presented Stephen the Seer's decree. The verses were these:
"'_Ere the green be red,
Sweet Eve, be never wed;
Ere be green the red cheek,
Never wed thee, Eve meek._'
"The terms perplexed Stephen, yet he jeered them. He resented the
senseless credence, 'Seers never err.' Then he repented, knelt,
wheedled, wept. Eve sees Stephen kneel, she relents, yet frets when
she remembers the Seer's decree. Her dress redeems her. These were the
events:
"Her well-kempt tresses fell: sedges, reeds beckoned them. The reeds
fell, the edges met her cheeks; her cheeks bled. She presses the green
sedge where her cheek bleeds. Red then bedewed the green reed, the
green reed then speckled her red cheek. The red cheek seems green,
the green reed seems red. These were the terms the Eld Seer decreed
Stephen Vere.
HERE ENDETH THE LEGEND."
The following curious lines run in quite an opposite way to the preceding,
for each verse has been written so as to include every letter in the
alphabet but the vowel _e_:
THE FATE OF NASSAN.
"Bold Nassan quits his caravan,
A hazy mountain grot to scan;
Climbs jaggy rocks to spy his way,
Doth tax his sight, but far doth stray.
Not work of man, nor sport of child,
Finds Nassan in that mazy wild;
Lax grows his joints, limbs toil in vain--
Poor wight! why didst thou quit that plain
Vainly for succour Nassan calls,
Know, Zillah, that thy Nassan falls;
But prowling wolf and fox may joy,
To quarry on thy Arab boy."
Here follows a fugitive verse, written with _ease_ without _e's_:
"A jovial swain may rack his brain,
And tax his fancy's might,
To quiz in vain, for 'tis most plain,
That what I say is right."
_CENTONES OR MOSAICS._
Of this formerly favourite amusement of the learned we give several
examples, only noting here that the word "Cento" primarily signified a
cloak made of patches.
1. I only knew she came and went,
2. Like troutlets in a pool;
3. She was a phantom of delight,
4. And I was like a fool.
5. One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed,
6. Out of those lips unshorn,
7. She shook her ringlets round her head
8. And laughed in merry scorn.
9. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
10. You heard them, O my heart;
11. 'Tis twelve at night by the castle clock,
12. Beloved, we must part.
13. "Come back, come back!" she cried in grief,
14. My eyes are dim with tears--
15. How shall I live through all the days?
16. All through a hundred years?
17. 'Twas in the prime of summer time,
18. She blessed me with her hand;
19. We strayed together, deeply blest,
20. Into the dreaming land.
21. The laughing bridal roses blow,
22. To dress her dark-brown hair;
23. My heart is breaking with my woe,
24. Most beautiful! most rare!
25. I clasped it on her sweet, cold hand,
26. The precious golden link!
27. I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
28. "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
29. And so I won my Genevieve,
30. And walked in Paradise;
31. The fairest thing that ever grew
32. Atween me and the skies!
1. Powell; 2. Hood; 3. Wordsworth; 4. Eastman; 5. Coleridge; 6.
Longfellow; 7. Stoddard; 8. Tennyson; 9. Tennyson; 10. Alice Cary; 11.
Coleridge; 12. Alice Cary; 13. Campbell; 14. Bayard Taylor; 15.
Osgood; 16. T. S. Perry; 17. Hood; 18. Hoyt; 19. Edwards; 20.
Cornwall; 21. Patmore; 22. Bayard Taylor; 23. Tennyson; 24. Read; 25.
Browning; 26. Smith; 27. Coleridge; 28. Wordsworth; 29. Coleridge; 30.
Hervey; 31. Wordsworth; 32. Osgood.
The next appeared a short time ago in one of the Edinburgh newspapers,
signed R. Fleming, and is a mosaic compilation from poems written to the
memory of Robert Burns:
1. Immortal bard, immortal Burns!
2. Whose lines are mottoes of the heart;
3. Affection loves and memory learns
4. Thy songs "untaught by rules of art."
5. For dear as life--as heaven--will be,
6. As years on years successive roll;
7. Fair types of thy rich harmony
8. Who wrote to humanise the soul.
9. His lyre was sweet, majestic, grand,
10. The pride and honour of the North;
11. His song was of bold freedom's land,
12. Brave Scotland, freedom's throne on earth.
13. Oft by the winding banks of Ayr;
14. With sinewy arm he turned the soil;
15. He painted Scotland's daughters fair,
16. Through twilight shades of good and ill.
17. His native wild enchanting strains,
18. Like dear memories round the hearth,
19. Immortalise the poet's name,
20. And few have won a greener wreath.
21. From John O'Groat's to 'cross the Tweed
22. What heart hath ever matched his flame?
23. Though rough and dark the path he trod,
24. Long shall old Scotland keep his name.
25. Great master of our Doric rhyme,
26. Though here thy course was but a span;
27. The pealing rapturous notes sublime
28. Binds man with fellow-man.
29. Peace to the dead--in Scotia's choir--
30. Yes, future bards shall pour the lay,
31. Warmed with a "spark of nature's fire,"
32. While years insidious steal away.
1. Bennoch; 2. Campbell; 3. Imlach; 4. Gray; 5. Glen; 6. Paul; 7.
M'Laggan; 8. Tannahill; 9. Glen; 10. Allan; 11. Gilfillan; 12. Park;
13. Wallace; 14. Roscoe; 15. Vedder; 16. Wordsworth; 17. Reid; 18.
Glass; 19. Paul; 20. Halleck; 21. Macindoe; 22. Ainslie; 23. Halleck;
24. Kelly; 25. Gray; 26. Mercer; 27. Vedder; 28. Imlach; 29.
Montgomery; 30. Gray; 31. Rushton; 32. Gilfillan.
The three following verses are very good:
1. When first I met thee, warm and young,
2. My heart I gave thee with my hand;
3. My name was then a magic spell,
4. Casting a dim religious light.
5. But now, as we plod on our way,
6. My heart no more with rapture swells;
7. I would not, if I could, be gay,
8. When earth is filled with cold farewells!
9. The heath this night must be my bed,
10. Ye vales, ye streams, ye groves, adieu?
11. Farewell for aye, e'en love is dead,
12. Would I could add, remembrance too!
1. Moore; 2. Morris; 3. Norton; 4. Milton; 5. Percival; 6. M'Naughton;
7. Rogers; 8. Patmore; 9. Scott; 10. Pope; 11. Procter; 12. Byron.
The following is copied from "Fireside Amusements," published by the
Messrs. Chambers, every line being taken from a different poet:
"On Linden when the sun was low,
A frog he would a-wooing go;
He sighed a sigh, and breathed a prayer,
None but the brave deserve the fair.
A gentle knight was pricking o'er the plain,
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow;
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
Or who would suffer being here below.
The younger of the sister arts
Was born on the open sea;
The rest were slain at Chevy Chase,
Under the greenwood tree.
At morn the blackcock trims his jetty wings,
And says--remembrance saddening o'er each brow--
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things!
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow!
It was a friar of orders gray,
Still harping on my daughter:
Sister spirit, come away,
Across this stormy water.
On the light fantastic toe,
Othello's occupation's gone;
Maid of Athens, ere I go,
Were the last words of Marmion.
There was a sound of revelry by night
In Thebes' streets three thousand years ago;
And comely virgins came with garlands dight
To censure Fate, and pious Hope forgo.
Oh! the young Lochinvar came out of the west,
An underbred fine-spoken fellow was he;
A back dropping in, an expansion of chest,
Far more than I once could foresee."
_ECHO VERSES._
A GENTLE ECHO ON WOMAN.
(IN THE DORIC MANNER.)
_Shepherd._ Echo, I ween, will in the woods reply,
And quaintly answer questions: shall I try?
_Echo._ Try.
_Shep._ What must we do our passion to express?
_Echo._ Press.
_Shep._ How shall I please her, who ne'er loved before?
_Echo._ Before.
_Shep._ What most moves women when we them address?
_Echo._ A dress.
_Shep._ Say, what can keep her chaste whom I adore?
_Echo._ A door.
_Shep._ If music softens rocks, love tunes my lyre.
_Echo._ Liar.
_Shep._ Then teach me, Echo, how shall I come by her?
_Echo._ Buy her.
_Shep._ When bought, no question I shall be her dear?
_Echo._ Her dear.
_Shep._ But deer have horns: how must I keep her under?
_Echo._ Keep her under.
_Shep._ But what can glad me when she's laid on bier?
_Echo._ Beer.
_Shep._ What must I do when women will be kind?
_Echo._ Be kind.
_Shep._ What must I do when women will be cross?
_Echo._ Be cross.
_Shep._ Lord, what is she that can so turn and wind?
_Echo._ Wind.
_Shep._ If she be wind, what stills her when she blows?
_Echo._ Blows.
_Shep._ But if she bang again, still should I bang her?
_Echo._ Bang her.
_Shep._ Is there no way to moderate her anger?
_Echo._ Hang her.
