The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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The splendid spur.
The white moth.
Irish melodies
I. Tim the Dragoon.
II. Kenmare river.
Lady Jane (Sapphics).
A triolet.
An oath.
Upon Graciosa, Walking and talking.
Written upon love’s Frontier-post.
Titania.
Measure for measure.
Retrospection.
Why this volume is so thin.
TWILIGHT.
WILLALOO.
The sair stroke.
The doom of the esquire Bedell.
‘Behold! I am not one that goes to lectures.’
Caliban upon rudiments.
SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMPS.
A letter.
ANECDOTE FOR FATHERS.
Unity put quarterly.
Fire!
De tea Fabula.
L’ENVOI (as I laye A-dreamynge).
Senex. Saye, cushat, callynge
from the brake,
What ayles thee soe to pyne?
Thy carefulle heart shall cease to ake
When dayes be fyne
And greene thynges twyne:
Saye, cushat, what thy griefe to myne?
Turtur. Naye, gossyp, loyterynge
soe late,
What ayles thee thus to chyde?
My love is fled by garden-gate;
Since Lammas-tyde
I wayte my bryde.
Saye, gossyp, whom dost thou abyde?
Senex. Loe! I am he,
the ‘Lonelie Manne,’
Of Time forgotten quite,
That no remembered face may scanne—
Sadde eremyte,
I wayte tonyghte
Pale Death, nor any other wyghte.
O cushat, cushat, callynge
lowe,
Goe waken Time from sleepe:
Goe whysper in his ear, that soe
His besom sweepe
Me to that heape
Where all my recollections keepe.
Hath he forgott?
Or did I viewe
A ghostlye companye
This even, by the dismalle yewe,
Of faces three
That beckoned mee
To land where no repynynges bee?
O Harrye, Harrye, Tom
and Dicke,
Each lost companion!
Why loyter I among the quicke,
When ye are gonne?
Shalle I alone
Delayinge crye ‘Anon, Anon’?
Naye, let the spyder have
my gowne,
To brayde therein her veste.
My cappe shal serve, now I ‘goe
downe,’
For mouse’s neste.
Loe! this is best.
I care not, soe I gayne my reste.
THE SPLENDID SPUR.
Not on the neck of prince or hound,
Nor on a woman’s finger twin’d,
May gold from the deriding ground
Keep sacred that we sacred bind:
Only the heel
Of splendid steel
Shall stand secure on sliding fate,
When golden navies weep their freight.
The scarlet hat, the
laurell’d stave
Are
measures, not the springs, of worth;
In a wife’s lap,
as in a grave,
Man’s
airy notions mix with earth.
Seek
other spur
Bravely
to stir
The
dust in this loud world, and tread
Alp-high
among the whisp’ring dead.
Trust in thyself,—then
spur amain:
So shall Charybdis wear a grace,
Grim Aetna laugh, the Libyan plain
Take roses to her shrivell’d face.
This orb—this round
Of sight and sound—
Count it the lists that God hath built
For haughty hearts to ride a-tilt.
If a leaf rustled, she would
start:
And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart
To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
Those little feet, in so much night?
The light above the
poet’s head
Streamed
on the page and on the cloth,
And twice and thrice
there buffeted
On the black
pane a white-wing’d moth;
’Twas Annie’s
soul that beat outside
And ‘Open,
open, open!’ cried:
’I could not find the
way to God;
There were
too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the
fearful road
Led over
wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed
and burned—
I was bewilder’d
and I turned.
’O, it was easy then!
I knew
Your window
and no star beside.
Look up, and take me
back to you!’
—He
rose and thrust the window wide.
’Twas but because his
brain was hot
With rhyming;
for he heard her not.
But poets polishing
a phrase
Show anger
over trivial things;
And as she blundered
in the blaze
Towards
him, on ecstatic wings,
He raised a hand and
smote her dead;
Then wrote
‘That I had died instead!’
IRISH MELODIES.
TIM THE DRAGOON (From ‘Troy Town’)
Be aisy an’ list to a chune
That’s sung of bowld Tim the Dragoon—
Sure, ’twas he’d niver miss
To be stalin’ a kiss,
Or a brace, by the light of the moon—
Aroon—
Wid a wink at the Man in the Moon!
Rest his sowl where the daisies
grow thick;
For he’s gone from the land of the quick:
But he’s still makin’ love
To the leddies above,
An’ be jabbers! he’ll tache ’em
the thrick—
Avick—
Niver doubt but he’ll tache ’em the
thrick!
’Tis by Tim the dear saints’ll
set sthore,
And ’ull thrate him to whisky galore:
For they ’ve only to sip
But the tip of his lip
An’ bedad! they’ll be askin’
for more—
Asthore—
By the powers, they’ll be shoutin’
‘Ancore!’
KENMARE RIVER.
’Tis pretty to be in Ballinderry,
’Tis pretty to be in Ballindoon,
But ’tis prettier far in County Kerry
Coortin’ under the bran’ new moon,
Aroon, Aroon!
’Twas there by the bosom
of blue Killarney
They came by the hundther’ a-coortin’
me;
Sure I was the one to give back their blarney,
An’ merry was I to be fancy-free.
But niver a step in the lot was
lighter,
An’ divvle a boulder among the bhoys,
Than Phelim O’Shea, me dynamither,
Me illigant arthist in clock-work toys.
’Twas all for love he
would bring his figgers
Of iminent
statesmen, in toy machines,
An’ hould me hand
as he pulled the thriggers
An’
scattered the thraytors to smithereens.
