* * * * *
TO
ELEANOR CHARLOTTE SELLAR
‘_Ban and Arrière Ban_!’ _a host_
_Broken_, _beaten_, _all unled_,
_They return as doth a ghost_
_From the dead_.
_Sad or glad my rallied rhymes_,
_Sought our dusty papers through_,
_For the sake of other times_
_Come to you_.
_Times and places new we know_,
_Faces fresh and seasons strange_
_But the friends of long ago_
_Do not change_.
MANY of the verses in this collection have appeared in Magazines: ‘How
they held the Bass’ was in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’; the ‘Ballad of the
Philanthropist’ in ‘Punch’; ‘Calais Sands’ in ‘The Magazine of Art’
(Messrs. Cassell and Co.); and others are recaptured from ‘Longman’s
Magazine,’ ‘Scribner’s,’ ‘The Illustrated London News,’ ‘The English
Illustrated Magazine,’ ‘Wit and Wisdom’ (lines from Omar Khayyam), ‘The
St. James’s Gazette,’ and possibly other serials. Some pieces are from
commendatory verses for books, as for Mr. Jacobs’s ‘Æsop’; some are from
Mr. Rider Haggard’s ‘World’s Desire,’ and ‘Cleopatra,’ two are from
Kirk’s ‘Secret Commonwealth’ (Nutt, 1893), and ‘Neiges d’Antan,’ are from
the author’s ‘Ballads and Lyrics of Old France,’ now long out of print.