_Shep._ Thanks, gentle Echo! right thy answers tell
What woman is and how to guard her well.
_Echo._ Guard her well.
ECHO AND THE LOVER.
_Lover._ Echo! mysterious nymph, declare
Of what you're made, and what you are.
_Echo._ Air.
_Lover._ 'Mid airy cliffs and places high;
Sweet Echo! listening love, you lie.
_Echo._ You lie.
_Lover._ Thou dost resuscitate dead sounds--
Hark! how my voice revives, resounds!
_Echo._ Zounds!
_Lover._ I'll question thee before I go--
Come, answer me more apropos!
_Echo._ Poh! Poh!
_Lover._ Tell me, fair nymph, if ere you saw
So sweet a girl as Phoebe Shaw?
_Echo._ Pshaw!
_Lover._ Say what will turn that frisking coney
Into the toils of matrimony?
_Echo._ Money!
_Lover._ Has Phoebe not a heavenly brow?
Is not her bosom white as snow?
_Echo._ Ass! no!
_Lover._ Her eyes! was ever such a pair?
Are the stars brighter than they are.
_Echo._ They are.
_Lover._ Echo, thou liest! but canst deceive me.
_Echo._ Leave me.
_Lover._ But come, thou saucy, pert romancer,
Who is as fair as Phoebe? Answer!
_Echo._ Ann, sir.
The latest good verses of this class are attributed to an echo that haunts
the Sultan's palace at Constantinople. Abdul Hamid is supposed to question
it as to the intentions of the European powers and his own resources:
"L'Angleterre?
Erre.
L'Autriche?
Triche.
La Prusse?
Russe.
Mes principautés?
Otées.
Mes cuirasses?
Assez.
Mes Pashas?
Achats.
Et Suleiman?
Ment."
--_The Athenæum._
_WATCH-CASE VERSES._
When thick watches with removable cases were in fashion, and before the
introduction of the present compact form, the outer case of the
old-fashioned "turnip" was frequently the repository of verses and sundry
devices, generally placed there by the watchmaker. Others, again,
consisted of the maker's name and address, with some appropriate maxim,
and were printed on satin or worked with the needle, and occasionally so
devised as to appear in a circle without a break, as in the following:
"Onward
perpetually moving
These faithful hands are proving
How soft the hours steal by;
This monitory pulse-like beating,
Is oftentimes methinks repeating,
'Swift, swift, the hours do fly.'
Ready! be ready! perhaps before
These hands have made
One revolution more,
Life's spring is snapt,--
You die!"
A watch-paper described by a writer in "Notes and Queries" gave the
address of Bowen, 2 Tichborne Street, Piccadilly, on a pedestal surmounted
by an urn. On the other side of the label was a winged figure, holding in
one hand a watch at arm's length, and in the other a book. At her feet lay
a sickle and a serpent with his tail in his mouth--the emblems of Time and
Eternity. Round the circumference of the label were these lines--
"Little monitor, impart
Some instruction to the heart;
Show the busy and the gay
Life is wasting swift away.
Follies cannot long endure,
Life is short and death is sure.
Happy those who wisely learn
Truth from error to discern:
Truth, immortal as the soul,
And unshaken as the pole."
The bottom of the case was lined with rose-coloured satin, on which was a
device in lace-paper--the central portion representing two hearts
transfixed by arrows, and surmounted by a dove holding a wreath in its
bill. A circular band enclosed the device, and bore the motto--
"Joined by friendship,
Crowned by love."
The lines next given are by Mr. J. Byrom, common called Dr. Byrom, whom we
have previously referred to:
"Could but our tempers move like this machine,
Not urged by passion, nor delayed by spleen;
But true to Nature's regulating power,
By virtuous acts distinguish every hour:
Then health and joy would follow, as they ought,
The laws of motion and the laws of thought:
On earth would pass the pleasant moments o'er
To rest in Heaven when Time shall be no more!"
The last lines of this watch-paper have been occasionally varied to--
"Sweet health to pass the pleasant moments o'er
And everlasting joy when Time shall be no more."
A watchmaker named Adams, who practised his craft many years ago in Church
Street, Hackney, was fond of putting scraps of poetry in the outer case of
watches sent him for repair. One of his effusions follow:
"To-morrow! yes, to-morrow! you'll repent
A train of years in vice and folly spent.
To-morrow comes--no penitential sorrow
Appears therein, for still it is to-morrow;
At length to-morrow such a habit gains
That you'll forget the time that Heaven ordains;
And you'll believe that day too soon will be
When more to-morrows you're denied to see."