An’ to see the
Queen in her Crystial Pallus
Fly up to
the roof, an’ the windeys broke!
And all with divvle
a trace of malus,—
But he was
the bhoy that enjoyed his joke!
Then O, but his cheek
would flush, an’ ‘Bridget,’
He ’d
say, ‘Will yez love me?’ But I ’d
be coy
And answer him, ‘Arrah
now, dear, don’t fidget!’
Though at
heart I loved him, me arthist bhoy!
One night we stood by
the Kenmare river,
An’
‘Bridget, creina, now whist,’ said he,
‘I’ll be goin’
to-night, an’ may be for iver;
Open your
arms at the last to me.’
’Twas there by the banks
of the Kenmare river
He took
in his hands me white, white face,
An’ we kissed
our first an’ our last for iver—
For Phelim
O’Shea is disparsed in space.
’Twas pretty to be by blue
Killarney,
’Twas pretty to hear the linnets’s
call,
But whist! for I cannot attind their blarney,
Nor whistle in answer at all, at all.
For the voice that he swore ’ud
out-call the linnet’s
Is cracked intoirely, and out of chune,
Since the clock-work missed it by thirteen minutes
An’ scattered me Phelim around the moon,
Aroon, Aroon!
Sapphics.
Down the green hill-side fro’ the castle window
Lady Jane spied Bill Amaranth a-workin’;
Day by day watched him go about his ample
Nursery garden.
Cabbages thriv’d there, wi’ a mort o’ green-stuff—
Kidney beans, broad beans, onions, tomatoes,
Artichokes, seakale, vegetable marrows,
Early potatoes.
Lady Jane cared not very much for all these:
What she cared much for was a glimpse o’ Willum
Strippin’ his brown arms wi’ a view to horti-
-Cultural effort.
Little guessed Willum, never extra-vain, that
Up the green hill-side, i’ the gloomy castle,
Feminine eyes could so delight to view his
Noble proportions.
Only one day while, in an innocent mood,
Moppin’ his brow (’cos ’twas a trifle sweaty)
With a blue kerchief—lo, he spies a white ’un
Coyly responding.
Oh, delightsome Love! Not
a jot do you care
For the restrictions set on human inter-
-course by cold-blooded social refiners;
Nor do I, neither.
Day by day, peepin’ fro’ behind the bean-sticks,
Willum observed that scrap o’ white a-wavin’,
Till his hot sighs out-growin’ all repression
Busted his weskit.
Lady Jane’s guardian was a haughty Peer, who
Clung to old creeds and had a nasty temper;
Can we blame Willum that he hardly cared to
Risk a refusal?
Year by year found him busy ’mid the bean-sticks,
Wholly uncertain how on earth to take steps.
Thus for eighteen years he beheld the maiden
Wave fro’ her window.
But the nineteenth spring, i’ the Castle post-bag,
Came by book-post Bill’s catalogue o’ seedlings
Mark’d wi’ blue ink at ‘Paragraphs relatin’
Mainly to Pumpkins.’
‘W. A. can,’ so the Lady Jane read,
’Strongly commend that very noble Gourd, the
Lady Jane, first-class medal, ornamental;
Grows to a great height.’
Scarce a year arter, by the scented hedgerows—
Down the mown hill-side, fro’ the castle gateway—
Came a long train and, i’ the midst, a black bier,
Easily shouldered.
‘Whose is yon corse that,
thus adorned wi’ gourd-leaves,
Forth ye bear with slow step?’ A mourner
answer’d,
’’Tis the poor clay-cold body Lady
Jane grew
Tired to abide in.’
’Delve my grave quick, then, for I die to-morrow.
Delve it one furlong fro’ the kidney bean-sticks,
Where I may dream she’s goin’ on precisely
As she was used to.’
Hardly died Bill when, fro’ the Lady Jane’s grave,
Crept to his white death-bed a lovely pumpkin:
Climb’d the house wall and over-arched his head wi’
Billowy verdure.
Simple this tale!—but delicately perfumed
As the sweet roadside honeysuckle. That’s why,
Difficult though its metre was to tackle,
I’m glad I wrote it.
To commemorate the virtue of Homoeopathy in restoring one apparently drowned.
Love, that in a tear was drown’d,
Lives revived by a tear.
Stella heard them mourn around
Love that in a tear was drown’d,
Came and coax’d his dripping swound,
Wept ‘The fault was mine, my dear!’
Love, that in a tear was drown’d,
Lives, revived by a tear.
(From ’Troy Town’.)
A month ago Lysander
pray’d
To Jove,
to Cupid, and to Venus,
That he might die if
he betray’d
A single
vow that pass’d between us.
Ah, careless gods, to
hear so ill
And cheat
a maid on you relying!
For false Lysander’s
thriving still,
And ’tis
Corinna lies a-dying.
(From ’Troy Town’.)
When as abroad, to greet the morn,
I mark my Graciosa walk,
In homage bends the whisp’ring corn,
Yet to confess
Its awkwardness
Must hang its head upon the stalk.
And when she talks, her lips do
heal
The wounds her lightest glances give:—
In pity then be harsh, and deal
Such wounds that I
May hourly die,
And, by a word restored, live.
(From ’Troy Town’.)
Toiling love, loose your pack,
All your sighs and tears unbind:
Care’s a ware will break a back,
Will not bend a maiden’s mind.
In this State a man
shall need
Neither
priest nor law giver:
Those same lips that
are his creed
Shall confess
their worshipper.
