Chapter XXI: Part VII (6)

"Amo, amas,
I love a lass,
As cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip's face
Is her nominative case,
And she's of the feminine gender.
Horum quorum,
Sunt divorum,
Harum, scarum, Divo;
Tag rag, merry derry, periwig and hatband,
Hic--hoc--hârum, genitivo."

JOHN O'KEEFE

There was a mayde come out of Kent,
Deintie love, deintie love;
There was a mayde cam out of Kent,
Daungerous be:
There was a mayde cam out of Kent,
Fáyre, propre, small and gent,
As ever upon the grounde went,
For so should it be.

"When you speake (Sweet)
I'ld have you do it ever. When you sing,
I'ld have you buy and sell so: so give Almes,
Pray so: and for the ord'ring your Affayres,
To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
Nothing but that: move still, still so:
And owne no other function....
My prettiest Perdita."

_The Winter's Tale._

"Such pretie things would soon be gon
If we should not so them remembre."

212.

There _might_ be an instant's check or faltering at the eighth line, but make it "when the WINDS BLOW and the SEAS FLOW"--the great flood of air and water banking up as it were into the words as does the Atlantic in a gale at the Spring Equinox--and all's well.

213. "AND THE FLEAS THAT TEASE IN THE HIGH PYRENEES."

"The flee is a lyttell worme, and greveth men mooste; and scapeth and voideth peril with lepynge and not with runnynge, and wexeth slowe and fayleth in colde tyme, and in somer tyme it wexeth quiver and swyft; and spareth not kynges."

214. "I LOVED A LASS."

George Wither, says Aubrey, could make verses as fast as he could write them. So, too, could Shakespeare. "What he thought," said his editors, "he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarse received from him a blot in his papers."

Still:--"So, So-a! fair and softly!" said the old Shropshire farmer to Job his plough-horse when he kicked up his heels as if to break into a gallop; "So, So-a! When thou'rt a racer, my dear, or born a high-blood Arab, there'll be time enough for that. _Some goes their best slow._"

If the lass's "fives" in the fourth stanza (of 214) were the fives of to-day she must have had a quite comfortable foot, a size or two larger, at any rate, than the bride's in Sir John Suckling's _Ballad upon a Wedding_:

... Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;
But oh, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison;
Who sees them is undone;
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Catharine pear,
The side that's next the sun.

Her lips were red; and one was thin
Compared to that was next her chin
(Some bee had stung it newly);
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze,
Than on the sun in Júly....

218. "AND ST. JOHN'S BELL RINGS FOR MATINS."

June 24 is not only the birthday of St. John the Baptist, but also the year's Sun Day, for about this day, following through the night but a little way beneath the horizon, he rises at dawn furthest North of East in his annual journey (see p. xiv). As once on May-day so it was then formerly the custom, all England over, to set bonfires blazing on the hilltops, around which the country people danced and sang. The dairy-maid who had the breath, and was fleet enough of foot to ring around, between dusk and daybreak, nine such merry bonfires before they were burnt out, assured her heart of a happy marriage within the year.

219. "O IT'S DABBLING IN THE DEW MAKES THE MILKMAIDS FAIR!"

The aïr to gi'e your cheäks a hue
O' rwosy red, so feaïr to view,
Is what do sheäke the grass-bleädes grae
At breäk o' dae, in mornén dew;
Vor vo'k that will be rathe abrode,
Will meet wi' health upon their road.

But biden up till dead o' night,
When han's o' clocks do stan' upright,
By candle-light, do soon consume
The feäce's bloom, an' turn it white.
An' moon-beäms cast vrom midnight skies
Do blunt the sparklen ov the eyes.

Vor health do weäke vrom nightly dreams
Below the mornen's eärly beams,
An' leäve the dead-aïr'd houses' eaves,
Vor quiv'ren leaves, an' bubblen streams,
A-glitt'ren brightly to the view,
Below a sky o' cloudless blue.

WILLIAM BARNES

The words in this poem are spelt as they are spoken in the County of Dorset. "Rathe" means early; and "below" beneath. There is a half-secret rhyme in each fourth line.

223. "MUSIC, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE, VIBRATES IN THE MEMORY."

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

TENNYSON

224. "A BELL IN MOSCOW." (stanza 4)

Of this I saw the picture in Thrae. It was named Czar Kolokol, and, when cast, was of the weight of about twenty-six hundred heavy men. It now stands clapperless on the ground with a breach in its metal side. Through this breach the people go into its silence to pray.

225.

This "Country Rhime," with Nos. 121 and 434, is taken from _A Book for Boys and Girls_, written by John Bunyan. It came out into the world on May 12th, 1686, two years before Bunyan died on Snow Hill in London; and two years after the publication of the Second Part of _The Pilgrim's Progress_, "wherein is set forth the manner of the setting out of Christian's Wife and Children, their dangerous journey, and safe arrival at the Desired Country."

When Bunyan was young he loved ringing the bells with the ringers in the steeple of the village church of Elstow, where he was born, and where his grandfather, Thomas Bonyon, was "a common baker of human bread."

