"Go, may'st thou be happy,
Though sadly we part,
In life's early summer
Grief breaks not the heart.
"The ills that assail us
As speedily pass
As shades o'er a mirror,
Which stain not the glass."
Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls "the mad pride of
intellectuality," and it certainly looks as if it could be done by
anybody. For example, take Bayly as a moralist. His ideas are out of
the centre. This is about his standard:
"CRUELTY.
"'Break not the thread the spider
Is labouring to weave.'
I said, nor as I eyed her
Could dream she would deceive.
"Her brow was pure and candid,
Her tender eyes above;
And I, if ever man did,
Fell hopelessly in love.
"For who could deem that cruel
So fair a face might be?
That eyes so like a jewel
Were only paste for me?
"I wove my thread, aspiring
Within her heart to climb;
I wove with zeal untiring
For ever such a time!
"But, ah! that thread was broken
All by her fingers fair,
The vows and prayers I've spoken
Are vanished into air!"
Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly tell. I
am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the numbers come
like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without abounding in his artless
vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was Bayly after all, not you nor
I, who wrote the classic--
"I'll hang my harp on a willow tree,
And I'll go to the war again,
For a peaceful home has no charm for me,
A battlefield no pain;
The lady I love will soon be a bride,
With a diadem on her brow.
Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride?
She is going to leave me now!"
It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the strains of a
barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A world of memories come
jigging back--foolish fancies, dreams, desires, all beckoning and bobbing
to the old tune:
"Oh had I but loved with a boyish love,
It would have been well for me."
How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the obvious, simple,
meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, let us mock as we will,
Bayly could do, and we cannot? He really had a slim, serviceable,
smirking, and sighing little talent of his own; and--well, we have not
even that. Nobody forgets
"The lady I love will soon be a bride."
Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh brother
minor poet, _mon semblable_, _mon frere_! Nor can we rival, though we
publish our books on the largest paper, the buried popularity of
"Gaily the troubadour
Touched his guitar
When he was hastening
Home from the war,
Singing, "From Palestine
Hither I come,
Lady love! Lady love!
Welcome me home!"
Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of a
Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediaeval, but of the comic
opera. Any one of us could get in more local colour for the money, and
give the crusader a cithern or citole instead of a guitar. This is how
we should do "Gaily the Troubadour" nowadays:--
"Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
Soldans seven hath he slain in fight,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!
"Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!
"His eyes they blaze as the burning coal,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
He smiteth a stave on his gold citole,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!
"From her mangonel she looketh forth,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
'Who is he spurreth so late to the north?'
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!
"Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!
"For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!"