All the laws he must
obey,
Now in force
and now repeal’d,
Shift in eyes that shift
as they,
Till alike
with kisses seal’d.
By Lord T-n.
So bluff Sir Leolin
gave the bride away:
And when they married
her, the little church
Had seldom seen a costlier
ritual.
The coach and pair alone
were two-pound-ten,
And two-pound-ten apiece
the wedding-cakes;—
Three wedding-cakes.
A Cupid poised a-top
Of each hung shivering
to the frosted loves
Of two fond cushats
on a field of ice,
As who should say ’I
see you!’—Such the joy
When English-hearted
Edwin swore his faith
With Mariana of the
Moated Grange.
For Edwin, plump head-waiter
at The Cock,
Grown sick of custom,
spoilt of plenitude,
Lacking the finer wit
that saith,
‘I wait, They come;
and if I make them wait, they go,’
Fell in a jaundiced
humour petulant-green,
Watched the dull clerk
slow-rounding to his cheese,
Flicked a full dozen
flies that flecked the pane—
All crystal-cheated
of the fuller air,
Blurted a free ‘Good-day
t’ye,’ left and right,
And shaped his gathering
choler to this head:—
’Custom! And yet
what profit of it all?
The old order changeth
yielding place to new,
To me small change,
and this the Counter-change
Of custom beating on
the self-same bar—
Change out of chop.
Ah me! the talk, the tip,
The would-be-evening
should-be-mourning suit,
The forged solicitude
for petty wants
More petty still than
they,—all these I loathe,
Learning they lie who
feign that all things come
To him that waiteth.
I have waited long,
And now I go, to mate
me with a bride
Who is aweary waiting,
even as I!’
But when the amorous
moon of honeycomb
Was over, ere the matron-flower
of Love—
Step-sister of To-morrow’s
marmalade—
Swooned scentless, Mariana
found her lord
Did something jar the
nicer feminine sense
With usage, being all
too fine and large,
Instinct of warmth and
colour, with a trick
Of blunting ‘Mariana’s’
keener edge
To ’Mary Ann’—the
same but not the same:
Whereat she girded,
tore her crisped hair,
Called him ‘Sir
Churl,’ and ever calling ‘Churl!’
Drave him to Science,
then to Alcohol,
To forge a thousand
theories of the rocks,
Then somewhat else for
thousands dewy cool,
Wherewith he sought
a more Pacific isle
And there found love,
a duskier love than hers.
By O—r K—m.
Wake! for the closed
Pavilion doors have kept
Their silence while
the white-eyed Kaffir slept,
And wailed
the Nightingale with ‘Jug, jug, jug!’
Whereat, for empty cup,
the White Rose wept.
Enter with me where
yonder door hangs out
Its Red Triangle to
a world of drought,
Inviting
to the Palace of the Djinn,
Where Death, Aladdin,
waits as Chuckerout.
Methought, last night,
that one in suit of woe
Stood by the Tavern-door
and whispered, ’Lo,
The Pledge
departed, what avails the Cup?
Then take the Pledge
and let the Wine-cup go.’
But I: ’For
every thirsty soul that drains
This Anodyne of Thought
its rim contains—
Free-will
the can, Necessity the must,
Pour off the must,
and, see, the can remains.
’Then, pot or glass,
why label it “With Care”?
Or why your Sheepskin
with my Gourd compare?
Lo! here
the Bar and I the only Judge:—
O, Dog that bit
me, I exact an hair!’
We are the Sum of things,
who jot our score
With Caesar’s
clay behind the Tavern door:
And Alexander’s
armies—where are they,
But gone to Pot—that
Pot you push for more?
And this same Jug I
empty, could it speak,
Might whisper that itself
had been a Beak
And dealt
me Fourteen Days ’without the Op.’—
Your Worship, see, my
lip is on your cheek.
Yourself condemned to
three score years and ten,
Say, did you judge the
ways of other men?
Why, now,
sir, you are hourly filled with wine,
And has the clay more
licence now than then?
Life is a draught, good
sir; its brevity
Gives you and me our
measures, and thereby
Has docked
your virtue to a tankard’s span,
And left of my criterion—a
Cri’!
After C. S. C.
When the hunter-star
Orion
(Or, it may be,
Charles his Wain)
Tempts the tiny elves
to try on
All their
little tricks again;
When the earth is calmly
breathing
Draughts
of slumber undefiled,
And the sire, unused
to teething,
Seeks for
errant pins his child;
When the moon is on
the ocean,
And our
little sons and heirs
From a natural emotion
Wish the
luminary theirs;
Then a feeling hard
to stifle,
Even harder
to define,
Makes me feel I ’d
give a trifle
For the
days of Auld Lang Syne.
James—for
we have been as brothers
(Are, to speak
correctly, twins),
Went about in one another’s
Clothing,
bore each other’s sins,
Rose together, ere the
pearly
Tint of
morn had left the heaven,
And retired (absurdly
early)
Simultaneously
at seven—
James, the days of yore
were pleasant.
Sweet to
climb for alien pears
Till the irritated peasant
Came and
took us unawares;
Sweet to devastate his
chickens,
As the ambush’d
catapult
Scattered, and the very
dickens
Was the
natural result;
Sweet to snare the thoughtless
rabbit;
Break the
next-door neighbour’s pane;
Cultivate the smoker’s
habit
On the not-innocuous
cane;
Leave the exercise unwritten;
Systematically
cut
Morning school, to plunge
the kitten
In his bath,
the water-butt.