All these "Homely rhimes" are followed in this particular _Book for Boys and Girls_ by comparisons", as here: first the bells; then a lesson about them. They are parables. But in Mr. Nahum's copying, many of the lessons were omitted; perhaps because he preferred to think out his own. Not that the poetry that is intended to teach, to praise virtue, and to instil wisdom in the heart and mind of its readers is any the less poetry for this reason. Nevertheless, _every_ beautiful thing in this world--the hyssop in the wall and the cedar of Lebanon, Solomon in all his glory and the ring on his finger, carries with it joy and wonder of the life that is ours, and gratitude to the Maker of all. And poets who, when writing, are too intent upon teaching, are apt to forfeit their rarest poetry.

232.

Dorothy was William Wordsworth's only sister and his friend Coleridge's close friend. What she squandered on these two poets--her self, her talk, her imagination, her love--only they could tell. "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears," once wrote her brother; she shared his visionary happiness. With Coleridge she used to walk and talk so nearly and dearly that again and again in her _Journal_ she uses all but the very words--that "thin gray cloud," the line on Spring, or on the one red leaf, for instance--which are so magically his own in _Christabel_ (No. 345).

233. "TO AUTUMN."

I read this--perhaps the loveliest of John Keats's odes, many times before I realised that the whole of it is addressed to the musing apparition or phantasm of Autumn whom in its second stanza he describes as if she were in image there before him. This, perhaps, was partly because the poem is usually printed with a full stop after "clammy cells," and partly because of my own stupidity.

Thomas Hood, in his scarcely less beautiful Ode, sees Autumn first as an old man:

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

And later, in his fourth stanza:

The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard,
The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain,
And honey bees have stored
The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;
The swallows all have winged across the main;
But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,
And sighs her tearful spells
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.
Alone, alone,
Upon a mossy stone,
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone,
With the last leaves for a love-rosary,
Whilst all the withered world looks drearily,
Like a dim picture of the drownèd past
In the hushed mind's mysterious far away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into that distance, gray upon the gray....

237. "A FOOLISH THING."

I thee advise
If thou be wise
To keep thy wit
Though it be small:
'Tis rare to get.
And far to fet,
'Twas ever yet
Dear'st ware of all.

GEORGE TURBERVILLE

"Far to fetch" it certainly is; but here is a little counsel to this end from the old Irish _Instructions of King Cormac_ (of the ninth century). Of Carbery I know no more, but doubtless there is much to hear:

"O Cormac, grandson of Conn," said Carbery, "what is the worst for the body of man?"

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac. "Sitting too long, lying too long, long standing, lifting heavy things, exerting oneself beyond one's strength, running too much, leaping too much, frequent falls, sleeping with one's leg over the bed-rail, gazing at glowing embers, wax, biestings [very new milk], new ale, bull-flesh, curdles, dry food, bog-water, rising too early, cold, sun, hunger, drinking too much, eating too much, sleeping too much, sinning too much, grief, running up a height, shouting against the wind, drying oneself by a fire, summer-dew, winter-dew, beating ashes, swimming on a full stomach, sleeping on one's back, foolish romping." ...

"O Cormac, grandson of Conn," said Carbery, "I desire to know how I shall behave among the wise and the foolish, among friends and strangers, among the old and the young, among the innocent and the wicked."

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac.

"Be not too wise, nor too foolish,
Be not too conceited, nor too diffident,
Be not too haughty, nor too humble,
Be not too talkative, nor too silent,
Be not too hard, nor too feeble.
If you be too wise, men will expect too much of you;
If you be too foolish, you will be deceived;
If you be too conceited, you will be thought vexatious;
If you be too humble, you will be without honour;
If you be too talkative, you will not be heeded;
If you be too silent, you will not be regarded;
If you be too bard, you will be broken;
If you be too feeble, you will be crushed."

But what the exact total of all these "too's" may be is a riddle only the Higher Mathematics can solve.

"OUR PLAY IS DONE"

--after which, in Elizabeth's day, "the characters (one or more) were wont to kneel down upon the stage and to offer a solemn prayer for the sovereign, or other patron":

"My tongue is wearie; when my Legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneele down before you: But (indeed) to pray for the Queene."

_Henry IV._

245. "AH! WOULD 'TWERE SO."

I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought
In Time's great periods shall return to nought;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days;

I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of spright which is so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;
And that nought lighter is than airy praise.

I know frail beauty's like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will invassall reason's power.

Know what I list, this all can not me move,
But that--O me! I both must write and love!

WILLIAM DRUMMOND

246. "NO CRANE TALKS." (line 16)

"I hear the crane, if I mistake not, cry
Who in the clouds forming the forked Y,
By the brave orders practized under her,
Instructeth souldiers in the art of war.
For when her troops of wandring cranes forsake
Frost-firmèd Strymon, and (in autumn) take
Truce with the northern dwarfs, to seek adventure
In southern climates for a milder winter;
A-front each band a forward captain flies,
Whose pointed bill cuts passage through the skies,
Two skilful sergeants keep the ranks aright,
And with their voyce hasten their tardy flight;
And when the honey of care-charming sleep
Sweetly begins through all their veines to creep
One keeps the watch, and ever carefull-most,
Walks many a round about the sleeping hoast,
Still holding in his claw a stony clod,
Whose fall may wake him if he hap to nod.
Another doth as much, a third, a fourth,
Untill, by turns the night be turnèd forth."

