Chapter II

It was an idle company--
Ladies and lordings fine--
Idly under the wild-wood tree
Their laughter ran like wine.
Yet as they laughed a voice they heard--
A voice where none was seen,--
Singing blithe as a hidden bird
Among the forest green.

"Mark ye, mark ye, a lonely knight
Riding the green forest:
Pardì! for one so poorly dight
He lifts a haughty crest!

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Azure and white is all his wear,
He hath no gold, I trow!
Wanderer, thou in the wild-wood there,
Tell us why sing ye so!"

"Noble ladies and lordings gay,
God have you all in guard:
Since ye are pleased with me to play,
My riddle it is not hard.
I sing because, of all that ride,
I am the least of worth:
I sing because, to match my pride,
Never was pride on earth.

"But, an ye ask what that may mean,
Thus do I answer then:
I bear with me the heart of a Queen--
I that am least of men:--
I bear her heart till the end of all,
Yea! by her own command
I bear the heart of a Queen royal
Unto the Holy Land."

Humbly there his crest he bent,--
Azure it waved and white,--
Haughtily there he turned and went
Singing, out of their sight.
Long, long but his voice they heard,--
A voice where none was seen,--
Singing blithe as a hidden bird,
Among the forest green.

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_The Presentation_

When in the womb of Time our souls' own son
Dear Love lay sleeping till his natal hour,
Long months I knew not that sweet life begun,
Too dimly treasuring thy touch of power;
And wandering all those days
By far-off ways,
Forgot immortal seed must have immortal flower.

Only, beloved, since my beloved thou art
I do remember, now that memory's vain,
How twice or thrice beneath my beating heart
Life quickened suddenly with proudest pain.
Then dreamed I Love's increase,
Yet held my peace
Till I might render thee thy own great gift again.

For as with bodies, so with souls it is,
The greater gives, the lesser doth conceive:
That thou hast fathered Love, I tell thee this,
And by my pangs beseech thee to believe.
Look on his hope divine--
Thy hope and mine--
Pity his outstretched hands, tenderly him receive!

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_The Inheritance_

While I within her secret garden walked,
The flowers, that in her presence must be dumb,
With me, their fellow-servant, softly talked,
Attending till the Flower of flowers should come.
Then, since at Court I had arrived but late,
I was by love made bold
To ask that of my lady's high estate
I might be told,
And glories of her blood, perpetuate
In histories old.

Then they, who know the chronicle of Earth,
Spoke of her loveliness, that like a flame
Far-handed down from noble birth to birth,
Gladdened the world for ages ere she came.
"Yea, yea," they said, "from Summer's royal sun
Comes that immortal line,
And was create not for this age alone
Nor wholly thine,
Being indeed a flower whose root is one
With Life Divine.

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"To the sweet buds that of herself are part
Already she this portion hath bequeathed,
As, not less surely, into thy proud heart
Her nobleness, O poet, she hath breathed,
That her inheritance by them and thee
The world may keep alway,
When the still sunlight of her eyes shall be
Lost to the day,
And even the fragrance of her memory
Fading away."

{156}

_Amore Altiero_

Since thou and I have wandered from the highway
And found with hearts reborn
This swift and unimaginable byway
Unto the hills of morn,
Shall not our love disdain the unworthy uses
Of the old time outworn?

I'll not entreat thy half unwilling graces
With humbly folded palms,
Nor seek to shake thy proud defended places
With noise of vague alarms,
Nor ask against my fortune's grim pursuing
The refuge of thy arms.

Thou'lt not withhold for pleasure vain and cruel
That which has long been mine,
Nor overheap with briefly burning fuel
A fire of flame divine,
Nor yield the key for life's profaner voices
To brawl within the shrine.

{157}

But thou shalt tell me of thy queenly pleasure
All that I must fulfil,
And I'll receive from out my royal treasure
What golden gifts I will,
So that two realms supreme and undisputed
Shall be one kingdom still.

And our high hearts shall praise the beauty hidden
In starry-minded scorn
By the same Lord who hath His servants bidden
To seek with eyes new-born
This swift and unimaginable byway
Unto the hills of morn.

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_The Pedlar's Song_

I tramped among the townward throng
A sultry summer's morn:
They mocked me loud, they mocked me long,
They laughed my pack to scorn.
But a likely pedlar holds his peace
Until the reckoning's told:--
Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold.

At weary noon I left the town,
I left the highway straight,
I climbed the silent, sunlit down
And stood by a castle gate.
Never yet was a house too high
When the pedlar's heart was bold:--
Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold.

A lady leaned from her window there
And asked my wares to see;
Her voice made rich the summer air,
Richer my soul in me.
She gave me only four little words,
Words of a language old:--
Merrily I from market came, for all my songs were sold.

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_Benedick's Song_

Though I see within thine eyes
Sudden frown of cloudy skies,
Yet I bid them "merry morn"
For they tell me Love is born.
So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
For they tell me Love is born.

Storms of mocking from thy lips
Lash me still like airy whips;
But to-day thy scorn I scorn
For I know that Love is born.
So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
For I know that Love is born.

O the hail that rattles fierce
Through my hodden cloak to pierce!
What care I if rags be torn?
Love and I are beggars born!
So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
Love and I are beggars born.

{160}

_Love and Grief._

One day, when Love and Summer both were young,
Love in a garden found my lady weeping;
Whereat, when he to kiss her would have sprung,
I stayed his childish leaping.

"Forbear," said I, "she is not thine to-day;
Subdue thyself in silence to await her;
If thou dare call her from Death's side away
Thou art no Love, but traitor.

Yet did he run, and she his kiss received,
"She is twice mine," he cried, "since she is troubled;
I knew but half, and now I see her grieved
My part in her is doubled."

{161}

_Egeria's Silence_

Her thought that, like a brook beside the way,
Sang to my steps through all the wandering year,
Has ceased from melody--O Love, allay
My sudden fear!

She cannot fail--the beauty of that brow
Could never flower above a desert heart--
Somewhere beneath, the well-spring even now
Lives, though apart.

Some day, when winter has renewed her fount
With cold, white-folded snows and quiet rain,
O Love, O Love, her stream again will mount
And sing again!

{162}

_Against Oblivion_

Cities drowned in olden time
Keep, they say, a magic chime
Rolling up from far below
When the moon-led waters flow.

So within me, ocean deep,
Lies a sunken world asleep.
Lest its bells forget to ring,
Memory! set the tide a-swing!

{163}

_Fond Counsel_

O youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain,
In sight and hearing of thy father's cot,
These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain,
These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not.
Wander not yet where noon's unpitying glare
Beats down the toilers in the city bare;
Forsake not yet, not yet, the homely plot,
O Youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain.

{164}

_Youth_

His song of dawn outsoars the joyful bird,
Swift on the weary road his footfall comes;
The dusty air that by his stride is stirred
Beats with a buoyant march of fairy drums.
"Awake, O Earth! thine ancient slumber break;
To the new day, O slumbrous Earth, awake!"

Yet long ago that merry march began,
His feet are older than the path they tread;
His music is the morning-song of man,
His stride the stride of all the valiant dead;
His youngest hopes are memories, and his eyes
Deep with the old, old dream that never dies.

{165}

_The Wanderer_

To Youth there comes a whisper out of the west:
"O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee
A life to build, a love therein to nest,
And a man's work, serving the age to be."

Peace, peace awhile! Before his tireless feet
Hill beyond hill the road in sunlight goes;
He breathes the breath of morning, clear and sweet,
And his eyes love the high eternal snows.

{166}

_The Adventurers_

Over the downs in sunlight clear
Forth we went in the spring of the year:
Plunder of April's gold we sought,
Little of April's anger thought.

Caught in a copse without defence
Low we crouched to the rain-squall dense:
Sure, if misery man can vex,
There it beat on our bended necks.

Yet when again we wander on
Suddenly all that gloom is gone:
Under and over through the wood,
Life is astir, and life is good.

Violets purple, violets white,
Delicate windflowers dancing light,
Primrose, mercury, moscatel,
Shimmer in diamonds round the dell.

Squirrel is climbing swift and lithe,
Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe,
Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap,
Ringdove flies with a sudden clap.

{167}

Rook is summoning rook to build,
Dunnock his beak with moss has filled,
Robin is bowing in coat-tails brown,
Tomtit chattering upside down.

Well is it seen that every one
Laughs at the rain and loves the sun;
We too laughed with the wildwood crew,
Laughed till the sky once more was blue.

Homeward over the downs we went
Soaked to the heart with sweet content;
April's anger is swift to fall,
April's wonder is worth it all.

{168}

_To Clare_

(WITH A VOLUME OF STORIES FROM FROISSART)

My Clare,--
These tales were told, you know,
In French, five hundred years ago,
By old Sir John, whose heart's delight
Was lady sweet and valiant knight.
A hundred years went by, and then
A great lord told the tales again,
When bluff King Hal desired his folk
To read them in the tongue they spoke.
Last, I myself among them took
What I loved best and made this book.
Great, lesser, less--these writers three
Worked for the days they could not see,
And certes, in their work they knew
Nothing at all, dear child, of you.
Yet is this book your own in truth,
Because 'tis made for noble youth,
And every word that's living there
Must die when Clares are no more Clare.

{169}

_The Return of Summer: An Eclogue_

Scene: ASHDOWN FOREST IN MAY

Persons: H.--A POET; C.--HIS DAUGHTER

H. Here then, if you insist, my daughter: still,
I must confess that I preferred the hill.
The warm scent of the pinewood seemed to me
The first true breath of summer; did you see
The waxen hurt-bells with their promised fruit
Already purple at the blossom's root,
And thick among the rusty bracken strown
Sunburnt anemones long overblown?
Summer is come at last!

C. And that is why
Mine is a better place than yours to lie.
This dark old yew tree casts a fuller shade
Than any pine; the stream is simply made
For keeping bottles cool; and when we've dined
I could just wade a bit while you . . . reclined.

H. Empty the basket then, without more words . . .
But I still wish we had not left the birds.

{170}

C. Father! you are perverse! Since when, I beg,
Have forest birds been tethered by the leg?
They're everywhere! What more can you desire?
The cuckoo shouts as though he'd never tire,
The nuthatch, knowing that of noise you're fond,
Keeps chucking stones along a frozen pond,
And busy gold-crest, somewhere out of sight,
Works at his saw with all his tiny might.
I do not count the ring-doves or the rooks,
We hear so much about them in the books
They're hardly real; but from where I sit
I see two chaffinches, a long-tailed tit,
A missel-thrush, a yaffle----

H. That will do:
I may have overlooked a bird or two.
Where are the biscuits? Are you getting cramp
Down by the water there--it must be damp?

C. I'm only watching till your bottle's cool:
It lies so snug beneath this glassy pool,
Like a sunk battleship; and overhead
The water-boatmen get their daily bread
By rowing all day long, and far below
Two little eels go winding, winding slow . . .
Oh! there's a shark!

H. A what?

C. A miller's thumb.
Don't move, I'll tempt him with a tiny crumb.

H. Be quick about it, please, and don't forget
I am at least as dry as he is wet.

C. Oh, very well then, here's your drink.

{171}

H. That's good!
I feel much better now.

C. I thought you would (_exit quietly_).

H. How beautiful the world is when it breathes
The news of summer!--when the bronzy sheathes
Still hang about the beech-leaf, and the oaks
Are wearing still their dainty tasselled cloaks,
While on the hillside every hawthorn pale
Has taken now her balmy bridal veil,
And, down below, the drowsy murmuring stream
Lulls the warm noonday in an endless dream.
O little brook, far more thou art to me
Than all the pageantry of field and tree:
_Es singen wohl die Nixen_--ah! 'tis truth--
_Tief unten ihren Reih'n_--but only Youth
Can hear them joyfully, as once I lay
And heard them singing of the world's highway,
Of wandering ended, and the maiden found,
And golden bread by magic mill-wheel ground.
Lost is the magic now, the wheel is still,
And long ago the maiden left the mill:
Yet once a year, one day, when summer dawns,
The old, old murmur haunts the river-lawns,
The fairies wake, the fairy song is sung,
And for an hour the wanderer's feet are young (_he dozes_).

C. (returning) Father! I called you twice.

H. I did not know:
Where have you been?

C. Oh, down the stream.

{172}

H. Just so:
Well, I went _up_.

C. I wish you'd been with me.

H. When East is West, my daughter, that may be.

{173}

_Dream-Market_

A MASQUE PRESENTED AT WILTON HOUSE,

JULY 28, 1909

_Scene_. A LAWN IN THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA

_Enter FLORA, Lady of Summer, with her maidens, PHYLLIS
and AMARYLLIS. She takes her seat upon a bank,
playing with a basket of freshly gathered flowers, one
of which she presently holds up in her hand._

FLORA. Ah! how I love a rose! But come, my girls,
Here's for your task: to-day you, Amaryllis,
Shall take the white, and, Phyllis, you the red.
Hold out your kirtles for them. White, red, white,
Red, red, and white again. . . .
Wonder you not
How the same sun can breed such different beauties?
[_She divides all her roses between them._
Well, take them all, and go--scatter them wide
In gardens where men love me, and be sure

{174}

Where even one flower falls, or one soft petal,
Next year shall see a hundred.
[_As they turn to go, enter LUCIA in hunting dress,
with bow in hand and a hound by her side. FLORA
rises to meet her, and recalls her maidens._]
Stay! attend me.

LUCIA. Greeting, fair ladies; you, I think, must be
Daughters of this green Earth, and one of you
The sweet Dame Flora.

FLORA. Your true servant, madam.
But if my memory be not newly withered
I have not known the pleasure. . . .

LUCIA. Yes, you have seen me--
At least, you might have seen me; I am Lucia,
Lady of Moonlight, and I often hunt
These downs of yours with all my nightly pack
Of questing beams and velvet-footed shadows.

FLORA. I fear at night. . . .

LUCIA. Oh, yes! at night you are sleeping!
And I by day am always rather faint;
So we don't meet; but sometimes your good folk
Have torn my nets by raking in the water;
And though their neighbours laughed, there are worse ways
Of spending time, and far worse things to rake for
Than silver lights upon a crystal stream.
But come! My royal Sire, the Man in the Moon--
_He_ has been here?

FLORA. So many kings come here,
I can't be sure; I've heard the Man in the Moon

{175}

Did once come down and ask his way to Norwich.
But that was years agone--hundreds of years--
It may not be the same--I do not know
You royal father's age. . . .

LUCIA. His age? Oh surely!
He never _can_ be more than one month old.

FLORA. Yet he's your father!

LUCIA. Well, he is and is not;
[_Proudly_] I am the daughter of a million moons.
They month by month and year by circling year,
From their celestial palace looking down
On your day-wearied Earth, have soothed her sleep,
And rocked her tides, and made a magic world
For all her lovers and her nightingales.
You owe them much, my ancestors. No doubt,
At times they suffered under clouds; at times
They were eclipsed; yet in their brighter hours
They were illustrious!

FLORA. And may I hope
Your present Sire, his present Serene Highness,
Is in his brighter hours to-day?

LUCIA. Ah! no.
Be sure he is not--else I had not left
My cool, sweet garden of unfading stars
For the rank meadows of this sun-worn mould.

FLORA. What _is_ your trouble, then?

LUCIA. Although my father
Has been but ten days reigning, he is sad
With all the sadness of a phantom realm,
And all the sorrows of ten thousand years.

{176}

We in our Moonland have no life like yours,
No birth, no death: we live but in our dreams:
And when they are grown old--these mortal visions
Of an immortal sleep--we seem to lose them.
They are too strong for us, too self-sufficient
To live for us; they go their ways and leave us,
Like shadows grown substantial.

FLORA. I have heard
Something on earth not unlike this complaint,
But can I help you?

LUCIA. Lady, if you cannot,
No one can help. In Moonland there is famine,
We are losing all our dreams, and I come hither
To buy a new one for my father's house.

FLORA. To buy a dream?

LUCIA. Some little darling dream
That will be always with us, night and day,
Loving and teasing, sailing light of heart
Over our darkest deeps, reminding us
Of our lost childhood, playing our old games,
Singing our old songs, asking our old riddles,
Building our old hopes, and with our old gusto
Rehearsing for us in one endless act
The world past and the world to be.

FLORA. Oh! now
I see your meaning. Yes, I have indeed
Plenty of such sweet dreams: _we_ call them children.
They are _our_ dreams too, and though they are born of us,
Truly in them we live. But, dearest lady,
We do not sell them.

{177}

LUCIA. Do you mean you will not?
Not one? Could you not _lend_ me one--just one?

FLORA. Ah! but to lend what cannot be returned
Is merely giving--who can bring again
Into the empty nest those wingèd years?
Still, there are children here well worth your hopes,
And you shall venture: if there be among them
One that your heart desires, and she consent,
Take her and welcome--for the will of Love
Is the wind's will, and none may guess his going.

LUCIA. O dearest Lady Flora!

FLORA. Stay! they are here,
Mad as a dance of May-flies.

[_The children run in dancing and singing._

Shall we sit
And watch these children?
Phyllis, bid them play,
And let them heed us no more than the trees
That girdle this green lawn with whispering beauty.
[_The children play and sing at their games, till at a
convenient moment the LADY FLORA holds up her hand._]

FLORA. Now, Amaryllis, stay the rushing stream,
The meadows for this time have drunk enough.
[_To LUCIA._] And you, what think you, lady, of these maids?
Has their sweet foolish singing moved your heart
To choose among them?

LUCIA. I have heard them gladly,
And if I could, would turn them all to elves,
That if they cannot live with me, at least

{178}

I might look down when our great galleon sails
Close over earth, and see them always here
Dancing upon the moonlit shores of night.
But how to choose!--and though they are young and fair
Their every grace foretells the fatal change,
The swift short bloom of girlhood, like a flower
Passing away, for ever passing away.
Have you not one with petals tenderer yet,
More deeply folded, further from the hour
When the bud dies into the mortal rose?

FLORA [_pointing._] _There_ is my youngest blossom and my fairest,
But my most wilful too--you'll pluck her not
Without some aid of magic.

LUCIA. Time has been
When I have known even your forest trees
Sway to a song of moonland. I will try it.

[_She sings and dances a witching measure._]

SONG

(_To an air by HENRY LAWES, published in 1652_)

The flowers that in thy garden rise,
Fade and are gone when Summer flies,
And as their sweets by time decay,
So shall thy hopes be cast away.

The Sun that gilds the creeping moss
Stayeth not Earth's eternal loss:
He is the lord of all that live,
Yet there is life he cannot give.

{179}

The stir of Morning's eager breath--
Beautiful Eve's impassioned death--
Thou lovest these, thou lovest well,
Yet of the Night thou canst not tell.

In every land thy feet may tread,
Time like a veil is round thy head:
Only the land thou seek'st with me
Never hath been nor yet shall be.

It is not far, it is not near,
Name it hath none that Earth can hear;
But there thy Soul shall build again
Memories long destroyed of men,
And Joy thereby shall like a river
Wander from deep to deep for ever.

[_When she has finished the child runs into her arms._]

FLORA. Your spell has won her, and I marvel not:
She was but half our own.
[_To the Child_] Farewell, dear child,
'Tis time to part, you with this lovely lady
To dance in silver halls, and gather stars
And be the dream you are: while we return
To the old toil and harvest of the Earth.
Farewell! and farewell all!

ALL. Farewell! farewell!

[_Exeunt omnes._

{180}

_The Cicalas: An Idyll_

_Scene_: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT

_Persons_: A LADY AND A POET

THE POET

Dimly I see your face: I hear your breath
Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death
And when you whisper, you but stir the air
With a soft hush like summer's own despair.

THE LADY (_aloud_)

O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
Let her no more endure the shame of day.

THE POET

A thousand ages have not made less bright
The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
That every son of man desires in dream.

{181}

THE LADY

Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold;
And Beauty lingers--but her tale is told:
Mankind has left her for a game of toys,
And fleets the golden hour with speed and noise.

THE POET

Think you the human heart no longer feels
Because it loves the swift delight of wheels?
And is not Change our one true guide on earth,
The surest hand that leads us from our birth?

THE LADY

Change were not always loss, if we could keep
Beneath all change a clear and windless deep:
But more and more the tides that through us roll
Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul.

THE POET

The foam of transient passions cannot fret
The sea-bed of the race, profounder yet:
And there, where Greece and her foundations are,
Lies Beauty, built below the tide of war.

THE LADY

So--to the desert, once in fifty years--
Some poor mad poet sings, and no one hears:
But what belated race, in what far clime,
Keeps even a legend of Arcadian time?

{182}

THE POET

Not ours perhaps: a nation still so young,
So late in Rome's deserted orchard sprung,
Bears not as yet, but strikes a hopeful root
Till the soil yield its old Hesperian fruit.

THE LADY

Is not the hour gone by? The mystic strain,
Degenerate once, may never spring again.
What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke
To grant such increase to our common oak?

THE POET

Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth,
More deeply planted in that genial earth,
From her Italian wildwood even now
Revert, and bear once more the golden bough.

THE LADY

A poet's dream was never yet less great
Because it issued through the ivory gate!
Show me one leaf from that old wood divine,
And all your ardour, all your hopes are mine.

THE POET

May Venus bend me to no harder task!
For--Pan be praised!--I hold the gift you ask.
The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils,
To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills.

{183}

THE LADY

Your young Italian--yes! I saw you stand
And point his path across our well-walled land:
A sculptor's model, but alas! no god:
These narrow fields the goat-foot never trod!

THE POET

Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced
To which the streams of old Arcadia danced;
And on his tongue still lay the childish lore
Of that lost world for which you hope no more.

THE LADY

Tell me!--from where I watched I saw his face,
And his hands moving with a rustic grace,
Caught too the alien sweetness of his speech,
But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach.

THE POET

He asked if we in England ever heard
The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird,
That neither eat nor sleep, but die content
When they in endless song their strength have spent.

THE LADY

Cicalas! how the name enchants me back
To the grey olives and the dust-white track!
Was there a story then?--I have forgot,
Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not.

{184}

THE POET

Lover of music, you at least should know
That these were men in ages long ago,--
Ere music was,--and then the Muses came,
And love of song took hold on them like flame.

THE LADY

Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks--
Most living still of all the deathless Greeks--
Yet tell me--how they died divinely mad,
And of the Muses what reward they had.

THE POET

They are reborn on earth, and from the first
They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst
Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill,
Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill.

THE LADY

They are reborn indeed! and rightly you
The far-heard echo of their music knew!
Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem,
Were there with Phaedrus, by Ilissus' stream.

THE POET

Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace
For ever haunts our short life's resting-place,
Outward and inward make me one true whole,
And grant me beauty in the inmost soul!

{185}

THE LADY

And thou, O Night, O starry Queen of Air,
Remember not my blind and faithless prayer!
Let me too live, let me too sing again,
Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men.

{186}

_The Faun_

Yesterday I thought to roam
Idly through the fields of home,
And I came at morning's end
To our brook's familiar bend.
There I raised my eyes, and there,
Shining through an ampler air,
Folded in by hills of blue
Such as Wessex never knew,
Changed as in a waking dream
Flowed the well-remembered stream.

Now a line of wattled pale
Fenced the downland from the vale,
Now the sedge was set with reeds
Fitter for Arcadian meads,
And where I was wont to find
Only things of timid kind,
Now the Genius of the pool
Mocked me from his corner cool.
Eyes he had with malice quick,
Tufted hair and ears a-prick,
And, above a tiny chin,
Lips with laughter wide a-grin.

{187}

Therewithal a shaggy flank
In the crystal clear he sank,
And beneath the unruffled tide
A little pair of hooves I spied.

Yet though plainly there he stood,
Creature of the wave and wood,
Under his satyric grace
Something manlike I could trace,
And the eyes that mocked me there
Like a gleam of memory were.

"So," said I at last to him,
Frowning from the river's brim,
"This is where you come to play,
Heedless of the time of day."

"Nay," replied the youthful god,
Leaning on the flowery sod,
"Here there are no clocks, and so
Time can neither come nor go."

"Little goat," said I, "you're late,
And your dinner will not wait:
If to-day you wish to eat,
Trust me, you must find your feet."

"Father," said the little goat,
"Do you know that I can float?

{188}

Do you know that I can dive
As deep as any duck alive?
Would you like to see me drop
Out of yonder willow's top?"

Sternly I replied again,
"You may spare your boasting vain;
All that you can do I did
When I was myself a kid."
Laughter followed such as pealed
Through the first unfurrowed field.
"Then what mother says is true,
And your hoof is cloven too!"

Ah!--but that irreverent mirth,
Learnt of the primeval earth,
Surely was with magic fraught
That upon my pulses wrought:
I too felt the air of June
Humming with a merry tune,
I too reckoned, like a boy,
Less of Time and more of Joy:
Till, as homeward I was wending,
I perceived my back unbending,
And before the mile was done
Ran beside my truant son.

{189}

_Fidele's Grassy Tomb_

The Squire sat propped in a pillowed chair,
His eyes were alive and clear of care,
But well he knew that the hour was come
To bid good-bye to his ancient home.

He looked on garden, wood, and hill,
He looked on the lake, sunny and still:
The last of earth that his eyes could see
Was the island church of Orchardleigh.

The last that his heart could understand
Was the touch of the tongue that licked his hand
"Bury the dog at my feet," he said,
And his voice dropped, and the Squire was dead.

Now the dog was a hound of the Danish breed,
Staunch to love and strong at need:
He had dragged his master safe to shore
When the tide was ebbing at Elsinore.

From that day forth, as reason would,
He was named "Fidele," and made it good:
When the last of the mourners left the door
Fidele was dead on the chantry floor.

{190}

They buried him there at his master's feet,
And all that heard of it deemed it meet:
The story went the round for years,
Till it came at last to the Bishop's ears.

Bishop of Bath and Wells was he,
Lord of the lords of Orchardleigh;
And he wrote to the Parson the strongest screed
That Bishop may write or Parson read.

The sum of it was that a soulless hound
Was known to be buried in hallowed ground:
From scandal sore the Church to save
They must take the dog from his master's grave.

The heir was far in a foreign land,
The Parson was wax to my Lord's command:
He sent for the Sexton and bade him make
A lonely grave by the shore of the lake.

The Sexton sat by the water's brink
Where he used to sit when he used to think:
He reasoned slow, but he reasoned it out,
And his argument left him free from doubt.

"A Bishop," he said, "is the top of his trade;
But there's others can give him a start with the spade:
Yon dog, he carried the Squire ashore,
And a Christian couldn't ha' done no more."

{191}

The grave was dug; the mason came
And carved on stone Fidele's name;
But the dog that the Sexton laid inside
Was a dog that never had lived or died.

So the Parson was praised, and the scandal stayed,
Till, a long time after, the church decayed,
And, laying the floor anew, they found
In the tomb of the Squire the bones of a hound.

As for the Bishop of Bath and Wells
No more of him the story tells;
Doubtless he lived as a Prelate and Prince,
And died and was buried a century since.

And whether his view was right or wrong
Has little to do with this my song;
Something we owe him, you must allow;
And perhaps he has changed his mind by now.

The Squire in the family chantry sleeps,
The marble still his memory keeps:
Remember, when the name you spell,
There rest Fidele's bones as well.

For the Sexton's grave you need not search,
'Tis a nameless mound by the island church:
An ignorant fellow, of humble lot--
But he knew one thing that a Bishop did not.

{192}

_Moonset_

Past seven o'clock: time to be gone;
Twelfth-night's over and dawn shivering up:
A hasty cut of the loaf, a steaming cup,
Down to the door, and there is Coachman John.

Ruddy of cheek is John and bright of eye;
But John it appears has none of your grins and winks;
Civil enough, but short: perhaps he thinks:
Words come once in a mile, and always dry.

Has he a mind or not? I wonder; but soon
We turn through a leafless wood, and there to the right,
Like a sun bewitched in alien realms of night,
Mellow and yellow and rounded hangs the moon.

Strangely near she seems, and terribly great:
The world is dead: why are we travelling still?
Nightmare silence grips my struggling will;
We are driving for ever and ever to find a gate.

{193}

"When you come to consider the moon," says John at last,
And stops, to feel his footing and take his stand;
"And then there's some will say there's never a hand
That made the world!"
A flick, and the gates are passed.

Out of the dim magical moonlit park,
Out to the workday road and wider skies:
There's a warm flush in the East where day's to rise,
And I'm feeling the better for Coachman John's remark.

{194}

_A Song of Exmoor_

The Forest above and the Combe below,
On a bright September morn!
He's the soul of a clod who thanks not God
That ever his body was born!
So hurry along, the stag's afoot,
The Master's up and away!
Halloo! Halloo! we'll follow it through
From Bratton to Porlock Bay!

_So hurry along, the stag's afoot,
The Master's up and away!
Halloo! Halloo! we'll follow it through
From Bratton to Porlock Bay!_

Hark to the tufters' challenge true,
'Tis a note that the red-deer knows!
His courage awakes, his covert he breaks,
And up for the moor he goes!
He's all his rights and seven on top,
His eye's the eye of a king,
And he'll beggar the pride of some that ride
Before he leaves the ling!

{195}

Here comes Antony bringing the pack,
Steady! he's laying them on!
By the sound of their chime you may tell that it's time
To harden your heart and be gone.
Nightacott, Narracott, Hunnacott's passed,
Right for the North they race:
He's leading them straight for Blackmoor Gate,
And he's setting a pounding pace!

We're running him now on a breast-high scent,
But he leaves us standing still;
When we swing round by Westland Pound
He's far up Challacombe Hill.
The pack are a string of struggling ants,
The quarry's a dancing midge,
They're trying their reins on the edge of the Chains
While he's on Cheriton Ridge.

