Chapter XX: Part VII (5)

Ae fatal morning I went out
Dreading nae injury,
And thinking lang, fell soun asleep
Beneath an apple tree.

Then by it came the Elfin Queen
And laid her hand on me;
And from that time since ever I mind
I've been in her companie....

He seems to have been an outlandish and unhuman creature--if this next rhyme tells of him truly (_gait_, meaning road; _pin_, (?) knife; _coft_, bought; _moss_, peat-bog; and _boonmost_--you can guess):

Tam o' the linn came up the gait,
Wi' twenty puddings on a plate,
And every pudding had a pin,
"We'll eat them a'," quo' Tam o' the linn.

Tam o' the linn had nae breeks to wear,
He coft him a sheep's-skin to make him a pair,
The fleshy side out, the woolly side in,
"It's fine summer cleeding," quo' Tam o' the linn.

Tam o' the linn he had three bairns,
They fell in the fire, in each others' arms;
"Oh," quo' the boonmost, "I've got a het skin;"
"It's better below," quo' Tam o' the linn.

Tam o' the linn gaed to the moss,
To seek a stable to his horse;
The moss was open, and Tam fell in,
"I've stabled mysel'," quo' Tam o' the linn.

138. "SABRINA."

This song is from "Comus," a masque written by Milton for the entertainment of the Earl of Bridgewater, lord lieutenant of Wales, at Ludlow Castle in 1634. That Castle's Hall is now open to the sky--"the lightning shines there; snow burdens the ivy." From a neighbouring room the two princes, Edward V. and his brother, went to their dark death in the Tower. Below the ruinous Castle flow together the Terne and the Corve, on their way to the great Severn--of which Sabrina, the daughter of Estrildis, is the Nymph, she having been drowned in its waters by Guendolen, the jealous queen of Locrine the son of Brut. Estrildis herself, the daughter of King Humber, "so farre excelled in bewtie, that none was then lightly found unto her comparable, for her skin was so whyte that scarcely the fynest kind of Ivorie that might be found, nor the snowe lately fallen downe from the Elament, nor the Lylles did passe the same."

Milton's poems--_Lycidas_, for instance--frequently resemble bunches of keys, each one of them fitting the lock of some ancient myth or legend. In the lines I have omitted from No. 138 are many such locks awaiting the reader--a reference to the following tale of Glaucus, for example:

There is a secret herb which, if nibbled by fish already gasping to death in our air, gives them the power and cunning to slip back through the grasses into their waters again. Of this herb Glaucus tasted, and instantly his eyes dazzled in desire to share their green transparent deeps. Whereupon the laughing divinities of the rivers gave him sea-green hair, sleeking the stream, fins and a fish's tail, and feasted him merrily. His story is told by Keats in the third book of his _Endymion_, while Leucothea's, another reference, is to be found in the fifth of the _Odyssey_. As for the Sirens, here is the counsel Circe gave Ulysses, the while his seamen lay asleep the night after they had returned in safety from Pluto's dismal mansions:

"... And then observe: They sit amidst a mead,
And round about it runs a hedge or wall
Of dead men's bones, their withered skins and all
Hung all along upon it; and these men
Were such as they had fawned into their fen,
And then their skins hung on their hedge of bones.
Sail by them therefore, thy companions
Beforehand causing to stop every ear
With sweet soft wax, so close that none may hear
A note of all their charmings...."

139.

These Songs are from the last act of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"--the Duke and his guests are retired, and now sleep far from Life's Play; and Puck and the fairies are abroad in his palace.

"I AM SENT WITH BROOME BEFORE."

When the cock begins to crow,
And the embers leave to glow,
And the owl cries, Tu-whit--Tu-whoo,
When crickets do sing
And mice roam about,
And midnight bells ring
To call the devout:
When the lazy lie sleeping
And think it no harm,
Their zeal is so cold
And their beds are so warm.
When the long--long lazy slut
Has not made the parlour clean,
No water on the hearth is put,
But all things in disorder seem;
Then we trip it round the room
And make like bees a drowsy hum.
Be she Betty, Nan, or Sue,
We make her of another hue
And pinch her black and blue.

But when the Puritans came in, it seems, the fairies fled away. And Richard Corbet bewailed their exile:

"Farewell, rewards and fairies!"
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late, for cleanliness,
Finds sixpence in her shoe?...

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad;
So little care of sleep or sloth
These pretty ladies had;
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily merrily went their tabour
And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late, Elizabeth,
And later, James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath been.

For times change, and with them changes the direction of man's imagination. He turns his questing thoughts now this way, now that; and though our learned dictionaries may maintain that fairy rings are but brighter circles in green grass formed by "certain fungi, especially _marasmius oreades_"--who knows?--

He that sees blowing the wild wood tree,
And peewits circling their watery glass,
Dreams about Strangers that yet may be
Dark to our eyes, Alas!

After all, Geoffrey Chaucer, even in _his_ distant day, lamented that England was bereft of the Silent Folk. Whisper, and they will return--bringing with them Prince Oberon, who "is of heyght but of III fote, and crokyd shulderyd.... And yf ye speke to hym, ye are lost for ever."

140. "AWM. 'WHO FEASTS TONIGHT?'"

Another mere fragment--from p. 182 of Mr. C. M. Doughty's Play, entitled _The Cliffs_. For the complete "feast" bestowed on the world by this great traveller and poet, the reader must seek out not only this volume, but his _Arabia Deserta_, and his _Dawn in Britain_.

