the boatmen as they row,
Cheerfully to the heart they go,
And touch a thousand pleasant strings
Of triumph and pride, and hope and joy,
And thoughts that are only known to boy,
And young imaginings!
The note is near, the voice comes clear,
And we catch its echo on the ear
With a feeling of delight;
And, as the gladdening sounds we hear,
There’s many an eager listener here,
And many a straining sight.

One moment,—and ye see
Where, fluttering quick, as the breezes blow,
Backwards and forwards, to and fro,
Bright with the beam of retiring day,
Old Eton’s flag, on its watery way,
Moves on triumphantly!
But what that ancient poets have told
Of Amphitrite’s car of gold,
With the Nymphs behind, and the Nymphs before,
And the Nereid’s song, and the Triton’s roar,
Could equal half the pride
That heralds the Monarch’s plashing oar
Over the swelling tide?
And look!—they land those gallant crews,
With their jackets light, and their bellying trews;
And Ashley walks applauded by,
With a world’s talent in his eye;
And Kinglake, dear to poetry,
And dearer to his friends;
Hibernian Roberts, you are there,
With that unthinking, merry stare
Which still its influence lends
To make us drown our devils blue,
In laughing at ourselves,—and you!
Still I could lengthen out the tale,
And sing Sir Thomas with his ale
To all that like to read;
Still I could choose to linger long
Where Friendship bids the willing song
Flow out for honest Meade!

Yet e’en on this triumphant day
One thought of grief will rise;
And though I bid my fancy play,
And jest and laugh through all the lay,
Yet sadness still will have its way,
And burst the vain disguise!
Yes! when the pageant shall have passed,
I shall have looked upon my last;
I shall not e’er behold again
Our pullers’ unremitted strain;
Nor listen to the charming cry
Of contest or of victory
That speaks what those young bosoms feel,
As keel is pressing fast on keel;
Oh! bright these glories still shall be,
But they shall never dawn for me!

E’en when a realm’s congratulation
Sang Pæans for the Coronation,
Amidst the pleasure that was round me,
A melancholy spirit found me;
And while all else were singing “Io!”
I couldn’t speak a word but “Heigh-ho!”
And so, instead of laughing gaily,
I dropped a tear,—and wrote my “Vale.”

Vale!

Eton, the Monarch of thy prayers
E’en now receives his load of cares;
Throned in the consecrated choir
He takes the sceptre of his sire,
And wears the crown his father wore,
And swears the oath his father swore,
And therefore sounds of joy resound,
Fair Eton, on thy classic ground.
A gladder gale is round thee breathed;
And on thy mansions thou hast wreathed
A thousand lamps, whose various hue
Waits but the night to burst to view.
Woe to the poets that refuse
To wake and woo their idle Muse,
When those glad notes, “God save the King,”
From hill, and vale, and hamlet ring!
Hark, how the loved inspiring tune
Peals forth from every loyal loon
Who loves his country, and excels
In drinking beer or ringing bells!
It is a day of shouts and greeting;
A day of idleness and eating;
And triumph swells in every soul,
And mighty beeves are roasted whole,
And ale, unbought, is set a-running,
And pleasure’s hymn grows rather stunning,
And children roll upon the green,
And cry, “Confusion to the Queen!”
And Sorrow flies, and Labour slumbers:
And Clio pours her loudest numbers;
And hundreds of that joyous throng
With whom my life hath lingered long
Give their glad raptures to the gale,
In one united echoing “Hail!”

I took the harp, I smote the string,
I strove to soar on Fancy’s wing,
And murmur in my sovereign’s praise
The latest of my boyhood’s lays.
Alas! the theme was too divine
To suit so weak a Muse as mine:
I saw—I felt it could not be;
No song of triumph flows from me;
The harp from which those sounds ye ask
Is all unfit for such a task;
And the last echo of its tone,
Dear Eton, must be thine alone!

A few short hours, and I am borne
Far from the fetters I have worn;
A few short hours, and I am free!—
And yet I shrink from liberty,
And look, and long to give my soul
Back to thy cherishing control.
Control? Ah no! thy chain was meant
Far less for bond than ornament;
And though its links are firmly set,
I never found them gall me yet.
Oh still, through many chequered years,
’Mid anxious toils, and hopes, and fears,
Still I have doted on thy fame,
And only gloried in thy name.
How I have loved thee! Thou hast been
My Hope, my Mistress, and my Queen;
I always found thee kind, and thou
Hast never seen me weep—till now.

I knew that time was fleeting fast,
I knew thy pleasures could not last;
I knew too well that riper age
Must step upon a busier stage;
Yet when around thine ancient towers
I passed secure my tranquil hours,
Or heard beneath thine aged trees
The drowsy humming of the bees,
Or wandered by thy winding stream,
I would not check my fancy’s dream;
Glad in my transitory bliss,
I recked not of an hour like this;
And now the truth comes swiftly on,
The truth I would not think upon,
The last sad thought, so oft delayed,—
“These joys are only born to fade.”

Ye Guardians of my earliest days,
Ye Patrons of my earliest lays,
Custom reminds me, that to you
Thanks and farewell to-day are due.
Thanks and farewell I give you,—not
(As some that leave this holy spot)
In laboured phrase and polished lie
Wrought by the forge of flattery,
But with a heart that cannot tell
The half of what it feels so well.
If I am backward to express,
Believe, my love is not the less;
Be kind as you are wont, and view
A thousand thanks in one Adieu.
My future life shall strive to show
I wish to pay the debt I owe;
The labours that ye give to May
September’s fruits shall best repay.
And you, my friends, who loved to share
Whate’er was mine of sport or care,
Antagonists at fives or chess,
Friends in the play-ground or the press,
I leave ye now; and all that rests
Of mutual tastes, and loving breasts,
In the lone vision that shall come,
Where’er my studies and my home,
To cheer my labour and my pain
And make me feel a boy again.

Yes! when at last I sit me down,
A scholar, in my cap and gown,—
When learned doctrines, dark and deep,
Move me to passion or to sleep,—
When Clio yields to logic’s wrangles,
And Long and Short give place to angles,—
When stern Mathesis makes it treason
To like a rhyme, or scorn a reason—
With aching head and weary wit
Your parted friend shall often sit,
Till Fancy’s magic spell hath bound him,
And lonely musings flit around him;
Then shall ye come with all your wiles,
Of gladdening sounds and warming smiles,
And nought shall meet his eye or ear,—
Yet shall he deem your souls are near.

Others may clothe their valediction
With all the tinsel charms of fiction;
And one may sing of Father Thames,
And Naiads with a hundred names,
And find a Pindus here, and own
The College pump a Helicon,
And search for gods about the College,
Of which old Homer had no knowledge;
And one may eloquently tell
The triumphs of the Windsor belle,
And sing of Mira’s lips and eyes,
In oft-repeated ecstasies.
Oh! he hath much and wondrous skill
To paint the looks that wound and kill,
As the poor maid is doomed to brook,
Unconsciously, her lover’s look,
And smiles, and talks, until the poet
Hears the band play, and does not know it.
To speak the plain and simple truth,—
I always was a jesting youth,
A friend to merriment and fun,
No foe to quibble and to pun;
Therefore I cannot feign a tear;
And, now that I have uttered here
A few unrounded accents, bred
More from the heart than from the head,
Honestly felt, and plainly told,
My lyre is still, my fancy cold.

MY FIRST FOLLY.
(Stanzas written at Midnight.)

Pretty Coquette, the ceaseless play
Of thine unstudied wit,
And thy dark eye’s remembered ray
By buoyant fancy lit,
And thy young forehead’s clear expanse,
Where the locks slept, as through the dance,
Dreamlike, I saw thee flit,
Are far too warm, and far too fair
To mix with aught of earthly care;
But the vision shall come when my day is done,
A frail and a fair and a fleeting one!

And if the many boldly gaze
On that bright brow of thine,
And if thine eye’s undying rays
On countless coxcombs shine,
And if thy wit flings out its mirth,
Which echoes more of air than earth,
For other ears than mine,
I heed not this; ye are fickle things,
And I like your very wanderings;
I gaze, and if thousands share the bliss,
Pretty Capricious! I heed not this.

In sooth I am a wayward youth,
As fickle as the sea,
And very apt to speak the truth,
Unpleasing though it be;
I am no lover; yet as long
As I have heart for jest or song,
An image, sweet, of thee,
Locked in my heart’s remotest treasures,
Shall ever be one of its hoarded pleasures;—
This from the scoffer thou hast won,
And more than this he gives to none.

SONGS FROM THE TROUBADOUR.[5]

I.
(FROM CANTO I.)

“My mother’s grave, my mother’s grave!
Oh! dreamless is her slumber there,
And drowsily the banners wave
O’er her that was so chaste and fair;
Yea! love is dead, and memory faded!
But when the dew is on the brake,
And silence sleeps on earth and sea,
And mourners weep, and ghosts awake,
Oh! then she cometh back to me,
In her cold beauty darkly shaded!

“I cannot guess her face or form;
But what to me is form or face?
I do not ask the weary worm
To give me back each buried grace
Of glistening eyes, or trailing tresses!
I only feel that she is here,
And that we meet, and that we part;
And that I drink within mine ear,
And that I clasp around my heart,
Her sweet still voice, and soft caresses!

“Not in the waking thought by day,
Not in the sightless dream by night,
Do the mild tones and glances play,
Of her who was my cradle’s light!
But in some twilight of calm weather
She glides, by fancy dimly wrought,
A glittering cloud, a darkling beam,
With all the quiet of a thought,
And all the passion of a dream,
Linked in a golden spell together!”