So also, according to travellers, talk, argue in parliament, camp, and keep watch the wandering tribes of the gaudy-dyed Baboons.

249.

If this poem is read softly, pausingly, without haste, the very words will seem like snowflakes themselves, floating into the mind; and then, the beauty and the wonder.

251

Here again, as in music, there are rests in the second, fourth and fifth lines of each stanza. Is there any magic to compare with that still solemn unearthly radiance when the world is masked with snow; and the very sparkling of the mind is like hoar-frost on the bark of a tree.

253. "THE WILD WOODS."

Allan Cunningham's in Scotland, and these--Mr. Robert Frost's--in Vermont U.S.A.:

Whose Woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though
He will not see my stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake,
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely dark and deep;
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep:
And miles to go before I sleep.

255.

There may be a few small verbal puzzles in this fifteenth-century carol--otherwise as clear, sharp and shining as a winter moon.

_Kechoun_ is kitchen, and Stephen (who waited on the King at bed and board) stepped out of it into the hall, "boar's head on hand." _Kyst_, means cast; _eylet_, aileth; _wod_ is mad. So too _brede_, I fancy. When the roasted capon or cock crowed in its dish, Herod, in wrath and fear cried on his torturers, "by two and all by one" to rise up and kill.

In later times a clay or earthenware box made all of a piece, with a slit in it, was carried by apprentices through the streets on St. Stephen's day, for money. And never a Catholic missionary once sailed for the Indies, Barbary, or the Islands of the Anthropophagites, but a box was hung by the priests in the church for alms against his return. From the former old custom comes our "Boxing Day."

In the Isle of Man, however, the Christmas Box was called the Wren Box, and for this reason: There dwelt of old a Lorelei, siren or sea-elf, in the emerald green creeks and caves of a solitary precipitous island. She was as lovely as she was cruel, and her shrill sweet voice rose amid the roaring and soughing of the waves in her steep rocky habitation as shines a poisonous flower in the dark of a forest. Thus she would at daybreak enchant to their doom sailors following their craft on the sea. Leaning to listen to this music creeping by them on the waters, they drew in to her haunts. Of their bones were coral made; while she lived on; sang on. She was hunted down at last in her sea-grottoes by those who, like Ulysses, had stopped their ears against her incantations. Brought finally to bay, her beauty and bright hair suddenly dwindled and dimmed, and she escaped in the shape of--Jenny Wren. Alas, for Jenny Wren! condemned ever after for the woes of this siren to be pursued with sticks and stones by young loons, cullions and Jerry Sneaks, on every St. Stephen's Day. As goes the rhyme:

"Oh, where are you going?" says milder to melder;
"Oh, where are you going?" says the younger to the elder.
"Oh, I cannot tell," says Festel to Fose;
"We're going to the woods," says John the Red Nose.
"We're going to the woods," says John the Red Nose.

"Oh, what will you do there?" says milder to melder;
"Oh, what will you do there?" says the younger to the elder.
"Oh, I do not know," says Festel to Fose;
"To shoot the cutty wren," says John the Red Nose.
"To shoot the cutty wren," says John the Red Nose.

"Oh, what of her corpsums?" etc. etc.,

and a sinister company they look, especially "milder"!

257.

_Lullay, lullay, thou lytill child,
Sleep and be well still;
The King of bliss thy father is,
As it was his will._

The other night I saw a sight,
A mayd a cradle keep:
"Lullay," she sung, and said among,
"Lie still, my child, and sleep."

"How should I sleep? I may not for weep,
So sore am I begone:
Sleep I would; I may not for cold,
And clothes have I none.

"For Adam's guilt mankind is spilt
And that me rueth sore;
For Adam and Eve here shall I live
Thirty winter and more."

258. "WELCOME TWELFTH DAY"

and here is a rhyme (entitled Jolagiafir) for a memory-game they used to play in old times on Twelfth Night after the bean or silver-penny had been discovered in the Twelfth Cake, and the Wassail Bowl has gone round with the Mince Pies.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear-tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear-tree.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Three French hens, two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

And so on to--

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Twelve lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,
Four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

And here is a recipe for Lamb's Wool, with which to fill "the Bowl": Take "the pulpe of rosted apples, in number four or five according to the greatnesse of the apples (especially the pome water), and mix it heartily in a wine quart of faire water"--or old ale--"with a due and fair lacing of nutmegs, sugar and ginger"--until the company can wait no longer.

And here's another "Twelve"; from Scotland:

What will be our twelve, boys?
What will be our twelve, boys?
Twelve's the Twelve Apostles;
Eleven's maidens in a dance;
Ten's the Ten Commandments;
Nine's the Muses o' Parnassus;
Eight's the table rangers;
Seven's the stars of heaven;
Six the echoing waters;
Five's the hymnlers o' my bower;
Four's the gospel-makers;
Three, three thrivers;
Twa's the lily and the rose,
That shine baith red and green, boys:
My only ane, she walks alane,
And evermair has dune, boys.