"ALL IN THEIR WATCHET CLOAKS." (line 15)

"Nan Page (my daughter) and my little sonne,
And three or foure more of their growth, wee'l dress
Like Urchins, Ouphes, and Fairies, greene and white,
With rounds of waxen Tapers on their heads,
And rattles in their hands ..."

_The Merry Wives of Windsor._

141. A HUNT'S-UP

was in old days the Tally-ho blared at daybreak to rouse the chase.

My houndes are bred of Southern kinde,
So flewed, so sanded they;
With crooked knees and dew-laps depe,
With eares the morning dew that sweepe
Slowly they chase their praye;
Their mouths, as tunable as belles
Each under each in concert swells.
_The hunte is up, the morne is bright and gray,
Hunting us hence with hunte's up to the day...._

Beyond all beastys poor timorous Wat
The hunter's skille doth trye,
See how the houndes, with many a doubte
The cold fault cleanly single out!
Hark to their merrie crie!
They spende their mouthes, echoe replies,
Another chase is in the skies.
_The hunte is up, the morne is bright and gray,
Hunting us hence with hunte's up to the day...._

These are two of the seven stanzas of a song richly larded with Shakesperean allusions, to be found in _The Diary of Master William Silence_.

In his book on English Poesy, Puttenham, who was born about 1520, says that a poet of the name of Gray won the esteem of Henry VIII. and the Duke of Somerset for "making certeine merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was, 'the hunte is up, the hunte is up." Henry VIII., moreover, was himself a versifier, and a musician, though, as I have read, a dull one. Here is the first stanza of one of his poems:

As the holly groweth green,
And never changeth hue,
So I am, ever hath been
Unto my lady true....

which, with another equally surprising in sentiment, may be found in full in that casket of antiquities, "Early English Lyrics, chosen by E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick."

143. "WITH HIS COAT SO GRAY."

Though I be now a grey, grey friar,
Yet I was once a hale young knight,
The cry of my dogs was the only quoir
In which my spirit did take delight.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

"D'YE KEN THAT A FOX WITH HIS LAST BREATH CURSED THEM ALL AS HE
DIED IN THE MORNING."

"'Hearken, Reynard, to my words,' (went on the King of Beasts). 'To-day you shall answer with your life for these sins you have committed.' ... 'But nay, my lord,' (sighed the fox), 'I am innocent of all these things. Your Majesty is great and mighty; I meagre and weak. If it is the King's pleasure to kill me, I must die, for whether justly or unjustly, I am your servant; my only strength is in your justice and mercy. To these I appeal, as none has yet appealed in vain. Yea, if it be your Majesty's will that I shall die, then do I accept it humbly. I say no more. But yet I cannot think it a worthy thing for so great a King to wreak his vengeance upon a subject so small.'"

148. "A FULLE FAYRE TYME."

What wonder May was welcome in medieval days--after the long winters and the black cold nights when roads were all but impassable, and men, "despisinge schetes" and nightgear, went to their naked beds with nought but the stars or a dip for candle and maybe their own bones and a scatter of straw for warmth. Is not "Loud sing Cuckoo!" our oldest song?

149. "LUBBER BREEZE."

I suppose, is the prevalent wind in Lubberland or Cocaigne, where "the pigs run about ready roasted, and cry, Come eat me!"

And here is a picture of another land of mill, that once long ago sang to its waters, and dreamed above its image in the weir:

Only the sound remains
Of the old mill;
Gone is the wheel;
On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.

Water that toils no more
Dangles white locks
And, falling, mocks
The music of the mill-wheel's busy roar....

Only the idle foam
Of water falling
Changelessly calling,
Where once men had a work-place and a home.

EDWARD THOMAS

150. "THE AMPLE HEAVEN."

The unthrifty sun shot vital gold,
A thousand pieces;
And heaven its azure did unfold
Chequered with snowy fleeces;
The air was all in spice,
And every bush
A garland wore; thus fed my eyes,
But all the earth lay hush.

Only a little fountain lent
Some use for ears,
And on the dumb shades language spent--
The music of her tears.

HENRY VAUGHAN

"THE TIME SA TRANQUIL IS AND STILL." (line 13)

Clear had the day been from the dawn,
All chequered was the sky,
Thin clouds, like scarves of cobweb lawn,
Veiled heaven's most glorious eye.

The wind had no more strength than this,
--That leisurely it blew--
To make one leaf the next to kiss
That closely by it grew.

The rills, that on the pebbles played,
Might now be heard at will;
This world the only music made,
Else everything was still....

MICHAEL DRAYTON

153. "O FOR A BOOKE."

Nor--says John Bunyan:

Nor let them fall under Discouragement
Who at their Horn-book stick, and time hath spent
Upon (their) A, B, C while others do
Into their Primer, or their Psalter go.
Some boys with difficulty do begin
Who in the end, the Bays, and Lawrel win.

On the other hand;

Some Boys have Wit enough to sport and play,
Who at their Books are Block-heads day by day.
Some men are arch enough at any Vice,
But Dunces in the way to Paradice.

So much for the reader, but the writer, too, may fall under discouragement. Listen to Colum Cille, an Irish scribe of the eleventh century, in yet another translation from the Gaelic:

My hand is weary with writing,
My sharp quill is not steady,
My slender-beaked pen pours forth
A black draught of shining dark-blue ink.