Another old engraved specimen contained this verse:
"Content thy selfe withe thyne estat,
And sende no poore wight from thy gate;
For why, this councell I thee give,
To learne to dye, and dye to lyve."
The following lines by Pope, occurring in his Epistle to the Earl of
Oxford, have been used in this way:
"Absent or dead
Still let a friend be
Dear. The Absent claims
a sigh, the dead a
tear.
May
Angels guard
The friend I
love."
Milman's poems have furnished a verse for this purpose:
"It matters little at what hour o' the day
The righteous fall asleep; death cannot come
To him untimely who is fit to die.
The less of this cold world, the more of heaven;
The briefer life, the earlier immortality."
Various other examples of watch-case verses follow:
THE WATCH'S MOMENTS.
"See how the moments pass,
How swift they fly away!
In the instructive glass
Behold thy life's decay.
Oh! waste not then thy prime
In sin's pernicious road;
Redeem thy misspent time,
Acquaint thyself with God.
So when thy pulse shall cease
Its throbbing transient play,
The soul to realms of bliss
May wing its joyful way."
"Deign, lady fair, this watch to wear,
To mark how moments fly;
For none a moment have to spare,
Who in a moment die."
TO A LADY WITH THE PRESENT OF A WATCH.
"With me while present, may thy lovely eyes,
Be never turned upon this golden toy;
Think every pleasing hour too swiftly flies,
And measure time by joy succeeding joy.
But when the cares that interrupt our bliss,
To me not always will thy sight allow,
Then oft with fond impatience look on this,
Then every minute count--as I do now."
"Time is thou hast, employ the portion small;
Time past is gone, thou canst not it recall;
Time future is not, and may never be;
Time present is the only time for thee."
"Watch against evil thoughts
Watch against idle words;
Watch against sinful ways;
Watch against wicked actions.
What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch."
The following lines have a sand-glass engraved between the first four and
the last four lines:
"Mark the rapid motion
Of this timepiece; hear it say,
Man, attend to thy salvation;
Time does quickly pass away.
Why, heedless of the warning
Which my tinkling sound doth give,
Do forget, vain frame adorning,
Man thou art not born to live?"
On a sun-dial the following verse has been found engraved:
"Once at a potent leader's voice it stayed;
Once it went back when a good monarch prayed;
Mortals! howe'er ye grieve, howe'er deplore,
The flying shadow shall return no more."
This was found under an hour-glass in a grotto near water:
"This babbling stream not uninstructive flows,
Nor idly loiters to its destined main;
Each flower it feeds that on its margin grows,
Now bids thee blush, whose days are spent in vain.
Nor void of moral, though unheeded glides
Time's current, stealing on with silent haste;
For lo! each falling sand _his_ folly chides,
Who lets one precious moment run to waste."
_PROSE POEMS._
Several pages of this kind appeared at the end of an early volume of
"Cornhill Magazine," of which this is the beginning:
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
"'Tis in the middle of the night; and as with weary hand we write,
'Here endeth C. M. volume seven,' we turn our grateful eyes to heaven.
The fainting soul, oppressèd long, expands and blossoms into song; but
why 'twere difficult to state, for here commenceth volume eight.
"And ah! what mischiefs him environ who claps the editorial tiar on!
'Tis but a paper thing, no doubt; but those who don it soon find out
the weight of lead--ah me, how weary!--one little foolscap sheet may
carry. Pleasing, we hear, to gods and man was Mr. William Gladstone
when he calmed the paper duty fuss; but oh, 'twas very hard on Us.
Before he took the impost off, one gentleman was found enough (he
_was_ Herculean, but still!--) to bear the letters from Cornhill: two
men are needed now, and these are clearly going at the knees. Yet
happy hearts had we to-day if one in fifteen hundred, say, of all the
packets, white and blue, which we diurnally go through, yielded an
ounce of sterling brains, or ought but headache for our pains. Ah,
could the Correspondent see the Editor in his misery, no more
injurious ink he'd shed, but tears of sympathy instead. What is this
tale of straws and bricks? A hen with fifty thousand chicks clapt in
Sahara's sandy plain to peck the wilderness for grain--in that unhappy
fowl is seen the despot of a magazine. Only one difference we find;
but that is most important, mind. Instinct compels _her_ patient beak;
ours--in all modesty we speak--is kept by CONSCIENCE (sternly chaste)
pegging the literary waste. Our barns are stored, our garners--well,
the stock in them's considerable; yet when we're to the desert
brought, again comes back the welcome thought that somewhere in its
depths may hide one little seed, which, multiplied in our half-acre on
Cornhill, might all the land with gladness fill. Experience then no
more we heed; but, though we seldom find the seed, we read, and read,
and read, and read." &c. &c.