259.

It looks as if this carol--of Henry VI.'s reign--was once a singing game: On the one side in the blaze of the Yule Log the Holly men with gilded and garlanded pole; and on the other Ivy with her maidens; each side taunting the other, and maybe tugging for prisoners. "Ivy-girls," too, used to be burned by companies of boys, and Holly-boys by girls--all yawping and jodelling at the sport.

"Poppynguy" may perhaps be the jay, but it would be pleasanter company for the lark, if here it means the green woodpecker. His other names are rain-bird, hew-hole, wood-sprite, woodweele, woodspeek and yaffle, the very sound of which is like the echo of his own laughter in the sunny green tops of the wood.

260. "WHEN ISICLES HANG BY THE WALL."

There is a peculiar magic (which may perhaps be less apparent to the Greenlanders) in icicles. Nor are its effects unknown to the four-footed. In certain remote regions of Siberia there is said to be a little animal called the Iccė-vulff (or Ice-wolf). He has prick-ears, is a fierce feeder, and wears a coat so wondrous close and dense that three or four of our English moles' skins laid one atop the other would yet fall short of its match. But he seldom attains to a ripe age, and for this reason. As soon as he is freed from his dam's snow-burrow, he hastes off to the dwellings of the men of those parts, snuffing their dried seal-steaks and blubber, being a most incorrigible thief and a very wary. And such is his craft that he mocks at gins, traps and pitfalls. But he has a habit which is often to his undoing. It is in this wise: The heat of these hovels is apt to melt a little the snow upon them, its water trickling and coursing softly down till long, keen icicles are formed, upon which, whether hungry or fed, taking up his station in a plumb line beneath them, he will squat and gloat for an hour together, having a marvellous greedy pleasure in clear glasslike colours. Hearing his breathing or faint snuffing, any human who wakes within will of a sudden violently shake the wall between. This dislodges the pendent icicles, and the squatting Iccė-vulff is pierced to his death as with a sword.

Winter indeed makes crystal even of ink. It has the power of enchanting every imagination; and particularly Coleridge's:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon....

264. "WOE WEEPS OUT HER DIVISION WHEN SHE SINGS."

This means, I think, that she adds her own grieved cadences to the melody, as may one, among many voices, singing in harmony.

265. "IS LIKE A BUBBLE."

This rainbow "bubble"--like Shelley's "many-coloured dome of glass" in his _Adonais_--seems, before our very eyes, to be floating up into the empty blue heavens, until it smalls into a bead of gold, and vanishes. It brings to memory--though I am uncertain of the first line--an epitaph in the church at Zennor, a village clustered above the Atlantic on the dreamlike coast of Cornwall--an epitaph cut in fine lettering into its slate slab, while at each corner of the slab Cherubs' heads puff out their round cheeks, representing the winds of the world:

Sorrow, and sin, false hope, and trouble--
These the Four Winds that daily vex this Bubble:
His breath a Vapour, and his life a Span;
'Tis Glorious Misery to be born a Man.

266. "O, SWEET CONTENT."

There is a jewel which no Indian mines
Can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit;
It makes men rich in greatest poverty;
Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,
The homely whistle to sweet music's strain:
Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,
That much in little, all in naught--Content.

"ART THOU POOR ... ART THOU RICH."

The subject being riches, here from Hugh Rhodes, is a nourishing crumb or two of advice. _Cautions_ the poem is called, and it may be found in the _Book of Nurture_:

He that spendeth much,
And getteth nought;
He that oweth much,
And hath nought;
He that looketh in his purse
And findeth nought,--
He may be sorry,
And say nought.

He that may and will not,
He then that would shall not.
He that would and cannot
May repent and sigh not.

He that sweareth
Till no man trust him;
He that lieth
Till no man believe him;
He that borroweth
Till no man will lend him;
Let him go where
No man knoweth him.

He that hath a good master,
And cannot keep him;
He that hath a good servant,
And is not content with him;
He that hath such conditions,
That no man loveth him;
May well know other,
But few men will know him.

And, to make trebly sure:

Three false sisters: "Perhaps," "May be," "I dare say."
Three timid brothers: "Hush!" "Stop!" "Listen!"

269. "LORD RAMESES OF EGYPT SIGHED."

The most ancient poem I know of consists of such a sigh. It comes from an Egyptian tomb, was composed about 5000 years ago, and might have been written by some melancholy soul at his sick-room window yesterday afternoon. For, after all, these ancients whose mummies are now a mere wonder for the curious, all lived, as Raleigh says, "in the same newness of time which we call 'old time.'"

"Death is before me to-day
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.

"Death is before me to-day
Like the odour of myrrh,
Like sitting under the sail on a windy day....

"Death is before me to-day
Like the course of the freshet,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house....

"Death is before me to-day
As a man longs to see his house
When he has spent years in captivity."

272. "THESE STRONG AND FAIR...."