He's gone by Kittuck and Lucott Moor,
He's gone by Woodcock's Ley;
By the little white town he's turned him down,
And he's soiling in open sea.
So hurry along, we'll both be in,
The crowd are a parish away!
We're a field of two, and we've followed it through
From Bratton to Porlock Bay!

_So hurry along, we'll both be in,
The crowd are a parish away!
We're a field of two, and we've followed it through
From Bratton to Porlock Bay!_

{196}

_Master and Man_

Do ye ken hoo to fush for the salmon?
If ye'll listen I'll tell ye.
Dinna trust to the books and their gammon,
They're but trying to sell ye.
Leave professors to read their ain cackle
And fush their ain style;
Come awa', sir, we'll oot wi' oor tackle
And be busy the while.

'Tis a wee bit ower bright, ye were thinkin'?
Aw, ye'll no be the loser;
'Tis better ten baskin' and blinkin'
Than ane that's a cruiser.
If ye're bent, as I tak it, on slatter,
Ye should pray for the droot,
For the salmon's her ain when there's watter,
But she's oors when it's oot.

Ye may just put your flee-book behind ye,
Ane hook wull be plenty;
If they'll no come for this, my man, mind ye,
They'll no come for twenty.

{197}

Ay, a rod; but the shorter the stranger
And the nearer to strike;
For myself I prefare it nae langer
Than a yard or the like.

Noo, ye'll stand awa' back while I'm creepin'
Wi' my snoot i' the gowans;
There's a bonny twalve-poonder a-sleepin'
I' the shade o' yon rowans.
Man, man! I was fearin' I'd stirred her,
But I've got her the noo!
Hoot! fushin's as easy as murrder
When ye ken what to do.

Na, na, sir, I doot na ye're willin'
But I canna permit ye,
For I'm thinkin' that yon kind o' killin'
Wad hardly befit ye.
And some work is deefficult hushin',
There'd be havers and chaff:
'Twull be best, sir, for you to be fushin'
And me wi' the gaff.

{198}

_Gavotte_

(OLD FRENCH)

Memories long in music sleeping,
No more sleeping,
No more dumb:
Delicate phantoms softly creeping
Softly back from the old-world come.

Faintest odours around them straying,
Suddenly straying
In chambers dim;
Whispering silks in order swaying,
Glimmering gems on shoulders slim:

Courage advancing strong and tender,
Grace untender
Fanning desire;
Suppliant conquest, proud surrender,
Courtesy cold of hearts on fire--

Willowy billowy now they're bending,
Low they're bending
Down-dropt eyes;
Stately measure and stately ending,
Music sobbing, and a dream that dies.

{199}

_Imogien_

(A LADY OF TENDER AGE)

Ladies, where were your bright eyes glancing,
Where were they glancing yesternight?
Saw ye Imogen dancing, dancing,
Imogen dancing all in white?
Laughed she not with a pure delight,
Laughed she not with a joy serene,
Stepped she not with a grace entrancing,
Slenderly girt in silken sheen?

All through the night from dusk to daytime
Under her feet the hours were swift,
Under her feet the hours of playtime
Rose and fell with a rhythmic lift:
Music set her adrift, adrift,
Music eddying towards the day
Swept her along as brooks in Maytime
Carry the freshly falling May.

Ladies, life is a changing measure,
Youth is a lilt that endeth soon;

{200}

Pluck ye never so fast at pleasure,
Twilight follows the longest noon.
Nay, but here is a lasting boon,
Life for hearts that are old and chill,
Youth undying for hearts that treasure
Imogen dancing, dancing still.

{201}

_Nel Mezzo Del Cammin_

Whisper it not that late in years
Sorrow shall fade and the world be brighter,
Life be freed of tremor and tears,
Heads be wiser and hearts be lighter.
Ah! but the dream that all endears,
The dream we sell for your pottage of truth--
Give us again the passion of youth,
Sorrow shall fade and the world be brighter.

{202}

_The Invasion_

Spring, they say, with his greenery
Northward marches at last,
Mustering thorn and elm;
Breezes rumour him conquering,
Tell how Victory sits
High on his glancing helm.

Smit with sting of his archery,
Hardest ashes and oaks
Burn at the root below:
Primrose, violet, daffodil,
Start like blood where the shafts
Light from his golden bow.

Here where winter oppresses us
Still we listen and doubt,
Dreading a hope betrayed:
Sore we long to be greeting him,
Still we linger and doubt
"What if his march be stayed?"

{203}

Folk in thrall to the enemy,
Vanquished, tilling a soil
Hateful and hostile grown;
Always wearily, warily,
Feeding deep in the heart
Passion they dare not own--

So we wait the deliverer;
Surely soon shall he come,
Soon shall his hour be due:
Spring shall come with his greenery,
Life be lovely again,
Earth be the home we knew.

{204}

_Rilloby-Rill_

Grasshoppers four a-fiddling went,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
They earned but little towards their rent
But all day long with their elbows bent
They fiddled a tune called Rilloby-rilloby,
Fiddled a tune called Rilloby-rill.

Grasshoppers soon on Fairies came,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
Fairies asked with a manner of blame,
"Where do you come from, what is your name?
What do you want with your Rilloby-rilloby,
What do you want with your Rilloby-rill?"

"Madam, you see before you stand,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
The Old Original Favourite Grand
Grasshopper's Green Herbarian Band,
And the tune we play is Rilloby-rilloby,
Madam, the tune is Rilloby-rill."

{205}

Fairies hadn't a word to say,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
Fairies seldom are sweet by day,
But the Grasshoppers merrily fiddled away,
O but they played with a willoby-rilloby,
O but they played with a willoby-will!

Fairies slumber and sulk at noon,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
But at last the kind old motherly moon
Brought them dew in a silver spoon,
And they turned to ask for Rilloby-rilloby,
One more round of Rilloby-rill.

Ah! but nobody now replied,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
When day went down the music died,
Grasshoppers four lay side by side,
And there was an end of their Rilloby-rilloby,
There was an end of their Rilloby-rill.

{206}

_Pereunt Et Imputantur_

(AFTER MARTIAL)

Bernard, if to you and me
Fortune all at once should give
Years to spend secure and free,
With the choice of how to live,
Tell me, what should we proclaim
Life deserving of the name?

Winning some one else's case?
Saving some one else's seat?
Hearing with a solemn face
People of importance bleat?
No, I think we should not still
Waste our time at others' will.

Summer noons beneath the limes,
Summer rides at evening cool,
Winter's tales and home-made rhymes,
Figures on the frozen pool--
These would we for labours take,
And of these our business make.

{207}

Ah! but neither you nor I
Dare in earnest venture so;
Still we let the good days die
And to swell the reckoning go.
What are those that know the way,
Yet to walk therein delay?

{208}

_Felix Antonius_

(AFTER MARTIAL)

To-day, my friend is seventy-five;
He tells his tale with no regret,
His brave old eyes are steadfast yet,
His heart the lightest heart alive.

He sees behind him green and wide
The pathway of his pilgrim years;
He sees the shore, and dreadless hears
The whisper of the creeping tide.

For out of all his days, not one
Has passed and left its unlaid ghost
To seek a light for ever lost,
Or wail a deed for ever done.

So for reward of life-long truth
He lives again, as good men can,
Redoubling his allotted span
With memories of a stainless youth.

{209}

_Ireland, Ireland_

Down thy valleys, Ireland, Ireland,
Down thy valleys green and sad,
Still thy spirit wanders wailing,
Wanders wailing, wanders mad.

Long ago that anguish took thee,
Ireland, Ireland, green and fair,
Spoilers strong in darkness took thee,
Broke thy heart and left thee there.

