EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH

Figure me to yourself, I pray— A man of my peculiar cut— Apart from dancing and deray,[1] Into an Alpine valley shut; Shut in a kind of damned Hotel, Discountenanced by God and man; The food?—Sir, you would do as well To cram your belly full of bran. The company? Alas, the day That I should dwell with such a crew, With devil anything to say, Nor any one to say it to! The place? Although they call it Platz, I will be bold and state my view; It’s not a place at all—and that’s The bottom verity, my Dew. There are, as I will not deny, Innumerable inns; a road; Several Alps indifferent high; The snow’s inviolable abode; Eleven English parsons, all Entirely inoffensive; four True human beings—what I call Human—the deuce a cipher more; A climate of surprising worth; Innumerable dogs that bark; Some air, some weather, and some earth; A native race—God save the mark!— A race that works, yet cannot work, Yodels, but cannot yodel right, Such as, unhelp’d, with rusty dirk, I vow that I could wholly smite. A river that from morn to night Down all the valley plays the fool; Not once she pauses in her flight, Nor knows the comfort of a pool; But still keeps up, by straight or bend, The selfsame pace she hath begun— Still hurry, hurry, to the end— Good God, is that the way to run? If I a river were, I hope That I should better realise The opportunities and scope Of that romantic enterprise. I should not ape the merely strange, But aim besides at the divine; And continuity and change I still should labour to combine. Here should I gallop down the race, Here charge the sterling[2] like a bull; There, as a man might wipe his face, Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool. But what, my Dew, in idle mood, What prate I, minding not my debt? What do I talk of bad or good? The best is still a cigarette. Me whether evil fate assault, Or smiling providences crown— Whether on high the eternal vault Be blue, or crash with thunder down— I judge the best, whate’er befall, Is still to sit on one’s behind, And, having duly moistened all, Smoke with an unperturbed mind. Davos, November 1880.

[1] “The whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir Robert’s house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons.”—See “Wandering Willie’s Tale” in “Redgauntlet,” borrowed perhaps from “Christ’s Kirk of the Green.”

[2] In architecture, a series of piles to defend the pier of a bridge.

VI

ALCAICS TO HORATIO F. BROWN

Brave lads in olden musical centuries, Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, Sat late by alehouse doors in April Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising: Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises, Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables; Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted; Love and Apollo were there to chorus. Now these, the songs, remain to eternity, Those, only those, the bountiful choristers Gone—those are gone, those unremembered Sleep and are silent in earth for ever. So man himself appears and evanishes, So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at Some green-embowered house, play their music, Play and are gone on the windy highway; Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memory Long after they departed eternally, Forth-faring tow’rd far mountain summits, Cities of men on the sounding Ocean. Youth sang the song in years immemorial; Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful; Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in springtime Heard and were pleased by the voice of singing; Youth goes, and leaves behind him a prodigy— Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian Sea-grey lagunes, sea-paven highways, Dear to me here in my Alpine exile. Davos, Spring 1881.

VII