And here is another poem by William Barnes which I have ventured to spell not as it appears in its original dialect, but in the usual way:

If souls should only shine as bright
In heaven as in earthly light,
And nothing better were the case,
How comely still, in shape and face,
Would many reach that happy place,--
The hopeful souls that in their prime,
Have seemed a-taken before their time--
The young that died in beauty.

But when one's limbs have lost their strength
A-toiling through a lifetime's length,
And over cheeks a-growing old
The slowly-wasting years have rolled
The deepening wrinkles' hollow fold;
When life is ripe, then death do call
For less of thought, than when it fall
On young folks in their beauty....

But still the dead shall more than keep
The beauty of their early sleep;
Where comely looks shall never wear
Uncomely, under toil and care,
The fair, at death be always fair,
Still fair to living, thought and love,
And fairer still to God above,
Than when they died in beauty.

273.

I remember actually coming upon this poem (in Mr. Nahum's second book), and how I twisted my head and looked up at the quiet dark-socketed skull in its alcove in the turret room. It had no alarm for me then, though I can recall cold moments of dread or confusion, when I was a boy, at the thought of death. Then--or was it some time after?--I turned the page and found the following poem by Thomas Campion, and, in Mr. Nahum's writing, this scrawl at the foot of it: "Yes, but the vision first."

The man of life upright,
Whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds,
Or thought of vanity;

The man whose silent days
In harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude
Nor sorrow discontent:

That man needs neither towers
Nor armour for defence,
Nor secret vaults to fly
From thunder's violence:

He only can behold
With unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep
And terrors of the skies.

Thus scorning all the cares
That fate or fortune brings,
He makes the heaven his book,
His wisdom heavenly things;

Good thoughts his only friends,
His wealth a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn
And quiet pilgrimage.

"... Yet suffer us, O Lord, not to repine, whether in the morning, at noon, or at midnight, that is to say, in our cradle, in our youth, or old age, we go to take our long sleep; but let us make this reckoning of our years, that if we can live no longer, _that_ is unto us our old age; for he that liveth so long as thou appointest him (though he die in the pride of his beauty) dieth an old man...."

274. "ADIEU! FAREWELL EARTH'S BLISS."

This solemn dirge was written in "time of pestilence,"--such a time as Daniel Defoe tells of in his "Journal of the Plague Year." The Elizabethan poets brooded endlessly on the mystery of death. A music haunts their words like that of muffled bells, as in John Fletcher's poem:

... Come hither, you that hope, and you that cry,
Leave off complaining!
Youth, strength, and beauty, that shall never die,
Are here remaining.
Come hither, fools, and blush you stay so long
From being blessed.
And mad men, worse than you, that suffer wrong,
Yet seek no rest!...

And in William Davenant's:

Wake, all the dead! What ho! what ho!
How soundly they sleep whose pillows lie low!
They mind not poor lovers, who walk above
On the decks of the world in storms of love.
No whisper now nor glance shall pass
Through wickets or through panes of glass,
For our windows and doors are shut and barred.
Lie close in the church, and in the churchyard!
In every grave make room, make room!
The world's at an end, and we come, we come!...

275. "I WHO LOVED WITH ALL MY LIFE LOVE WITH ALL MY DEATH."

Not full twelve years twice-told, a weary breath
I have exchanged for a wishèd death.
My course was short, the longer is my rest,
God takes them soonest whom he loveth best;
For he that's born to-day and dies to-morrow,
Loseth some days of mirth, but months of sorrow.

And this reminds me of an epitaph I chanced on in the graveyard at Manorbier whose ruinous castle towers above the green turf of its narrow ocean inlet, as if it were keeping a long tryst with the clocked church tower on the height:

Weep not for her ye friends that's dear,
Weep for your sins, for death is near--
You see by her, she [was] cut down soon.
Her morning Sun went down at noon.

And then there are these two unforgettable fragments, the one from the Scots of John Wedderburn (1542), and the other of a century before, its authorship unknown:

WHO'S AT MY WINDOW?

Who's at my window, who, who?
Go from my window, go, go!
Who calleth there so like a stranger?
Go from my window--go!

Lord, I am here, a wretched mortal
That for Thy mercy does cry and call--
Unto Thee, my Lord Celestial,
See who is at my window, who.

THE CALL.

... Come home again, come home again;
Mine own sweet heart, come home again!
You are gone astray
Out of your way,
Therefore, sweet heart, come home again!

277. "HARK! NOW EVERYTHING IS STILL."

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

"'TIS NOW FULL TIDE 'TWEEN NIGHT AND DAY."

(line 17)

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

O, take fast hold! let that light be thy guide
In this small course which birth draws out to death--
And think how evil becometh him to slide,
Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

278.

Of the _Lyke-wake Dirge_ is known neither the age nor the author. The body from which the "saule" or spirit within is fled away lies in its shroud, and the dirge tells of that spirit's journey. Its word "sleet," says Mr. Sidgwick, means either salt, for it was the custom to place in a wooden platter beside the dead, earth and salt for emblems, the one of corruption, the other of the immortal; or, as some suppose, "sleet" should be _fleet_, meaning embers or water or house-room. "Whinnies" means gorse. To explain the full meaning of Bridge of Dread would need many pages--but does not much of that meaning haunt in the very music and solemnity of the words?