Down thy valleys, Ireland, Ireland,
Still thy spirit wanders mad;
All too late they love that wronged thee,
Ireland, Ireland, green and sad.

{210}

_Hymn_

IN THE TIME OF WAR AND TUMULTS

O Lord Almighty, Thou whose hands
Despair and victory give;
In whom, though tyrants tread their lands,
The souls of nations live;

Thou wilt not turn Thy face away
From those who work Thy will,
But send Thy peace on hearts that pray,
And guard Thy people still.

Remember not the days of shame,
The hands with rapine dyed,
The wavering will, the baser aim,
The brute material pride:

Remember, Lord, the years of faith,
The spirits humbly brave,
The strength that died defying death,
The love that loved the slave;

{211}

The race that strove to rule Thine earth
With equal laws unbought:
Who bore for Truth the pangs of birth,
And brake the bonds of Thought.

Remember how, since time began,
Thy dark eternal mind
Through lives of men that fear not man
Is light for all mankind.

Thou wilt not turn Thy face away
From those who work Thy will,
But send Thy strength on hearts that pray
For strength to serve Thee still.

{212}

_The Building of the Temple_

(AN ANTHEM HEARD IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL)

_The Organ._

O Lord our God, we are strangers before Thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

O Lord God of our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of Thy people, and prepare their heart unto Thee.

And give unto Solomon my son a perfect heart to keep Thy commandments, and to build the palace for the which I have made provision.

_Boys' voices._

O come to the Palace of Life,
Let us build it again.
It was founded on terror and strife,
It was laid in the curse of the womb,
And pillared on toil and pain,
And hung with veils of doom,
And vaulted with the darkness of the tomb.

{213}

_Men's voices._

O Lord our God, we are sojourners here for a day,
Strangers and sojourners, as all our fathers were:
Our years on the earth are a shadow that fadeth away;
Grant us light for our labour, and a time for prayer.

_Boys._

But now with endless song,
And joy fulfilling the Law;
Of passion as pure as strong
And pleasure undimmed of awe;
With garners of wine and grain
Laid up for the ages long,
Let us build the Palace again
And enter with endless song,
Enter and dwell secure, forgetting the years of wrong.

_Men._

O Lord our God, we are strangers and sojourners here,
Our beginning was night, and our end is hid in Thee:
Our labour on the earth is hope redeeming fear,
In sorrow we build for the days we shall not see.

_Boys._

Great is the name
Of the strong and skilled,
Lasting the fame
Of them that build:

{214}

The tongues of many nations
Shall speak of our praise,
And far generations
Be glad for our days.

_Men._

We are sojourners here as all our fathers were,
As all our children shall be, forgetting and forgot:
The fame of man is a murmur that passeth on the air,
We perish indeed if Thou remember not.

We are sojourners here as all our fathers were,
Strangers travelling down to the land of death:
There is neither work nor device nor knowledge there,
O grant us might for our labour, and to rest in faith.

_Boys._

In joy, in the joy of the light to be,

_Men._

O Father of Lights, unvarying and true,

_Boys._

Let us build the Palace of Life anew.

_Men._

Let us build for the years we shall not see.

_Boys._

Lofty of line and glorious of hue,
With gold and pearl and with the cedar tree,

{215}

_Men._

With silence due
And with service free,

_Boys._

Let us build it for ever in splendour new.

_Men._

Let us build in hope and in sorrow, and rest in Thee.

{216}

_Epistle_

TO COLONEL FRANCIS EDWARD YOUNGHUSBAND

Across the Western World, the Arabian Sea,
The Hundred Kingdoms and the Rivers Three,
Beyond the rampart of Himalayan snows,
And up the road that only Rumour knows,
Unchecked, old friend, from Devon to Thibet,
Friendship and Memory dog your footsteps yet.

Let not the scornful ask me what avails
So small a pack to follow mighty trails:
Long since I saw what difference must be
Between a stream like you, a ditch like me.
This drains a garden and a homely field
Which scarce at times a living current yield;
The other from the high lands of his birth
Plunges through rocks and spurns the pastoral earth,
Then settling silent to his deeper course
Draws in his fellows to augment his force,
Becomes a name, and broadening as he goes,
Gives power and purity where'er he flows,
Till, great enough for any commerce grown,
He links all nations while he serves his own.

{217}

Soldier, explorer, statesman, what in truth
Have you in common with homekeeping youth?
"Youth" comes your answer like an echo faint;
And youth it was that made us first acquaint.
Do you remember when the Downs were white
With the March dust from highways glaring bright,
How you and I, like yachts that toss the foam,
From Penpole Fields came stride and stride for home?
One grimly leading, one intent to pass,
Mile after mile we measured road and grass,
Twin silent shadows, till the hour was done,
The shadows parted and the stouter won.
Since then I know one thing beyond appeal--
How runs from stem to stern a trimbuilt keel.
Another day--but that's not mine to tell,
The man in front does not observe so well;
Though, spite of all these five-and-twenty years,
As clear as life our schoolday scene appears.
The guarded course, the barriers and the rope;
The runners, stripped of all but shivering hope;
The starter's good grey head; the sudden hush;
The stern white line; the half-unconscious rush;
The deadly bend, the pivot of our fate;
The rope again; the long green level straight;
The lane of heads, the cheering half unheard;
The dying spurt, the tape, the judge's word.

You, too, I doubt not, from your Lama's hall
Can see the Stand above the worn old wall,

{218}

Where then they clamoured as our race we sped,
Where now they number our heroic dead.*
As clear as life you, too, can hear the sound
Of voices once for all by "lock-up" bound,
And see the flash of eyes still nobly bright
But in the "Bigside scrimmage" lost to sight.

Old loves, old rivalries, old happy times,
These well may move your memory and my rhymes;
These are the Past; but there is that, my friend,
Between us two, that has nor time nor end.
Though wide apart the lines our fate has traced
Since those far shadows of our boyhood raced,
In the dim region all men must explore--
The mind's Thibet, where none has gone before--
Rounding some shoulder of the lonely trail
We met once more, and raised a lusty hail.

"Forward!" cried one, "for us no beaten track,
No city continuing, no turning back:
The past we love not for its being past,
But for its hope and ardour forward cast:
The victories of our youth we count for gain
Only because they steeled our hearts to pain,
And hold no longer even Clifton great
Save as she schooled our wills to serve the State.

{219}

Nay, England's self, whose thousand-year-old name
Burns in our blood like ever-smouldering flame,
Whose Titan shoulders as the world are wide
And her great pulses like the Ocean tide,
Lives but to bear the hopes we shall not see--
Dear mortal Mother of the race to be."

Thereto you answered, "Forward! in God's name;
I own no lesser law, no narrower claim.
A freeman's Reason well might think it scorn
To toil for those who may be never born,
But for some Cause not wholly out of ken,
Some all-directing Will that works with men,
Some Universal under which may fall
The minor premiss of our effort small;
In Whose unending purpose, though we cease,
We find our impulse and our only peace."

So passed our greeting, till we turned once more,
I to my desk and you to rule Indore.
To meet again--ah! when? Yet once we met,
And to one dawn our faces still are set.

EXETER,
_September_ 10, 1904.

* In the school quadrangle at Clifton, the site from which, upon occasion, the grand stand used to overlook the Close, is now occupied by the Memorial to those Cliftonians who fell in the South African War.

{220}

_An Essay on Criticism_

'Tis hard to say if greater waste of time
Is seen in writing or in reading rhyme;
But, of the two, less dangerous it appears
To tire our own than poison others' ears.
Time was, the owner of a peevish tongue,
The pebble of his wrath unheeding flung,
Saw the faint ripples touch the shore and cease,
And in the duckpond all again was peace.
But since that Science on our eyes hath laid
The wondrous clay from her own spittle made,
We see the widening ripples pass beyond,
The pond becomes the world, the world a pond,
All ether trembles when the pebble falls,
And a light word may ring in starry halls.
When first on earth the swift iambic ran
Men here and there were found but nowhere Man.
From whencesoe'er their origin they drew,
Each on its separate soil the species grew,
And by selection, natural or not,
Evolved a fond belief in one small spot.
The Greek himself, with all his wisdom, took
For the wide world his bright Aegean nook,
{221}

For fatherland, a town, for public, all
Who at one time could hear the herald bawl:
For him barbarians beyond his gate
Were lower beings, of a different date;
He never thought on such to spend his rhymes,
And if he did, they never read the _Times_.
Now all is changed, on this side and on that,
The Herald's learned to print and pass the hat;
His tone is so much raised that, far or near,
All with a sou to spend his news may hear,--
And who but, far or near, the sou affords
To learn the worst of foreigners and lords!
So comes the Pressman's heaven on earth, wherein
One touch of hatred proves the whole world kin--
"Our rulers are the best, and theirs the worst,
Our cause is always just and theirs accurst,
Our troops are heroes, hirelings theirs or slaves,
Our diplomats but children, theirs but knaves,
Our Press for independence justly prized,
Theirs bought or blind, inspired or subsidized.
For the world's progress what was ever made
Like to our tongue, our Empire and our trade?"
So chant the nations, till at last you'd think
Men could no nearer howl to folly's brink;
Yet some in England lately won renown
By howling word for word, but upside down.

But where, you cry, could poets find a place
(If poets we possessed) in this disgrace?
{222}

Mails will be mails, Reviews must be reviews,
But why the Critic with the Bard confuse?
Alas! Apollo, it must be confessed
Has lately gone the way of all the rest.
No more alone upon the far-off hills
With song serene the wilderness he fills,
But in the forum now his art employs
And what he lacks in knowledge gives in noise.
At first, ere he began to feel his feet,
He begged a corner in the hindmost sheet,
Concealed with Answers and Acrostics lay,
And held aloof from Questions of the Day.
But now, grown bold, he dashes to the front,
Among the leaders bears the battle's brunt,
Takes steel in hand, and cheaply unafraid
Spurs a lame Pegasus on Jameson's Raid,
Or pipes the fleet in melodrama's tones
To ram the Damned on their Infernal Thrones.

Sure, Scriblerus himself could scarce have guessed
The Art of Sinking might be further pressed:
But while these errors almost tragic loom
The Indian Drummer has but raised a boom.
"So well I love my country that the man
Who serves her can but serve her on my plan;
Be slim, be stalky, leave your Public Schools
To muffs like Bobs and other flannelled fools;
The lordliest life (since Buller made such hay)
Is killing men two thousand yards away;

{223}

You shoot the pheasant, but it costs too much
And does not tend to decimate the Dutch;
Your duty plainly then before you stands,
Conscription is the law for seagirt lands;
Prate not of freedom! Since I learned to shoot
I itch to use my ammunition boot."

An odd way this, we thought, to criticize--
This barrackyard "Attention! d---- your eyes!"
But England smiled and lightly pardoned him,
For was he not her Mowgli and her Kim?
But now the neighbourhood remonstrance roars,
He's naughty still, and naughty out of doors.
'Tis well enough that he should tell Mamma
Her sons are tired of being what they are,
But to give friendly bears, expecting buns,
A paper full of stale unwholesome Huns--
One might be led to think, from all this work,
That little master's growing quite a Turk.

O Rudyard, Rudyard, in our hours of ease
(Before the war) you were not hard to please:
You loved a regiment whether fore or aft,
You loved a subaltern, however daft,
You loved the very dregs of barrack life,
The amorous colonel and the sergeant's wife.
You sang the land where dawn across the Bay
Comes up to waken queens in Mandalay,
The land where comrades sleep by Cabul ford,
And Valour, brown or white, is Borderlord,
{224}

The secret Jungle-life of child and beast,
And all the magic of the dreaming East.
These, these we loved with you, and loved still more
The Seven Seas that break on Britain's shore,
The winds that know her labour and her pride,
And the Long Trail whereon our fathers died.

In that Day's Work be sure you gained, my friend,
If not the critic's name, at least his end;
Your song and story might have roused a slave
To see life bodily and see it brave.
With voice so genial and so long of reach
To your Own People you the Law could preach,
And even now and then without offence
To Lesser Breeds expose their lack of sense.
Return, return! and let us hear again
The ringing engines and the deep-sea rain,
The roaring chanty of the shore-wind's verse,
Too bluff to bicker and too strong to curse.
Let us again with hearts serene behold
The coastwise beacons that we knew of old;
So shall you guide us when the stars are veiled,
And stand among the Lights that never Failed.

{225}

_Le Byron de Nos Jours; or, The
English Bar and Cross Reviewers._

Still must I hear?--while Austin prints his verse
And Satan's sorrows fill Corelli's purse,
Must I not write lest haply some K.C.
To flatter Tennyson should sneer at me?
Or must the Angels of the Darker Ink
No longer tell the public what to think--
Must lectures and reviewing all be stayed
Until they're licensed by the Board of Trade?
Prepare for rhyme--I'll risk it--bite or bark
I'll stop the press for neither Gosse nor Clarke.

O sport most noble, when two cocks engage
With equal blindness and with equal rage!
When each, intent to pick the other's eye,
Sees not the feathers from himself that fly,
And, fired to scorch his rival's every bone,
Ignores the inward heat that grills his own;
Until self-plucked, self-spitted and self-roast,
Each to the other serves himself on toast.

But stay, but stay, you've pitched the key, my Muse,
A semi-tone too low for great Reviews;

{226}

Such penny whistling suits the cockpit's hum,
But here's a scene deserves the biggest drum.

Behold where high above the clamorous town
The vast Cathedral-towers in peace look down:
Hark to the entering crowd's incessant tread--
They bring their homage to the mighty dead.
Who in silk gown and fullest-bottomed wig
Approaches yonder, with emotion big?
Room for Sir Edward! now we shall be told
Which shrines are tin, which silver and which gold.
'Tis done! and now by life-long habit bound
He turns to prosecute the crowd around;
Indicts and pleads, sums up the _pro_ and _con_,
The verdict finds and puts the black cap on.

"Prisoners, attend! of Queen Victoria's day
I am the Glory, you are the Decay.
You cannot think like Tennyson deceased,
You do not sing like Browning in the least.
Of Tennyson I sanction every word,
Browning I cut to something like one-third:
Though, mind you this, immoral he is not,
Still quite two-thirds I hope will be forgot.
He was to poetry a Tom Carlyle--
And that reminds me, Thomas too was vile.
He wrote a life or two, but parts, I'm sure,
Compared with other parts are very poor.

{227}

Now Dickens--most extraordinary--dealt
In fiction with what people really felt.
That proves his genius. Thackeray again
Is so unequal as to cause me pain.
And last of all, with History to conclude,
I've read Macaulay and I've heard of Froude.
That list, with all deductions, Gentlemen,
Will show that 'now' is not the same as 'then'.
If you believe the plaintiff you'll declare
That English writers are not what they were."

Down sits Sir Edward with a glowing breast,
And some applause is instantly suppressed.
Now up the nave of that majestic church
A quick uncertain step is heard to lurch.
Who is it? no one knows; but by his mien
He's the head verger, if he's not the Dean.

"What fellow's this that dares to treat us so?
This is no place for lawyers, out you go!
He is a brawler, Sir, who here presumes
To move our laurels and arrange our tombs.
Suppose that Meredith or Stephen said
(Or do you think those gentlemen are dead?)
This age has borne no advocates of rank,
Would not your face in turn be rather blank?
Come now, I beg you, go without a fuss,
And leave these high and heavenly things to us;
You may perhaps be some one, at the Bar,
But you are not in Orders, and we are."

{228}

Sir Edward turns to go, but as he wends,
One swift irrelevant retort he sends.
"Your logic and your taste I both disdain,
You've quoted wrong from Jonson and Montaigne."
The shaft goes home, and somewhere in the rear
Birrell in smallest print is heard to cheer.

And yet--and yet--conviction's not complete:
There was a time when Milton walked the street,
And Shakespeare singing in a tavern dark
Would not have much impressed Sir Edward Clarke.
To be alive--ay! there's the damning thing,
For who will buy a bird that's on the wing?
Catch, kill and stuff the creature, once for all,
And he may yet adorn Sir Edward's hall;
But while he's free to go his own wild way
He's not so safe as birds of yesterday.

In fine, if I must choose--although I see
That both are wrong--Great Gosse! I'd rather be
A critic suckled in an age outworn
Than a blind horse that starves knee-deep in corn.

NOTE.--The foregoing parody, which first appeared in _The Monthly Review_ some years ago, was an attempt to sum up and commemorate a literary discussion of the day. On Saturday night, November 15, 1902, at the Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., delivered an address on "The Glory and Decay of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria." 'Sir Edward Clarke, who mentioned incidentally that he lectured at the college forty years ago, said that there was a rise from the {229} beginning of that reign to the period 1850-60, and that from the latter date there had been a very strange and lamentable decline to the end of the reign, would he thought, be amply demonstrated. A glorious galaxy of talent adorned the years 1850-60. There were two great poets, two great novelists, and two great historians. The two great poets were Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. The first named would always stand at the head of the literature of the Victorian period. There was no poet in the whole course of our history whose works were more likely to live as a complete whole than he, and there was not a line which his friends would wish to see blotted out. Robert Browning was a poet of strange inequality and of extraordinary and fantastic methods in his composition. However much one could enjoy some of his works, one could only hope that two-thirds of them would be as promptly as possible forgotten--not, however, from any moral objection to what he wrote. He was the Carlyle of poetry. By his Lives of Schiller and Sterling, Carlyle showed that he _could_ write beautiful and pure English, but that he should descend to the style of some of his later works was a melancholy example of misdirected energy. . . . Charles Dickens was perhaps the most extraordinary genius of those who had endeavoured to deal with fiction as illustrative of the actual experiences of life. With Dickens there stood the great figure of Thackeray, who had left a great collection of books, very unequal in their quality, but containing amongst them some of the finest things ever written in the English tongue. The two great historians were Macaulay and Froude. To-day we had no great novelist. Would anyone suggest we had a poet? (Laughter.) After the year 1860 there were two great names in poetry--the two Rossettis. There had been no book produced in the last ten years which could compete with any one of the books produced from 1850 to 1860.'

To this Mr. Edmund Gosse replied a week later at the Dinner of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He reminded his audience that even the most perspicuous people in past times had made the grossest blunders when they judged their own age. Let them remember the insensibility of Montaigne to the merits of all his contemporaries. In the next age, and in their own country, Ben Jonson took occasion at the very moment when Shakespeare was producing his masterpieces, to lament the total decay of poetry in England. We could not see the trees for the wood behind them, but we ought to be confident they were growing all the time.

{230}

Mr. Gosse also wrote to the _Times_ on behalf of "the Profession" of Letters, reminding Sir Edward of the names of Swinburne and William Morris, Hardy and Stevenson, Creighton and Gardiner, and asking what would be the feelings of the learned gentleman if Meredith or Leslie Stephen (of whose existence he was perhaps unaware) should put the question in public, "Would anyone suggest we have an Advocate?"

Sir Edward, in his rejoinder, had no difficulty in showing that Mr. Gosse's citation of Montaigne and Jonson was not verbally exact. Mr. Birrell added some comments which were distinguished by being printed in type of a markedly different size.

To the author of these lines, the controversy appears so typical and so likely to arise again, that he desires to record, in however slight a form, his recollection of it, and his own personal bias, which is in no degree lessened by reconsideration after ten years.

{231}

NOTES

_Drake's Drum_.--A State drum, painted with the arms of Sir Francis Drake, is preserved among other relics at Buckland Abbey, the seat of the Drake family in Devon.

_The fighting Téméraire_.--The last two stanzas have been misunderstood. It seems, therefore, necessary to state that they are intended to refer to Turner's picture in the National Gallery of "The Fighting _Téméraire_ tugged to her Last Berth."

_San Stefano_.--Sir Peter Parker was the son of Admiral Christopher Parker, grandson of Admiral Sir Peter Parker (the life-long friend and chief mourner of Nelson), and great-grandson of Admiral Sir William Parker. On his mother's side he was grandson of Admiral Byron, and first cousin of Lord Byron, the poet. He was killed in action near Baltimore in 1814, and buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where may be seen the monument erected to his memory by the officers of the _Menelaus_.

_The Quarter-Gunner's Yarn_.--This ballad is founded on fragmentary lines communicated to the author by Admiral Sir Windham Hornby, K.C.B., who served under Sir Thomas Hardy in 1827. For an account of Cheeks the Marine see Marryat's _Peter Simple_.

_Vae Victis_.--See _Livy_, xxx., 43; _Diodorus Siculus_, xix., 106.

_Seringapatam_.--In 1780, while attempting to relieve Arcot, a British force of three thousand men was cut to pieces by Hyder Ali. Baird, then a young captain in the 73rd, was left for dead on the field. He was afterwards, with forty-nine other officers, kept in prison at Seringapatam, and treated with Oriental barbarity and treachery by Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Sahib, Sultans of Mysore. Twenty-three of the prisoners died by poison, torture, and fever; the rest were surrendered in 1784. In 1799, at the Siege of Seringapatam, Major-General Baird commanded the first European brigade, and volunteered to lead the storming column. {232} Tippoo Sahib, with eight thousand of his men, fell in the assault, but the victor spared the lives of his sons, and forbade a general sack of the city.

_Clifton Chapel_.--Thirty-five Old Cliftonian officers served in the campaign of 1897 on the Indian Frontier, of whom twenty-two were mentioned in despatches, and six recommended for the Distinguished Service Order. Of the three hundred Cliftonians who served in the war in South Africa, thirty were killed in action and fourteen died of wounds or fever.

"Clifton, remember these thy sons who fell
Fighting far over sea;
For they in a dark hour remembered well
Their warfare learned of thee."

_The Echo_.--The ballad was "The Twa Sisters of Binnorie," as set by Arthur Somervell.

_Sráhmandázi_.--This ballad is founded on materials given to the author by the late Miss Mary Kingsley on her return from her last visit to the Bantu peoples of West Africa. The song-net, as described by her, resembles a long piece of fishing-net folded, and is carried by the Songman over his shoulder. When opened and laid before an audience, it is seen to contain "tokens"--such as a leopard's paw, a child's hair, a necklet, or a dried fish--sewn firmly to the meshes of the net. These form a kind of symbolical index to the Songman's repertory: the audience make their choice by laying a hand upon any token which appears desirable. The last of the tokens is that which represents the Song of Dying or Song of Sráhmandázi. It is a shapeless piece of any substance, and is recognized only by its position in the net. The song, being unintelligible to the living, is never asked for until the moment of death.