Age, my James, that
from the cheek of
Beauty steals
its rosy hue,
Has not left us much
to speak of:
But ’tis
not for this I rue.
Beauty with its thousand
graces,
Hair and
tints that will not fade,
You may get from many
places
Practically
ready-made.
No; it is the evanescence
Of those
lovelier tints of Hope—
Bubbles, such as adolescence
Joys to
win from melted soap—
Emphasizing the conclusion
That the
dreams of Youth remain
Castles that are An
delusion
(Castles, that’s
to say, in Spain).
Age thinks ‘fit,’
and I say ‘fiat.’
Here I stand
for Fortune’s butt,
As for Sunday swains
to shy at
Stands the
stoic coco-nut.
If you wish it put succinctly,
Gone are
all our little games;
But I thought I ’d
say distinctly
What I feel
about it, James.
In youth I dreamed,
as other youths have dreamt,
Of love,
and thrummed an amateur guitar
To verses of my own,—a
stout attempt
To hold
communion with the Evening Star
I wrote a sonnet, rhymed
it, made it scan.
Ah me! how trippingly
those last lines ran.—
O Hesperus!
O happy star! to bend
O’er
Helen’s bosom in the tranced west,
To match the hours heave
by upon her breast,
And at her
parted lip for dreams attend—
If dawn defraud thee,
how shall I be deemed,
Who house within that
bosom, and am dreamed?
For weeks I thought
these lines remarkable;
For weeks
I put on airs and called myself
A bard: till on
a day, as it befell,
I took a
small green Moxon from the shelf
At random, opened at
a casual place,
And found my young illusions
face to face
With this:—’Still
steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d
upon my fair Love’s ripening breast
To feel for ever its
soft fall and swell,
Awake for
ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear
her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,—or
else swoon to death.’
O gulf not to be crossed
by taking thought!
O heights
by toil not to be overcome!
Great Keats, unto your
altar straight I brought
My speech,
and from the shrine departed dumb.
—And yet sometimes I
think you played it hard
Upon a rather hopeful
minor bard.
NUGAE OXONIENSES.
By W—ll—m C—wp—r.
’Tis evening.
See with its resorting throng
Rude Carfax teems, and
waistcoats, visited
With too-familiar elbow,
swell the curse
Vortiginous. The
boating man returns,
His rawness growing
with experience—
Strange union! and directs
the optic glass
Not unresponsive to
Jemima’s charms,
Who wheels obdurate,
in his mimic chaise
Perambulant, the child.
The gouty cit,
Asthmatical, with elevated
cane
Pursues the unregarding
tram, as one
Who, having heard a
hurdy-gurdy, girds
His loins and hunts
the hurdy-gurdy-man,
Blaspheming. Now
the clangorous bell proclaims
The Times or Chronicle,
and Rauca screams
The latest horrid murder
in the ear
Of nervous dons expectant
of the urn
And mild domestic muffin.
To
the Parks
Drags the slow Ladies’
School, consuming time
In passing given points.
Here glow the lamps,
And tea-spoons clatter
to the cosy hum
Of scientific circles.
Here resounds
The football-field with
its discordant train,
The crowd that cheers
but not discriminates,
As ever into touch the
ball returns
And shrieks the whistle,
while the game proceeds
With fine irregularity
well worth
The paltry shilling.—
Draw
the curtains close
While I resume the night-cap
dear to all
Familiar with my illustrated
works.
By E. A. P.
In the sad and sodden
street,
To
and fro,
Flit the fever-stricken
feet
Of the freshers as they
meet,
Come
and go,
Ever buying, buying,
buying
Where the shopmen stand
supplying,
Vying,
vying
All
they know,
While the Autumn lies
a-dying
Sad
and low
As the price of summer
suitings when the winter breezes blow,
Of the summer, summer
suitings that are standing in a row
On
the way to Jericho.
See the freshers as they row
To and fro,
Up and down the Lower River for an afternoon
or so—
(For the deft manipulation
Of the never-resting oar,
Though it lead to approbation,
Will induce excoriation)—
They are infinitely sore,
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme
Up and down the way to Iffley in an afternoon
or so;
(Which is slow).
Do they blow?
’Tis the wind and nothing more,
’Tis the wind that in Vacation has a
tendency to go:
But the coach’s objurgation and his
tendency to ‘score’
Will be sated—nevermore.
See the freshers in the street,
The elite!
Their apparel how unquestionably neat!
How delighted at a distance,
Inexpensively attired,
I have wondered with persistence
At their butterfly existence!
How admired!
And the payment—O, the payment!
It is tardy for the raiment:
Yet the haberdasher gloats as he sells,
And he tells,
’This is best
To be dress’d
Rather better than the rest,
To be noticeably drest,
To be swells,
To be swells, swells, swells, swells,
Swells, swells, swells,
To be simply and indisputably swells.’
See the freshers one
or two,
Just
a few,
Now
on view,
Who are sensibly and
innocently new;
How they cluster, cluster,
cluster
Round the rugged walls
of Worcester!
See
them stand,
Book
in hand,
In the garden ground
of John’s!
How they dote upon their
Dons!
See
in every man a Blue!
It
is true
They are lamentably
few;
But
I spied
Yesternight upon the
staircase just a pair of boots outside
Upon
the floor,
Just a little pair of
boots upon the stairs where I reside,
Lying
there and nothing more;
And
I swore
While these dainty twins
continued sentry by the chamber door
That the hope their
presence planted should be with me evermore,
Should
desert me—nevermore.
O waly, waly, my
bonnie crew
Gin
ye maun bumpit be!
And waly, waly, my Stroke
sae true,
Ye
leuk unpleasauntlie!
O hae ye suppit the
sad sherrie
That
gars the wind gae soon;
Or hae ye pud o’
the braw bird’s-e’e,
Ye
be sae stricken doun?
I hae na suppit the
sad sherrie,
For
a’ my heart is sair;
For Keiller’s
still i’ the bonnie Dundee,
And
his is halesome fare.
But I hae slain our
gude Captain,
That
c’uld baith shout and sweer,
And ither twain put
out o’ pain—
The
Scribe and Treasurere.
There’s ane lies
stark by the meadow-gate,
And
twa by the black, black brig:
And waefu’, waefu’,
was the fate
That
gar’d them there to lig!
They waked us soon,
they warked us lang,
Wearily
did we greet;
‘Should he abrade’
was a’ our sang,
Our
food but butcher’s-meat.
We hadna train’d
but ower a week,
A
week, but barely twa,
Three sonsie steeds
they fared to seek,
That
mightna gar them fa’.
They ’ve ta’en
us ower the lang, lang coorse,
And
wow! but it was wark;
And ilka coach he sware
him hoorse,
That
ilka man s’uld hark.
Then upped and spake
our pawkie bow,
—O,
but he wasna late!
’Now who shall gar them
cry Enow,
That
gang this fearsome gate?’
Syne he has ta’en
his boatin’ cap,
And
cast the keevils in,
And wha but me to gae
(God hap!)
And
stay our Captain’s din?
I stayed his din by
the meadow-gate,
His
feres’ by Nuneham brig,
And waefu’, waefu’,
was the fate
That
gar’d them there to lig!
O, waly to the welkin’s
top!
And
waly round the braes!
And waly all about the
shop
(To use
a Southron phrase).
Rede ither crews be
debonair,
But
we ’ve a weird to dree,
I wis we maun be bumpit
sair
By
boaties two and three:
Sing stretchers of yew
for our Toggere,
Sith
we maun bumpit be!
THE DOOM OF THE ESQUIRE BEDELL.
Adown the torturing
mile of street
I
mark him come and go,
Thread in and out with
tireless feet
The
crossings to and fro;
A soul that treads without
retreat
A
labyrinth of woe.
Palsied with awe of
such despair,
All
living things give room,
They flit before his
sightless glare
As
horrid shapes, that loom
And shriek the curse
that bids him bear
The
symbol of his doom.
The very stones are
coals that bake
And
scorch his fevered skin;
A fire no hissing hail
may slake
Consumes
his heart within.
Still must he hasten
on to rake
The
furnace of his sin.
Still forward! forward!
For he feels
Fierce
claws that pluck his breast,
And blindly beckon as
he reels
Upon
his awful quest:
For there is that behind
his heels
Knows
neither ruth nor rest.
The fiends in hell have
flung the dice;
The
destinies depend
On feet that run for
fearful price,
And
fangs that gape to rend;
And still the footsteps
of his Vice
Pursue
him to the end:—
The feet of his incarnate
Vice
Shall
dog him to the end.
‘BEHOLD! I AM NOT ONE THAT GOES TO LECTURES.’
By W. W.
Behold! I am not
one that goes to Lectures or the pow-wow of
Professors.
The elementary laws never apologise: neither do I apologise.
I find letters from
the Dean dropt on my table—and every one
is
signed
by the Dean’s name—
And I leave them where
they are; for I know that as long as I
stay
up
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
I am one who goes to the river,
I sit in the boat and think of ‘life’ and of ‘time.’
How life is much, but
time is more; and the beginning is
everything,
But the end is something.
I loll in the Parks, I go to the wicket, I swipe.
I see twenty-two young
men from Foster’s watching me, and the
trousers
of the twenty-two young men,
I see the Balliol men
en masse watching me.—The Hottentot
that
loves his mother, the untutored Bedowee, the Cave-man
that
wears only his certificate of baptism, and the shaggy
Sioux
that hangs his testamur with his scalps.
I see the Don who ploughed
me in Rudiments watching me: and the
wife
of the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me.
I see the rapport of
the wicket-keeper and umpire. I cannot see
that
I am out.
Oh! you Umpires!
I am not one who greatly
cares for experience, soap, bull-dogs,
cautions,
majorities, or a graduated Income-Tax,
The certainty of space,
punctuation, sexes, institutions,
copiousness,
degrees, committees, delicatesse, or the
fetters
of rhyme—
For none of these do I care: but least for the fetters of rhyme.
Myself only I sing. Me Imperturbe! Me Prononce!
Me progressive and the depth of me progressive,
And the bathos, Anglice bathos
Of me chanting to the Public the song of Simple Enumeration.
OR AUTOSCHEDIASTIC THEOLOGY IN A HOLE.
Rudiments, Rudiments,
and Rudiments!
‘Thinketh one made them
i’ the fit o’ the blues.
’Thinketh one made them
with the ‘tips’ to match,
But not the answers;
’doubteth there be none,
Only Guides, Helps,
Analyses, such as that:
Also this Beast, that
groweth sleek thereon,
And snow-white bands
that round the neck o’ the same.
’Thinketh, it came of
being ill at ease.
’Hath heard that Satan
finds some mischief still
For idle hands, and
the rest o ’t. That’s the case.