279.

Next this poem in Mr. Nahum's book was "Lead, Kindly Light," and there was a strange picture for it hanging in the round tower--the picture of a small becalmed ship, clumsy of rig and low in the water which was smooth and green as glass. In the midst of the ship there was piled high what might be taken for a vast heap of oranges, their fair reddish colour blazing in the rays of the sun that was about to plunge out of the greenish sky below the line of the west. But what even more particularly attracted my eye at the time was that ship's figurehead--a curious head and shoulders as if with wings, and of a kind of far beauty or wonder entirely past me to describe. Many years afterwards I read that this poem was written by John Henry Newman (one who even in his young days at Oxford was "never less alone than when alone"), when his mind was perplexed and unhappy, and he himself had time to ponder awhile, because the boat in which he was sailing to England had been for some days becalmed off the coast of Spain.

281. "FEAR NO MORE."

_Philaster._ Fie, fie,
So young and so dissembling! fear'st thou not death?
Can boys contemn that?

_Bellario._ O, what boy is he
Can be content to live to be a man,
That sees the best of men thus passionate,
Thus without reason?

_Philaster._ O, but thou dost not know what 'tis to die.

_Bellario._ Yes, I do know, my Lord!
'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep,
A quiet resting from all jealousy;
A thing we all pursue; I know besides
It is but giving over of a game
That must be lost.

From _Philaster_: FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER

284. "ALL THE FLOWERS."

"... But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three--that is, burnet, wild thyme, and watermints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."

_An Essay on Gardens_, FRANCIS BACON

Bring, too, some branches forth of Daphne's hair,
And gladdest myrtle for the posts to wear,
With spikenard weaved and marjorams between
And starred with yellow-golds and meadows-queen.

The very names indeed of the aromatic herbs seem to "perfume the air"--bergamot, lavender, meadowsweet, costmary, southernwood, woodruff, balm, germander. And flowers even though dead remain sweet in their dust, as every bowl of potpourri proclaims. To have "a repository of odours" always with them, when streets were foul and pestilence was a peril, gentle-people would in old times carry fresh nosegays or pomanders. The pomanders were of many kinds; an orange stuffed with cloves, etc., for the hand; or--for pocket or chatelaine--some little curiously-devised receptacle of silver containing tiny phials of precious essences--possibly no bigger than a plum. Or they might be compounded of rare ingredients: "Your only way to make a good pomander is this. Take an ounce of the purest garden mould, cleansed and steeped seven days in change of motherless rose water. Then take the best labdanum, benjoin, both storaxes, ambergris, civet, and musk. Incorporate them together, and work them into what form you please. This, if your breath be not too valiant, will make you smell as sweet as any lady's dog."

285.

I have pondered over the thirteenth and eighteenth lines of this poem, but am not yet certain of all that they were intended to convey. But what scope for the imagination is in it! The next epitaph is by Stephen Hawes, whose _Passetyme of Pleasure or History of Graunde Amoure, and La Bel Pucel_, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509:

O mortal folk, you may behold and see
How I lie here, sometime a mighty knight.
The end of joy and all prosperity
Is death at last, thorough his course and might:
For though the day be never so long,
At last the bells ringeth to evensong.

And the lines following are said to have been found between the pages of Sir Walter Raleigh's Bible in the Gate House at Westminster, having been written by him, it is surmised, during the night before he--an ageing man of sixty-six--was beheaded:

Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

286. "SIDNEY, O SIDNEY IS DEAD."

"Sir Philip Sydney, Knight," says John Aubrey, "was the most accomplished courtier of his time. He was not only of an excellent witt, but extremely beautiful; he much resembled his sister. He was a person of great courage. Among others Mr. Edmund Spenser made his addresse to him, and brought his _Faery Queen_. Sir Philip was busy at his study, and his servant delivered Mr. Spenser's booke to his master, who layd it by, thinking it might be such kind of stuffe as he was frequently troubled with. When Sir Philip perused it, he was so exceedingly delighted with it, that he was extremely sorry he was gonne, and where to send for him he knew not. After much enquiry he learned his lodgeing, and sent for him, and mightily caressed him.... From this time there was a great friendship between them, to his dying day.... His body was putt in a leaden coffin (which after the firing of Paule's, I myself sawe), and with wonderfull greate state was carried to St. Paule's church, when he was buried in our Ladie's Chapell. There solempnized this funerall all the nobility and great officers of Court."

Here is part of a letter written to him, by his father, Sir Henry Sidney, in 1566, when Philip was a boy at Shrewsbury School:

SON PHILIP.... Above all things, tell no untruth.
No, not in trifles. The custom of it is nought: and let it
not satisfy you that, for a time, the hearers take it for a
truth; yet after it will be known as it is, to your shame. For
there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman, than to be
accounted a liar.... Remember, my son! the noble blood you are
descended of by your mother's side: and think that only by
virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that
illustrious family; otherwise, through vice and sloth, you may
be counted _labes generis_, "a spot of your kin," one of the
greatest curses that can happen to man.

