So this, the perfect beauty of our days,
When heaven and earth were vocal of her praise,
The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes:
And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb
Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom,
That, dead as living, Rose may be with roses.
THE POET’S APOLOGY
No, the Muse has gone away,
Does not haunt me much to-day.
Everything she had to say
Has been said!
’Twas not much at any time
She could hitch into a rhyme,
Never was the Muse sublime,
Who has fled!
Any one who takes her in
May observe she’s rather thin;
Little more than bone and skin
Is the Muse;
Scanty sacrifice she won
When her very best she’d done,
And at her they poked their fun,
In Reviews.
‘Rhymes,’ in truth, ‘are stubborn things.’
And to Rhyme she clung, and clings,
But whatever song she sings
Scarcely sells.
If her tone be grave, they say
‘Give us something rather gay.’
If she’s skittish, then they pray
‘Something else!’
Much she loved, for wading shod,
To go forth with line and rod,
Loved the heather, and the sod,
Loved to rest
On the crystal river’s brim
Where she saw the fishes swim,
And she heard the thrushes’ hymn,
By the Test!
She, whatever way she went,
Friendly was and innocent,
Little need the Bard repent
Of her lay.
Of the babble and the rhyme,
And the imitative chime
That amused him on a time,—
Now he’s grey.
NOTES
Page 1.
Jeanne d’Arc is said to have led a Scottish force at Lagny, when she defeated the Burgundian, Franquet d’Arras. A Scottish artist painted her banner; he was a James Polwarth, or a Hume of Polwarth, according to a conjecture of Mr. Hill Burton’s. A monk of Dunfermline, who continued Fordun’s Chronicle, avers that he was with the Maiden in her campaigns, and at her martyrdom. He calls her Puella a spiritu sancto excitata. Unluckily his manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence. At her trial, Jeanne said that she had only once seen her own portrait: it was in the hands of a Scottish archer. The story of the white dove which passed from her lips as they opened to her last cry of Jesus! was reported at the trial for her Rehabilitation (1450–56).