A stream of the wisdom of blessed God
Springs from my fair-brown shapely hand;
On the page it squirts its draught
Of ink of the green-skinned holly.

My little dripping pen travels
Across the plain of shining books,
Without ceasing for the wealth of the great--
Whence my hand is weary with writing.

But to come back to the reader in his shadie nooke:

Tales of my Nursery! shall that still loved spot,
That window corner, ever be forgot,
Where through the woodbine--when with upward ray
Gleamed the last shadow of departing day--
Still did I sit, and with unwearied eye,
Read while I wept, and scarcely paused to sigh!
In that gay drawer, with fairy fictions stored,
When some new tale was added to my hoard,
While o'er each page my eager glance was flung,
'Twas but to learn what female fate was sung;
If no sad maid the castle shut from light,
I heeded not the giant and the knight.
Sweet Cinderella, even before the ball,
How did I love thee--ashes, rags, and all!
What bliss I deemed it to have stood beside,
On every virgin when thy shoe was tried!
How longed to see thy shape the slipper suit!
But, dearer than the slipper, loved the foot.

As for "_the streete cryes all about_": according to _London Lickpenny_, among the street-cries in the fifteenth century were: Hot Pease! Hot Fine Oatcakes! Whitings maids, Whitings! Have you any old boots? Buy a mat! New Brooms, green brooms! with a general hullabaloo of What d'ye lack? and now and again a bawling of Clubs! to summon the tag, rag, and bobtail to a row.

Of singing cries, we may still hear in the sunny summer London streets such sweet and doleful strains as Won't you buy my sweet blooming lavender: Sixteen branches a penny! and in the dusks of November the muffin-man's bell. Besides these, we have Rag-a'-bone! Milk-o! Any scissors to grind? Clo' props! Water-creeses! and, as I remember years ago,

Young lambs to sell, white lambs to sell;
If I'd as much money as I could tell
I wouldn't be crying, Young lambs to sell!

155. "WITH HEY! WITH HOW! WITH HOY."

In _Rustic Speech and Folk Lore_ Mrs. Wright gives the decoys with which the country people all over England beguile their beasts and poultry into "shippon, sty, or pen"; or holla them on their way, but much, I have found, depends on him who hollas!

For _Cows_: Coop! Cush, cush!--while the milkmaid calls--Hoaf!
Hobe! Mull! Proo! Proochy! Prut!

For _Calves_: Moddie! Mog, mog, mog! Pui-ho! Sook, sook!

For _Sheep_: Co-hobe! Ovey!

For _Pigs_: Check-check! Cheat! Dack, dack! Giss! or Gissy!
Lix! Ric-sic! Shug, shug, shug! Tantassa, tantassa pig, tow a
row, a row! Tig, tig, tig!

For _Turkeys_: Cobbler! Peet, peet, peet! Pen! Pur, pur, pur!

For _Geese_: Fly-laig! Gag, gag, gag! Ob-ee! White-hoddy!

For _Ducks_: Bid, bid, bid! Diddle! Dill, dill! Wid! Wheetie!

For _Pigeons_: Pees! Pod!

And for _Rabbits_: Map!

"Yea, and I do vow unto thee," said the voice of the beautiful virgin speaking out of the rock; "Call unto them but in their own names and language, and the strong and delicate creatures of the countries of the mind will flock into the living field of thy vision, and above the waters will befall the secret singing of birds, and thou shalt be a pilgrim. Mark how intense a shadow dwells upon this stone! Therein too lurk marvels to be seen." The voice ceased, and I heard nothing but the tapping of a fragment of dry lichen which in the draught of the hot air caused by the burning sunlight stirred between rock and sand. And I cried, "O unfortunate one, I thirst!"

156. "LAVENDER'S BLUE."

"A poor thing," as Audrey says, but homely and melodious and once _some_body's own: such a somebody as inscribed on the walls of Burford Church:

"... Love made me Poet
And this I writt,
My harte did do yt
And not my witt."

159. "THERE IS A GARDEN IN HER FACE."

Thomas Campion was "borne upon Ash Weddensday being the twelft day of February. An. Rg. Eliz. nono"--1567. He had one sister, Rose. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and this was his yearly allowance of clothes: A gowne, a cap, a hat, ii dubletes, ii payres of hose, iiii payres of netherstockes, vi payre of shoes, ii shirts, and two bandes. He was allowed also one quire of paper every quarter; and half a pound of candles every fortnight from Michaelmas to Lady Day. He studied law, may for a time have fought as a soldier in France, and became a physician. He died on March 1, 1620, and was buried on the same day at St. Dunstan's in the West, Fleet Street, the entry in the register under that date being: "Thomas Campion, doctor of Phisicke, was buried."

I have taken these particulars from Mr. S. P. Vivian's edition of his poems, because it is pleasant to share even this little of what is known of a man who is not only a rare and true poet--though for two centuries a forgotten one--but also because he was one of the chief song-writers in the great age of English Music. Like all good craftsmen, he did his work "well, surely, cleanly, workmanly, substantially, curiously, and sufficiently," as did the glaziers of King's College Chapel, which is distant but a kingfisher's flight over a strip of lovely water from his own serene Peterhouse. It seems a little curious that being himself a lover of music he should have at first disliked rhymes in verse, though he lived to write such delicate rhymed poems as this.

In the preface to his _Book of Ayres_, he tells the secret of his craft: "In these English Ayres," he says, "I have chiefely aymed to couple my Words and Notes _lovingly_ together, which will be much for him to doe that hath not power over both."

160. "WHAT IS THERE HID IN THE HEART OF A ROSE?"

There is a legend in _Sir John Mandeville's Travels_, which in our spelling runs thus: "Bethlehem is a little city, long and narrow and well walled, and on each side enclosed with good ditches. It was wont to be called Ephrata.... And toward the east end of the city is a full fair church and a gracious, and it hath many towers, pinnacles, and corners, full strong, and curiously made; and within that church be forty-four pillars of marble, massive and fair.

"And between the city and the church is the field _Floridus_, that is to say, the 'Field of Flowers'; it being so named for this reason: A fair maiden was blamed with wrong and slandered ... for which cause she was demned to death and to be burnt in that place, to the which she was led. And, as the fire began to crackle about her, she made her prayers to our Lord,--that, as assuredly as she was not guilty of that sin, He would help her and make it to be known to all men, of His merciful grace. And when she had thus said, she entered into the fire, and anon was the fire quenched and out; and the brands that were burning became red rose-trees, and the brands that were not kindled became white rose-trees, full of roses. And these were the first rose-trees and roses, both white and red, that ever any man saw; and thus was this maiden saved by the grace of God. And therefore is that field clept the field of God, _Floridus_, for it is full of roses."

163. "THESE FLOWERS, AS IN THEIR CAUSES, SLEEP."

(line 4)

--while, also, flowers may themselves be the _causes_ of poems, as, in a degree, a dewdrop in a buttercup is of the buttercup's causing. There the rhodora, or rhododendron:

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! Let the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky ...
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew;
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you....

R. W. EMERSON

And here anemone and cyclamen--in an enchanting little poem of but the day before yesterday:

Long ago I went to Rome
As pilgrims go in Spring,
Journeying through the happy hills
Where nightingales sing,
And where the blue anemones
Drift among the pines
Until the woods creep down into
A wilderness of vines.

Now every year I go to Rome
As lovers go in dreams,
To pick the fragrant cyclamen
To bathe in Sabine streams,
And come at nightfall to the city
Across the shadowy plain,
And hear through all the dusty streets
The waterfalls again.

MARGARET CECILIA FURSE

"THE PHOENIX BUILDS HER SPICY NEST." (line 18)

The Phoenix, in faith rather than by sight, is thus described by Pliny: "She is as big as an eagle, in colour yellow, and bright as gold, namely all about the neck, the rest of the bodie a deepe red purple; the taile azure blue, intermingled with feathers among of rose carnation colour: and the head bravely adorned with a crest and pennache finely wrought, having a tuft and plume thereupon right faire and goodly to be seene."

Her life is but three hundred and nine years less in duration than that of the many-centuried patriarch Methuselah. When the lassitude of age begins to creep upon her, she wings across sea and land to the sole Arabian Tree. There she builds a nest of aromatic twigs, cassia and frankincense, and enkindling it with her own dying ardour she is consumed to ashes. And yet--while still they are of a heat beyond the tempering of the sun that shines down on them from the heavens, they magically stir, take body and awaken; and she rearises to life renewed, in her gold, her rose carnation, her purple and azure blue.

164. "THE BOWER OF BLISS."

This and No. 348 are but the merest fragments of the _Faerie Queene_; but they show of what an echoing mutable music are its words. And were ever light and colour so living, natural and crystal clear? Reading this verse, hearing its sounds and seeing its sights in the imagination, you cannot think Thomas Nash was too fantastical when he wrote: "Poetry is the Honey of all Flowers, the Quintessence of all Sciences, the Marrow of Art and the very Phrase of Angels." Indeed, as Spenser's epitaph in Westminster Abbey says of him, he was the Prince of Poets of his time, whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works which he left behind him. And poet of poets he has always remained. John Keats, when he was a boy, used to sit in a little summerhouse at Enfield with his schoolfellow Cowden Clarke, simply drinking in this verse, and laying up store of purest English for his own brief life's matchless work. So, too, Abraham Cowley:

"How this love (for poetry) came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left ringing there. For I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights and giants and monsters and brave houses which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old...."

170.

The poems of Robert Herrick and of Thomas Campion though known well in their own day remained for many years practically unread and forgotten. Thomas Traherne's (who died in 1674) had an even more curious fate, for they were discovered in manuscript and by chance on a bookstall so lately as 1896, and were first taken to be the work of Henry Vaughan. Here is a passage in prose from _Centuries of Meditation_, by the same writer, repeating this reverie of his childhood in other words: "The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The men! oh, what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling angels! and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street were moving jewels: I knew not that they were born or should die. But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the light of the day, and something infinite behind everything appeared, which talked with my expectation and moved my desire...."

172. "BUT SILLY WE." (line 9)

This poem, I think carries with it the thought that in study of that great book, that fair volume, called the World, there is no full stop, no limit, pause, conclusion. Like bees, with their nectar and honeycomb, man stores up his knowledge and experience in books. These and his houses outlast him; the things he makes; and here and there a famous or happy or tragic name is for a while remembered. Else, we have our Spring and Summer--and dark cold skies enough, many of us--then vanish away, seeming but restless phantoms in Time's enormous dream. So far at least as this world is concerned. And generations of men--as of the grasses and flowers--follow one upon the other.

Oh, yes, my dear, you have a Mother,
And she, when young, was loved by another,
And in that mother's nursery
Played _her_ mamma, like you and me.
When that mamma was tiny as you
She had a happy mother too:
On, on ... Yes, presto! Puff! Pee-fee!--
And Grandam Eve and the apple-tree.

O, into distance, smalling, dimming,
Think of that endless row of women,
Like beads, like posts, like lamps, they seem--
Grey-green willows, and life a stream--
Laughing and sighing and lovely; and, Oh,
You to be next in that long row!

And yet, "But silly we" is true of most of us and of most of our time on earth. As Coventry Patmore says:

An idle Poet, here and there,
Looks round him, but, for all the rest,
The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling's jest.
Love wakes men, once a life-time each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach
They read with joy, then shut the book:
And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget; but, either way,
That and the Child's unheeded dream
Is all the light of all their day.

Or again, in the words of Sir John Davies--long since dead:

... I know my Soul hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blind and ignorant in all:
I know I am one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.
I know my life's a pain and but a span,
I know my sense is mocked with everything;
And, to conclude, I know myself a man
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

175. "FOR SOLDIERS"

from an old book entitled, "A Posie of Gilloflowers, eche differing from other in Colour and Odour, yet all sweete." There were pretty and sonorous names for collections of poems in the days of Humfrey Gifford (of whom nothing is known but that he made this Posie)--such as _Wits Commonwealth_; _The Banket of Sapience_; _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_; _A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions_; and _A Handfull of Pleasant Delights_.

"YE BUDS OF BRUTUS LAND"

sons of those, that is, who, according to the ancient myth were descended from Brut or Brute, the Trojan, the conqueror of Albion and its giants, the founder of London, after whom the land is named Britain.

"SOLDIERS ARE PREST" (stanza I)

that is, seized by the King's men, the press-gangs, and carried away by force to fight in the wars.

"YOUR QUEEN."

"To the Most High, Mightie and Magnificent Empresse Renowmed for Pietie, Vertue, and all Gratious Government ELIZABETH by the Grace of God Queene of England Fraunce and Ireland and of Virginia." So runs Spenser's dedication of "The Faerie Queene," while in "The Shepheardes Calender" for April, are the lines:

See, where she sits upon the grassie greene,
(O seemely sight)
Yclad in Scarlot like a mayden Queene,
And Ermines white.
Upon her head a Cremosin coronet,
With Damaske roses and Daffadillies set:
Bayleaves betweene,
And Primroses greene
Embellish the sweete Violet.

In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Oberon tells Puck how he saw that "Faire Vestall" in danger of Love's sharp arrows--and "The Imperiall Votresse passèd on In maiden meditation, fancy free." But Shakespeare, if actually invited to Court, it is said, "was in paine."

176. "THE BATTLE-HYMN."

The writer of this magnificent Battle-Hymn died in 1910, at the age of ninety-one. If Henry Carey, who wrote our own "National Anthem," had realised how much and how often _his_ fellow countrymen were to be fated to use his words, he would perhaps have taken a little more trouble with them (as much, at any rate, as Shelley and Flecker took in _their_ versions of it), and would have found a pleasanter rhyme than "over us" for "glorious," and than "voice" for "cause." If, on the other hand, he had read the following _Grace_ which Ben Jonson made at the moment's call before King James, he might perhaps have refrained from rhyming altogether, and so, by sheer modesty, would have missed being immortalized:

Our King and Queen the Lord God Blesse,
The Paltzgrave, and the Lady Besse.
And God blesse every living thing
That lives, and breathes, and loves the King.
God bless the Counsell of Estate,
And Buckingham the fortunate.
God blesse them all, and keep them safe,
And God blesse me, and God blesse Raph.

"The king," says John Aubrey, "was mighty enquisitive to know who this Raph was. Ben told him 'twas the drawer at the _Swanne_ taverne, by Charing-crosse, who drew him good Canarie. For this drollery his majestie gave Ben an hundred poundes....

177.

"To those," it is said, "who have resided a long time by the falls of Niagara, the lowest whisper is distinctly audible." Their hearing accustoms itself to that unending and enormous roar, and becomes more exquisite. This is untrue of those whose finer sense is lulled by the roar of war: they become deafened, and cannot hear the voice of the one soldier--of which human "ones" every army is composed. And so war may poison even when its intention and its cause are honour and faith. In this particular poem (No. 177), the soldier is one of those who fought in the Transvaal in the years 1899-1901.

180.

Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Julian Grenfell, Charles Sorley, Francis Ledwidge, Alan Seeger, Joyce Kilmer--these are the names of but a few of the men, none of them old, many of them in the heyday of their gifts and genius, who besides proving themselves soldiers in the Great War had also proved themselves poets. Within his powers, every true poet lives in his country's service. These in that service died.

"... Old stairs wind upwards to a long corridor, the distant ends of which are unseen. A few candles gutter in the draughts. The shadows leap. The place is so still that I can hear the antique timbers talking. But something is without which is not the noise of the wind. I listen, and hear it again, the darkness throbbing; the badly adjusted horizon of outer night thudding on the earth--the incessant guns of the great war.

And I come, for this night at least, to my room. On the wall is a tiny silver Christ on a crucifix; and above that the portrait of a child, who fixes me in the surprise of innocence, questioning and loveable, the very look of warm April and timid but confiding light. I sleep with the knowledge of that over me, an assurance greater than that of all the guns of all the hosts. It is a promise. I may wake to the earth I used to know in the morning."

H. M. TOMLINSON

184.

The reader may speculate how it is that while room has been found here for this entrancing rhyme, none has been made for Macaulay's longer Lays, Browning's Cavalier Songs, and a host of poems equally gallant and spirited. Perhaps he will forgive their absence if he will consider what is said on page xxxiii, and if he will also remember that every chooser must make his choice.

There is, too, the story of the Woodcutter's son. This fuzzheaded boy, called Dick or Dickon, while playing on his elder pipe the tune of "Over the Hills" one dappled sunshine morning in the woods, fortuning to squinny his eye sidelong over his pipe, perceived a crooked and dwarf old man to be standing beside him where before was only a solitary bearded thistle. This old man, the twist of whose countenance showed him to be one with an ear for woodland music, invited the Woodcutter's son to descend with him into the orchards of the Gnomes--and to help himself. This he did, and marvellously he fared. On turning out his pockets that night--the next day being a Sunday--his Mother found (apart from the wondrous smouldering heap of fruits, amethyst, emerald, rubies and the topaz, which he had given her) two or three strange unpolished stones, and these also from the Old Man's orchards. And she climbed up with her candle, he being abed, and asked him why he had burdened himself with such things of little seeming value, when he might have carried off their weight in diamonds big as dumplings. "Well, you see, mother dear," he drowsily replied, "I chose of the best and brightest till my eyes dazzled; and then there was a bird that called, Dick! Dick! Dick! Dick! and those magic pebbles were among her eggs."

185. "WE BE THE KING'S MEN."

The Song of Soldiers from Act I., Scene I., Part i. of that mighty play, _The Dynasts_. "The time is a fine day in March, 1805. A highway crosses the ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond."

186. BUDMOUTH DEARS

--from _The Dynasts_, Act II., Scene I., Part iii.--the song sung in Camp on the Plain of Vittoria by Sergeant Young (of Sturminster Newton) of the Fifteenth (King's) Hussars on the eve of the longest day in the year 1813 and of Wellington's victory.

187. "TRAFALGAR"

--from _The Dynasts_, Act V., Scene VII., Part i. Boatmen and burghers with their pipes and mugs are sitting on settles round the fire in the taproom of the _Old Rooms_ Inn at Weymouth. The body of Nelson on board his battered _Victory_ has lately been brought to England to be sepulchred in St. Paul's. And this is the Song the Second Boatman sings.

The "Nothe," line 8, is the promontory that divides for Weymouth, where lived Nelson's Captain Hardy, its harbour or back-sea on the north, and the Portland Roads, its front-sea on the south "Roads," meaning protected seas where ships may _ride_ at anchor. On this tempestuous and fateful night, October 21, 1805, the breakers were sweeping clean across the spit of land called the Narrows. On the further side runs for a round ten miles that enormous wall of pebbles--Chesil Beach, whose stones the tides sort out so precisely--the least in size towards Lyme Regis--that a coast-man can tell even in a thick mist where he has landed on the beach, merely by measuring them with his eye. About ten miles up this water swim in Spring the swans of the Swannery of Abbotsbury with their cygnets, each mother-bird striving to decoy as many strange young ones into her train as she can. So deals a proud and powerful nation with the lesser kingdoms of the earth.

About four years and a half before Trafalgar, on April 2nd, 1801, Nelson and Parker had won the Battle of the Baltic--as Thomas Campbell (who was then twenty-four), in his well-known poem tells:

... Like leviathans afloat
Lay their bulwarks on the brine;
While the sign of battle flew
On the lofty British line:
It was ten of April morn by the chime:
As they drifted on their path,
There was silence deep as death;
And the boldest held his breath,
For a time....

So accustomed, indeed, are we mere landsmen to the exploits of the Navy on the High Seas that we easily forget it was once to our forefathers a novelty and a wonder--such a wonder as might be compared with the fabulous Castles in Spain or the Gardens of Babylon, as the old nameless poet of the following lines recounts:

Cease now the talke of wonders! nothing rare
Of floateing ilandes, castles in the aire!
Of wooden walls, graves walkeing, flieing steedes,
Or Trojan horse! The present truth exceeds
Those ancient fables; floating iles great store,
Sent from the British Ile, now guard her shore,
And castles strong without foundation stande
More safe on waters pavement then on lande....

189. "BRAVE SAILORS."

And here is one of them--come home to his sweetheart, and she (until stanza 6) not recognizing him:

As I walked out one night, it being dark all over,
The moon did show no light I could discover,
Down by a river side where ships were sailing,
A lonely maid I spied, weeping and bewailing.

I boldly stept up to her, and asked her what grieved her,
She made me this reply, "None could relieve her,
For my love is pressed, she cried, to cross the ocean,
My mind is like the Sea, always in motion."

He said, "My pretty fair maid, mark well my story,
For your true love and I fought for England's glory,
By one unlucky shot we both got parted,
And by the wounds he got, I'm broken hearted.

"He told me before he died his heart was broken,
He gave me this gold ring, take it for a token,--
'Take this unto my dear, there is no fairer,
Tell her to be kind and love the bearer.'"

Soon as these words he spoke she ran distracted,
Not knowing what she did, nor how she acted,
She run ashore, her hair showing her anger,
"Young man, you've come too late, for I'll wed no stranger."

Soon as these words she spoke, her love grew stronger.
He flew into her arms, he could wait no longer,
They both sat down and sung, but she sung clearest,
Like a Nightingale in spring, "Welcome home, my dearest."

He sang, "God bless the wind that blew him over."
She sang, "God bless the ship that brought him over,"
They both sat down and sung, but she sung clearest,
Like a Nightingale in spring, "Welcome home, my dearest."

To get any rhythm into this doggerel is like persuading a donkey to gallop. And yet how clearly one sees the dark night, the disguised sailor and his sweetheart talking together on the river strand, and the ships on its bosom in the gloom; while the wistful, deceitful tale he tells her is as old as Romance. Once get cantering, too; how pleasing is the motion!

192. "DARK ROSALEEN."

From his childhood, which was spent in a little shop in Dublin, Mangan had a dark and troubled life. But always a passionate love for his country, Ireland--his Dark Rosaleen--burned on in his imagination as it is revealed in the wild and haunting music of this poem.

197.

There are so many words in this poem strange to an English ear that it seems better to explain them here so as not to interrupt the actual reading of it too much. After all, the little that is not plain speaks in its music, and that is a very large part of what we call its "meaning." For the meaning of a poem is _all_ the interest, thought, pictures, music, and happiness that we can get out of it--it is all that it _does_ to us.

Stanza (1) "loaning" is a green path in the fields, and "ilka" means every; "wede" means faded or vanished. (2) "bught" is a sheepfold; "scorning" I suppose means cracking jokes at one another; "dowie" means sad and drooping; "daffing" and "gabbing" is larking and gossiping; a "leglin" is a milkpail. (3) "hairst" means harvest; "bandsters," sheaf-binders; "lyart" is faded with age; "runkled" wrinkled; "fleeching" is wheedling or coaxing or flirting. (4) "swankies" means the blithe lads of stanza 2; "bogle" means goblin or bogey--an evening game like "I spy," I should think. (5) "Dool and wae" means sorrow or grief and woe.

199.

Robert Hayman, a Merchant of Bristol at the age of twenty-five, was a nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh's. He became Governor of a Plantation called _The British Hope_ in Newfoundland. In 1628 he settled in Guiana (of whose gilded and barbaric Amazonian princesses his uncle tells in Hakluyt's _Voyages_). He made his will in 1633, and nothing more was afterwards heard of him--at least by the people of Bristol.

Poetry shines out of his stumbling verses like the setting sun through a thicket of thorns. Their "Totnes" is an uncommonly old town, mainly consisting of that "long street" where, when a boy, he met "godly Drake." At its East-Gate is the Brutus-stone--for here Brut of Troy is said first to have trodden English soil, having landed from the Dart. Twenty miles distant to westward of the town lies on its rivers Plymouth--the Spaniards' wasps' nest--its Drake in stone now gazing out to sea from its Hoe. Twenty miles to the east on the coast is Hayes Barton, where Raleigh was born about 1552. And seven miles down the Dart is the village of Greenway, the home of his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the discoverer of Newfoundland, who was in that year a boy of about sixteen. Here amid-stream juts up the Anchor Rock upon which, runs the story, the discoverer of tobacco and of the potato used to sit and smoke his pipe. In 1587 Gilbert and Raleigh sailed together in search of the as yet Unfoundland, but on that voyage in vain.

200. "FOR HALLY NOW IS DEAD."

Hally was Henry, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of James I., Queen Elizabeth's godson, and a beloved patron of the arts and poetry to whom Sir Walter Raleigh looked for happy favours. He was little of body and quick of spirit, and, like Alexander, delighted "to witch the World with noble horsemanship." He died when he was nineteen. In Windsor Castle may be seen a suit of armour made for this young prince when he was a boy--a suit which for grace and craftsmanship is said to be one of the most beautiful things of its kind in the world.

202. "HENRY BEFORE AGINCOURT."

Here, again, the verse of this ancient fragment jolts, jars, and moves cumbrously as a cannon over rocky ground. But how wide and moving a picture it presents, and how noble is its utterance.

203. "ALEXANDER THE GREAT."

This is the translation of another ancient Irish poem made by Kuno Meyer. Plutarch wrote Alexander's Life (comparing him with Julius Caesar), in which the young prince is pictured as if by Velasquez. Here are a few words from the translation of this life which Sir Thomas North made from the French of Amiot:

"The ambition and desire he (Alexander) had of honour showed a certain greatness of mind and noble courage, passing his years.... For when he was asked one day (because he was swift of foot) whether he would assay to run for victory at the Olympian Games, 'I could be content' (said he), 'so I might run with Kings'." When, too, "they brought him news that his Father had taken some famous city, or had won some great battle, he was nothing glad to hear it, but would say to his playfellows: 'Sirs, my Father will have all: I shall have nothing left me to conquer with you that shall be ought worth' ..."

"Is it even so?" said my lady.
"Even so!" said my lord.

205. "AND THE KINGS ASLEEP."

... Not a stone-cast from the summit of the hill where all snow was now parched and evaporated away, stood a cairn of boulders and thereon sate three Eagles whose eyes surveyed the kingdoms of the world, its seas and Man's lost possessions. And the Eagle that was eastwards of the three, a little rimpled her wings and cried: "Where now? where now?" And the Eagle that shook upon her plumes the dazzle of the dying sun stretched out her corded neck and yelped: "Man! Man!" And the midmost Eagle stooped low its golden head and champed between its talons with its beak upon the boulder: "The Earth founders," she mewed. And a stillness was upon the hill as though of a myriad watching eyes.