This is also an instance of this hidden verse in the beginning of one of
Macaulay's letters to his sister Hannah:
"MY DARLING,--Why am I such a fool as to write to a gipsy at
Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one
letter for my three? A lazy chit, whose fingers tire in penning a page
in reply to a quire! There, miss, you read all the first sentence of
my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse."
When Mr. Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House" was first published, the
"Athenæum" furnished the following unique criticism:
"The gentle reader we apprise, That this new Angel in the House
Contains a tale not very wise, About a person and a spouse. The
author, gentle as a lamb, Has managèd his rhymes to fit, And haply
fancies he has writ Another 'In Memoriam.' How his intended gathered
flowers, And took her tea and after sung, Is told in style somewhat
like ours, For delectation of the young. But, reader, lest you say we
quiz The poet's record of his she, Some little pictures you shall see,
Not in our language but in his:
'While thus I grieved and kissed her glove,
My man brought in her note to say
Papa had bid her send his love,
And hoped I dine with them next day;
They had learned and practised Purcell's glee,
To sing it by to-morrow night:
The postscript was--her sisters and she
Inclosed some violets blue and white.
* * * * *
'Restless and sick of long exile,
From those sweet friends I rode, to see
The church repairs, and after a while
Waylaying the Dean, was asked to tea.
They introduced the Cousin Fred
I'd heard of, Honor's favourite; grave,
Dark, handsome, bluff, but gently bred,
And with an air of the salt wave.'
Fear not this saline Cousin Fred; He gives no tragic mischief birth;
There are no tears for you to shed, Unless they may be tears of mirth.
From ball to bed, from field to farm, The tale flows nicely purling
on; With much conceit there is no harm, In the love-legend here begun.
The rest will come another day, If public sympathy allows; And this
is all we have to say About the 'Angel in the House.'"
THE PRINTER.
"The printer-man had just set up a 'stickful' of brevier, filled with
italic, fractions, signs, and other things most queer; the type he
lifted from the stick, nor dreamt of coming woes, when lo! a wretched
wasp thought fit to sting him on the nose: the printer-man the type
let fall, as quick as quick could be, and gently murmured a naughty
word beginning with a D."
MY LOVE.
"I seen her out a-walking in her habit de la rue, and it ain't no use
a-talking, but she's pumpkins and a few. She glides along in glory
like a duck upon a lake, and I'd be all love and duty, if I only were
her drake!"
THE SOLO.
"He drew his breath with a gasping sob, with a quivering voice he
sang, but his voice leaked out and could not drown the accompanist's
clamorous bang. He lost his pitch on the middle A, he faltered on the
lower D, and foundered at length like a battered wreck adrift on the
wild high C."
PONY LOST.
_On Feb. 21st, 1822, this devil bade me adieu._
"Lost, stolen, or astray, not the least doubt but run away, a mare
pony that is all bay,--if I judge pretty nigh, it is about eleven
hands high; full tail and mane, a pretty head and frame; cut on both
shoulders by the collar, not being soft nor hollow; it is about five
years old, which may be easily told; for spirit and for speed, the
devil cannot her exceed."
An excellent specimen of this kind of literary work is to be found in J.
Russell Lowell's "Fable for Critics," of which the title-page and preface
are written in this fashion, and there is here given an extract from the
latter:
"Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that
is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody
knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than
it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure
in following wherever I wander at pleasure,--that, in short, I take
more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so
like Mephistopheles, that the public will doubt, as they grope through
my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun _at_ them or _with_ them.
"So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is
already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land,
but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation
of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it.
Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like
ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the
Review and Magazine critics call _lofty_ and _true_, and about thirty
thousand (_this_ tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed
_full of promise_ and _pleasing_. The public will see by a glance at
this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about
courting _them_, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of
for boiling my pot.
"As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my
pages, with praises or blames, let them send in their cards, without
further delay, to my friend G. P. Putnam, Esquire, in Broadway, where
a list will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour
of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time
(that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly
give each his proper position, at the rate of one author to each new
edition. Thus, a premium is offered sufficiently high (as the
Magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to club
their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have
all of them fairly been run through the mill." &c. &c.
That which is considered, however, one of the best of Prose Poems is the
following, which appeared originally in _Fraser's Magazine_, and will also
be found in Maclise and Maginn's "Gallery of Illustrious Literary
Characters,"[11] being part of the introductory portion of a notice of the
late Earl of Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, and known at the time as an
aspirant to literary and political fame: