STANZAS.
“Why will you never listen to an Irish melody?”—Query in a Ball-room.
The songs she sung—the songs she sung!
How many a sigh they stole!
Oh! there be lutes as sweetly strung,
But none with half the soul
That dwelt in every silver tone
She drew from each sweet string:
Oh! no,—the songs she made her own
I will not hear them sing!
The songs she sung—the songs she sung!
How few and faint the words
Of praise that fell whene’er she flung
Her fingers o’er the chords;
No plaudit followed when the strain
Died on the quivering air,
But tears were gushing forth like rain,
And lips were quivering there!
The songs she sung—the songs she sung!
Long, grieving years are fled,
Earth’s yearnings from the heart are flung,
Earth’s hopes are with the dead;
And worldly wrongs—forgot—forgiven—
Sleep in Death’s second birth;
But I would only hear in Heaven
The songs she gave to earth!
BECAUSE!
“Why? Because.”—Lindley Murray.
Sweet Nea!—for your lovely sake
I weave these rambling numbers,
Because I’ve lain an hour awake,
And can’t compose my slumbers;
Because your beauty’s gentle light
Is round my pillow beaming,
And flings, I know not why, to-night,
Some witchery o’er my dreaming!
Because we’ve passed some joyous days,
And danced some merry dances;
Because you love old Beaumont’s plays,
And old Froissart’s romances!
Because, whene’er I hear your words,
Some pleasant feeling lingers;
Because I think your heart has chords
That vibrate to my fingers!
Because you’ve got those long, soft curls
I’ve sworn should deck my goddess;
Because you’re not, like other girls,
All bustle, blush, and bodice!
Because your eyes are deep and blue,
Your fingers long and rosy;
Because a little child and you
Would make one’s home so cosy!
Because your little tiny nose
Turns up so pert and funny;
Because I know you choose your beaux
More for their mirth than money;
Because I think you’d rather twirl
A waltz, with me to guide you,
Than talk small nonsense with an Earl,
And a coronet beside you!
Because you don’t object to walk,
And are not given to fainting;
Because you have not learned to talk
Of flowers and Poonah-painting;
Because I think you’d scarce refuse
To sew one on a button;
Because I know you’d sometimes choose
To dine on simple mutton!
Because I think I’m just so weak
As, some of those fine morrows,
To ask you if you’ll let me speak
My story—and my sorrows:
Because the rest’s a simple thing,
A matter quickly over,
A church—a priest—a sigh—a ring—
And a chaise-and-four for Dover!
SONG TO A SERENADER IN FEBRUARY.
Air—“Why hast thou taught me to love thee?”
Dear minstrel, the dangers are not to be told
Of those strains which have trebly undone me,—
A victim to pity, to love, and to cold,
I’ll be dead by the time thou hast won me!
Oh! think for a moment—whoever thou art,
On the woes that beset me together,—
If thou wilt not consider the state of my heart,
Oh! think of the state of the weather.
How keenly around me the night breezes blow,—
How sweetly thy parting note lingers,—
Ah! would that the glow of my heart could bestow
A share of its warmth to—my fingers!
But though she who would watch while the nightingales sing
Should scorn to let cold overcome her,—
Though, like other sweet birds, you begin in the Spring,
I can’t fall in love till the Summer.
THE CHILDE’S DESTINY.
“And none did love him—not his lemans dear.”
—Byron.
No mistress of the hidden skill,
No wizard gaunt and grim,
Went up by night to heath or hill
To read the stars for him;
The merriest girl in all the land
Of vine-encircled France
Bestowed upon his brow and hand
Her philosophic glance:
“I bind thee with a spell,” said she,
“I sign thee with a sign;
No woman’s love shall light on thee,
No woman’s heart be thine!
“And trust me, ’tis not that thy cheek
Is colourless and cold;
Nor that thine eye is slow to speak
What only eyes have told;
And many a cheek of paler white
Hath blushed with passion’s kiss,
And many an eye of lesser light
Hath caught its fire from bliss;
Yet while the rivers seek the sea,
And while the young stars shine,
No woman’s love shall light on thee,—
No woman’s heart be thine!
“And ’tis not that thy spirit, awed
By Beauty’s numbing spell,
Shrinks from the force or from the fraud
Which Beauty loves so well;
For thou hast learned to watch, and wake,
And swear by earth and sky;
And thou art very bold to take
What we must still deny:
I cannot tell;—the charm was wrought
By other threads than mine!
The lips are lightly begged or bought,—
The heart may not be thine!
“Yet thine the brightest smiles shall be
That ever Beauty wore;
And confidence from two or three,
And compliments from more;
And one shall give—perchance hath given—
What only is not love,—
Friendship,—oh! such as saints in heaven
Rain on us from above:
If she shall meet thee in the bower,
Or name thee in the shrine,
O wear the ring and guard the flower!
Her heart may not be thine!
“Go, set thy boat before the blast,
Thy breast before the gun;
The haven shall be reached at last,
The battle shall be won:
Or muse upon thy country’s laws,
Or strike thy country’s lute;
And patriot hands shall sound applause,
And lovely lips be mute.
Go, dig the diamond from the wave,
The treasure from the mine;
Enjoy the wreath, the gold, the grave,—
No woman’s heart is thine!
“I charm thee from the agony
Which others feel or feign;
From anger, and from jealousy,
From doubt, and from disdain;
I bid thee wear the scorn of years
Upon the cheek of youth,
And curl the lip at passion’s tears,
And shake the head at truth;
While there is bliss in revelry,
Forgetfulness in wine,
Be thou from woman’s love as free
As woman is from thine!”
THE MODERN NECTAR.
One day, as Bacchus wandered out
From his own gay and glorious heaven,
To see what mortals were about
Below, ’twixt six o’clock and seven,
And laugh at all the toils and tears,
The sudden hopes, the causeless fears,
The midnight songs, the morning smarts,
The aching heads, the breaking hearts,
Which he and his fair crony Venus
Within the month had sown between us,
He lighted by chance on a fiddling fellow
Who never was known to be less than mellow,
A wandering poet, who thought it his duty
To feed upon nothing but bowls and beauty,
Who worshipped a rhyme, and detested a quarrel,
And cared not a single straw for laurel,
Holding that grief was sobriety’s daughter,
And loathing critics, and cold water.
Ere day on the Gog-Magog hills had fainted,
The god and the minstrel were quite acquainted;
Beneath a tree, in the sunny weather,
They sate them down, and drank together:
They drank of all fluids that ever were poured
By an English lout, or a German lord,
Rum and shrub, and brandy and gin,
One after another, they stowed them in,
Claret of Carbonell, porter of Meux,
Champagne which would waken a wit in dukes,
Humble Port, and proud Tokay,
Persico, and Crême de Thé,
The blundering Irishman’s Usquebaugh,
The fiery Welshman’s Cwrw da;
And after toasting various names
Of mortal and immortal flames,
And whispering more than I or you know
Of Mistress Poll, and Mistress Juno,
The god departed, scarcely knowing
A Zephyr’s from a nose’s blowing,
A frigate from a pewter flagon,
Or Thespis from his own stage waggon;
And rolling about like a barrel of grog,
He went up to heaven as drunk as a hog!
“Now may I,” he lisped, “for ever sit
In Lethe’s darkest and deepest pit,
Where dulness everlasting reigns
O’er the quiet pulse and the drowsy brains,
Where ladies jest, and lovers laugh,
And noble lords are bound in calf,
And Zoilus for his sins rehearses
Old Bentham’s prose, old Wordsworth’s verses,
If I have not found a richer draught
Than ever yet Olympus quaffed
Better and brighter and dearer far
Than the golden sands of Pactolus are!”
And then he filled in triumph up,
To the highest top sparkle, Jove’s beaming cup,
And pulling up his silver hose,
And turning in his tottering toes
(While Hebe, as usual, the mischievous gipsy,
Was laughing to see her brother tipsy),
He said—“May it please your high Divinity,
This nectar is—Milk Punch at Trinity!”
AN EPITAPH
On the late King of the Sandwich Islands.
1825.
Beneath the marble, mud, or moss,
Which e’er his subjects shall determine,
Entombed in eulogies and dross,
The Island King is food for vermin.
Preserved by scribblers and by salt
From Lethe and sepulchral vapours,
His body fills his father’s vault,
His character, the daily papers.
Well was he framed for royal seat;
Kind, to the meanest of his creatures,
With tender heart and tender feet,
And open purse and open features;
The ladies say who laid him out,
And earned thereby the usual pensions,
They never wreathed a shroud about
A corpse of more genteel dimensions.
He warred with half-a-score of foes,
And shone, by proxy, in the quarrel;
Enjoyed hard fights and soft repose,
And deathless debt and deathless laurel.
His enemies were scalped and flayed
Whene’er his soldiers were victorious,
And widows wept and paupers paid
To make their sovereign ruler glorious;
And days were set apart for thanks,
And prayers were said by pious readers,
And laud was lavished on the ranks,
And laurel lavished on their leaders;
Events are writ by History’s pen,
Though causes are too much to care for;
Fame talks about the where and when,
While Folly asks the why and wherefore.
In peace he was intensely gay
And indefatigably busy,
Preparing gewgaws every day,
And shows to make his subjects dizzy,
And hearing the report of guns,
And signing the report of gaolers,
And making up receipts for buns,
And patterns for the army tailors,
And building carriages and boats,
And streets, and chapels, and pavilions,
And regulating all the coats,
And all the principles of millions,
And drinking homilies and gin,
And chewing pork and adulation,
And looking backwards upon sin,
And looking forward to salvation.
The people, in his happy reign,
Were blest beyond all other nations;
Unharmed by foreign axe or chain,
Unhealed by civil innovations;
They served the usual logs and stones
With all the usual rites and terrors,
And swallowed all their father’s bones,
And swallowed all their father’s errors.
When the fierce mob, with clubs and knives,
All vowed that nothing should content them,
But that their representatives
Should actually represent them,
He interposed the proper checks,
By sending troops with drums and banners
To cut their speeches short, and necks,
And break their heads to mend their manners,
And when Dissension flung her stain
Upon the light of Hymen’s altar,
And Destiny made Hymen’s chain
As galling as the hangman’s halter,
He passed a most domestic life,
By many mistresses befriended,
And did not put away his wife,
For fear the priest should be offended.
And thus at last he sank to rest
Amid the blessings of his people,
And sighs were heard from every breast,
And bells were tolled from every steeple,
And loud was every public throng
His brilliant character adorning,
And poets raised a mourning song,
And clothiers raised the price of mourning.
His funeral was very grand,
Followed by many robes and maces,
And all the great ones of the land
Struggling, as heretofore, for places;
And every loyal minister
Was there, with signs of purse-felt sorrow,
Save Pozzy, his lord chancellor,
Who promised to attend to-morrow.
Peace to his dust. His fostering care
By grateful hearts shall long be cherished;
And all his subjects shall declare
They lost a grinder when he perished.
They who shall look upon the lead
In which a people’s love hath shrined him,
Will say when all the worst is said,
Perhaps he leaves a worse behind him.
THE CHAUNT OF THE BRAZEN HEAD.
“Brazen companion of my solitary hours! do you, while I recline, pronounce a prologue to those sentiments of Wisdom and Virtue, which are hereafter to be the oracles of statesmen, and the guides of philosophers. Give me to-night a proem of our essay, an opening of our case, a division of our subject. Speak!” (Slow music. The Friar falls asleep. The head chaunts as follows.) —The Brazen Head.
I think, whatever mortals crave,
With impotent endeavour,—
A wreath, a rank, a throne, a grave,—
The world goes round for ever:
I think that life is not too long;
And therefore I determine,
That many people read a song
Who will not read a sermon.
I think you’ve looked through many hearts,
And mused on many actions,
And studied Man’s component parts,
And Nature’s compound fractions;
I think you’ve picked up truth by bits
From foreigner and neighbour;
I think the world has lost its wits,
And you have lost your labour.
I think the studies of the wise,
The hero’s noisy quarrel,
The majesty of woman’s eyes,
The poet’s cherished laurel,
And all that makes us lean or fat,
And all that charms or troubles,—
This bubble is more bright than that,
But still they all are bubbles.
I think the thing you call Renown,
The unsubstantial vapour
For which the soldier burns a town,
The sonnetteer a taper,
Is like the mist which, as he flies,
The horseman leaves behind him;
He cannot mark its wreaths arise,
Or if he does they blind him.
I think one nod of Mistress Chance
Makes creditors of debtors,
And shifts the funeral for the dance,
The sceptre for the fetters:
I think that Fortune’s favoured guest
May live to gnaw the platters,
And he that wears the purple vest
May wear the rags and tatters.
I think the Tories love to buy
“Your Lordships” and “your Graces,”
By loathing common honesty,
And lauding commonplaces:
I think that some are very wise,
And some are very funny,
And some grow rich by telling lies,
And some by telling money.
I think the Whigs are wicked knaves—
(And very like the Tories)—
Who doubt that Britain rules the waves,
And ask the price of glories:
I think that many fret and fume
At what their friends are planning,
And Mr. Hume hates Mr. Brougham,
As much as Mr. Canning.
I think that friars and their hoods,
Their doctrines and their maggots,
Have lighted up too many feuds,
And far too many faggots:
I think, while zealots fast and frown,
And fight for two or seven,
That there are fifty roads to Town,
And rather more to Heaven.
I think that, thanks to Paget’s lance,
And thanks to Chester’s learning,
The hearts that burned for fame in France
At home are safe from burning:
I think the Pope is on his back;
And, though ’tis fun to shake him,
I think the Devil not so black
As many people make him.
I think that Love is like a play,
Where tears and smiles are blended,
Or like a faithless April day,
Whose shine with shower is ended:
Like Colnbrook pavement, rather rough,
Like trade, exposed to losses,
And like a Highland plaid,—all stuff,
And very full of crosses.
I think the world, though dark it be,
Has aye one rapturous pleasure
Concealed in life’s monotony,
For those who seek the treasure:
One planet in a starless night,
One blossom on a briar,
One friend not quite a hypocrite,
One woman not a liar!
I think poor beggars court St. Giles,
Rich beggars court St. Stephen;
And death looks down with nods and smiles,
And makes the odds all even:
I think some die upon the field,
And some upon the billow,
And some are laid beneath a shield,
And some beneath a willow.
I think that very few have sighed
When Fate at last has found them,
Though bitter foes were by their side,
And barren moss around them:
I think that some have died of drought,
And some have died of drinking;
I think that nought is worth a thought,—
And I’m a fool for thinking!
MY OWN FUNERAL.
(From Beranger.)
This morning, as in bed I lay,
Half waking and half sleeping,
A score of Loves, immensely gay,
Were round my chamber creeping;
I could not move my hand or head
To ask them what the stir meant;
And “Ah!” they cried, “our friend is dead;
Prepare for his interment!”
All whose hearts with mine were blended,
Weep for me! my days are ended!
One drinks my brightest Burgundy,
Without a blush, before me;
One brings a little rosary,
And breathes a blessing o’er me;
One finds my pretty chambermaid,
And courts her in dumb crambo;
Another sees the mutes arrayed
With fife by way of flambeau:
In your feasting and your fêting,
Weep for me! my hearse is waiting.
Was ever such a strange array?
The mourners all are singing;
From all the churches on our way
A merry peal is ringing;
The pall that clothes my cold remains,
Instead of boars and dragons,
Is blazoned o’er with darts and chains,
With lutes, and flowers, and flagons:
Passers-by their heads are shaking!—
Weep for me! my grave is making.
And now they let my coffin fall;
And one of them rehearses,
For want of holy ritual,
My own least holy verses:
The sculptor carves a laurel leaf,
And writes my name and story;
And silent nature in her grief
Seems dreaming of my glory:
Just as I am made immortal,—
Weep for me!—they bar the portal.
But Isabel, by accident,
Was wandering by that minute;
She opened that dark monument,
And found her slave within it;
The clergy said the Mass in vain,
The College could not save me;
But life, she swears, returned again
With the first kiss she gave me:
You who deem that life is sorrow,
Weep for me again to-morrow!
L’INCONNUE.
Many a beaming brow I’ve known,
And many a dazzling eye,
And I’ve listened to many a melting tone
In magic fleeting by;
And mine was never a heart of stone,
And yet my heart hath given to none
The tribute of a sigh;
For Fancy’s wild and witching mirth
Was dearer than aught I found on earth,
And the fairest forms I ever knew
Were far less fair than—L’Inconnue!
Many an eye that once was bright
Is dark to-day in gloom;
Many a voice that once was light
Is silent in the tomb;
Many a flower that once was dight
In beauty’s most entrancing might
Hath faded in its bloom;
But she is still as fair and gay
As if she had sprung to life to-day;
A ceaseless tone and a deathless hue
Wild Fancy hath given to—L’Inconnue
Many an eye of piercing jet
Hath only gleamed to grieve me;
Many a fairy form I’ve met,
But none have wept to leave me;
When all forsake, and all forget,
One pleasant dream shall haunt me yet,
One hope shall not deceive me;
For oh! when all beside is past,
Fancy is found our friend at last;
And the faith is firm and the love is true
Which are vowed by the lips of—L’Inconnue!
SONG.
(From Lidean’s Love.)
“O Love! O beauteous Love!
Thy home is made for all sweet things,
A dwelling for thine own soft dove
And souls as spotless as her wings;
There summer ceases never:
The trees are rich with luscious fruits,
The bowers are full of joyous throngs,
And gales that come from Heaven’s own lutes
And rivulets whose streams are songs
Go murmuring on for ever!
O Love! O wretched Love!
Thy home is made for bitter care;
And sounds are in thy myrtle grove
Of late repentance, long despair,
Of feigning and forsaking:
Thy banquet is the doubt and fear
That come we know not whence or why,
The smile that hardly masks a tear,
The laughter that is half a sigh,
The heart that jests in breaking!
O Love! O faithless Love!
Thy home is like the roving star
Which seems so fair, so far above
The world where woes and sorrows are;
But could we wander thither,
There’s nothing but another earth
As dark and restless as our own,
Where misery is child of mirth,
And every heart is born to groan,
And every flower to wither!”
JOSEPHINE.
We did not meet in courtly hall,
Where birth and beauty throng,
Where Luxury holds festival,
And Wit awakes the song;
We met where darker spirits meet,
In the home of sin and shame,
Where Satan shows his cloven feet
And hides his titled name:
And she knew that she could not be, Love,
What once she might have been;
But she was kind to me, Love,
My pretty Josephine.
We did not part beneath the sky,
As warmer lovers part;
Where night conceals the glistening eye,
But not the throbbing heart;
We parted on the spot of ground
Where we first had laughed at love,
And ever the jests were loud around,
And the lamps were bright above:—
“The heaven is very dark, Love,
The blast is very keen,
But merrily rides my bark, Love,
Good night, my Josephine!”
She did not speak of ring or vow,
But filled the cup of wine,
And took the roses from her brow
To make a wreath for mine;
And bade me, when the gale should lift
My light skiff o’er the wave,
To think as little of the gift
As of the hand that gave:—
“Go gaily o’er the sea, Love,
And find your own heart’s queen;
And look not back to me, Love,
Your humble Josephine!”
That garland breathes and blooms no more;
Past are those idle hours:
I would not, could I choose, restore
The fondness, or the flowers.
Yet oft their withered witchery
Revives its wonted thrill,
Remembered, not with passion’s sigh,
But, oh! remembered still;
And even from your side, Love,
And even from this scene,
One look is o’er the tide, Love,
One thought with Josephine.
Alas! your lips are rosier,
Your eyes of softer blue,
And I have never felt for her
As I have felt for you;
Our love was like the bright snow-flakes
Which melt before you pass,
Or the bubble on the wine, which breaks
Before you lip the glass;
You saw these eyelids wet, Love,
Which she has never seen;
But bid me not forget, Love,
My poor Josephine!
SONG FOR THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.
By a General Lover.
“Mille gravem telis, exhaustâ pene pharetrâ.”
Apollo has peeped through the shutter,
And awakened the witty and fair;
The boarding-school belle’s in a flutter,
The twopenny post’s in despair;
The breath of the morning is flinging
A magic on blossom, on spray,
And cockneys and sparrows are singing
In chorus on Valentine’s Day.
Away with ye, dreams of disaster,
Away with ye, visions of law,
Of cases I never shall master,
Of pleadings I never shall draw!
Away with ye, parchments and papers,
Red tapes, unread volumes, away!
It gives a fond lover the vapours
To see you on Valentine’s Day.
I’ll sit in my nightcap, like Hayley,
I’ll sit with my arms crost, like Spain.
Till joys, which are vanishing daily,
Come back in their lustre again;
Oh! shall I look over the waters,
Or shall I look over the way,
For the brightest and best of earth’s daughters,
To rhyme to, on Valentine’s Day?
Shall I crown with my worship, for fame’s sake,
Some goddess whom Fashion has starred,
Make puns on Miss Love and her namesake,
Or pray for a pas with Brocard?
Shall I flirt, in romantic idea,
With Chester’s adorable clay,
Or whisper in transport “Si mea[8]
Cum vestris”—on Valentine’s Day?
Shall I kneel to a Sylvia or Celia,
Who no one e’er saw, or may see,
A fancy-drawn Laura-Amelia,
An ad libit. Anna Marie?
Shall I court an initial with stars to it,
Go mad for a G. or a J.,
Get Bishop to put a few bars to it,
And print it on Valentine’s Day?
I think not of Laura the witty;
For, oh! she is married at York!
I sigh not for Rose of the City,
For, oh! she is buried at Cork!
Adèle has a braver and better
To say—what I never could say;
Louise cannot construe a letter
Of English, on Valentine’s Day.
So perish the leaves in the arbour!
The tree is all bare in the blast;
Like a wreck that is drifting to harbour,
I come to thee, Lady, at last:
Where art thou, so lovely and lonely?
Though idle the lute and the lay,
The lute and the lay are thine only,
My fairest, on Valentine’s Day.
For thee I have opened my Blackstone,
For thee I have shut up myself;
Exchanged my long curls for a Caxton,
And laid my short whist on the shelf;
For thee I have sold my old sherry,
For thee I have burnt my new play;
And I grow philosophical,—very!
Except upon Valentine’s Day!
PALINODIA.
“Nec meus hic sermo est, sed quem præcepit.”
—Horace.
There was a time, when I could feel
All passion’s hopes and fears;
And tell what tongues can ne’er reveal
By smiles and sighs and tears.
The days are gone! no more—no more
The cruel Fates allow;
And though I’m hardly twenty-four,—
I’m not a lover now.
Lady, the mist is on my sight,
The chill is on my brow;
My day is night, my bloom is blight;
I’m not a lover now!
I never talk about the clouds,
I laugh at girls and boys,
I’m growing rather fond of crowds,
And very fond of noise;
I never wander forth alone
Upon the mountain’s brow;
I weighed, last winter, sixteen stone;—
I’m not a lover now!
I never wish to raise a veil,
I never raise a sigh;
I never tell a tender tale,
I never tell a lie:
I cannot kneel, as once I did;
I’ve quite forgot my bow;
I never do as I am bid;—
I’m not a lover now!
I make strange blunders every day,
If I would be gallant;
Take smiles for wrinkles, black for grey,
And nieces for their aunt:
I fly from folly, though it flows
From lips of loveliest glow;
I don’t object to length of nose;—
I’m not a lover now!
I find my Ovid very dry,
My Petrarch quite a pill,
Cut Fancy for Philosophy,
Tom Moore for Mr. Mill.
And belles may read, and beaux may write,—
I care not who or how;
I burnt my Album, Sunday night;—
I’m not a lover now!
I don’t encourage idle dreams
Of poison or of ropes:
I cannot dine on airy schemes;
I cannot sup on hopes:
New milk, I own, is very fine,
Just foaming from the cow;
But yet I want my pint of wine;—
I’m not a lover now!
When Laura sings young hearts away,
I’m deafer than the deep;
When Leonora goes to play,
I sometimes go to sleep;
When Mary draws her white gloves out,
I never dance, I vow,—
“Too hot to kick one’s heel’s about!”
I’m not a lover now!
I’m busy, now, with state affairs;
I prate of Pitt and Fox;
I ask the price of rail-road shares,
I watch the turns of stocks.
And this is life! no verdure blooms
Upon the withered bough:
I save a fortune in perfumes;—
I’m not a lover now!
I may be yet, what others are,
A boudoir’s babbling fool,
The flattered star of Bench or Bar,
A party’s chief, or tool:—
Come shower or sunshine, hope or fear,
The palace or the plough,—
My heart and lute are broken here;—
I’m not a lover now!
Lady, the mist is on my sight,
The chill is on my brow;
My day is night, my bloom is blight
I’m not a lover now!
TIME’S SONG.
O’er the level plains, where mountains greet me as I go,
O’er the desert waste, where fountains at my bidding flow,
On the boundless beam by day, on the cloud by night,
I am riding hence away: who will chain my flight?
War his weary watch was keeping,—I have crushed his spear;
Grief within her bower was weeping,—I have dried her tear;
Pleasure caught a minute’s hold,—then I hurried by,
Leaving all her banquet cold, and her goblet dry.
Power had won a throne of glory: where is now his fame?
Genius said, “I live in story:” who hath heard his name?
Love beneath a myrtle bough whispered “Why so fast?”
And the roses on his brow withered as I past.
I have heard the heifer lowing o’er the wild wave’s bed;
I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed;
Where began my wandering? Memory will not say!
Where will rest my weary wings? Science turns away!
THE HOOPOE’S INVOCATION TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
(From the Birds of Aristophanes, 1. 209.)
Waken, dear one, from thy slumbers;
Pour again those holy numbers,
Which thou warblest there alone
In a heaven-instructed tone,
Mourning from this leafy shrine
Lost—lost Itys, mine and thine,
In the melancholy cry
Of a mother’s agony.
Echo, ere the murmurs fade,
Bear them from the yew tree’s shade
To the throne of Jove; and there,
Phœbus with his golden hair
Listens long, and loves to suit
To his ivory-mounted lute
Thy sad music; at the sound
All the gods come dancing round,
And a sympathetic song
Peals from the immortal throng.
GOOD NIGHT TO THE SEASON.
“So runs the world away.”—Hamlet.
Good night to the Season!—’Tis over!
Gay dwellings no longer are gay;
The courtier, the gambler, the lover,
Are scattered like swallows away:
There’s nobody left to invite one
Except my good uncle and spouse;
My mistress is bathing at Brighton,
My patron is sailing at Cowes:
For want of a better enjoyment,
Till Ponto and Don can get out,
I’ll cultivate rural employment,
And angle immensely for trout.
Good night to the Season!—the lobbies,
Their changes, and rumours of change,
Which startled the rustic Sir Bobbies,
And made all the Bishops look strange;
The breaches, and battles, and blunders,
Performed by the Commons and Peers;
The Marquis’s eloquent blunders,
The Baronet’s eloquent ears;
Denouncings of Papists and treasons,
Of foreign dominion and oats;
Misrepresentations of reasons,
And misunderstandings of notes.
Good night to the Season!—the buildings
Enough to make Inigo sick;
The paintings, and plasterings, and gildings
Of stucco, and marble, and brick;
The orders deliciously blended,
From love of effect, into one;
The club-houses only intended,
The palaces only begun;
The hell, where the fiend in his glory
Sits staring at putty and stones,
And scrambles from storey to storey,
To rattle at midnight his bones.
Good night to the Season!—the dances,
The fillings of hot little rooms,
The glancings of rapturous glances,
The fancyings of fancy costumes;
The pleasures which Fashion makes duties,
The praisings of fiddles and flutes,
The luxury of looking at Beauties,
The tedium of talking to Mutes;
The female diplomatists, planners
Of matches for Laura and Jane;
The ice of her Ladyship’s manners,
The ice of his Lordship’s champagne.
Good night to the Season!—the rages
Led off by the chiefs of the throng,
The Lady Matilda’s new pages,
The Lady Eliza’s new song;
Miss Fennel’s macaw, which at Boodle’s
Was held to have something to say;
Mrs. Splenetic’s musical poodles,
Which bark Batti, Batti, all day;
The pony Sir Araby sported,
As hot and as black as a coal,
And the Lion his mother imported,
In bearskins and grease, from the Pole.
Good night to the Season!—the Toso,
So very majestic and tall;
Miss Ayton, whose singing was so-so,
And Pasta, divinest of all;
The labour in vain of the ballet,
So sadly deficient in stars;
The foreigners thronging the Alley,
Exhaling the breath of cigars;
The loge where some heiress (how killing!)
Environed with exquisites sits,
The lovely one out of her drilling,
The silly ones out of their wits.
Good night to the Season!—the splendour
That beamed in the Spanish Bazaar;
Where I purchased—my heart was so tender—
A card-case, a pasteboard guitar,
A bottle of perfume, a girdle,
A lithographed Riego, full grown,
Whom bigotry drew on a hurdle
That artists might draw him on stone;
A small panorama of Seville,
A trap for demolishing flies,
A caricature of the Devil,
And a look from Miss Sheridan’s eyes.
Good night to the Season!—the flowers
Of the grand Horticultural fête,
When boudoirs were quitted for bowers,
And the fashion was—not to be late;
When all who had money and leisure
Grew rural o’er ices and wines,
All pleasantly toiling for pleasure,
All hungrily pining for pines,
And making of beautiful speeches,
And massing of beautiful shows,
And feeding on delicate peaches,
And treading on delicate toes.
Good night to the Season!—Another
Will come, with its trifles and toys,
And hurry away, like its brother,
In sunshine, and odour, and noise.
Will it come with a rose or a briar?
Will it come with a blessing or curse?
Will its bonnets be lower or higher?
Will its morals be better or worse?
Will it find me grown thinner or fatter,
Or fonder of wrong or of right,
Or married—or buried?—no matter:
Good night to the Season—good night!
SONG.—YES OR NO.
The Baron de Vaux hath a valiant crest,—
My Lady is fair and free;
The Baron is full of mirth and jest,—
My Lady is full of glee;
But their path, we know, is a path of woe,
And many the reason guess,—
The Baron will ever mutter “No”
When my Lady whispers “Yes.”
The Baron will pass the wine-cup round,—
My Lady forth will roam;
The Baron will out with horse and hound,—
My Lady sits at home;
The Baron will go to draw the bow,—
My Lady will go to chess;
And the Baron will ever mutter “No”
When my Lady whispers “Yes.”
The Baron hath ears for a lovely lay,
If my Lady sings it not;
The Baron is blind to a beauteous day,
If it beam in my Lady’s grot;
The Baron bows low to a furbelow,
If it be not my Lady’s dress;
And the Baron will ever mutter “No”
When my Lady whispers “Yes.”
Now saddle my steed, and helm my head,
Be ready in the porch;
Stout Guy, with a ladder of silken thread,
And trusty Will, with a torch;
The wind may blow, the torrent flow,—
No matter,—on we press;
I never can hear the Baron’s “No”
When my Lady whispers “Yes.”
UTOPIA.
——“I can dream, sir,
If I eat well and sleep well.”
—The Mad Lover.
If I could scare the light away,
No sun should ever shine;
If I could bid the clouds obey,
Thick darkness should be mine:
Where’er my weary footsteps roam,
I hate whate’er I see;
And Fancy builds a fairer home
In slumber’s hour for me.
I had a vision yesternight
Of a lovelier land than this,
Where heaven was clothed in warmth and light,
Where earth was full of bliss;
And every tree was rich with fruits,
And every field with flowers,
And every zephyr wakened lutes
In passion-haunted bowers.
I clambered up a lofty rock,
And did not find it steep;
I read through a page and a half of Locke,
And did not fall asleep;
I said whate’er I may but feel,
I paid whate’er I owe;
And I danced one day an Irish reel,
With the gout in every toe.
And I was more than six feet high,
And fortunate, and wise;
And I had a voice of melody
And beautiful black eyes;
My horses like the lightning went,
My barrels carried true,
And I held my tongue at an argument,
And winning cards at loo.
I saw an old Italian priest
Who spoke without disguise;
I dined with a judge who swore, like Best,
All libels should be lies:
I bought for a penny a twopenny loaf,
Of wheat, and nothing more;
I danced with a female philosophe,
Who was not quite a bore.
The kitchens there had richer roast,
The sheep wore whiter wool;
I read a witty Morning Post,
And an innocent John Bull:
The gaolers had nothing at all to do,
The hangman looked forlorn,
And the Peers had passed a vote or two
For freedom of trade in corn.
There was a crop of wheat, which grew
Where plough was never brought;
There was a noble lord, who knew
What he was never taught:
A scheme appeared in the Gazette
For a lottery with no blanks;
And a Parliament had lately met,
Without a single Bankes.
And there were kings who never went
To cuffs for half-a-crown;
And lawyers who were eloquent
Without a wig and gown;
And sportsmen who forebore to praise
Their greyhounds and their guns;
And poets who deserved the bays,
And did not dread the duns.
And boroughs were bought without a test,
And no man feared the Pope;
And the Irish cabins were all possessed
Of liberty and soap;
And the Chancellor, feeling very sick,
Had just resigned the seals;
And a clever little Catholic
Was hearing Scotch appeals.
I went one day to a Court of Law
Where a fee had been refused;
And a Public School I really saw
Where the rod was never used;
And the sugar still was very sweet,
Though all the slaves were free;
And all the folk in Downing Street
Had learnt the rule of three.
There love had never a fear or doubt,
December breathed like June:
The Prima Donna ne’er was out
Of temper—or of tune;
The streets were paved with mutton pies,
Potatoes ate like pine;
Nothing looked black but a woman’s eyes;
Nothing grew old but wine.
It was an idle dream; but thou,
The worshipped one, wert there,
With thy dark clear eyes and beaming brow,
White neck and floating hair;
And oh, I had an honest heart,
And a house of Portland stone;
And thou wert dear, as still thou art,
And more than dear, my own!
Oh bitterness!—the morning broke
Alike for boor and bard;
And thou wert married when I woke,
And all the rest was marred:
And toil and trouble, noise and steam,
Came back with the coming ray;
And, if I thought the dead could dream,
I’d hang myself to-day!
MARRIAGE CHIMES.
——“Go together,
You precious winners all.”
—Winter’s Tale.
Fair Lady, ere you put to sea,
You and your mate together,
I meant to hail you lovingly,
And wish you pleasant weather.
I took my fiddle from the shelf,
But vain was all my labour;
For still I thought about myself,
And not about my neighbour.
Safe from the perils of the war,
Nor killed, nor hurt, nor missing—
Since many things in common are
Between campaigns and kissing—
Ungrazed by glance, unbound by ring,
Love’s carte and tierce I’ve parried,
While half my friends are marrying,
And half—good lack!—are married.
’Tis strange—but I have passed alive
Where darts and deaths were plenty,
Until I find my twenty-five
As lonely as my twenty:
And many lips have sadly sighed—
Which were not made for sighing,
And many hearts have darkly died—
Which never dreamed of dying.
Some victims fluttered like a fly,
Some languished like a lily;
Some told their tale in poetry,
And some in Piccadilly:
Some yielded to a Spanish hat,
Some to a Turkish sandal;
Hosts suffered from an entrechat
And one or two from Handel.
Good Sterling said no dame should come
To be the queen of his bourn,
But one who only prized her home,
Her spinning wheel, and Gisborne:
And Mrs. Sterling says odd things
With most sublime effront’ry;
Gives lectures on elliptic springs,
And follows hounds ’cross country.
Sir Roger had a Briton’s pride
In freedom, plough, and furrow;—
No fortune hath Sir Roger’s bride,
Except a rotten borough;
Gustavus longed for truth and crumbs,
Contentment and a cottage;—
His Laura brings a pair of plums
To boil the poor man’s pottage.
My rural coz, who loves his peace,
And swore at scientifics,
Is flirting with a lecturer’s niece,
Who construes hieroglyphics:
And Foppery’s fool, who hated blues
Worse than he hated Holborn,
Is raving of a pensive Muse,
Who does the verse for Colburn.
And Vyvyan, Humour’s crazy child,—
Whose worship, whim, or passion,
Was still for something strange and wild,
Wit, wickedness, or fashion,—
Is happy with a little Love,
A parson’s pretty daughter,
As tender as a turtle-dove,—
As dull as milk and water.
And Gerard hath his Northern Fay—
His nymph of mirth and haggis;
And Courtenay wins a damsel gay
Who figures at Colnaghi’s;
And Davenant now has drawn a prize,—
I hope and trust, a Venus,
Because there are some sympathies—
As well as leagues—between us.
Thus north and south, and east and west,
The chimes of Hymen jingle;
But I shall wander on, unblest,
And singularly single;
Light-pursed, light-hearted, addle-brained,
And often captivated,
Yet, save on circuit—unretained,
And, save at chess—unmated.
Yet oh!—if Nemesis with me
Should sport, as with my betters,
And put me on my awkward knee,
To prate of flowers and fetters,—
I know not whose the eyes should be
To make this fortress tremble;
But yesternight I dreamt,—ah me!
Whose they should most resemble!
REMEMBER ME.
In Seville, when the feast was long,
And lips and lutes grew free,
At Inez feet, amid the throng,
A masquer bent his knee;
And still the burden of his song
Was “Sweet, remember me!
“Remember me in shine and shower,
In sorrow and in glee;
When summer breathes upon the flower,
When winter blasts the tree,
When there are dances in the bower
Or sails upon the sea.
“Remember me beneath far skies,
Or foreign lawn or lea;
When others worship those wild eyes
Which I no more may see,
When others wake the melodies
Of which I mar the key.
“Remember me! my heart will claim
No love, no trust, from thee;
Remember me, though doubt and blame
Linked with the record be;
Remember me,—with scorn or shame,—
But yet, remember me!”
THE FANCY BALL.
“A visor for a visor! What care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?”
—Romeo and Juliet.
“You used to talk,” said Miss MacCall,
“Of flowers, and flames, and Cupid;
But now you never talk at all;
You’re getting vastly stupid:
You’d better burn your Blackstone, sir,
You never will get through it;
There’s a Fancy Ball at Winchester,—
Do let us take you to it!”
I made that night a solemn vow
To startle all beholders;
I wore white muslin on the brow,
Green velvet on my shoulders;
My trousers were supremely wide,
I learnt to swear “by Allah!”
I stuck a poniard by my side,
And called myself “Abdallah.”
Oh, a fancy ball’s a strange affair!
Made up of silk and leathers,
Light heads, light heels, false hearts, false hair,
Pins, paint, and ostrich feathers:
The dullest duke in all the town,
To-day may shine a droll one;
And rakes, who have not half-a-crown,
Look royal in a whole one.
Go, call the lawyer from his pleas,
The schoolboy from his Latin;
Be stoics here in ecstasies,
And savages in satin;
Let young and old forego—forget
Their labour and their sorrow,
And none—except the Cabinet—
Take counsel for the morrow.
Begone, dull care! This life of ours
Is very dark and chilly;
We’ll sleep through all its serious hours,
And laugh through all its silly.
Be mine such motley scene as this,
Where, by established usance,
Miss Gravity is quite amiss,
And Madam Sense a nuisance!
Hail, blest Confusion! here are met
All tongues and times and faces,
The Lancers flirt with Juliet,
The Brahmin talks of races;
And where’s your genuis, bright Corinne?
And where’s your brogue, Sir Lucius?
And Chinca Ti, you have not seen
One chapter of Confucius.
Lo! dandies from Kamschatka flirt
With Beauties from the Wrekin;
And belles from Berne look very pert
On Mandarins from Pekin;
The Cardinal is here from Rome,
The Commandant from Seville;
And Hamlet’s father from the tomb,
And Faustus from the Devil.
O sweet Anne Page!—those dancing eyes
Have peril in their splendour!
“O sweet Anne Page!”—so Slender sighs,
And what am I, but slender?
Alas! when next your spells engage
So fond and starved a sinner,
My pretty Page, be Shakespeare’s Page,
And ask the fool to dinner!
What mean those laughing Nuns, I pray,
What mean they, nun or fairy?
I guess they told no beads to-day,
And sang no Ave Mary:
From mass and matins, priest and pyx,
Barred door, and window grated,
I wish all pretty Catholics
Were thus emancipated!
Four seasons come to dance quadrilles
With four well-seasoned sailors;
And Raleigh talks of rail-road bills
With Timon, prince of railers;
I find Sir Charles of Aubyn Park
Equipt for a walk to Mecca;
And I run away from Joan of Arc,
To romp with sad Rebecca.
Fair Cleopatra’s very plain;
Puck halts, and Ariel swaggers;
And Cæsar’s murdered o’er again,
Though not by Roman daggers:
Great Charlemagne is four feet high;
Sad stuff has Bacon spoken;
Queen Mary’s waist is all awry,
And Psyche’s nose is broken.
Our happiest bride—how very odd!—
Is the mourning Isabella;
And the heaviest foot that ever trod
Is the foot of Cinderella;
Here sad Calista laughs outright,
There Yorick looks most grave, sir,
And a Templar waves the cross to-night,
Who never crossed the wave, sir!
And what a Babel is the talk!
“The Giraffe”—“plays the fiddle”—
“Macadam’s roads”—“I hate this chalk!”—
“Sweet girl”—“a charming riddle”—
“I’m nearly drunk with”—“Epsom salts”—
“Yes, separate beds”—“such cronies!”
“Good Heaven! who taught that man to waltz?”—
“A pair of Shetland ponies.”
“Lord Nugent”—“an enchanting shape”—
“Will move for”—“Maraschino”—
“Pray, Julia, how’s your mother’s ape?”—
“He died at Navarino!”—
“The gout, by Jove, is”—“apple pie”—
“Don Miguel”—“Tom the tinker”—
“His Lordship’s pedigree’s as high
As”—“Whipcord, dam by Clinker.”
“Love’s shafts are weak”—“my chestnut kicks”—
“Heart-broken”—“broke the traces”—
“What say you now of politics?”—
“Change hands and to your places.”—
“A five-barred gate”—“a precious pearl”—
“Grave things may all be punned on!”—
“The Whigs, thank Heaven, are”—“out of curl!”—
“Her age is”—“four by London!”
Thus run the giddy hours away,
The morning’s light is beaming,
And we must go to dream by day
All we to-night are dreaming,—
To smile and sigh, to love and change:
Oh, in our hearts’ recesses,
We dress in fancies quite as strange
As these our fancy dresses!
A LETTER OF ADVICE.
(From Miss Medora Trevilian, at Padua, to Miss Araminta Vavasour, in London.)
“Enfir, monsieur, un homme aimable;
Voilà pourquoi je ne saurais l’aimer”
—Scribe.
You tell me you’re promised a lover,
My own Araminta, next week;
Why cannot my fancy discover
The hue of his coat and his cheek?
Alas! if he look like another,
A vicar, a banker, a beau,
Be deaf to your father and mother,
My own Araminta, say “No!”
Miss Lane, at her Temple of Fashion,
Taught us both how to sing and to speak,
And we loved one another with passion,
Before we had been there a week:
You gave me a ring for a token;
I wear it wherever I go;
I gave you a chain,—is it broken?
My own Araminta, say “No!”
O think of our favourite cottage,
And think of our dear Lalla Rookh!
How we shared with the milkmaids their pottage,
And drank of the stream from the brook;
How fondly our loving lips faltered
“What further can grandeur bestow?”
My heart is the same;—is yours altered?
My own Araminta, say “No!”
Remember the thrilling romances
We read on the bank in the glen;
Remember the suitors our fancies
Would picture for both of us then.
They wore the red cross on their shoulder,
They had vanquished and pardoned their foe—
Sweet friend, are you wiser or colder?
My own Araminta, say “No!”
You know when Lord Rigmarole’s carriage
Drove off with your cousin Justine,
You wept, dearest girl, at the marriage,
And whispered, “How base she has been!”
You said you were sure it would kill you,
If ever your husband looked so;
And you will not apostatise,—will you?
My own Araminta, say “No!”
When I heard I was going abroad, love,
I thought I was going to die;
We walked arm-in-arm to the road, love,
We looked arm-in-arm to the sky;
And I said, “When a foreign postilion
Has hurried me off to the Po,
Forget not Medora Trevilian:
My own Araminta, say “No!”
We parted! but sympathy’s fetters
Reach far over valley and hill;
I muse o’er your exquisite letters,
And feel that your heart is mine still;
And he who would share it with me, love,—
The richest of treasures below,—
If he’s not what Orlando should be, love,
My own Araminta, say “No!”
If he wears a top-boot in his wooing,
If he comes to you riding a cob,
If he talks of his baking or brewing,
If he puts up his feet on the hob,
If he ever drinks port after dinner,
If his brow or his breeding is low,
If he calls himself “Thompson” or “Skinner”,
My own Araminta, say “No!”
If he studies the news in the papers
While you are preparing the tea,
If he talks of the damps or the vapours
While moonlight lies soft on the sea,
If he’s sleepy while you are capricious,
If he has not a musical “Oh!”
If he does not call Werther delicious,—
My own Araminta, say “No!”
If he ever sets foot in the City
Among the stockbrokers and Jews,
If he has not a heart full of pity,
If he don’t stand six feet in his shoes,
If his lips are not redder than roses,
If his hands are not whiter than snow,
If he has not the model of noses,—
My own Araminta, say “No!”
If he speaks of a tax or a duty,
If he does not look grand on his knees,
If he’s blind to a landscape of beauty,
Hills, valleys, rocks, water, and trees,
If he dotes not on desolate towers,
If he likes not to hear the blast blow,
If he knows not the language of flowers,—
My own Araminta, say “No!”
He must walk—like a god of old story
Come down from the home of his rest;
He must smile—like the sun in his glory
On the bud, he loves ever the best;
And oh! from its ivory portal
Like music his soft speech must flow!
If he speak, smile, or walk like a mortal,
My own Araminta, say “No!”
Don’t listen to tales of his bounty,
Don’t hear what they say of his birth,
Don’t look at his seat in the county,
Don’t calculate what he is worth;
But give him a theme to write verse on,
And see if he turns out his toe;
If he’s only an excellent person,—
My own Araminta, say “No!”
EVERY-DAY CHARACTERS.
I.
THE VICAR.
Some years ago, ere time and taste
Had turned our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way, between
St. Mary’s Hill and Sandy Thicket,
Was always shown across the green,
And guided to the Parson’s wicket.
Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
Led the lorn traveller up the path,
Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlour steps collected,
Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say—
“Our master knows you—you’re expected.”
Up rose the Reverend Dr. Brown,
Up rose the Doctor’s winsome marrow;
The lady laid her knitting down,
Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow;
Whate’er the stranger’s caste or creed,
Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner,
He found a stable for his steed,
And welcome for himself, and dinner.
If, when he reached his journey’s end,
And warmed himself in Court or College,
He had not gained an honest friend
And twenty curious scraps of knowledge,—
If he departed as he came,
With no new light on love or liquor,—
Good sooth, the traveller was to blame,
And not the Vicarage, nor the Vicar.
His talk was like a stream, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels or shoeing horses.
He was a shrewd and sound Divine,
Of loud Dissent the mortal terror;
And when, by dint of page and line,
He ’stablished Truth, or startled Error,
The Baptist found him far too deep;
The Deist sighed with saving sorrow;
And the lean Levite went to sleep,
And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow.
His sermon never said or showed
That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious,
Without refreshment on the road
From Jerome or from Athanasius:
And sure a righteous zeal inspired
The hand and head that penned and planned them
For all who understood admired,
And some who did not understand them.
He wrote, too, in a quiet way,
Small treatises, and smaller verses,
And sage remarks on chalk and clay,
And hints to noble Lords—and nurses;
True histories of last year’s ghost,
Lines to a ringlet, or a turban,
And trifles for the Morning Post,
And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.
He did not think all mischief fair,
Although he had a knack of joking;
He did not make himself a bear,
Although he had a taste for smoking;
And when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man’s belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
And he was kind, and loved to sit
In the low hut or garnished cottage,
And praise the farmer’s homely wit,
And share the widow’s homelier pottage:
At his approach complaint grew mild;
And when his hand unbarred the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled
The welcome which they could not utter.
He always had a tale for me
Of Julius Cæsar, or of Venus;
From him I learnt the rule of three,
Cat’s cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus;
I used to singe his powdered wig,
To steal the staff he put such trust in,
And make the puppy dance a jig,
When he began to quote Augustine.
Alack the change! in vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled,—
The level lawn, the trickling brook,
The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;
You reach it by a carriage entry;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted up for gentry.
Sit in the Vicar’s seat: you’ll hear
The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
Where is the old man laid?—look down,
And construe on the slab before you,
“Hic jacet GVLIELMVS BROWN
Vir nullâ non donandus lauru.”
II.
QUINCE.
“Fallentis semita vitæ.”—Hor.
Near a small village in the West,
Where many worthy people
Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best
To guard from evil Church and steeple,
There stood—alas! it stands no more!—
A tenement of brick and plaster,
Of which, for forty years and four,
My good friend Quince was lord and master.
Welcome was he in hut and hall
To maids and matrons, peers and peasants;
He won the sympathies of all
By making puns, and making presents.
Though all the parish were at strife,
He kept his counsel, and his carriage,
And laughed, and loved a quiet life,
And shrank from Chancery suits—and marriage.
Sound was his claret—and his head;
Warm was his double ale—and feelings;
His partner at the whist club said
That he was faultless in his dealings:
He went to church but once a week;
Yet Dr. Poundtext always found him
An upright man, who studied Greek,
And liked to see his friends around him.
Asylums, hospitals, and schools,
He used to swear, were made to cozen;
All who subscribed to them were fools,—
And he subscribed to half-a-dozen:
It was his doctrine that the poor
Were always able, never willing;
And so the beggar at his door
Had first abuse, and then—a shilling.
Some public principles he had,
But was no flatterer, nor fretter;
He rapped his box when things were bad,
And said, “I cannot make them better!”
And much he loathed the patriot’s snort,
And much he scorned the placeman’s snuffle;
And cut the fiercest quarrels short
With—“Patience, gentlemen—and shuffle!”
For full ten years his pointer Speed
Had couched beneath her master’s table;
For twice ten years his old white steed
Had fattened in his master’s stable;
Old Quince averred, upon his troth,
They were the ugliest beasts in Devon;
And none knew why he fed them both,
With his own hands, six days in seven.
Whene’er they heard his ring or knock,
Quicker than thought, the village slatterns
Flung down the novel, smoothed the frock,
And took up Mrs. Glasse, and patterns;
Adine was studying baker’s bills;
Louisa looked the queen of knitters;
Jane happened to be hemming frills;
And Bell, by chance, was making fritters.
But all was vain; and while decay
Came, like a tranquil moonlight, o’er him,
And found him gouty still, and gay,
With no fair nurse to bless or bore him,
His rugged smile and easy chair,
His dread of matrimonial lectures,
His wig, his stick, his powdered hair,
Were themes for very strange conjectures.
Some sages thought the stars above
Had crazed him with excess of knowledge;
Some heard he had been crost in love
Before he came away from college;
Some darkly hinted that his Grace
Did nothing, great or small, without him;
Some whispered, with a solemn face,
That there was “something odd about him!”
I found him, at three score and ten,
A single man, but bent quite double;
Sickness was coming on him then
To take him from a world of trouble:
He prosed of slipping down the hill,
Discovered he grew older daily;
One frosty day he made his will,—
The next, he sent for Doctor Bailey.
And so he lived,—and so he died!—
When last I sat beside his pillow
He shook my hand, and “Ah!” he cried,
“Penelope must wear the willow.
Tell her I hugged her rosy chain
While life was flickering in the socket;
And say, that when I call again,
I’ll bring a licence in my pocket.
“I’ve left my house and grounds to Fag,—
I hope his master’s shoes will suit him;
And I’ve bequeathed to you my nag,
To feed him for my sake,—or shoot him.
The Vicar’s wife will take old Fox,—
She’ll find him an uncommon mouser,—
And let her husband have my box,
My bible, and my Assmanshauser.
“Whether I ought to die or not,
My doctor cannot quite determine;
It’s only clear that I shall rot,
And be, like Priam, food for vermin.
My debts are paid:—but Nature’s debt
Almost escaped my recollection:
Tom!—we shall meet again;—and yet
I cannot leave you my direction!”
III.
THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM.
“Il faut juger des femmes depuis la chaussure jusqu’ à la coiffure exclusivement, á peu pres comme on mesure le poisson entre queue et tête.”—La Bruyere.
Years—years ago,—ere yet my dreams
Had been of being wise or witty,—
Ere I had done with writing themes,
Or yawned o’er this infernal Chitty;—
Years—years ago,—while all my joy
Was in my fowling-piece and filly,—
In short, while I was yet a boy,
I fell in love with Laura Lily.
I saw her at the County Ball:
There, when the sound of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall
Of hands across and down the middle,
Her’s was the subtlest spell by far
Of all that set young hearts romancing;
She was our queen, our rose, our star;
And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing!
Dark was her hair, her hand was white;
Her voice was exquisitely tender;
Her eyes were full of liquid light;
I never saw a waist so slender!
Her every look, her every smile,
Shot right and left a score of arrows;
I thought ’twas Venus from her isle,
And wondered where she’d left her sparrows.
She talked,—of politics or prayers,—
Of Southey’s prose or Wordsworth’s sonnets,—
Of danglers—or of dancing bears,
Of battles,—or the last new bonnets,
By candlelight, at twelve o’clock,
To me it mattered not a tittle;
If those bright lips had quoted Locke,
I might have thought they murmured Little.
Through sunny May, through sultry June,
I loved her with a love eternal;
I spoke her praises to the moon,
I wrote them to the Sunday Journal:
My mother laughed; I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling:
My father frowned; but how should gout
See any happiness in kneeling?
She was the daughter of a Dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother, just thirteen,
Whose colour was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,
And Lord Lieutenant of the county.
But titles, and the three per cents,
And mortgages, and great relations,
And India bonds, and tithes, and rents,
Oh what are they to love’s sensations?
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks—
Such wealth, such honours, Cupid chooses;
He cares as little for the stocks
As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.
She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach,
Grew lovelier from her pencil’s shading:
She botanised; I envied each
Young blossom in her boudoir fading:
She warbled Handel; it was grand;
She made the Catalani jealous:
She touched the organ; I could stand
For hours and hours to blow the bellows.
She kept an album, too, at home,
Well filled with all an album’s glories;
Paintings of butterflies, and Rome,
Patterns for trimmings, Persian stories;
Soft songs to Julia’s cockatoo,
Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter,
And autographs of Prince Leboo,
And recipes for elder water.
And she was flattered, worshipped, bored;
Her steps were watched, her dress was noted;
Her poodle dog was quite adored,
Her sayings were extremely quoted;
She laughed, and every heart was glad,
As if the taxes were abolished;
She frowned, and every look was sad,
As if the opera were demolished.
She smiled on many, just for fun—
I knew that there was nothing in it;
I was the first—the only one,
Her heart had thought of for a minute.
I knew it, for she told me so,
In phrase which was divinely moulded;
She wrote a charming hand—and oh!
How sweetly all her notes were folded!
Our love was like most other loves;—
A little glow, a little shiver,
A rose-bud, and a pair of gloves,
And “Fly not yet”—upon the river;
Some jealousy of some one’s heir,
Some hope of dying broken-hearted,
A miniature, a lock of hair,
The usual vows,—and then we parted.
We parted; months and years rolled by;
We met again four summers after:
Our parting was all sob and sigh;
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter:
For in my heart’s most secret cell
There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ball-room’s Belle,
But only—Mrs. Something Rogers!
IV.
MY PARTNER.
“There is, perhaps, no subject of more universal interest in the whole range of natural knowledge, than that of the increasing fluctuations which take place in the atmosphere in which we are immersed.”—British Almanac.
At Cheltenham, where one drinks one’s fill
Of folly and cold water,
I danced last year my first quadrille
With old Sir Geoffrey’s daughter.
Her cheek with summer’s rose might vie,
When summer’s rose is newest;
Her eyes were blue as autumn’s sky,
When autumn’s sky is bluest;
And well my heart might deem her one
Of life’s most precious flowers,
For half her thoughts were of its sun,
And half were of its showers.
I spoke of novels:—Vivian Grey
Was positively charming,
And Almack’s infinitely gay,
And Frankenstein alarming;
I said De Vere was chastely told,
Thought well of Herbert Lacy,
Called Mr. Banim’s sketches “bold,”
And Lady Morgan’s “racy.”
I vowed that last new thing of Hook’s
Was vastly entertaining;
And Laura said,—“I doat on books,
Because its always raining!”
I talked of Music’s gorgeous fane;
I raved about Rossini,
Hoped Renzi would come back again,
And criticised Pacini;
I wished the chorus-singers dumb,
The trumpets more pacific,
And eulogised Brocard’s aplomb,
And voted Paul “terrific!”
What cared she for Medea’s pride,
Or Desdemona’s sorrow?
“Alas!” my beauteous listener sighed,
“We must have rain to-morrow!”
I told her tales of other lands;
Of ever-boiling fountains,
Of poisonous lakes and barren sands,
Vast forests, trackless mountains:
I painted bright Italian skies,
I lauded Persian roses,
Coined similes for Spanish eyes,
And jests for Indian noses;
I laughed at Lisbon’s love of mass,
Vienna’s dread of treason:
And Laura asked me—where the glass
Stood, at Madrid, last season?
I broached whate’er had gone its rounds,
The week before, of scandal;
What made Sir Luke lay down his hounds,
And Jane take up her Handel;
Why Julia walked upon the heath,
With the pale moon above her;
Where Flora lost her false front teeth,
And Anne her falser lover;
How Lord de B. and Mrs. L.
Had crossed the sea together:
My shuddering partner cried, “O Ciel!
How could they,—in such weather?”
Was she a Blue?—I put my trust
In strata, petals, gases;
A boudoir-pedant? I discussed
The toga and the fasces;
A Cockney-Muse? I mouthed a deal
Of folly from “Endymion;”
A saint? I praised the pious zeal
Of Messrs. Way & Simeon;
A politician?—it was vain
To quote the morning paper;
The horrid phantoms came again,
Rain, Hail, and Snow, and Vapour.
Flat flattery was my only chance;
I acted deep devotion,
Found magic in her every glance,
Grace in her every motion;
I wasted all a stripling’s lore,
Prayer, passion, folly, feeling;
And wildly looked upon the floor,
And mildly on the ceiling.
I envied gloves upon her arm
And shawls upon her shoulder;
And, when my worship was most warm,
She—“never found it colder.”
I don’t object to wealth or land;
And she will have the giving
Of an extremely pretty hand,
Some thousands, and a living.
She makes silk purses, broiders stools,
Sings sweetly, dances finely,
Paints screens, subscribes to Sunday-schools,
And sits a horse divinely.
But to be linked in life to her!—
The desperate man who tried it
Might marry a Barometer
And hang himself beside it!
V.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
IN THE EXHIBITION OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 1831.
What are you, lady?—naught is here
To tell us of your name or story,
To claim the gazer’s smile or tear,
To dub you Whig or damn you Tory;
It is beyond a poet’s skill
To form the slightest notion whether
We e’er shall walk through one quadrille,
Or look upon one moon together.
You’re very pretty!—all the world
Is talking of your bright brow’s splendour.
And of your locks, so softly curled,
And of your hands, so white and slender;
Some think you’re blooming in Bengal;
Some say you’re blowing in the City;
Some know you’re nobody at all:
I only feel—you’re very pretty.
But bless my heart! it’s very wrong;
You’re making all our belles ferocious;
Anne “never saw a chin so long;”
And Laura thinks your dress “atrocious:”
And Lady Jane, who now and then
Is taken for the village steeple,
Is sure you can’t be four feet ten,
And “wonders at the taste of people.”
Soon pass the praises of a face;
Swift fades the very best vermilion;
Fame rides a most prodigious pace;
Oblivion follows on the pillion;
And all who in these sultry rooms
To-day have stared, and pushed, and fainted,
Will soon forget your pearls and plumes,
As if they never had been painted.
You’ll be forgotten—as old debts
By persons who are used to borrow;
Forgotten as the sun that sets,
When shines a new one on the morrow;
Forgotten—like the luscious peach
That blessed the schoolboy last September;
Forgotten like a maiden speech,
Which all men praise, but none remember.
Yet, ere you sink into the stream
That whelms alike sage, saint, and martyr,
And soldier’s sword, and minstrel’s theme,
And Canning’s wit, and Gatton’s charter,
Here, of the fortunes of your youth,
My fancy weaves her dim conjectures,
Which have, perhaps, as much of truth
As passion’s vows, or Cobbett’s lectures.
Was’t in the north, or in the south
That summer breezes rocked your cradle?
And had you in your baby mouth
A wooden or a silver ladle?
And was your first unconscious sleep
By Brownie banned, or blessed by Fairy?
And did you wake to laugh or weep?
And were you christened Maud or Mary?
And was your father called “Your Grace?”
And did he bet at Ascot races?
And did he chat of commonplace?
And did he fill a score of places?
And did your lady-mother’s charms
Consist in picklings, broilings, bastings?
Or did she prate about the arms
Her brave forefathers wore at Hastings?
Where were you finished? tell me where?
Was it at Chelsea or at Chiswick?
Had you the ordinary share
Of books and backboard, harp and physic?
And did they bid you banish pride,
And mind your Oriental tinting?
And did you learn how Dido died?
And who found out the art of printing?
And are you fond of lanes and brooks—
A votary of the sylvan Muses?
Or do you con the little books
Which Baron Brougham and Vaux diffuses?
Or do you love to knit and sow—
The fashionable world’s Arachne?
Or do you canter down the Row
Upon a very long-tailed hackney?
And do you love your brother James?
And do you pet his mares and setters?
And have your friends romantic names?
And do you write them long, long letters?
And are you—since the world began
All women are—a little spiteful?
And don’t you dote on Malibran?
And don’t you think Tom Moore delightful?
I see they’ve brought you flowers to-day;
Delicious food for eyes and noses;
But carelessly you turn away
From all the pinks and all the roses;
Say, is that fond look sent in search
Of one whose look as fondly answers?
And is he, fairest, in the Church?
Or is he—ain’t he—in the Lancers?
And is your love a motley page
Of black and white, half joy, half sorrow?
Are you to wait till you’re of age?
Or are you to be his to-morrow?
Or do they bid you, in their scorn,
Your pure and sinless flame to smother?
Is he so very meanly born?
Or are you married to another?
Whate’er you are, at last, adieu!
I think it is your bounden duty
To let the rhymes I coin for you
Be prized by all who prize your beauty.
From you I seek nor gold nor fame;
From you I fear no cruel strictures;
I wish some girls that I could name
Were half as silent as their pictures!
APRIL FOOLS.
——“passim
Palantes error certo de tramite pellit;
Ill sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit.”
—Horace.
This day, beyond all contradiction,
This day is all thine own, Queen Fiction!
And thou art building castles boundless
Of groundless joys, and griefs as groundless;
Assuring Beauties that the border
Of their new dress is out of order,
And schoolboys that their shoes want tying,
And babies that their dolls are dying.
Lend me—lend me some disguise;
I will tell prodigious lies;
All who care for what I say
Shall be April Fools to-day!
First, I relate how all the nation
Is ruined by Emancipation;
How honest men are sadly thwarted,
How beads and faggots are imported,
How every parish church looks thinner,
How Peel has asked the Pope to dinner;
And how the Duke who fought the duel,
Keeps good King George on water gruel.
Thus I waken doubts and fears
In the Commons and the Peers;
If they care for what I say,
They are April Fools to-day!
Next, I announce to hall and hovel
Lord Asterisk’s unwritten novel;
It’s full of wit, and full of fashion,
And full of taste, and full of passion;
It tells some very curious histories,
Elucidates some charming mysteries,
And mingles sketches of society
With precepts of the soundest piety.
Thus I babble to the host
Who adore the Morning Post;
If they care for what I say,
They are April Fools to-day!
Then to the artist of my raiment
I hint his bankers have stopped payment;
And just suggest to Lady Locket
That somebody has picked her pocket;
And scare Sir Thomas from the City
By murmuring, in a tone of pity,
That I am sure I saw my Lady
Drive through the Park with Captain Grady.
Off my troubled victims go,
Very pale and very low;
If they care for what I say,
They are April Fools to-day!
I’ve sent the learned Doctor Trepan
To feel Sir Hubert’s broken knee-pan;
’Twill rout the Doctor’s seven senses
To find Sir Hubert charging fences!
I’ve sent a sallow parchment-scraper
To put Miss Tim’s last will on paper;
He’ll see her, silent as a mummy,
At whist, with her two maids and dummy.
Man of brief, and man of pill,
They will take it very ill;
If they care for what I say,
They are April Fools to-day!
And then to her whose smile shed light on
My weary lot last year at Brighton
I talk of happiness and marriage,
St. George’s, and a travelling carriage;
I trifle with my rosy fetters,
I rave about her witching letters,
And swear my heart shall do no treason
Before the closing of the season.
Thus I whisper in the ear
Of Louisa Windermere;
If she cares for what I say,
She’s an April Fool to-day!
And to the world I publish gaily,
That all things are improving daily;
That suns grow warmer, streamlets clearer,
And faith more warm, and love sincerer;
That children grow extremely clever,
That sin is seldom known, or never;
That gas, and steam, and education,
Are killing sorrow and starvation!
Pleasant visions!—but alas,
How those pleasant visions pass!
If you care for what I say,
You’re an April Fool to-day!
Last, to myself, when night comes round me,
And the soft chain of thought has bound me,
I whisper “Sir, your eyes are killing;
You owe no mortal man a shilling;
You never cringe for Star or Garter;
You’re much too wise to be a martyr;
And, since you must be food for vermin,
You don’t feel much desire for ermine!”
Wisdom is a mine, no doubt,
If one can but find it out;
But, whate’er I think or say,
I’m an April Fool to-day!
SCHOOL AND SCHOOLFELLOWS.
FLOREAT ETONA.
Twelve years ago I made a mock
Of filthy trades and traffics:
I wondered what they meant by stock;
I wrote delightful sapphics;
I knew the streets of Rome and Troy,
I supped with Fates and Furies,—
Twelve years ago I was a boy,
A happy boy, at Drury’s.
Twelve years ago!—how many a thought
Of faded pains and pleasures
Those whispered syllables have brought
From Memory’s hoarded treasures!
The fields, the farms, the bats, the books,
The glories and disgraces,
The voices of dear friends, the looks
Of all familiar faces!
Kind Mater smiles again to me,
As bright as when we parted;
I seem again the frank, the free,
Stout-limbed, and simple-hearted!
Pursuing every idle dream,
And shunning every warning;
With no hard work but Bovney stream,
No chill except Long Morning:
Now stopping Harry Vernon’s ball
That rattled like a rocket;
Now hearing Wentworth’s “Fourteen all!”
And striking for the pocket;
Now feasting on a cheese and flitch,—
Now drinking from the pewter;
Now leaping over Chalvey ditch,
Now laughing at my tutor.
Where are my friends? I am alone;
No playmate shares my beaker:
Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,
And some—before the Speaker;
And some compose a tragedy,
And some compose a rondeau;
And some draw sword for Liberty,
And some draw pleas for John Doe.
Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes
Without the fear of sessions;
Charles Medlar loathed false quantities
As much as false professions;
Now Mill keeps order in the land,
A magistrate pedantic;
And Medlar’s feet repose unscanned
Beneath the wide Atlantic.
Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din,
Does Dr. Martext’s duty;
And Mullion, with that monstrous chin,
Is married to a Beauty;
And Darrell studies, week by week,
His Mant, and not his Manton;
And Ball, who was but poor in Greek,
Is very rich at Canton.
And I am eight-and-twenty now;—
The world’s cold chains have bound me;
And darker shades are on my brow,
And sadder scenes around me;
In Parliament I fill my seat,
With many other noodles;
And lay my head in Jermyn Street
And sip my hock at Boodle’s.
But often when the cares of life
Have sent my temples aching,
When visions haunt me of a wife,
When duns await my waking,
When Lady Jane is in a pet,
Or Hoby in a hurry,
When Captain Hazard wins a bet,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry,—
For hours and hours I think and talk
Of each remembered hobby;
I long to lounge in Poet’s walk,
To shiver in the Lobby;
I wish that I could run away
From House, and Court, and Levée,
Where bearded men appear to-day
Just Eton boys grown heavy,—
That I could bask in childhood’s sun,
And dance o’er childhood’s roses,
And find huge wealth in one pound one,
Vast wit in broken roses,
And play Sir Giles at Datchet Lane,
And call the milk-maids Houris,—
That I could be a boy again,—
A happy boy,—at Drury’s.
ARRIVALS AT A WATERING-PLACE.
“I play a spade.—Such strange new faces
Are flocking in from near and far;
Such frights!—(Miss Dobbs holds all the aces)—
One can’t imagine who they are:
The lodgings at enormous prices,—
New donkeys, and another fly;
And Madame Bonbon out of ices,
Although we’re scarcely in July:
We’re quite as sociable as any,
But one old horse can scarcely crawl;
And really, where there are so many
We can’t tell where we ought to call.
“Pray who has seen the odd old fellow
Who took the Doctor’s house last week?—
A pretty chariot,—livery yellow,
Almost as yellow as his cheek;
A widower, sixty-five, and surly,
And stiffer than a poplar tree;
Drinks rum and water, gets up early
To dip his carcass in the sea;
He’s always in a monstrous hurry,
And always talking of Bengal;
They say his cook makes noble curry;
I think, Louisa, we should call.
“And so Miss Jones, the mantua-maker,
Has let her cottage on the hill!—
The drollest man,—a sugar baker
Last year imported from the till;
Prates of his ’orses and his ’oney,
Is quite in love with fields and farms;
A horrid Vandal,—but his money
Will buy a glorious coat of arms;
Old Clyster makes him take the waters;
Some say he means to give a ball;
And after all, with thirteen daughters,
I think, Sir Thomas, you might call.
“That poor young man!—I’m sure and certain
Despair is making up his shroud;
He walks all night beneath the curtain
Of the dim sky and murky cloud:
Draws landscapes,—throws such mournful glances;
Writes verses,—has such splendid eyes;
An ugly name,—but Laura fancies
He’s some great person in disguise!—
And since his dress is all the fashion,
And since he’s very dark and tall,
I think that out of pure compassion,
I’ll get Papa to go and call.
“So Lord St. Ives is occupying
The whole of Mr. Ford’s hotel!
Last Saturday his man was trying
A little nag I want to sell.
He brought a lady in the carriage;
Blue eyes,—eighteen, or thereabouts;—
Of course, you know, we hope it’s marriage,
But yet the femme de chambre doubts.
She looked so pensive when we met her,
Poor thing!—and such a charming shawl!—
Well! till we understand it better,
It’s quite impossible to call!
“Old Mr. Fund, the London Banker,
Arrived to-day at Premium Court;
I would not, for the world, cast anchor
In such a horrid dangerous port;
Such dust and rubbish, lath and plaster,—
(Contractors play the meanest tricks),—
The roofs as crazy as its master,
And he was born in fifty-six;
Stairs creaking—cracks in every landing—
The colonnade is sure to fall;
We shan’t find post or pillar standing
Unless we make great haste to call.
“Who was that sweetest of sweet creatures
Last Sunday in the Rector’s seat?
The finest shape,—the loveliest features,—
I never saw such tiny feet!
My brother,—(this is quite between us)
Poor Arthur,—’twas a sad affair;
Love at first sight!—she’s quite a Venus,
But then she’s poorer far than fair;
And so my father and my mother
Agreed it would not do at all;
And so, I’m sorry for my brother!—
It’s settled that we’re not to call.
“And there’s an author full of knowledge;
And there’s a captain on half-pay;
And there’s a baronet from college,
Who keeps a boy and rides a bay;
And sweet Sir Marcus from the Shannon,
Fine specimen of brogue and bone;
And Dr. Calipel, the Canon,
Who weighs. I fancy, twenty stone:
A maiden lady is adorning,
The faded front of Lily Hall:—
Upon my word, the first fine morning,
We’ll make a round, my dear, and call.”
Alas! disturb not, maid and matron,
The swallow in my humble thatch;
Your son may find a better patron,
Your niece may meet a better match:
I can’t afford to give a dinner,
I never was on Almack’s list;
And since I seldom rise a winner,
I never like to play at whist;
Unknown to me the stocks are falling,
Unwatched by me the glass may fall:
Let all the world pursue its calling,—
I’m not at home if people call.
TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE.
“Rien n’est changé, mes amis!”—Charles X.
I heard a sick man’s dying sigh,
And an infant’s idle laughter;
The Old Year went with mourning by,
And the New came dancing after.
Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle!
Bring boughs of cypress for the bier,
Fling roses on the cradle:
Mutes to wait on the funeral state!
Pages to pour the wine:
A requiem for Twenty-eight,
And a health to Twenty-nine!
Alas for human happiness!
Alas for human sorrow!
Our yesterday is nothingness,—
What else will be our morrow?
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses:
While sages prate, and courts debate,
The same stars set and shine;
And the world, as it rolled through Twenty-eight,
Must roll through Twenty-nine.
Some king will come, in Heaven’s good time,
To the tomb his father came to;
Some thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim to;
Some suffering land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her,
And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her:
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat, and combine;
And much where we were in Twenty-eight
We shall be in Twenty-nine.
O’Connell will toil to raise the rent,
And Kenyon to sink the nation,
And Sheil will abuse the Parliament,
And Peel the Association;
And the thought of bayonets and swords
Will make ex-chancellors merry,
And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords,
And throats in the County Kerry;
And writers of weight will speculate
On the Cabinet’s design;
And just what it did in Twenty-eight
It will do in Twenty-nine.
John Thomas Mugg, on the lonely hill,
Will do a deed of mystery;
The Morning Chronicle will fill
Five columns with the history.
The jury will be all surprise,
The prisoner quite collected,
And Justice Park will wipe his eyes
And be very much affected;
And folks will relate poor Corder’s fate
As they hurry home to dine,
Comparing the hangings of Twenty-eight
With the hangings of Twenty-nine.
And the goddess of love will keep her smiles,
And the god of cups his orgies,
And there’ll be riots in St. Giles’,
And weddings in St. George’s.
And mendicants will sup like kings,
And lords will swear like lacqueys,
And black eyes oft will lead to rings,
And rings will lead to black eyes;
And pretty Kate will scold her mate
In a dialect all divine;
Alas! they married in Twenty-eight,—
They will part in Twenty-nine!
And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of friendship colder;
But still I shall be what I have been,
Sworn foe to Lady Reason,
And seldom troubled with the spleen,
And fond of talking treason:
I shall buckle my skate, and leap my gate,
And throw—and write—my line;
And the woman I worshipped in Twenty-eight
I shall worship in Twenty-nine!
LETTERS FROM TEIGNMOUTH.
I.
OUR BALL.
“Comment! c’est lui? que je le regards encore! C’est que
Vraiment il est bien changé; n’est-ce pas, mon papa?”
—Les Premier Amours.
You’ll come to our Ball;—since we parted,
I’ve thought of you more than I’ll say;
Indeed, I was half broken-hearted
For a week, when they took you away.
Fond fancy brought back to my slumbers
Our walks on the Ness and the Den,
And echoed the musical numbers
Which you used to sing to me then.
I know the romance, since it’s over,
’Twere idle, or worse, to recall;
I know you’re a terrible rover;
But Clarence, you’ll come to our Ball!
It’s only a year, since, at College,
You put on your cap and your gown;
But, Clarence, you’re grown out of knowledge,
And changed from the spur to the crown:
The voice that was best when it faltered
Is fuller and firmer in tone,
And the smile that should never have altered—
Dear Clarence—it is not your own:
Your cravat was badly selected;
Your coat don’t become you at all;
And why is your hair so neglected?
You must have it curled for our Ball.
I’ve often been out upon Haldon
To look for a covey with pup;
I’ve often been over to Shaldon,
To see how your boat is laid up:
In spite of the terrors of Aunty,
I’ve ridden the filly you broke;
And I’ve studied your sweet little Dante
In the shade of your favourite oak:
When I sat in July to Sir Lawrence,
I sat in your love of a shawl;
And I’ll wear what you brought me from Florence,
Perhaps, if you’ll come to our Ball.
You’ll find us all changed since you vanished;
We’ve set up a National School;
And waltzing is utterly banished,
And Ellen has married a fool;
The Major is going to travel,
Miss Hyacinth threatens a rout,
The walk is laid down with fresh gravel,
Papa is laid up with the gout;
And Jane has gone on with her easels,
And Anne has gone off with Sir Paul;
And Fanny is sick with the measles,—
And I’ll tell you the rest at the Ball.
You’ll meet all your Beauties; the Lily
And the Fairy of Willowbrook Farm,
And Lucy, who made me so silly
At Dawlish, by taking your arm;
Miss Manners, who always abused you
For talking so much about Hock,
And her sister, who often amused you
By raving of rebels and Rock;
And something which surely would answer,
An heiress quite fresh from Bengal;
So though you were seldom a dancer,
You’ll dance, just for once, at our Ball.
But out on the World! from the flowers
It shuts out the sunshine of truth:
It blights the green leaves in the bowers,
It makes an old age of our youth;
And the flow of our feeling, once in it,
Like a streamlet beginning to freeze,
Though it cannot turn ice in a minute,
Grows harder by sudden degrees:
Time treads o’er the graves of affection;
Sweet honey is turned into gall;
Perhaps you have no recollection
That ever you danced at our Ball!
You once could be pleased with our ballads,—
To-day you have critical ears;
You once could be charmed with our salads—
Alas! you’ve been dining with Peers;
You trifled and flirted with many,—
You’ve forgotten the when and the how;
There was one you liked better than any,—
Perhaps you’ve forgotten her now.
But of those you remember most newly,
Of those who delight or enthrall,
None loves you a quarter so truly
As some you will find at our Ball.
They tell me you’ve many who flatter,
Because of your wit and your song:
They tell me—and what does it matter?—
You like to be praised by the throng:
They tell me you’re shadowed with laurel:
They tell me you’re loved by a Blue:
They tell me you’re sadly immoral—
Dear Clarence, that cannot be true!
But to me, you are still what I found you,
Before you grew clever and tall;
And you’ll think of the spell that once bound you;
And you’ll come—won’t you come?—to our Ball!
II.
PRIVATE THEATRICALS.
——“Sweet, when actors first appear,
The loud collision of applauding gloves.”
—Moultrie.
Your labours, my talented brother,
Are happily over at last:
They tell me—that, somehow or other,
The Bill is rejected,—or passed;
And now you’ll be coming, I’m certain,
As fast as your posters can crawl,
To help us to draw up our curtain,
As usual, at Fustian Hall.
Arrangements are nearly completed;
But still we’ve a Lover or two,
Whom Lady Albina entreated
We’d keep, at all hazards, for you:
Sir Arthur makes horrible faces;
Lord John is a trifle too tall;
And yours are the safest embraces
To faint in, at Fustian Hall.
Come, Clarence;—its really enchanting
To listen and look at the rout:
We’re all of us puffing and panting,
And raving, and running about;
Here Kitty and Adelaide bustle;
There Andrew and Anthony bawl;
Flutes murmur—chains rattle—robes rustle
In chorus, at Fustian Hall.
By-the-by, there are two or three matters
We want you to bring us from town:
The Inca’s white plumes from the hatter’s,
A nose and a hump for the clown;
We want a few harps for our banquet,
We want a few masks for our ball;
And steal from your wise friend Bosanquet
His white wig, for Fustian Hall!
Hunca Munca must have a huge sabre;
Friar Tuck has forgotten his cowl;
And we’re quite at a stand-still with Weber
For want of a lizard and owl:
And then, for our funeral procession,
Pray get us a love of a pall,—
Or how shall we make an impression
On feelings, at Fustian Hall?
And, Clarence, you’ll really delight us,
If you’ll do your endeavour to bring,
From the Club, a young person to write us
Our prologue, and that sort of thing;
Poor Crotchet, who did them supremely,
Is gone for a Judge to Bengal;
I fear we shall miss him extremely
This season, at Fustian Hall.
Come, Clarence! your idol Albina
Will make a sensation, I feel;
We all think there never was seen a
Performer so like the O’Neill:
At rehearsals, her exquisite fury
Has deeply affected us all;
For one tear that trickles at Drury,
There’ll be twenty at Fustian Hall!
Dread objects are scattered before her
On purpose to harrow her soul;
She stares, till a deep spell comes o’er her,
At a knife, or a cross, or a bowl.
The sword never seems to alarm her
That hangs on a peg to the wall;
And she doats on thy rusty old armour,
Lord Fustian, of Fustian Hall.
She stabbed a bright mirror this morning,—
(Poor Kitty was quite out of breath!)—
And trampled, in anger and scorning,
A bonnet and feathers to death.
But hark!—I’ve a part in “The Stranger,”—
There’s the Prompter’s detestable call!
Come, Clarence—our Romeo and Ranger—
We want you at Fustian Hall!