Also ‘hath heard
they pop the names i’ the hat,
Toss out a brace, a
dozen stick inside;
Let forty through and
plough the sorry rest.
’Thinketh, such shows
nor right nor wrong in them,
Only their strength,
being made o’ sloth i’ the main—
’Am strong myself compared
to yonder names
O’ Jewish towns
i’ the paper. Watch th’ event—
’Let twenty pass, ’have
a shot at twenty-first,
’Miss Ramoth-Gilead,
’take Jehoiakim,
’Let Abner by and spot
Melchizedek,
Knowing not, caring
not, just choosing so,
As it likes me each
time, I do: so they.
‘Saith they be terrible:
watch their feats i’ the Viva!
One question plays the
deuce with six months’ toil.
Aha, if they would tell
me! No, not they!
There is the sport:
‘come read me right or die!’
All at their mercy,—why
they like it most
When—when—well,
never try the same shot twice!
’Hath fled himself and
only got up a tree.
’Will say a plain word if he gets a plough.
[1] Caliban museth of the now extinct Examination in the Rudiments of Faith and Religion.
My Juggins, see: the pasture
green,
Obeying Nature’s kindly law,
Renews its mantle; there has been
A thaw.
The frost-bound earth is free
at last,
That lay ’neath Winter’s sullen
yoke
’Till people felt it getting past
A joke.
Now forth again the Freshers fare,
And get them tasty summer suits
Wherein they flaunt afield and scare
The brutes.
Again the stream suspects the
keel;
Again the shrieking captain drops
Upon his crew; again the meal
Of chops
Divides the too-laborious day;
Again the Student sighs o’er Mods,
And prompts his enemies to lay
Long odds.
Again the shopman spreads his
wiles;
Again the organ-pipes, unbound,
Distract the populace for miles
Around.
Then, Juggins, ere December’s
touch
Once more the wealth of Spring reclaim,
Since each successive year is much
The same;
Since too the monarch on his throne
In purple lapped and frankincense,
Who from his infancy has blown
Expense,
No less than he who barely gets
The boon of out-of-door relief,
Must see desuetude,—come let’s
Be brief.
At those resolves last New Year’s
Day
The easy gods indulgent wink.
Then downward, ho!—the shortest way
Is drink.
A LETTER.
Addressed during the Summer Term of 1888 by Mr. Algernon Dexter, Scholar of ------ College, Oxford, to his cousin, Miss Kitty Tremayne, at ------ Vicarage, Devonshire.
After W. M. P.
Dear Kitty,
At
length the term’s ending;
I
’m in for my Schools in a week;
And the time that at
present I’m spending
On
you should be spent upon Greek:
But I’m fairly
well read in my Plato,
I’m
thoroughly red in the eyes,
And I’ve almost
forgotten the way to
Be
healthy and wealthy and wise.
So ’the best of
all ways’—why repeat you
The
verse at 2.30 a.m.,
When I ’m stealing
an hour to entreat you
Dear
Kitty, to come to Commem.?
Oh, come! You
shall rustle in satin
Through
halls where Examiners trod:
Your laughter shall
triumph o’er Latin
In
lecture-room, garden, and quad.
There are dances, flirtations
at Nuneham,
Flower-shows,
the procession of Eights:
There’s a list
stretching usque ad Lunam
Of
concerts, and lunches, and fetes:
There’s the Newdigate
all about ‘Gordon,’
—So
sweet, and they say it will scan.
You shall flirt with
a Proctor, a Warden
Shall
run for your shawl and your fan.
They are sportive as
gods broken loose from
Olympus,
and yet very em-
-inent men. There
are plenty to choose from,
You’ll
find, if you come to Commem.
I know your excuses:
Red Sorrel
Has
stumbled and broken her knees;
Aunt Phoebe thinks waltzing
immoral;
And
’Algy, you are such a tease;
It’s nonsense,
of course, but she is strict’;
And
little Dick Hodge has the croup;
And there’s no
one to visit your ‘district’
Or
make Mother Tettleby’s soup.
Let them cease for a
se’nnight to plague you;
Oh,
leave them to manage pro tem.
With their croups and
their soups and their ague)
Dear
Kitty, and come to Commem.
Don’t tell me
Papa has lumbago,
That
you haven’t a frock fit to wear,
That the curate ’has
notions, and may go
To
lengths if there’s nobody there,’
That the Squire has
‘said things’ to the Vicar,
And
the Vicar ‘had words’ with the Squire,
That the Organist’s
taken to liquor,
And
leaves you to manage the choir:
For Papa must be cured,
and the curate
Coerced,
and your gown is a gem;
And the moral is—Don’t
be obdurate,
Dear
Kitty, but come to Commem.
’My gown?
Though, no doubt, sir, you’re clever,
You
’d better leave fashions alone.
Do you think that a
frock lasts for ever?’
Dear
Kitty, I’ll grant you have grown;
But I thought of my
‘scene’ with McVittie
That
night when he trod on your train
At the Bachelor’s
Ball. ‘’Twas a pity,’
You
said, but I knew ’twas Champagne.
And your gown was enough
to compel me
To
fall down and worship its hem—
(Are ‘hems’
wearing? If not, you shall tell me
What
is, when you come to Commem.)
Have you thought, since
that night, of the Grotto?
Of
the words whispered under the palms,
While the minutes flew
by and forgot to
Remind
us of Aunt and her qualms?
Then, Kitty, let ‘yes’
be the answer.
