Will this not do to sing just as well as the original? and is it not true that “almost any man you please could reel it off for days together”? Anything will do that speaks of forgetting people, and of being forsaken, and about the sunset, and the ivy, and the rose.
“Tell me no more that the tide of thine anguish
Is red as the heart’s blood and salt as the sea;
That the stars in their courses command thee to languish,
That the hand of enjoyment is loosened from thee!“Tell me no more that, forgotten, forsaken,
Thou roamest the wild wood, thou sigh’st on the shore.
Nay, rent is the pledge that of old we had taken,
And the words that have bound me, they bind thee no more!“Ere the sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens
Were wreathing the orange’s bud in thy hair,
And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence
That gave thee, a bride, to the baronet’s heir.“Farewell, may no thought pierce thy breast of thy treason;
Farewell, and be happy in Hubert’s embrace.
Be the belle of the ball, be the bride of the season,
With diamonds bedizened and languid in lace.”
This is mine, and I say, with modest pride, that it is quite as good as—
“Go, may’st thou be happy,
Though sadly we part,
In life’s early summer
Grief breaks not the heart.“The ills that assail us
As speedily pass
As shades o’er a mirror,
Which stain not the glass.”
Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls “the mad pride of intellectuality,” and it certainly looks as if it could be done by anybody. For example, take Bayly as a moralist. His ideas are out of the centre. This is about his standard:
“CRUELTY.
“‘Break not the thread the spider
Is labouring to weave.’
I said, nor as I eyed her
Could dream she would deceive.“Her brow was pure and candid,
Her tender eyes above;
And I, if ever man did,
Fell hopelessly in love.“For who could deem that cruel
So fair a face might be?
That eyes so like a jewel
Were only paste for me?“I wove my thread, aspiring
Within her heart to climb;
I wove with zeal untiring
For ever such a time!“But, ah! that thread was broken
All by her fingers fair,
The vows and prayers I’ve spoken
Are vanished into air!”
Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly tell. I am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the numbers come like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without abounding in his artless vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was Bayly after all, not you nor I, who wrote the classic—
“I’ll hang my harp on a willow tree,
And I’ll go to the war again,
For a peaceful home has no charm for me,
A battlefield no pain;
The lady I love will soon be a bride,
With a diadem on her brow.
Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride?
She is going to leave me now!”
It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the strains of a barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A world of memories come jigging back—foolish fancies, dreams, desires, all beckoning and bobbing to the old tune:
“Oh had I but loved with a boyish love,
It would have been well for me.”