207. "DANCE SEDATELY"

--and here are two old rhymes for the dancing to. One for a Morris Dance:

Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly,
Tickle it, tickle it lustily;
Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour,
Tickle it, tickle it lustily.

Let us be seene in Hygate Freene,
To dance for the honour of Holloway.
Since we are come hither, let us spare for no leather
To dance for the honour of Holloway.

And this for a Flower Dance:

Where's my lovely parsley, say?
My violets, roses, where are they?
My parsley, roses, violets fair,
Where are my flowers? Tell me where?

And yet another for one's Lonesome Low:

The king's young dochter was sitting in her window,
Sewing at her silken seam;
She lookt out o' the bow-window,
And she saw the leaves growing green,
My luve;
And she saw the leaves growing green.

She stuck her needle into her sleeve,
Her seam down by her tae,
And she is awa' to the merrie greenwood,
To pu' the nit and the slae,
My luve;
To pu' the nit and the slae.

The "dochter" is of course daughter, "nit" is nut, and "slae" sloe.

209.

Pause an instant on the fifth word in the third stanza and you can actually _hear_ the birds laughing--yaffle, blackcap, bullfinch and jay, and the droning and the whistling and the whir-r-r.

210. FA LA LA.

Scattered through this volume are many songs, a few of them--both words and music--exceedingly ancient. Mr. Nahum had a cofferful of old hand-written music (square crotchets and quavers and handsome clefs); and many outlandish instruments were hung up in the dust and silence in one of his cupboards. I remember some small living thing set a string jangling when for the first time the door admitted me to a sight of their queer shapes and appearances. In an old book of 1548, _The Complaynt of Scotland_, there is a list of names, not only of old folk-tales such as "The tayl of the wolfe of the varldes end"; and "The tayl of the giantes that eit quyk men," but of songs and dances for long in common love and knowledge even in those old times. Here are a few of the songs:

God You, Good Day, Wild Boy.
Broom, Broom on Hill.
Trolly lolly leman, dow.
All musing of Marvels, amiss have I gone.
O Mine Heart, hey, this is my Song.
Shall I go with You to Rumbelow Fair?
That Day, that Day, that Gentle Day.
Alas, that Samyn Sweet Face!
In are Mirthful Morrow.

And here some Dances:

All Christian Men's Dance.
Long Flat Foot of Garioch.
The Lamb's Wind.
Leaves Green.
The Bace of Voragon.
The Loch of Slene.
The Bee.
Shake a Trot, and
The Vod and the Val.

The tunes to these were played at that day on four kinds of bagpipe (including a drone bagpipe), a trump, a recorder, a "fiddell," and a "quhissil"--which is the pleasantest way of spelling _whistle_ I have yet seen. The melodies and words of most of them are, apparently, all now clean forgotten.

"Fa la la" (No. 210) is of a different kind, being one of hundreds of madrigals, "ayres" and ballets of which both the words and the music were written in England in the first twenty years or so of the seventeenth century. There is, of course, a hoard of learning that one may study on this English music--William Byrd's, John Dowland's, Thomas Ford's, Thomas Campion's, John Bartlet's, Philip Rosseter's, Robert Ayres' and others--which in its own day was as famous in the countries of Europe as English poetry is now. It was the coming of foreign music and musicians to England--the Italians and Handel and Mendelssohn--that put it ungratefully out of mind. To-day its dust has at last been brushed away. The Madrigals are being printed and sung again, and Dr. Fellowes has lately published a volume containing the words of hundreds of such lively, nimble and heart-entrancing rhymes--intended by their writers to carry with them a double charm--not only their own verbal melody, grace and beauty, but also their music's.

My own knowledge is scanty indeed, but I gather that a madrigal is intended to be sung, unaccompanied with instruments, by voices only--three to five, six, or seven, it may be, and men's and women's or boys', coursing, echoing, interweaving, responding and rilling together like the countless runnels and wavelets of a brook over its stones, or a wood full of singing birds at evening. An Ayre is different. It is for the voice--singing its melody to the accompaniment of lute, viol or virginal, as a nightingale may sing at dusk above the murmur of a softly-brawling brook. A Ballet, the most ancient of all three, went hand in hand and foot to foot with a dance.

All I wish to make clear is that the printed words of Nos. 210 and 212, for instance, can give only a fraction of the pleasure their poets intended, who in writing had always the singing voice and often the twangling string in mind. Their very age to my fancy gives them an enticing strangeness, grace, and freshness. For in their company the imagination returns to the days when first they rang out in the taverns and parlours and palaces and streets of a London that from every steeple and tower was within sight of green fields; a noble city of but about three hundred thousand people (including children) wherein you might any day find William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Chapman and the rest talking together in its taverns, the _Mermaid_ or the _Triple Tun_, while that ill-fortuned traveller and statesman, Sir Walter Raleigh, fallen upon evil days, sat mewed up in the Tower of London, engrossed in his _History of the World_.

None the less there are human beings who remain deaf to the magic both of words and music--that, like the deaf adder, _stop_ their ears: "I know very well," wrote Sir William Temple, "that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to these charms, would I think do well to keep their own counsel, for ... while this world lasts, I doubt most but the pleasure and requests of these two entertainments will do so too; and happy those that content themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent; and do not trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them!

"When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

211. "THE ONELY PRETTY RING TIME."