We’ll
dance at the ’Varsity Ball,
And the morning shall
find you a dancer
In
Christ Church or Trinity hall.
And perhaps, when the
elders are yawning
And
rafters grow pale overhead
With the day, there
shall come with its dawning
Some
thought of that sentence unsaid.
Be it this, be it that—’I
forget,’ or
’Was
joking’—whatever the fem-
-inine fib, you’ll
have made me your debtor
And
come,—you will come? to Commem.
ANECDOTE FOR FATHERS.
Designed to show that the practice of lying is not confined to children.
By the late W. W. (of H.M. Inland Revenue Service).
And is it so?
Can Folly stalk
And aim her unrespecting
darts
In shades where grave
Professors walk
And
Bachelors of Arts?
I have a boy, not six
years old,
A sprite of birth and
lineage high:
His birth I did myself
behold,
His
caste is in his eye.
And oh! his limbs are
full of grace,
His boyish beauty past
compare:
His mother’s joy
to wash his face,
And
mine to brush his hair!
One morn we strolled
on our short walk,
With four goloshes on
our shoes,
And held the customary
talk
That
parents love to use.
(And oft I turn it into verse,
And write it down upon
a page,
Which, being sold, supplies
my purse
And
ministers to age.)
So as we paced the curving
High,
To view the sights of
Oxford town
We raised our feet (like
Nelly Bly),
And
then we put them down.
’Now, little Edward,
answer me’—
I said, and clutched
him by the gown—
’At Cambridge would
you rather be,
Or
here in Oxford town?’
My boy replied with
tiny frown
(He’d been a year at
Cavendish),
’I’d rather dwell
in Oxford town,
If
I could have my wish.’
’Now, little Edward,
say why so;
My little Edward, tell
me why.’
‘Well, really, Pa, I
hardly know.’
‘Remarkable!’
said I:
’For Cambridge has her
“King’s Parade,”
And much the more becoming
gown;
Why should you slight
her so,’ I said,
‘Compared with Oxford
town?’
At this my boy hung
down his head,
While sterner grew the
parent’s eye;
And six-and-thirty times
I said,
‘Come, Edward, tell
me why?’
For I loved Cambridge
(where they deal—
How strange!—in
butter by the yard);
And so, with every third
appeal,
I
hit him rather hard.
Twelve times I struck,
as may be seen
(For three times twelve is
thirty-six),
When in a shop the Magazine
His
tearful sight did fix.
He saw it plain, it
made him smile,
And thus to me he made
reply:—
’At Oxford there’s
a Crocodile;[1]
And
that’s the reason why.’
Oh, Mr. Editor! my heart
For deeper lore would
seldom yearn,
Could I believe the
hundredth part
Of
what from you I learn.
[1] Certain obscure paragraphs relating to a crocodile, kept at the Museum, had been perplexing the readers of the Oxford Magazine for some time past, and had been distorted into an allegory of portentous meaning.
By A. C. S.
The Centuries kiss and
commingle,
Cling, clasp, and are
knit in a chain;
No cycle but scorns
to be single,
No two but demur to
be twain,
’Till the land of the
lute and the love-tale
Be bride of the boreal
breast,
And the dawn with the
darkness shall dovetail,
The East
with the West.
The desire of the grey
for the dun nights
Is that of the dun for
the grey;
The tales of the Thousand
and One Nights
Touch lips with ‘The
Times’ of to-day.—
Come, chasten the cheap
with the classic;
Choose, Churton, thy
chair and thy class,
Mix, melt in the must
that is Massic
The
beer that is Bass!
Omnipotent age of the
Aorist!
Infinitely freely exact!—
As the fragrance of
fiction is fairest
If frayed in the furnace
of fact—
Though nine be the Muses
in number
There is hope if the
handbook be one,—
Dispelling the planets
that cumber
The
path of the sun.
Though crimson thy hands
and thy hood be
With the blood of a
brother betrayed,
O Would-be-Professor
of Would-be,
We call thee to bless
and to aid.
Transmuted would travel
with Er, see
The Land of the Rolling
of Logs,
Charmed, chained to
thy side, as to Circe
The
Ithacan hogs.
O bourne of the black
and the godly!
O land where the good
niggers go.
With the books that
are borrowed of Bodley,
Old moons and our castaway
clo’!
There, there, till the
roses be ripened
Rebuke us, revile, and
review,
Then take thee thine
annual stipend
So
long over-due.
[1] Suggested by an Article in the Quarterly Review, enforcing the unity of literature ancient and modern, and the necessity of providing a new School of Literature in Oxford.
By Sir W. S.
Written on the occasion of the visit of the United Fire Brigades to Oxford, 1887.
St. Giles’s street
is fair and wide,
St.
Giles’s street is long;
But long or wide, may
naught abide
Therein
of guile or wrong;
For through St. Giles’s,
to and fro,
The mild ecclesiastics
go
From
prime to evensong.
It were a fearsome task,
perdie!
To sin in such good
company.
Long had the slanting
beam of day
Proclaimed the Thirtieth
of May
Ere now, erect, its
fiery heat
Illumined all that hallowed
street,
And breathing benediction
on
Thy serried battlements,
St. John,
Suffused at once with
equal glow
The cluster’d
Archipelago,
The Art Professor’s
studio
And
Mr. Greenwood’s shop,
Thy building, Pusey,
where below
The stout Salvation
soldiers blow
The
cornet till they drop;
Thine, Balliol, where
we move, and oh!
Thine,
Randolph, where we stop.