This next fragment is from a letter written on October 18, 1580, by Sir Philip Sidney himself to his younger brother Robert (then seventeen). This Robert six years afterwards fought with him at Zutphen. He grew up a gallant gentleman, was created Earl of Leicester, and in his leisure wrote words to fit the music of John Dowland--afterwards lutenist to Charles I.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

For the money you have received, assure yourself (for it is
true), there is nothing I spend so pleaseth me; as that which
is for you. If ever I have ability, you shall find it so: if
not, yet shall not any brother living be better beloved than
you, of me.... Look to your diet, sweet Robin! and hold your
heart in courage and virtue. Truly, great part of my comfort
is in you!.... Be careful of yourself, and I shall never have
cares.... I write this to you as one, that for myself have
given over the delight in the world; but wish to you as much,
if not more, than to myself.... God bless you, sweet Boy! and
accomplish the joyful hope I conceive of you.... Lord how I
have babbled! Once again, farewell, dearest Brother!

Your most loving and careful brother,

PHILIP SIDNEY

And here in a few words is a fleeting glimpse of this renowned man as he appeared amidst the splendour and magnificence of the Tournament, during the Anjou Fetes in London, in 1581, five years before his death:

"Then proceeded Master Philip Sidney, in very sumptuous manner
with armour part blue and the rest gilt and engraven.... He
had four pages that rode on his four spare horses" (richly
caparisoned in gold and pearls and feathers of silver) "who
had cassock hats and Venetian hose all of cloth of silver laid
with gold lace and hats of the same with gold bands and white
feathers: and each one a pair of white buskins." ... There
followed him in as rich and splendid array his gentlemen,
yeomen, and trumpeters.

287. "HIS PICTURE IN A SHEET."

Of John Donne's Book of Poems there was nothing in Mr. Nahum's first volume, much in the others. But what I then read of them I little understood. It is a poetry that awaits the mind as the body grows older, and when we have ourselves learned the experience of life with which it is concerned. Not that the simplest poetry will then lose anything of its grace and truth and beauty--far rather it shines the more clearly, since age needs it the more.

"_His Picture in a sheet_" refers to a drawing (prefixed to Donne's _Poems_') of his stone effigy. This shows him draped with a shroud, and may now be seen in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which he was the dean, and in whose pulpit a few days before his death he preached his last valedictory or farewell sermon.

"LIVING TO ETERNITY."

How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!...

Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a well chosen book or friend;

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.

Sir Thomas More was such a man. On Monday, July 5th, 1535, the night before he was beheaded, he wrote ("with a cole") this letter of farewell to his daughter Margaret Roper. He had seen her for the last time when she openly met and kissed him in the midst of his enemies and of the throngs on Tower Wharf, as he came from Judgment:

"Oure Lorde Blesse you good daughter, & youre good husbande, & youre lyttle boye, & all yours, & all my children, & all my Godde chyldren and all oure frendes.... I cumber you good _Margaret_ much, but I would be sory, if it should be any longer than to morow. For it is saint _Thomas_ even, & the utas of saint _Peter_: & therfore to morow long I to go to God: it were a day verye mete & convenient for me. I never liked your maner toward me better, than whan you kissed me laste: for I love when doughterly love, and deere charitye, hath no leysure to loke to worldlye curtesy. Farewell my dere chylde, & pray for me & I shall for you & all youre frendes, that we maye merilye mete in heaven...."

288. "DO THOU THE SAME."

So too Walter Savage Landor:

... Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold
Than daisies in the mould,
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
His name, and life's brief date.
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be,
And, O, pray too for me!

290. "A PRETTY BUD."

"To die young," in William Drummond's words, "is to do that soon, and in some fewer days, which once thou must do; it is but the giving over of a game, that after never so many hazards must be lost."

291. "A-LEFT ASLEEP."

May! Be thou never graced with birds that sing,
Nor Flora's pride!
In thee all flowers and roses spring--
Mine, only died.

_In obitum MS. X^o Maij._ 1614, WILLIAM BROWNE

293. "SUNK LYONESSE."

There is a legend--recorded in an ancient monastic chronicle--that in the days of Arthur there stretched between Land's End and the Scillies a country of castles, of fair towns, and landscapes, named Lyonesse. When the tumult of the last great Arthurian battle was over, there befell a cataclysm of nature, and in a night of tempest this whole region was engulfed beneath the seas.

What truth is in this legend no certain history relates. But when the vast Atlantic breakers begin to lull after storm, to lie listening in the watches of the night is to hear, it would seem, deep-sunken belfries of bells sounding in the waters, and siren-like lamentations. I have myself heard this, and fantasy though it may be, if the ear is once beguiled into its deceit, the bells clash and chime on and on in the imagination, mingled with the enormous lully of the surges, until at last, one falls asleep.

299. "SING NO SAD SONGS FOR ME."

--and here is another such happy and tender word of farewell--but from one unknown:

When from the world I should be ta'en,
And from earth's necessary pain,
Then let no blacks be worn for me,
Not in a ring, my dear, by thee.
But this bright diamond, let it be
Worn in rememberance of me.
And when it sparkles in your eye,
Think 'tis my shadow passeth by.