But what is this that
frights the air,
And wakes the curate
from his lair
In
Pusey’s cool retreat,
To leave the feast,
to climb the stair,
And
scan the startled street?
As when perambulate
the young
And call with unrelenting
tongue
On
home, mamma, and sire;
Or voters shout with
strength of lung
For
Hall & Co’s Entire;
Or Sabbath-breakers
scream and shout—
The band of Booth, with
drum devout,
Eliza on her Sunday
out,
Or
Farmer with his choir:—
E’en so, with
shriek of fife and drum
And
horrid clang of brass,
The Fire Brigades of
England come
And
down St. Giles’s pass.
Oh grand, methinks,
in such array
To spend a Whitsun Holiday
All
soaking to the skin!
(Yet shoes and hose alike
are stout;
The shoes to keep the
water out,
The
hose to keep it in.)
They came from Henley
on the Thames,
From
Berwick on the Tweed,
And at the mercy of
the flames
They left their children
and their dames,
To come and play their
little games
On
Morrell’s dewy mead.
Yet feared they not
with fire to play—
The pyrotechnics (so
they say)
Were
very fine indeed.
(P.S. by Lord Macaulay).
Then let us bless Our Gracious
Queen and eke the Fire Brigade,
And bless no less the horrid mess they’ve
been and gone
and made;
Remove the dirt they chose to squirt upon our
best attire,
Bless all, but most the lucky chance that no
one
shouted ‘Fire!’
Plain Language from truthful James[1].
Do I sleep? Do I dream?
Am I hoaxed by a scout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our “to ti en einai” a failure,
or is Robert Browning played
out?
Which expressions like
these
May
be fairly applied
By a party who sees
A
Society skied
Upon tea that the Warden
of Keble had biled with legitimate
pride.
’Twas November the third,
And
I says to Bill Nye,
’Which it’s true
what I’ve heard:
If
you’re, so to speak, fly,
There’s a chance
of some tea and cheap culture, the sort
recommended
as High.’
Which I mentioned its
name,
And
he ups and remarks:
’If dress-coats is the
game
And
pow-wow in the Parks,
Then I ’m nuts
on Sordello and Hohenstiel-Schwangau and similar
Snarks.’
Now the pride of Bill
Nye
Cannot
well be express’d;
For he wore a white
tie
And
a cut-away vest:
Says I, ’Solomon’s
lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well
dress’d.’
But not far did we wend,
When
we saw Pippa pass
On the arm of a friend
—Doctor
Furnivall ’twas,
And he wore in his hat
two half-tickets for London, return,
second-class.
‘Well,’ I thought,
‘this is odd.’
But
we came pretty quick
To a sort of a quad
That
was all of red brick,
And I says to the porter,—’R.
Browning: free passes; and kindly
look slick.’
But says he, dripping
tears
In
his check handkerchief,
’That symposium’s
career’s
Been
regrettably brief,
For it went all its
pile upon crumpets and busted on
gunpowder-leaf!’
Then we tucked up the
sleeves
Of
our shirts (that were biled),
Which the reader perceives
That
our feelings were riled,
And we went for that
man till his mother had doubted the traits
of her child.
Which emotions like
these
Must
be freely indulged
By a party who sees
A
Society bulged
On a reef the existence
of which its prospectus had never
divulged.
But I ask,—Do
I dream?
Has
it gone up the spout?
Are things what they
seem,
Or
is Sophists about?
Is our “to ti
en einai” a failure, or is Robert Browning played
out?
[1] The Oxford Browning Society expired at Keble the week before this was written.
AS I LAYE A-DREAMYNGE.
After T. I.
As I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
a-dreamynge,
O softlye moaned the dove to her mate within
the tree,
And meseemed unto my syghte
Came rydynge many a knyghte
All cased in armoure bryghte
Cap-a-pie,
As I laye a-dreamynge, a goodlye companye!
As I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
a-dreamynge,
O sadlye mourned the dove, callynge long and
callynge lowe,
And meseemed of alle that hoste
Notte a face but was the ghoste
Of a friend that I hadde loste
Long agoe.
As I laye a-dreamynge, oh, bysson teare to flowe!
As I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
a-dreamynge,
O sadlye sobbed the dove as she seemed to despayre,
And laste upon the tracke
Came one I hayled as ‘Jacke!’
But he turned mee his backe
With a stare:
As I laye a-dreamynge, he lefte mee callynge
there.
Stille I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
a-dreamynge,
And gentler sobbed the dove as it eased her of
her payne,
And meseemed a voyce yt cry’d—
’They shall ryde, and they shall ryde
’Tyll the truce of tyme and tyde
Come agayne!
Alle for Eldorado, yette never maye attayne!’
Stille I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
a-dreamynge,
And scarcelye moaned the dove, as her agonye
was spente:
’Shalle to-morrowe see them nygher
To a golden walle or spyre?
You have better in yr fyre,
Bee contente.’
As I laye a-dreamynge, it seem’d smalle
punyshment.
But I laye a-wakynge, and loe!
the dawne was breakynge
And rarely pyped a larke for the promyse of the
daye:
’Uppe and sette yr lance in reste!
Uppe and followe on the queste!
Leave the issue to be guessed
At the endynge of the waye’—
As I laye a-wakynge, ’twas
soe she seemed to say—
’Whatte and if it alle be feynynge?
There be better thynges than gaynynge,
Rycher pryzes than attaynynge.’—
And ’twas truthe she seemed to saye.
Whyles the dawne was breakynge, I rode upon my
waye.