302. "READEN OV A HEAD-STWONE."

This poem, again, is spelt as the words would be pronounced by the country people of Dorset, the country in which William Barnes was born and lived nearly all his long life. Their way of speech is slower than in common English, and the words, especially those with the two dots, or diaeresis, over them, should be lingered over a little in pronouncing them.

Londoners have a way of being scornfully amused at country speech--in their ignorance that it is older and far more beautiful than their own clipped and nasal manner of talking. But half an hour with the great _Dialect Dictionary_ will prove how inexhaustibly rich the English language once was and still is in words made, used, and loved by folk unlearned in books, but with keen and lively eyes in their heads, quick to see the delight and livingness of a thing, and with the wits to give it a name fitting it as close as a skin.

303. "CARE IS HEAVY."

Dear God, though Thy all-powerful hand
Should so direct my earthly fate
That I may seem unfortunate
To them who do not understand
That all things follow Thy decree,
Staunchly I'll bear what e'er's Thy will--
Praying Thee but to grant me still
That none shall come to harm through me;
For, God, although Thou knowest all,
I am too young to comprehend
The windings to my journey's end;
I fear upon the road to fall
In the worst sin of all that be
And thrust my brother in the sea.

CONAL O'RIORDAN

304. "MOTHER, NEVER MOURN."

"It was my own mother (wrote Thomas Cantimpratanus about 1260) who told me the story which I am about to relate. My grandmother had a firstborn son of most excellent promise, comely beyond the wont of children, at whose death she mourned ... with a grief that could not be consoled, until one day, as she went by the way, she saw in her vision a band of youths moving onwards, as it seemed to her, with exceeding great joy; and she, remembering her son and weeping that she saw him not in this joyful band, suddenly beheld him trailing weary footsteps after the rest. Then with a grievous cry the mother asked: 'How comes it, my son, that thou goest alone, lagging thus behind the rest?' Then he opened the side of his cloak and showed her a heavy water-pot, saying: 'Behold, dear mother, the tears which thou hast vainly shed for me, through the weight whereof I must needs linger behind the rest! Thou therefore shalt turn thy tears to God: then only shall I be freed from the burden wherewith I am now grieved.'"

But not all dreamers are so rebuked or so comforted. St. Augustine, a loving son, pined in vain:

"If the dead could come in dreams," he wrote, "my pious mother would no night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart, she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an only love."

310. TOM O' BEDLAM.

This poem has been at hide-and-seek with the world for many years past. Mr. Frank Sidgwick has now played Seek, however, and has tracked it down in the British Museum in a manuscript, No. 24665, inscribed "Giles Earle--his book, 1615." In this manuscript the poem consists of eight stanzas of ten lines each, with a chorus of five lines. The version in this book is only of twenty-five lines, as they were arranged by Mrs. Meynell in her beautiful Anthology, _The Flower of the Mind_. Here are the chief differences which Mr. Sidgwick has very kindly allowed me to collect from his account of his search:

Line 1, "moon" is _morn_. Line 2, "lovely" is _lonely_, "marrow" is _morrow_. Line 10, "rounded" is _wounded_. Line 16, "a heart" is a _host_. And line 21, "with" is _by_. It is a happy exercise of the wits to choose between them and to find reasons for one's choice. When and by whom the poem was written is not yet known. It remains a shining jewel in the crown of the most modest of all men of genius, Mr. Anon.

314. "WHAT'S IN THERE."

This far-carrying rhyme belongs to the ancient and famous game of Dump. "He who speaks first in it," says Dr. Gregor, "or laughs first, or lets his teeth be seen, gets nine nips, nine nobs, nine double douncornes, an' a gueed blow on the back o' the head."

The _faht_ and _fahr_, I suppose, are the pleasant Scots way of saying _what_ and _where_.

316.

So may the omission of a few commas effect a wonder in the imagination. To the imagination indeed there is nothing absurd in, "I saw the sun at twelve o'clock at night"--for one can actually _see_ in the "little nowhere of the mind" both burning sun and black night _together_: as once in a dream I myself was enchanted by three moons in the sky, shining in their silver above waters as wide as those of Milton's curfew. So, too, even mere day-by-day objects will take on themselves a strangeness and beauty never seen or "marked" before, if (like Marcus Aurelius and his loaf of bread) we will only "glut" the eye on them. "I see a rose," said an old woman on her deathbed, "but if, in childhood and youth, I had seen it closer, what a rose on the threshold it had been!"

Here is another old nursery "nonsense" rhyme that makes almost as lively pictures in the mind:

There was a man of double deed
Who sowed his garden full of seed;
And when the seed began to grow,
'Twas like a garden full of snow;
And when the snow began to fall,
Like birds it was upon the wall;
And when the birds began to fly,
'Twas like a shipwreck in the sky;
And when the sky began to crack,
'Twas like a stick upon my back;
And when my back began to smart,
'Twas like a pen-knife in my heart;
And when my heart began to bleed,
Then I was dead--and dead indeed.

319. "IT HAD BECOME A GLIMMERING GIRL."