--from _The Dynasts_, Act II., Scene I., Part iii.--the song sung in

Camp on the Plain of Vittoria by Sergeant Young (of Sturminster Newton)

of the Fifteenth (King's) Hussars on the eve of the longest day in the

year 1813 and of Wellington's victory.

187. "TRAFALGAR"

--from _The Dynasts_, Act V., Scene VII., Part i. Boatmen and burghers

with their pipes and mugs are sitting on settles round the fire in

the taproom of the _Old Rooms_ Inn at Weymouth. The body of Nelson on

board his battered _Victory_ has lately been brought to England to be

sepulchred in St. Paul's. And this is the Song the Second Boatman sings.

The "Nothe," line 8, is the promontory that divides for Weymouth, where

lived Nelson's Captain Hardy, its harbour or back-sea on the north,

and the Portland Roads, its front-sea on the south "Roads," meaning

protected seas where ships may _ride_ at anchor. On this tempestuous

and fateful night, October 21, 1805, the breakers were sweeping clean

across the spit of land called the Narrows. On the further side runs

for a round ten miles that enormous wall of pebbles--Chesil Beach,

whose stones the tides sort out so precisely--the least in size towards

Lyme Regis--that a coast-man can tell even in a thick mist where he

has landed on the beach, merely by measuring them with his eye. About

ten miles up this water swim in Spring the swans of the Swannery of

Abbotsbury with their cygnets, each mother-bird striving to decoy as

many strange young ones into her train as she can. So deals a proud and

powerful nation with the lesser kingdoms of the earth.

About four years and a half before Trafalgar, on April 2nd, 1801,

Nelson and Parker had won the Battle of the Baltic--as Thomas Campbell

(who was then twenty-four), in his well-known poem tells:

... Like leviathans afloat

Lay their bulwarks on the brine;

While the sign of battle flew

On the lofty British line:

It was ten of April morn by the chime:

As they drifted on their path,

There was silence deep as death;

And the boldest held his breath,

For a time....

So accustomed, indeed, are we mere landsmen to the exploits of the Navy

on the High Seas that we easily forget it was once to our forefathers

a novelty and a wonder--such a wonder as might be compared with the

fabulous Castles in Spain or the Gardens of Babylon, as the old

nameless poet of the following lines recounts:

Cease now the talke of wonders! nothing rare

Of floateing ilandes, castles in the aire!

Of wooden walls, graves walkeing, flieing steedes,

Or Trojan horse! The present truth exceeds

Those ancient fables; floating iles great store,

Sent from the British Ile, now guard her shore,

And castles strong without foundation stande

More safe on waters pavement then on lande....

189. "BRAVE SAILORS."

And here is one of them--come home to his sweetheart, and she (until

stanza 6) not recognizing him:

As I walked out one night, it being dark all over,

The moon did show no light I could discover,

Down by a river side where ships were sailing,

A lonely maid I spied, weeping and bewailing.

I boldly stept up to her, and asked her what grieved her,

She made me this reply, "None could relieve her,

For my love is pressed, she cried, to cross the ocean,

My mind is like the Sea, always in motion."

He said, "My pretty fair maid, mark well my story,

For your true love and I fought for England's glory,

By one unlucky shot we both got parted,

And by the wounds he got, I'm broken hearted.

"He told me before he died his heart was broken,

He gave me this gold ring, take it for a token,--

'Take this unto my dear, there is no fairer,

Tell her to be kind and love the bearer.'"

Soon as these words he spoke she ran distracted,

Not knowing what she did, nor how she acted,

She run ashore, her hair showing her anger,

"Young man, you've come too late, for I'll wed no stranger."

Soon as these words she spoke, her love grew stronger.

He flew into her arms, he could wait no longer,

They both sat down and sung, but she sung clearest,

Like a Nightingale in spring, "Welcome home, my dearest."

He sang, "God bless the wind that blew him over."

She sang, "God bless the ship that brought him over,"

They both sat down and sung, but she sung clearest,

Like a Nightingale in spring, "Welcome home, my dearest."

To get any rhythm into this doggerel is like persuading a donkey to

gallop. And yet how clearly one sees the dark night, the disguised

sailor and his sweetheart talking together on the river strand, and the

ships on its bosom in the gloom; while the wistful, deceitful tale he

tells her is as old as Romance. Once get cantering, too; how pleasing

is the motion!

192. "DARK ROSALEEN."

From his childhood, which was spent in a little shop in Dublin, Mangan

had a dark and troubled life. But always a passionate love for his

country, Ireland--his Dark Rosaleen--burned on in his imagination as it

is revealed in the wild and haunting music of this poem.

197.

There are so many words in this poem strange to an English ear that it

seems better to explain them here so as not to interrupt the actual

reading of it too much. After all, the little that is not plain speaks

in its music, and that is a very large part of what we call its

"meaning." For the meaning of a poem is _all_ the interest, thought,

pictures, music, and happiness that we can get out of it--it is all

that it _does_ to us.

Stanza (1) "loaning" is a green path in the fields, and "ilka" means

every; "wede" means faded or vanished. (2) "bught" is a sheepfold;

"scorning" I suppose means cracking jokes at one another; "dowie" means

sad and drooping; "daffing" and "gabbing" is larking and gossiping;

a "leglin" is a milkpail. (3) "hairst" means harvest; "bandsters,"

sheaf-binders; "lyart" is faded with age; "runkled" wrinkled;

"fleeching" is wheedling or coaxing or flirting. (4) "swankies" means

the blithe lads of stanza 2; "bogle" means goblin or bogey--an evening

game like "I spy," I should think. (5) "Dool and wae" means sorrow or

grief and woe.

199.

Robert Hayman, a Merchant of Bristol at the age of twenty-five, was

a nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh's. He became Governor of a Plantation

called _The British Hope_ in Newfoundland. In 1628 he settled in Guiana

(of whose gilded and barbaric Amazonian princesses his uncle tells in

Hakluyt's _Voyages_). He made his will in 1633, and nothing more was

afterwards heard of him--at least by the people of Bristol.

Poetry shines out of his stumbling verses like the setting sun through

a thicket of thorns. Their "Totnes" is an uncommonly old town, mainly

consisting of that "long street" where, when a boy, he met "godly

Drake." At its East-Gate is the Brutus-stone--for here Brut of Troy

is said first to have trodden English soil, having landed from the

Dart. Twenty miles distant to westward of the town lies on its rivers

Plymouth--the Spaniards' wasps' nest--its Drake in stone now gazing out

to sea from its Hoe. Twenty miles to the east on the coast is Hayes

Barton, where Raleigh was born about 1552. And seven miles down the

Dart is the village of Greenway, the home of his half-brother Sir

Humphrey Gilbert, the discoverer of Newfoundland, who was in that year

a boy of about sixteen. Here amid-stream juts up the Anchor Rock upon

which, runs the story, the discoverer of tobacco and of the potato used

to sit and smoke his pipe. In 1587 Gilbert and Raleigh sailed together

in search of the as yet Unfoundland, but on that voyage in vain.

200. "FOR HALLY NOW IS DEAD."

Hally was Henry, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of James I., Queen

Elizabeth's godson, and a beloved patron of the arts and poetry to whom

Sir Walter Raleigh looked for happy favours. He was little of body and

quick of spirit, and, like Alexander, delighted "to witch the World

with noble horsemanship." He died when he was nineteen. In Windsor

Castle may be seen a suit of armour made for this young prince when he

was a boy--a suit which for grace and craftsmanship is said to be one

of the most beautiful things of its kind in the world.

202. "HENRY BEFORE AGINCOURT."

Here, again, the verse of this ancient fragment jolts, jars, and moves

cumbrously as a cannon over rocky ground. But how wide and moving a

picture it presents, and how noble is its utterance.

203. "ALEXANDER THE GREAT."

This is the translation of another ancient Irish poem made by Kuno

Meyer. Plutarch wrote Alexander's Life (comparing him with Julius

Caesar), in which the young prince is pictured as if by Velasquez. Here

are a few words from the translation of this life which Sir Thomas

North made from the French of Amiot:

"The ambition and desire he (Alexander) had of honour showed a certain

greatness of mind and noble courage, passing his years.... For when

he was asked one day (because he was swift of foot) whether he would

assay to run for victory at the Olympian Games, 'I could be content'

(said he), 'so I might run with Kings'." When, too, "they brought him

news that his Father had taken some famous city, or had won some

great battle, he was nothing glad to hear it, but would say to his

playfellows: 'Sirs, my Father will have all: I shall have nothing left

me to conquer with you that shall be ought worth' ..."

"Is it even so?" said my lady.

"Even so!" said my lord.

205. "AND THE KINGS ASLEEP."

... Not a stone-cast from the summit of the hill where all snow was now

parched and evaporated away, stood a cairn of boulders and thereon sate

three Eagles whose eyes surveyed the kingdoms of the world, its seas

and Man's lost possessions. And the Eagle that was eastwards of the

three, a little rimpled her wings and cried: "Where now? where now?"

And the Eagle that shook upon her plumes the dazzle of the dying sun

stretched out her corded neck and yelped: "Man! Man!" And the midmost

Eagle stooped low its golden head and champed between its talons with

its beak upon the boulder: "The Earth founders," she mewed. And a

stillness was upon the hill as though of a myriad watching eyes.

207. "DANCE SEDATELY"

--and here are two old rhymes for the dancing to. One for a Morris

Dance:

Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly,

Tickle it, tickle it lustily;

Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour,

Tickle it, tickle it lustily.

Let us be seene in Hygate Freene,

To dance for the honour of Holloway.

Since we are come hither, let us spare for no leather

To dance for the honour of Holloway.

And this for a Flower Dance:

Where's my lovely parsley, say?

My violets, roses, where are they?

My parsley, roses, violets fair,

Where are my flowers? Tell me where?

And yet another for one's Lonesome Low:

The king's young dochter was sitting in her window,

Sewing at her silken seam;

She lookt out o' the bow-window,

And she saw the leaves growing green,

My luve;

And she saw the leaves growing green.

She stuck her needle into her sleeve,

Her seam down by her tae,

And she is awa' to the merrie greenwood,

To pu' the nit and the slae,

My luve;

To pu' the nit and the slae.

The "dochter" is of course daughter, "nit" is nut, and "slae" sloe.

209.

Pause an instant on the fifth word in the third stanza and you can

actually _hear_ the birds laughing--yaffle, blackcap, bullfinch and

jay, and the droning and the whistling and the whir-r-r.

210. FA LA LA.

Scattered through this volume are many songs, a few of them--both

words and music--exceedingly ancient. Mr. Nahum had a cofferful of

old hand-written music (square crotchets and quavers and handsome

clefs); and many outlandish instruments were hung up in the dust and

silence in one of his cupboards. I remember some small living thing

set a string jangling when for the first time the door admitted me to

a sight of their queer shapes and appearances. In an old book of 1548,

_The Complaynt of Scotland_, there is a list of names, not only of old

folk-tales such as "The tayl of the wolfe of the varldes end"; and "The

tayl of the giantes that eit quyk men," but of songs and dances for

long in common love and knowledge even in those old times. Here are a

few of the songs:

God You, Good Day, Wild Boy.

Broom, Broom on Hill.

Trolly lolly leman, dow.

All musing of Marvels, amiss have I gone.

O Mine Heart, hey, this is my Song.

Shall I go with You to Rumbelow Fair?

That Day, that Day, that Gentle Day.

Alas, that Samyn Sweet Face!

In are Mirthful Morrow.

And here some Dances:

All Christian Men's Dance.

Long Flat Foot of Garioch.

The Lamb's Wind.

Leaves Green.

The Bace of Voragon.

The Loch of Slene.

The Bee.

Shake a Trot, and

The Vod and the Val.

The tunes to these were played at that day on four kinds of bagpipe

(including a drone bagpipe), a trump, a recorder, a "fiddell," and a

"quhissil"--which is the pleasantest way of spelling _whistle_ I have

yet seen. The melodies and words of most of them are, apparently, all

now clean forgotten.

"Fa la la" (No. 210) is of a different kind, being one of hundreds

of madrigals, "ayres" and ballets of which both the words and the

music were written in England in the first twenty years or so of the

seventeenth century. There is, of course, a hoard of learning that one

may study on this English music--William Byrd's, John Dowland's, Thomas

Ford's, Thomas Campion's, John Bartlet's, Philip Rosseter's, Robert

Ayres' and others--which in its own day was as famous in the countries

of Europe as English poetry is now. It was the coming of foreign music

and musicians to England--the Italians and Handel and Mendelssohn--that

put it ungratefully out of mind. To-day its dust has at last been

brushed away. The Madrigals are being printed and sung again, and Dr.

Fellowes has lately published a volume containing the words of hundreds

of such lively, nimble and heart-entrancing rhymes--intended by their

writers to carry with them a double charm--not only their own verbal

melody, grace and beauty, but also their music's.

My own knowledge is scanty indeed, but I gather that a madrigal

is intended to be sung, unaccompanied with instruments, by voices

only--three to five, six, or seven, it may be, and men's and women's or

boys', coursing, echoing, interweaving, responding and rilling together

like the countless runnels and wavelets of a brook over its stones, or

a wood full of singing birds at evening. An Ayre is different. It is

for the voice--singing its melody to the accompaniment of lute, viol

or virginal, as a nightingale may sing at dusk above the murmur of a

softly-brawling brook. A Ballet, the most ancient of all three, went

hand in hand and foot to foot with a dance.

All I wish to make clear is that the printed words of Nos. 210 and

212, for instance, can give only a fraction of the pleasure their

poets intended, who in writing had always the singing voice and often

the twangling string in mind. Their very age to my fancy gives them

an enticing strangeness, grace, and freshness. For in their company

the imagination returns to the days when first they rang out in the

taverns and parlours and palaces and streets of a London that from

every steeple and tower was within sight of green fields; a noble city

of but about three hundred thousand people (including children) wherein

you might any day find William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Chapman and

the rest talking together in its taverns, the _Mermaid_ or the _Triple

Tun_, while that ill-fortuned traveller and statesman, Sir Walter

Raleigh, fallen upon evil days, sat mewed up in the Tower of London,

engrossed in his _History of the World_.

None the less there are human beings who remain deaf to the magic both

of words and music--that, like the deaf adder, _stop_ their ears: "I

know very well," wrote Sir William Temple, "that many who pretend to

be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry

and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment

of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to these

charms, would I think do well to keep their own counsel, for ...

while this world lasts, I doubt most but the pleasure and requests of

these two entertainments will do so too; and happy those that content

themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent; and do

not trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be quiet

themselves, though nobody hurts them!

"When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best but like

a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep

it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

211. "THE ONELY PRETTY RING TIME."

"Amo, amas,

I love a lass,

As cedar tall and slender;

Sweet cowslip's face

Is her nominative case,

And she's of the feminine gender.

Horum quorum,

Sunt divorum,

Harum, scarum, Divo;

Tag rag, merry derry, periwig and hatband,

Hic--hoc--hârum, genitivo."

JOHN O'KEEFE

There was a mayde come out of Kent,

Deintie love, deintie love;

There was a mayde cam out of Kent,

Daungerous be:

There was a mayde cam out of Kent,

Fáyre, propre, small and gent,

As ever upon the grounde went,

For so should it be.

"When you speake (Sweet)

I'ld have you do it ever. When you sing,

I'ld have you buy and sell so: so give Almes,

Pray so: and for the ord'ring your Affayres,

To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you

Nothing but that: move still, still so:

And owne no other function....

My prettiest Perdita."

_The Winter's Tale._

"Such pretie things would soon be gon

If we should not so them remembre."

212.

There _might_ be an instant's check or faltering at the eighth line,

but make it "when the WINDS BLOW and the SEAS FLOW"--the great flood of

air and water banking up as it were into the words as does the Atlantic

in a gale at the Spring Equinox--and all's well.

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

"The flee is a lyttell worme, and greveth men mooste; and scapeth and

voideth peril with lepynge and not with runnynge, and wexeth slowe and

fayleth in colde tyme, and in somer tyme it wexeth quiver and swyft;

and spareth not kynges."

214. "I LOVED A LASS."

George Wither, says Aubrey, could make verses as fast as he could write

them. So, too, could Shakespeare. "What he thought," said his editors,

"he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarse received from him a

blot in his papers."

Still:--"So, So-a! fair and softly!" said the old Shropshire farmer to

Job his plough-horse when he kicked up his heels as if to break into a

gallop; "So, So-a! When thou'rt a racer, my dear, or born a high-blood

Arab, there'll be time enough for that. _Some goes their best slow._"

If the lass's "fives" in the fourth stanza (of 214) were the fives

of to-day she must have had a quite comfortable foot, a size or two

larger, at any rate, than the bride's in Sir John Suckling's _Ballad

upon a Wedding_:

... Her feet beneath her petticoat

Like little mice stole in and out,

As if they feared the light;

But oh, she dances such a way!

No sun upon an Easter-day

Is half so fine a sight.

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,

No daisy makes comparison;

Who sees them is undone;

For streaks of red were mingled there,

Such as are on a Catharine pear,

The side that's next the sun.

Her lips were red; and one was thin

Compared to that was next her chin

(Some bee had stung it newly);

But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,

I durst no more upon them gaze,

Than on the sun in Júly....

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

June 24 is not only the birthday of St. John the Baptist, but also the

year's Sun Day, for about this day, following through the night but

a little way beneath the horizon, he rises at dawn furthest North of

East in his annual journey (see p. xiv). As once on May-day so it was

then formerly the custom, all England over, to set bonfires blazing

on the hilltops, around which the country people danced and sang. The

dairy-maid who had the breath, and was fleet enough of foot to ring

around, between dusk and daybreak, nine such merry bonfires before they

were burnt out, assured her heart of a happy marriage within the year.

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

The aïr to gi'e your cheäks a hue

O' rwosy red, so feaïr to view,

Is what do sheäke the grass-bleädes grae

At breäk o' dae, in mornén dew;

Vor vo'k that will be rathe abrode,

Will meet wi' health upon their road.

But biden up till dead o' night,

When han's o' clocks do stan' upright,

By candle-light, do soon consume

The feäce's bloom, an' turn it white.

An' moon-beäms cast vrom midnight skies

Do blunt the sparklen ov the eyes.

Vor health do weäke vrom nightly dreams

Below the mornen's eärly beams,

An' leäve the dead-aïr'd houses' eaves,

Vor quiv'ren leaves, an' bubblen streams,

A-glitt'ren brightly to the view,

Below a sky o' cloudless blue.

WILLIAM BARNES

The words in this poem are spelt as they are spoken in the County

of Dorset. "Rathe" means early; and "below" beneath. There is a

half-secret rhyme in each fourth line.

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

There is sweet music here that softer falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass,

Or night-dews on still waters between walls

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

TENNYSON

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

Of this I saw the picture in Thrae. It was named Czar Kolokol, and,

when cast, was of the weight of about twenty-six hundred heavy men. It

now stands clapperless on the ground with a breach in its metal side.

Through this breach the people go into its silence to pray.

225.

This "Country Rhime," with Nos. 121 and 434, is taken from _A Book

for Boys and Girls_, written by John Bunyan. It came out into the

world on May 12th, 1686, two years before Bunyan died on Snow Hill in

London; and two years after the publication of the Second Part of _The

Pilgrim's Progress_, "wherein is set forth the manner of the setting

out of Christian's Wife and Children, their dangerous journey, and safe

arrival at the Desired Country."

When Bunyan was young he loved ringing the bells with the ringers in

the steeple of the village church of Elstow, where he was born, and

where his grandfather, Thomas Bonyon, was "a common baker of human

bread."

All these "Homely rhimes" are followed in this particular _Book for

Boys and Girls_ by comparisons", as here: first the bells; then a

lesson about them. They are parables. But in Mr. Nahum's copying, many

of the lessons were omitted; perhaps because he preferred to think

out his own. Not that the poetry that is intended to teach, to praise

virtue, and to instil wisdom in the heart and mind of its readers is

any the less poetry for this reason. Nevertheless, _every_ beautiful

thing in this world--the hyssop in the wall and the cedar of Lebanon,

Solomon in all his glory and the ring on his finger, carries with it

joy and wonder of the life that is ours, and gratitude to the Maker of

all. And poets who, when writing, are too intent upon teaching, are apt

to forfeit their rarest poetry.

232.

Dorothy was William Wordsworth's only sister and his friend Coleridge's

close friend. What she squandered on these two poets--her self, her

talk, her imagination, her love--only they could tell. "She gave

me eyes, she gave me ears," once wrote her brother; she shared his

visionary happiness. With Coleridge she used to walk and talk so nearly

and dearly that again and again in her _Journal_ she uses all but the

very words--that "thin gray cloud," the line on Spring, or on the one

red leaf, for instance--which are so magically his own in _Christabel_

(No. 345).

233. "TO AUTUMN."

I read this--perhaps the loveliest of John Keats's odes, many times

before I realised that the whole of it is addressed to the musing

apparition or phantasm of Autumn whom in its second stanza he describes

as if she were in image there before him. This, perhaps, was partly

because the poem is usually printed with a full stop after "clammy

cells," and partly because of my own stupidity.

Thomas Hood, in his scarcely less beautiful Ode, sees Autumn first as

an old man:

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless like Silence, listening

To silence, for no lonely bird would sing

Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,

Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;

Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright

With tangled gossamer that fell by night,

Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

And later, in his fourth stanza:

The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard,

The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain,

And honey bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;

The swallows all have winged across the main;

But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.

Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone,

With the last leaves for a love-rosary,

Whilst all the withered world looks drearily,

Like a dim picture of the drownèd past

In the hushed mind's mysterious far away,

Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last

Into that distance, gray upon the gray....

237. "A FOOLISH THING."

I thee advise

If thou be wise

To keep thy wit

Though it be small:

'Tis rare to get.

And far to fet,

'Twas ever yet

Dear'st ware of all.

GEORGE TURBERVILLE

"Far to fetch" it certainly is; but here is a little counsel to this

end from the old Irish _Instructions of King Cormac_ (of the ninth

century). Of Carbery I know no more, but doubtless there is much to

hear:

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

body of man?"

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac. "Sitting too long, lying too long,

long standing, lifting heavy things, exerting oneself beyond one's

strength, running too much, leaping too much, frequent falls, sleeping

with one's leg over the bed-rail, gazing at glowing embers, wax,

biestings [very new milk], new ale, bull-flesh, curdles, dry food,

bog-water, rising too early, cold, sun, hunger, drinking too much,

eating too much, sleeping too much, sinning too much, grief, running

up a height, shouting against the wind, drying oneself by a fire,

summer-dew, winter-dew, beating ashes, swimming on a full stomach,

sleeping on one's back, foolish romping." ...

"O Cormac, grandson of Conn," said Carbery, "I desire to know how

I shall behave among the wise and the foolish, among friends and

strangers, among the old and the young, among the innocent and the

wicked."

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac.

"Be not too wise, nor too foolish,

Be not too conceited, nor too diffident,

Be not too haughty, nor too humble,

Be not too talkative, nor too silent,

Be not too hard, nor too feeble.

If you be too wise, men will expect too much of you;

If you be too foolish, you will be deceived;

If you be too conceited, you will be thought vexatious;

If you be too humble, you will be without honour;

If you be too talkative, you will not be heeded;

If you be too silent, you will not be regarded;

If you be too bard, you will be broken;

If you be too feeble, you will be crushed."

But what the exact total of all these "too's" may be is a riddle only

the Higher Mathematics can solve.

"OUR PLAY IS DONE"

--after which, in Elizabeth's day, "the characters (one or more) were

wont to kneel down upon the stage and to offer a solemn prayer for the

sovereign, or other patron":

"My tongue is wearie; when my Legs are too, I will bid you good night;

and so kneele down before you: But (indeed) to pray for the Queene."

_Henry IV._

245. "AH! WOULD 'TWERE SO."

I know that all beneath the moon decays,

And what by mortals in this world is brought

In Time's great periods shall return to nought;

That fairest states have fatal nights and days;

I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,

With toil of spright which is so dearly bought,

As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;

And that nought lighter is than airy praise.

I know frail beauty's like the purple flower,

To which one morn oft birth and death affords;

That love a jarring is of minds' accords,

Where sense and will invassall reason's power.

Know what I list, this all can not me move,

But that--O me! I both must write and love!

WILLIAM DRUMMOND

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

"I hear the crane, if I mistake not, cry

Who in the clouds forming the forked Y,

By the brave orders practized under her,

Instructeth souldiers in the art of war.

For when her troops of wandring cranes forsake

Frost-firmèd Strymon, and (in autumn) take

Truce with the northern dwarfs, to seek adventure

In southern climates for a milder winter;

A-front each band a forward captain flies,

Whose pointed bill cuts passage through the skies,

Two skilful sergeants keep the ranks aright,

And with their voyce hasten their tardy flight;

And when the honey of care-charming sleep

Sweetly begins through all their veines to creep

One keeps the watch, and ever carefull-most,

Walks many a round about the sleeping hoast,

Still holding in his claw a stony clod,

Whose fall may wake him if he hap to nod.

Another doth as much, a third, a fourth,

Untill, by turns the night be turnèd forth."

So also, according to travellers, talk, argue in parliament, camp, and

keep watch the wandering tribes of the gaudy-dyed Baboons.

249.

If this poem is read softly, pausingly, without haste, the very words

will seem like snowflakes themselves, floating into the mind; and then,

the beauty and the wonder.

251

Here again, as in music, there are rests in the second, fourth and

fifth lines of each stanza. Is there any magic to compare with that

still solemn unearthly radiance when the world is masked with snow; and

the very sparkling of the mind is like hoar-frost on the bark of a tree.

253. "THE WILD WOODS."

Allan Cunningham's in Scotland, and these--Mr. Robert Frost's--in

Vermont U.S.A.:

Whose Woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village though

He will not see my stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake,

The only other sounds the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely dark and deep;

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep:

And miles to go before I sleep.

255.

There may be a few small verbal puzzles in this fifteenth-century

carol--otherwise as clear, sharp and shining as a winter moon.

_Kechoun_ is kitchen, and Stephen (who waited on the King at bed and

board) stepped out of it into the hall, "boar's head on hand." _Kyst_,

means cast; _eylet_, aileth; _wod_ is mad. So too _brede_, I fancy.

When the roasted capon or cock crowed in its dish, Herod, in wrath and

fear cried on his torturers, "by two and all by one" to rise up and

kill.

In later times a clay or earthenware box made all of a piece, with

a slit in it, was carried by apprentices through the streets on St.

Stephen's day, for money. And never a Catholic missionary once sailed

for the Indies, Barbary, or the Islands of the Anthropophagites, but a

box was hung by the priests in the church for alms against his return.

From the former old custom comes our "Boxing Day."

In the Isle of Man, however, the Christmas Box was called the Wren Box,

and for this reason: There dwelt of old a Lorelei, siren or sea-elf,

in the emerald green creeks and caves of a solitary precipitous

island. She was as lovely as she was cruel, and her shrill sweet voice

rose amid the roaring and soughing of the waves in her steep rocky

habitation as shines a poisonous flower in the dark of a forest. Thus

she would at daybreak enchant to their doom sailors following their

craft on the sea. Leaning to listen to this music creeping by them

on the waters, they drew in to her haunts. Of their bones were coral

made; while she lived on; sang on. She was hunted down at last in her

sea-grottoes by those who, like Ulysses, had stopped their ears against

her incantations. Brought finally to bay, her beauty and bright hair

suddenly dwindled and dimmed, and she escaped in the shape of--Jenny

Wren. Alas, for Jenny Wren! condemned ever after for the woes of this

siren to be pursued with sticks and stones by young loons, cullions and

Jerry Sneaks, on every St. Stephen's Day. As goes the rhyme:

"Oh, where are you going?" says milder to melder;

"Oh, where are you going?" says the younger to the elder.

"Oh, I cannot tell," says Festel to Fose;

"We're going to the woods," says John the Red Nose.

"We're going to the woods," says John the Red Nose.

"Oh, what will you do there?" says milder to melder;

"Oh, what will you do there?" says the younger to the elder.

"Oh, I do not know," says Festel to Fose;

"To shoot the cutty wren," says John the Red Nose.

"To shoot the cutty wren," says John the Red Nose.

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

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

257.

_Lullay, lullay, thou lytill child,

Sleep and be well still;

The King of bliss thy father is,

As it was his will._

The other night I saw a sight,

A mayd a cradle keep:

"Lullay," she sung, and said among,

"Lie still, my child, and sleep."

"How should I sleep? I may not for weep,

So sore am I begone:

Sleep I would; I may not for cold,

And clothes have I none.

"For Adam's guilt mankind is spilt

And that me rueth sore;

For Adam and Eve here shall I live

Thirty winter and more."

258. "WELCOME TWELFTH DAY"

and here is a rhyme (entitled Jolagiafir) for a memory-game they used

to play in old times on Twelfth Night after the bean or silver-penny

had been discovered in the Twelfth Cake, and the Wassail Bowl has gone

round with the Mince Pies.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

A partridge in a pear-tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear-tree.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

Three French hens, two turtle doves and

A partridge in a pear-tree.

And so on to--

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

Twelve lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing,

Ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming,

Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming,

Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,

Four colly birds, three French hens,

Two turtle doves, and

A partridge in a pear-tree.

And here is a recipe for Lamb's Wool, with which to fill "the Bowl":

Take "the pulpe of rosted apples, in number four or five according to

the greatnesse of the apples (especially the pome water), and mix it

heartily in a wine quart of faire water"--or old ale--"with a due and

fair lacing of nutmegs, sugar and ginger"--until the company can wait

no longer.

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

What will be our twelve, boys?

What will be our twelve, boys?

Twelve's the Twelve Apostles;

Eleven's maidens in a dance;

Ten's the Ten Commandments;

Nine's the Muses o' Parnassus;

Eight's the table rangers;

Seven's the stars of heaven;

Six the echoing waters;

Five's the hymnlers o' my bower;

Four's the gospel-makers;

Three, three thrivers;

Twa's the lily and the rose,

That shine baith red and green, boys:

My only ane, she walks alane,

And evermair has dune, boys.

259.

It looks as if this carol--of Henry VI.'s reign--was once a singing

game: On the one side in the blaze of the Yule Log the Holly men with

gilded and garlanded pole; and on the other Ivy with her maidens; each

side taunting the other, and maybe tugging for prisoners. "Ivy-girls,"

too, used to be burned by companies of boys, and Holly-boys by

girls--all yawping and jodelling at the sport.

"Poppynguy" may perhaps be the jay, but it would be pleasanter company

for the lark, if here it means the green woodpecker. His other names

are rain-bird, hew-hole, wood-sprite, woodweele, woodspeek and yaffle,

the very sound of which is like the echo of his own laughter in the

sunny green tops of the wood.

260. "WHEN ISICLES HANG BY THE WALL."

There is a peculiar magic (which may perhaps be less apparent to

the Greenlanders) in icicles. Nor are its effects unknown to the

four-footed. In certain remote regions of Siberia there is said to be a

little animal called the Iccė-vulff (or Ice-wolf). He has prick-ears,

is a fierce feeder, and wears a coat so wondrous close and dense that

three or four of our English moles' skins laid one atop the other would

yet fall short of its match. But he seldom attains to a ripe age, and

for this reason. As soon as he is freed from his dam's snow-burrow, he

hastes off to the dwellings of the men of those parts, snuffing their

dried seal-steaks and blubber, being a most incorrigible thief and

a very wary. And such is his craft that he mocks at gins, traps and

pitfalls. But he has a habit which is often to his undoing. It is in

this wise: The heat of these hovels is apt to melt a little the snow

upon them, its water trickling and coursing softly down till long, keen

icicles are formed, upon which, whether hungry or fed, taking up his

station in a plumb line beneath them, he will squat and gloat for an

hour together, having a marvellous greedy pleasure in clear glasslike

colours. Hearing his breathing or faint snuffing, any human who

wakes within will of a sudden violently shake the wall between. This

dislodges the pendent icicles, and the squatting Iccė-vulff is pierced

to his death as with a sword.

Winter indeed makes crystal even of ink. It has the power of enchanting

every imagination; and particularly Coleridge's:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon....

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

This means, I think, that she adds her own grieved cadences to the

melody, as may one, among many voices, singing in harmony.

265. "IS LIKE A BUBBLE."

This rainbow "bubble"--like Shelley's "many-coloured dome of glass" in

his _Adonais_--seems, before our very eyes, to be floating up into the

empty blue heavens, until it smalls into a bead of gold, and vanishes.

It brings to memory--though I am uncertain of the first line--an

epitaph in the church at Zennor, a village clustered above the Atlantic

on the dreamlike coast of Cornwall--an epitaph cut in fine lettering

into its slate slab, while at each corner of the slab Cherubs' heads

puff out their round cheeks, representing the winds of the world:

Sorrow, and sin, false hope, and trouble--

These the Four Winds that daily vex this Bubble:

His breath a Vapour, and his life a Span;

'Tis Glorious Misery to be born a Man.

266. "O, SWEET CONTENT."

There is a jewel which no Indian mines

Can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit;

It makes men rich in greatest poverty;

Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,

The homely whistle to sweet music's strain:

Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,

That much in little, all in naught--Content.

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

The subject being riches, here from Hugh Rhodes, is a nourishing crumb

or two of advice. _Cautions_ the poem is called, and it may be found in

the _Book of Nurture_:

He that spendeth much,

And getteth nought;

He that oweth much,

And hath nought;

He that looketh in his purse

And findeth nought,--

He may be sorry,

And say nought.

He that may and will not,

He then that would shall not.

He that would and cannot

May repent and sigh not.

He that sweareth

Till no man trust him;

He that lieth

Till no man believe him;

He that borroweth

Till no man will lend him;

Let him go where

No man knoweth him.

He that hath a good master,

And cannot keep him;

He that hath a good servant,

And is not content with him;

He that hath such conditions,

That no man loveth him;

May well know other,

But few men will know him.

And, to make trebly sure:

Three false sisters: "Perhaps," "May be," "I dare say."

Three timid brothers: "Hush!" "Stop!" "Listen!"

269. "LORD RAMESES OF EGYPT SIGHED."

The most ancient poem I know of consists of such a sigh. It comes from

an Egyptian tomb, was composed about 5000 years ago, and might have

been written by some melancholy soul at his sick-room window yesterday

afternoon. For, after all, these ancients whose mummies are now a

mere wonder for the curious, all lived, as Raleigh says, "in the same

newness of time which we call 'old time.'"

"Death is before me to-day

Like the recovery of a sick man,

Like going forth into a garden after sickness.

"Death is before me to-day

Like the odour of myrrh,

Like sitting under the sail on a windy day....

"Death is before me to-day

Like the course of the freshet,

Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house....

"Death is before me to-day

As a man longs to see his house

When he has spent years in captivity."

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

And here is another poem by William Barnes which I have ventured to

spell not as it appears in its original dialect, but in the usual way:

If souls should only shine as bright

In heaven as in earthly light,

And nothing better were the case,

How comely still, in shape and face,

Would many reach that happy place,--

The hopeful souls that in their prime,

Have seemed a-taken before their time--

The young that died in beauty.

But when one's limbs have lost their strength

A-toiling through a lifetime's length,

And over cheeks a-growing old

The slowly-wasting years have rolled

The deepening wrinkles' hollow fold;

When life is ripe, then death do call

For less of thought, than when it fall

On young folks in their beauty....

But still the dead shall more than keep

The beauty of their early sleep;

Where comely looks shall never wear

Uncomely, under toil and care,

The fair, at death be always fair,

Still fair to living, thought and love,

And fairer still to God above,

Than when they died in beauty.

273.

I remember actually coming upon this poem (in Mr. Nahum's second book),

and how I twisted my head and looked up at the quiet dark-socketed

skull in its alcove in the turret room. It had no alarm for me then,

though I can recall cold moments of dread or confusion, when I was

a boy, at the thought of death. Then--or was it some time after?--I

turned the page and found the following poem by Thomas Campion, and,

in Mr. Nahum's writing, this scrawl at the foot of it: "Yes, but the

vision first."

The man of life upright,

Whose guiltless heart is free

From all dishonest deeds,

Or thought of vanity;

The man whose silent days

In harmless joys are spent,

Whom hopes cannot delude

Nor sorrow discontent:

That man needs neither towers

Nor armour for defence,

Nor secret vaults to fly

From thunder's violence:

He only can behold

With unaffrighted eyes

The horrors of the deep

And terrors of the skies.

Thus scorning all the cares

That fate or fortune brings,

He makes the heaven his book,

His wisdom heavenly things;

Good thoughts his only friends,

His wealth a well-spent age,

The earth his sober inn

And quiet pilgrimage.

"... Yet suffer us, O Lord, not to repine, whether in the morning, at

noon, or at midnight, that is to say, in our cradle, in our youth, or

old age, we go to take our long sleep; but let us make this reckoning

of our years, that if we can live no longer, _that_ is unto us our old

age; for he that liveth so long as thou appointest him (though he die

in the pride of his beauty) dieth an old man...."

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

This solemn dirge was written in "time of pestilence,"--such a time

as Daniel Defoe tells of in his "Journal of the Plague Year." The

Elizabethan poets brooded endlessly on the mystery of death. A music

haunts their words like that of muffled bells, as in John Fletcher's

poem:

... Come hither, you that hope, and you that cry,

Leave off complaining!

Youth, strength, and beauty, that shall never die,

Are here remaining.

Come hither, fools, and blush you stay so long

From being blessed.

And mad men, worse than you, that suffer wrong,

Yet seek no rest!...

And in William Davenant's:

Wake, all the dead! What ho! what ho!

How soundly they sleep whose pillows lie low!

They mind not poor lovers, who walk above

On the decks of the world in storms of love.

No whisper now nor glance shall pass

Through wickets or through panes of glass,

For our windows and doors are shut and barred.

Lie close in the church, and in the churchyard!

In every grave make room, make room!

The world's at an end, and we come, we come!...

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

Not full twelve years twice-told, a weary breath

I have exchanged for a wishèd death.

My course was short, the longer is my rest,

God takes them soonest whom he loveth best;

For he that's born to-day and dies to-morrow,

Loseth some days of mirth, but months of sorrow.

And this reminds me of an epitaph I chanced on in the graveyard at

Manorbier whose ruinous castle towers above the green turf of its

narrow ocean inlet, as if it were keeping a long tryst with the clocked

church tower on the height:

Weep not for her ye friends that's dear,

Weep for your sins, for death is near--

You see by her, she [was] cut down soon.

Her morning Sun went down at noon.

And then there are these two unforgettable fragments, the one from the

Scots of John Wedderburn (1542), and the other of a century before, its

authorship unknown:

WHO'S AT MY WINDOW?

Who's at my window, who, who?

Go from my window, go, go!

Who calleth there so like a stranger?

Go from my window--go!

Lord, I am here, a wretched mortal

That for Thy mercy does cry and call--

Unto Thee, my Lord Celestial,

See who is at my window, who.

THE CALL.

... Come home again, come home again;

Mine own sweet heart, come home again!

You are gone astray

Out of your way,

Therefore, sweet heart, come home again!

277. "HARK! NOW EVERYTHING IS STILL."

Death stands above me, whispering low

I know not what into my ear;

Of his strange language all I know

Is, there is not a word of fear.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

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

(line 17)

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust;

And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;

Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might

To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;

Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light,

That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

O, take fast hold! let that light be thy guide

In this small course which birth draws out to death--

And think how evil becometh him to slide,

Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:

Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

278.

Of the _Lyke-wake Dirge_ is known neither the age nor the author. The

body from which the "saule" or spirit within is fled away lies in its

shroud, and the dirge tells of that spirit's journey. Its word "sleet,"

says Mr. Sidgwick, means either salt, for it was the custom to place in

a wooden platter beside the dead, earth and salt for emblems, the one

of corruption, the other of the immortal; or, as some suppose, "sleet"

should be _fleet_, meaning embers or water or house-room. "Whinnies"

means gorse. To explain the full meaning of Bridge of Dread would need

many pages--but does not much of that meaning haunt in the very music

and solemnity of the words?

279.

Next this poem in Mr. Nahum's book was "Lead, Kindly Light," and there

was a strange picture for it hanging in the round tower--the picture

of a small becalmed ship, clumsy of rig and low in the water which was

smooth and green as glass. In the midst of the ship there was piled

high what might be taken for a vast heap of oranges, their fair reddish

colour blazing in the rays of the sun that was about to plunge out

of the greenish sky below the line of the west. But what even more

particularly attracted my eye at the time was that ship's figurehead--a

curious head and shoulders as if with wings, and of a kind of far

beauty or wonder entirely past me to describe. Many years afterwards I

read that this poem was written by John Henry Newman (one who even in

his young days at Oxford was "never less alone than when alone"), when

his mind was perplexed and unhappy, and he himself had time to ponder

awhile, because the boat in which he was sailing to England had been

for some days becalmed off the coast of Spain.

281. "FEAR NO MORE."

_Philaster._ Fie, fie,

So young and so dissembling! fear'st thou not death?

Can boys contemn that?

_Bellario._ O, what boy is he

Can be content to live to be a man,

That sees the best of men thus passionate,

Thus without reason?

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

_Bellario._ Yes, I do know, my Lord!

'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep,

A quiet resting from all jealousy;

A thing we all pursue; I know besides

It is but giving over of a game

That must be lost.

From _Philaster_: FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER

284. "ALL THE FLOWERS."

"... But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed

by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three--that

is, burnet, wild thyme, and watermints. Therefore you are to set whole

alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."

_An Essay on Gardens_, FRANCIS BACON

Bring, too, some branches forth of Daphne's hair,

And gladdest myrtle for the posts to wear,

With spikenard weaved and marjorams between

And starred with yellow-golds and meadows-queen.

The very names indeed of the aromatic herbs seem to "perfume the

air"--bergamot, lavender, meadowsweet, costmary, southernwood,

woodruff, balm, germander. And flowers even though dead remain sweet in

their dust, as every bowl of potpourri proclaims. To have "a repository

of odours" always with them, when streets were foul and pestilence

was a peril, gentle-people would in old times carry fresh nosegays

or pomanders. The pomanders were of many kinds; an orange stuffed

with cloves, etc., for the hand; or--for pocket or chatelaine--some

little curiously-devised receptacle of silver containing tiny phials

of precious essences--possibly no bigger than a plum. Or they might

be compounded of rare ingredients: "Your only way to make a good

pomander is this. Take an ounce of the purest garden mould, cleansed

and steeped seven days in change of motherless rose water. Then take

the best labdanum, benjoin, both storaxes, ambergris, civet, and musk.

Incorporate them together, and work them into what form you please.

This, if your breath be not too valiant, will make you smell as sweet

as any lady's dog."

285.

I have pondered over the thirteenth and eighteenth lines of this poem,

but am not yet certain of all that they were intended to convey. But

what scope for the imagination is in it! The next epitaph is by Stephen

Hawes, whose _Passetyme of Pleasure or History of Graunde Amoure, and

La Bel Pucel_, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509:

O mortal folk, you may behold and see

How I lie here, sometime a mighty knight.

The end of joy and all prosperity

Is death at last, thorough his course and might:

For though the day be never so long,

At last the bells ringeth to evensong.

And the lines following are said to have been found between the pages

of Sir Walter Raleigh's Bible in the Gate House at Westminster, having

been written by him, it is surmised, during the night before he--an

ageing man of sixty-six--was beheaded:

Even such is Time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

And pays us but with earth and dust;

Who, in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,

My God shall raise me up, I trust.

286. "SIDNEY, O SIDNEY IS DEAD."

"Sir Philip Sydney, Knight," says John Aubrey, "was the most

accomplished courtier of his time. He was not only of an excellent

witt, but extremely beautiful; he much resembled his sister. He was

a person of great courage. Among others Mr. Edmund Spenser made his

addresse to him, and brought his _Faery Queen_. Sir Philip was busy

at his study, and his servant delivered Mr. Spenser's booke to his

master, who layd it by, thinking it might be such kind of stuffe as

he was frequently troubled with. When Sir Philip perused it, he was

so exceedingly delighted with it, that he was extremely sorry he was

gonne, and where to send for him he knew not. After much enquiry he

learned his lodgeing, and sent for him, and mightily caressed him....

From this time there was a great friendship between them, to his dying

day.... His body was putt in a leaden coffin (which after the firing of

Paule's, I myself sawe), and with wonderfull greate state was carried

to St. Paule's church, when he was buried in our Ladie's Chapell. There

solempnized this funerall all the nobility and great officers of Court."

Here is part of a letter written to him, by his father, Sir Henry

Sidney, in 1566, when Philip was a boy at Shrewsbury School:

SON PHILIP.... Above all things, tell no untruth.

No, not in trifles. The custom of it is nought: and let it

not satisfy you that, for a time, the hearers take it for a

truth; yet after it will be known as it is, to your shame. For

there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman, than to be

accounted a liar.... Remember, my son! the noble blood you are

descended of by your mother's side: and think that only by

virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that

illustrious family; otherwise, through vice and sloth, you may

be counted _labes generis_, "a spot of your kin," one of the

greatest curses that can happen to man.

This next fragment is from a letter written on October 18, 1580, by Sir

Philip Sidney himself to his younger brother Robert (then seventeen).

This Robert six years afterwards fought with him at Zutphen. He grew up

a gallant gentleman, was created Earl of Leicester, and in his leisure

wrote words to fit the music of John Dowland--afterwards lutenist to

Charles I.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

For the money you have received, assure yourself (for it is

true), there is nothing I spend so pleaseth me; as that which

is for you. If ever I have ability, you shall find it so: if

not, yet shall not any brother living be better beloved than

you, of me.... Look to your diet, sweet Robin! and hold your

heart in courage and virtue. Truly, great part of my comfort

is in you!.... Be careful of yourself, and I shall never have

cares.... I write this to you as one, that for myself have

given over the delight in the world; but wish to you as much,

if not more, than to myself.... God bless you, sweet Boy! and

accomplish the joyful hope I conceive of you.... Lord how I

have babbled! Once again, farewell, dearest Brother!

Your most loving and careful brother,

PHILIP SIDNEY

And here in a few words is a fleeting glimpse of this renowned man as

he appeared amidst the splendour and magnificence of the Tournament,

during the Anjou Fetes in London, in 1581, five years before his death:

"Then proceeded Master Philip Sidney, in very sumptuous manner

with armour part blue and the rest gilt and engraven.... He

had four pages that rode on his four spare horses" (richly

caparisoned in gold and pearls and feathers of silver) "who

had cassock hats and Venetian hose all of cloth of silver laid

with gold lace and hats of the same with gold bands and white

feathers: and each one a pair of white buskins." ... There

followed him in as rich and splendid array his gentlemen,

yeomen, and trumpeters.

287. "HIS PICTURE IN A SHEET."

Of John Donne's Book of Poems there was nothing in Mr. Nahum's first

volume, much in the others. But what I then read of them I little

understood. It is a poetry that awaits the mind as the body grows

older, and when we have ourselves learned the experience of life with

which it is concerned. Not that the simplest poetry will then lose

anything of its grace and truth and beauty--far rather it shines the

more clearly, since age needs it the more.

"_His Picture in a sheet_" refers to a drawing (prefixed to Donne's

_Poems_') of his stone effigy. This shows him draped with a shroud,

and may now be seen in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which he was the dean,

and in whose pulpit a few days before his death he preached his last

valedictory or farewell sermon.

"LIVING TO ETERNITY."

How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another's will;

Whose armour is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill!...

Who God doth late and early pray

More of his grace than gifts to lend;

And entertains the harmless day

With a well chosen book or friend;

This man is freed from servile bands

Of hope to rise or fear to fall:

Lord of himself, though not of lands,

And having nothing, yet hath all.

Sir Thomas More was such a man. On Monday, July 5th, 1535, the night

before he was beheaded, he wrote ("with a cole") this letter of

farewell to his daughter Margaret Roper. He had seen her for the last

time when she openly met and kissed him in the midst of his enemies and

of the throngs on Tower Wharf, as he came from Judgment:

"Oure Lorde Blesse you good daughter, & youre good husbande, & youre

lyttle boye, & all yours, & all my children, & all my Godde chyldren

and all oure frendes.... I cumber you good _Margaret_ much, but I would

be sory, if it should be any longer than to morow. For it is saint

_Thomas_ even, & the utas of saint _Peter_: & therfore to morow long

I to go to God: it were a day verye mete & convenient for me. I never

liked your maner toward me better, than whan you kissed me laste: for I

love when doughterly love, and deere charitye, hath no leysure to loke

to worldlye curtesy. Farewell my dere chylde, & pray for me & I shall

for you & all youre frendes, that we maye merilye mete in heaven...."

288. "DO THOU THE SAME."

So too Walter Savage Landor:

... Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold

Than daisies in the mould,

Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,

His name, and life's brief date.

Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be,

And, O, pray too for me!

290. "A PRETTY BUD."

"To die young," in William Drummond's words, "is to do that soon, and

in some fewer days, which once thou must do; it is but the giving over

of a game, that after never so many hazards must be lost."

291. "A-LEFT ASLEEP."

May! Be thou never graced with birds that sing,

Nor Flora's pride!

In thee all flowers and roses spring--

Mine, only died.

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

293. "SUNK LYONESSE."

There is a legend--recorded in an ancient monastic chronicle--that in

the days of Arthur there stretched between Land's End and the Scillies

a country of castles, of fair towns, and landscapes, named Lyonesse.

When the tumult of the last great Arthurian battle was over, there

befell a cataclysm of nature, and in a night of tempest this whole

region was engulfed beneath the seas.

What truth is in this legend no certain history relates. But when the

vast Atlantic breakers begin to lull after storm, to lie listening

in the watches of the night is to hear, it would seem, deep-sunken

belfries of bells sounding in the waters, and siren-like lamentations.

I have myself heard this, and fantasy though it may be, if the ear is

once beguiled into its deceit, the bells clash and chime on and on in

the imagination, mingled with the enormous lully of the surges, until

at last, one falls asleep.

299. "SING NO SAD SONGS FOR ME."

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

one unknown:

When from the world I should be ta'en,

And from earth's necessary pain,

Then let no blacks be worn for me,

Not in a ring, my dear, by thee.

But this bright diamond, let it be

Worn in rememberance of me.

And when it sparkles in your eye,

Think 'tis my shadow passeth by.

302. "READEN OV A HEAD-STWONE."

This poem, again, is spelt as the words would be pronounced by the

country people of Dorset, the country in which William Barnes was born

and lived nearly all his long life. Their way of speech is slower

than in common English, and the words, especially those with the two

dots, or diaeresis, over them, should be lingered over a little in

pronouncing them.

Londoners have a way of being scornfully amused at country speech--in

their ignorance that it is older and far more beautiful than their own

clipped and nasal manner of talking. But half an hour with the great

_Dialect Dictionary_ will prove how inexhaustibly rich the English

language once was and still is in words made, used, and loved by folk

unlearned in books, but with keen and lively eyes in their heads, quick

to see the delight and livingness of a thing, and with the wits to give

it a name fitting it as close as a skin.

303. "CARE IS HEAVY."

Dear God, though Thy all-powerful hand

Should so direct my earthly fate

That I may seem unfortunate

To them who do not understand

That all things follow Thy decree,

Staunchly I'll bear what e'er's Thy will--

Praying Thee but to grant me still

That none shall come to harm through me;

For, God, although Thou knowest all,

I am too young to comprehend

The windings to my journey's end;

I fear upon the road to fall

In the worst sin of all that be

And thrust my brother in the sea.

CONAL O'RIORDAN

304. "MOTHER, NEVER MOURN."

"It was my own mother (wrote Thomas Cantimpratanus about 1260) who told

me the story which I am about to relate. My grandmother had a firstborn

son of most excellent promise, comely beyond the wont of children, at

whose death she mourned ... with a grief that could not be consoled,

until one day, as she went by the way, she saw in her vision a band

of youths moving onwards, as it seemed to her, with exceeding great

joy; and she, remembering her son and weeping that she saw him not in

this joyful band, suddenly beheld him trailing weary footsteps after

the rest. Then with a grievous cry the mother asked: 'How comes it,

my son, that thou goest alone, lagging thus behind the rest?' Then he

opened the side of his cloak and showed her a heavy water-pot, saying:

'Behold, dear mother, the tears which thou hast vainly shed for me,

through the weight whereof I must needs linger behind the rest! Thou

therefore shalt turn thy tears to God: then only shall I be freed from

the burden wherewith I am now grieved.'"

But not all dreamers are so rebuked or so comforted. St. Augustine, a

loving son, pined in vain:

"If the dead could come in dreams," he wrote, "my pious mother would

no night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a

happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart,

she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an

only love."

310. TOM O' BEDLAM.

This poem has been at hide-and-seek with the world for many years past.

Mr. Frank Sidgwick has now played Seek, however, and has tracked it

down in the British Museum in a manuscript, No. 24665, inscribed "Giles

Earle--his book, 1615." In this manuscript the poem consists of eight

stanzas of ten lines each, with a chorus of five lines. The version in

this book is only of twenty-five lines, as they were arranged by Mrs.

Meynell in her beautiful Anthology, _The Flower of the Mind_. Here are

the chief differences which Mr. Sidgwick has very kindly allowed me to

collect from his account of his search:

Line 1, "moon" is _morn_. Line 2, "lovely" is _lonely_, "marrow" is

_morrow_. Line 10, "rounded" is _wounded_. Line 16, "a heart" is a

_host_. And line 21, "with" is _by_. It is a happy exercise of the wits

to choose between them and to find reasons for one's choice. When and

by whom the poem was written is not yet known. It remains a shining

jewel in the crown of the most modest of all men of genius, Mr. Anon.

314. "WHAT'S IN THERE."

This far-carrying rhyme belongs to the ancient and famous game of Dump.

"He who speaks first in it," says Dr. Gregor, "or laughs first, or lets

his teeth be seen, gets nine nips, nine nobs, nine double douncornes,

an' a gueed blow on the back o' the head."

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

_what_ and _where_.

316.

So may the omission of a few commas effect a wonder in the imagination.

To the imagination indeed there is nothing absurd in, "I saw the sun

at twelve o'clock at night"--for one can actually _see_ in the "little

nowhere of the mind" both burning sun and black night _together_: as

once in a dream I myself was enchanted by three moons in the sky,

shining in their silver above waters as wide as those of Milton's

curfew. So, too, even mere day-by-day objects will take on themselves a

strangeness and beauty never seen or "marked" before, if (like Marcus

Aurelius and his loaf of bread) we will only "glut" the eye on them. "I

see a rose," said an old woman on her deathbed, "but if, in childhood

and youth, I had seen it closer, what a rose on the threshold it had

been!"

Here is another old nursery "nonsense" rhyme that makes almost as

lively pictures in the mind:

There was a man of double deed

Who sowed his garden full of seed;

And when the seed began to grow,

'Twas like a garden full of snow;

And when the snow began to fall,

Like birds it was upon the wall;

And when the birds began to fly,

'Twas like a shipwreck in the sky;

And when the sky began to crack,

'Twas like a stick upon my back;

And when my back began to smart,

'Twas like a pen-knife in my heart;

And when my heart began to bleed,

Then I was dead--and dead indeed.

319. "IT HAD BECOME A GLIMMERING GIRL."

"The Tuatha De Danaan--the divine Children of Danu which forgotten

centuries ago invaded Ireland--can take all shapes, and those that

are in the waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in

Galway, says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land ...,'

and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things are in the sea as

well as on land. My father was out fishing one night off Tyrone. And

something came beside the boat that had eyes shining like candles. And

then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a minute, and whatever was

in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink the boat. And then they

saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the shining eyes. So my

father went to the priest, and he bid him always to take a drop of holy

water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and nothing could

harm him.'"

W. B. YEATS

321. "ONE WITHOUT."

Was it the sound of a footfall I heard

On the cold flag stone?

Or the cry of a wandering far night bird,

On the sea-winds blown?

Was that a human shape that stood?

In the shadow below,

Or but the mist of the moonlit wood

As it hovered low?

Was it the voice of a child that called

From the hill side steep?

Or, O, but the wind as it softly lulled

The world to sleep?

ELIZABETH RAMAL

325. "BROOME, BROOME ON HILL."

The story is of how a bright lady comes to keep her tryst with a

knight-at-arms in the golden broom of Hive Hill. She finds him under

a charm, an enchantment, asleep; and having left her ring on his

finger for proof of her coming, she steals away. Presently after he

awakes--her presence gone. To leave a quiet and happy room vacant at

night is sometimes to have this experience, as it were, _reversed_.

There comes a feeling that you being gone, gentler visitants may enter

and share its solitude--while its earthly occupant sleeps overhead, and

one by one the stars sink to their setting.

326. "THE CHANGELING."

When larks gin sing

Away we fling,

And babes new-born steal as we go;

An elf instead

We leave in bed,

And wind out, laughing, Ho, ho, ho!

329. "MARIANA."

It is difficult to read this poem slowly and intently enough if one is

to experience to the _full_ the living things and sights and sounds

that by its words are charmed into the mind--the hushed solitude, the

desolation. Take even, of all there is, but the "peering mouse" in

the sixth stanza--his sharp nose sniffing the air beneath the small

wooden arch of his dark-glimmering mousery, where miche and shriek and

gambol his fellows behind the mouldering wainscot. Or stay for a moment

looking down on the "marsh mosses" in the third stanza--of a green as

lively as a fairy's mantle in the sunlight, gilding the waters of the

blackened sluice. So piece by piece the words of the poem build up in

the imagination this solitary house with its forsaken Mariana, whom

Tennyson himself had seen in the dream conferred on him by another

poet, Shakespeare, in _Measure for Measure_:

_Isabella._ Can this be so? did _Angelo_ so leave her?

_Duke._ Left her in her teares, and dried not one of them

with his comfort: swallowed his vowes whole,

pretending in her discoveries of dishonour: in

few, bestowed on her her owne lamentation,

which she yet weares for his sake: and he, a

marble to her teares, is washed with them, but

relents not.

_Isabella._ What a merit were it in death to take this poore

maid from the world....

332. "YES TOR."

Turn your back on Okehampton and break out due South into the wilds of

Dartmoor, and there, "summering" together "beneath the empty skies,"

lie titanic Yes Tor and High Willes, rearing their bare vast shapes 700

yards into the air.

333. "TO HEARE THE MANDRAKE GRONE." (stanza 2)

Of the dangerous plant Mandrake ("its root in something the shape and

appearance of a man") is concocted Mandragora, one of the "drowsy

syrups." "The leaves and fruit be also dangerous, for they cause deadly

sleep, and peevish drowsiness." The fruit is "of the bigness of a

reasonable pippin, and as yellow as gold when it is thoroughly ripe":

fair without, ashes within. It is said that the mandrake's screams,

when it is dragged out of the ground, will send the hearer mad. So

the gatherer should first seal his ears, then tie the plant to a

dog's tail and hike him on to haul it out of its haunt! "Avicenna the

Arabian physician asserts that a Jew at Metz had a mandragore with a

human head, and the legs and body of a cock, which lived five weeks,

and was fed on lavender and earthworms, and, when dead, was preserved

in spirits." Even up to the nineteenth century dreaders or wishers of

witchcraft were wont to carry these monstrous little Erdmannikens in

bosom or pocket for an amulet or charm.

The "Basilisk," old books maintain, is a fabulous beast whose icy glare

freezes the gazer, and is mortal. Approach her then with a mirror; and

courage be your guide!

"HEMLOCK, HENBANE, ADDERS-TONGUE." (line 10)

Hemlock is that tall, dim-spotted plant of a sad green colour, and of

a scent "strong, heady and bad," which is "very cold and dangerous,"

especially when "digged in the dark."

Clammy henbane is woolly-leafed, with hollow dark-eyed flowers of a

purple-veined dingy yellow. "It lusts to grow in rancid soil, To 'stil

its deadly oil."

Moonwort is the meek-looking little flowering fern that has the power

to break locks, and to make any horse that chances to tread upon it

cast his shoes.

The livid-flowered, cherry like-fruited dwale, enoron, or nightshade is

the most "daungerous" plant in England. While leopard's bane--though it

bears a bright-yellow daisy-like flower, and witches are said to fear

sun-colour--is venomous to animals.

I am uncertain of adder's tongue, for the fern of this name cures sore

eyes; and cuckoo-pint which is also so called, is "a remedy for poison

and the plague"!

Of these six insidious plants only one is openly mentioned by

Shakespeare, and they appear to have few country names, unlike,

for example, the purple orchis, "which has so many," says Nicholas

Culpeper, "that they would fill a sheet of paper": long-purples,

dead-men's fingers, crake-feet, giddy-gandy, neat-legs, geese and

goslings, and gander-gooses, being a few choice specimens.

334. "THE RAVEN."

Underneath an old oak tree

There was of swine a huge company,

That grunted as they crunched the mast:

For that was ripe, and fell full fast.

Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high:

One acorn they left, and no more might you spy.

Next came a Raven, that liked not such folly:

He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy!

Blacker was he than blackest jet,

Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet.

He picked up the acorn and buried it straight

By the side of a river both deep and great.

Where then did the Raven go?

He went high and low,

Over hill, over dale, did the black Raven go.

Many Autumns, many Springs

Travelled he with wandering wings:

Many Summers, many Winters--

I can't tell half his adventures.

At length he came back, and with him a She,

And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree,

They built them a nest in the topmost bough,

And young ones they had, and were happy enow.

But soon came a Woodman in leathern guise,

His brow, like a pent-house, hung over his eyes.

He'd an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke,

But with many a hem! and a sturdy stroke,

At length he brought down the poor Raven's own oak.

His young ones were killed; for they could not depart,

And their mother did die of a broken heart.

The boughs from the trunk the Woodman did sever;

And they floated it down on the course of the river.

They sawed it in planks, and its bark they did strip,

And with this tree and others they made a good ship.

The ship, it was launched; but in sight of the land

Such a storm there did rise as no ship could withstand.

It bulged on a rock, and the waves rush'd in fast:

Round and round flew the raven, and cawed to the blast.

He heard the last shriek of the perishing souls--

See! see! o'er the topmast the mad water rolls!

Right glad was the Raven, and off he went fleet,

And Death riding home on a cloud he did meet,

And he thanked him again and again for this treat:

They had taken his all, and REVENGE IT WAS SWEET!

S. T. COLERIDGE

"Seventeen or eighteen years ago," wrote Coleridge in 1817, "an artist

of some celebrity was so pleased with this doggerel that he amused

himself with the thought of making a Child's Picture Book of it; but he

could not hit on a picture for the four lines beginning, 'Many Autumns,

many Springs.' I suggested a _Round-about_ with four seats, and the

four seasons, as children, with Time for the shew-man."

335. "A THOUSAND DARLING IMPS." (stanza 19)

"Aeriel spirits," says Robert Burton, "are such as keep quarter most

part in the air, cause many tempests, thunder, and lightnings, tear

oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain

stones, ... wool, frogs, etc., counterfeit armies in the air, strange

noises, swords, etc."

Nothing vexed Linnet Sara more than to be asked if there were any such

darling imps or spectres or ghosts or blackamoors in Thrae. All such to

her were nothing but idle fiddle-faddle. But Reginald Scot, who wrote

_The Discoverie of Witchcraft_ (1584), had another kind of kitchen

company when he was young.

"... Our mothers maide," he says, of his childhood, "so terrified

us with ... bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags,

fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens, kit with the cansticke,

tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes,

changlings, Incubus, Robin goodfellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man

in the oke, the hellwaine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob

gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we were afraid

of our own shadowes: in so much as some never feare the divill, but in

a dark night; ..."

There seems to be no mention here of the salamander--a creature at

least as rarely seen by mortal eyes as the puckle or firedrake.

"When I was about five years old," says Benvenuto Cellini, "my father

happened to be in a basement-chamber of our house, where they had been

washing, and where a good fire of oak logs was still burning; he had a

viol in his hand and was playing and singing alone beside the fire. The

weather was very cold. Happening to look into the fire, he espied in

the middle of the most burning flames a little creature like a lizard,

which was sporting in the core of the intensest coals. Becoming aware

of what the thing was, he had my sister and me called, and pointing it

out to us children, gave me a great box on the ears, which caused me to

cry with all my might. Then he pacified me by saying, 'My dear little

boy, I am not striking you for anything that you have done, but only to

make you remember that the lizard you see in the fire is a salamander,

a creature which has never been seen before by any of whom we have

credible information.' So saying he gave me some pieces of money, and

kissed me."

"BELL AND WHIP AND HORSE'S TAIL" (stanza 22)

--such in old days was the Witch's vile punishment if she escaped

drowning: to be whipped, tied to a horse's tail, and rung through the

crowded streets.

"Agramie," I suppose, is agrimony, which, if worn by the wary, will

enable the wearer to detect witches. Their eyes too will betray them,

for _there_ you will find no tiny image of yourself reflected as in the

eyes of the honest. And if you would be rid of their company, pluck a

sprig of scarlet pimpernel, and repeat this charm:

Herbe pimpernell, I have thee found

Growing upon Christ Jesus' ground:

The same guift the Lord Jesus gave unto thee,

When he shed his blood on the tree,

Arise up, pimpernell, and goe with me.

And God blesse me,

And all that shall wear _thee_. AMEN.

"Say this fifteen dayes together, twice a day, morning earlye fasting,

and in the evening full."

Indeed, at last, whatever the peril, a quiet heart and heaven's

courage, are charm enough:

I say that we are wound

With mercy round and round

As if with air: ...

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS

336. "THE WATER KELPY" (stanza 8)

is a fiend that haunts in rivers and desolate waters. It is of

horse-shape, and the sound of its neighings is a boding of death to the

traveller.

"Thus did the evil creatures often press me hard, but, as was meet, I

served them well with my war-sword; they had no joyous fill by eating

me, wicked destroyers, sitting round their feast nigh the bottom of the

sea; but in the morning, wounded by the sword, slain by the dagger,

they lay up along the sea-strand, so that they could never more hinder

seafarers on their course in the deep channel.

Light came from the east, the bright beacon of the Lord; the waves were

stilled, and I could descry the sea-headlands, those wind-swept walls."

_Beowulf_, translated by C. B. TINKER

"'And what is the sea?' asked Will.

'The sea!' cried the miller. 'Lord help us all, it is the greatest

thing God made! That is where all the water in the world runs down

into a great salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as

innocent-like as a child; but they do say when the wind blows it gets

up into water-mountains bigger than any of ours, and swallows down

great ships bigger than our mill, and makes such a roaring that you can

hear it miles away upon the land. There are great fish in it five times

bigger than a bull, and one old serpent as long as our river and as old

as all the world, with whiskers like a man, and a crown of silver on

her head.'"

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

341. "THE WANDERING SPECTRE."

"... The usewall Method for a curious Person to get a transient Sight

of this otherwise invisible Crew of Subterraneans, ... is to put his

left Foot under the Wizard's right Foot, and the Seer's Hand is put on

the Inquirer's Head, who is to look over the Wizard's right Shoulder

... then will he see a Multitude of Wights, like furious hardie Men,

flocking to him haistily from all Quarters, as thick as Atoms in the

Air.... Thes thorow Fear strick him breathless and speechless."

So says "Mr. Robert Kirk, Minister at Aberfoill," in his _Secret

Commonwealth_ of 1691.

Of these invisible wights the womenkind "are said to Spin very fine,

to Dy, to Tossue, and Embroyder, but whether only curious Cob-webs,

impalpable Rainbows ... I leave to conjecture."

343. "AND CLOOTIE'S WAUR NOR A WOMAN WAS."

(stanza 19)

A strip or patch of wild weedy uncropped ground (like the Sluggard's

garden) that in England is called _No Man's Land_, the Scots country

folk call _Clootie's Croft_ (or Clootie's little field). They hand

it over by name, as it were, to the Fiend, hoping that he may rest

content with its harvest of nettle and bramble and burr, and not range

elsewhere. It is an old belief that if, like Christian, the wayfarer

meets Apollyon straddling across his path, he may have to withstand him

not only with sword and staff, but with his wits. Just so, too, in old

times, sovereign princes would test strangers with dark questions and

riddles. In this ballad the Fiend disguised as a knight comes wooing

at a Widow's door, in the next he is abroad on the high road. Jennifer

and the wee boy kept up their hearts, their wits about them, their eyes

open, and "had the last word"; which, says Mr. Sidgwick, is a mighty

powerful charm against evil spirits--as against Witches are the herbs

vervain, dill, basil, hyssop, periwinkle and rue. Iron, too; the cross,

and running water.

Here is another such encounter from _The White Wallet_--packed with

poems new and old. You can almost hear the voices of the two speakers

standing together in the quiet and dust of the morning road:

MEET-ON-THE-ROAD.

"Now, pray, where are you going, child?" said Meet-on-the-Road.

"To school, sir, to school, sir," said Child-as-It-Stood.

"What have you in your basket, child?" said Meet-on-the-Road.

"My dinner, sir, my dinner, sir," said Child-as-It-Stood.

"What have you for your dinner, child?" said Meet-on-the-Road.

"Some pudding, sir, some pudding, sir," said Child-as-It-Stood.

"Oh, then I pray, give me a share," said Meet-on-the-Road.

"I've little enough for myself, sir," said Child-as-It-Stood.

"What have you got that cloak on for?" said Meet-on-the-Road.

"To keep the wind and cold from me," said Child-as-It-Stood.

"I wish the wind would blow through you," said Meet-on-the-Road.

"Oh, what a wish! Oh, what a wish!" said Child-as-It-Stood.

"Pray what are those bells ringing for?" said Meet-on-the-Road.

"To ring bad spirits home again," said Child-as-It-Stood.

"Oh, then, I must be going, child!" said Meet-on-the-Road.

"So fare you well, so fare you well," said Child-as-It-Stood.

And here, for titbits and _bonnes bouches_, are Seven Ancient Riddles

from _Popular Rhymes_--in case:

i.

The fiddler and his wife,

The piper and his mother,

Ate three half-cakes, three whole cakes,

And three quarters of another.

ii.

A house full, a yard full,

And ye can't catch a bowl full.

iii.

As I was going o'er London Bridge,

I heard something crack;

Not a man in all England

Can mend that!

iv.

I had a little sister,

They called her Pretty Peep;

She wades in the waters,

Deep, deep, deep!

She climbs up the mountains,

High, high, high;

My poor little sister,

She has but one eye.

v.

As I was going o'er yon moor of moss,

I met a man on a gray horse;

He whipp'd and he wail'd,

I ask'd him what he ail'd;

He said he was going to his father's funeral,

Who died seven years before he was born!

vi.

As I looked out o' my chamber window,

I heard something fall;

I sent my maid to pick it up,

But she couldn't pick it all.

vii.

Black within, and red without,

Four corners round about.

ANSWERS.

i. 1¾ cakes each; since, if Mr. Piper marries, his wife will be Mr.

and Mrs. Fiddler's dear daughter-in-law. ii. Smoke; iii. Ice; iv. A

Star; v. The poor soul in the coffin was by trade a dyer; vi. Snuff

(!); vii. A Chimney (in Days of Yore).

344. "THE FAUSE KNICHT."

Such visitants, it would appear, have marvellous power even over faces

or shapes in stone:

He's tied his steed to the kirk-stile,

Syne wrang-gaites round the kirk gaed he;

When the Mer-Man entered the kirk-door,

Away the sma' images turned their e'e....

Wrang-gaites must mean widdershins, left to right, West to East, the

opposite to _deiseal_ (deshal)--to the right, Sunwards.

Here is another such visitor--one who considerately intrudes not all at

once but little by little, bone by bone:

THE STRANGE VISITOR.

A wife was sitting at her reel ae night;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' braid braid soles, and sat down at the fireside;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' sma' legs, and sat down on the braid braid soles;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' muckle muckle knees, and sat down on the sma'

sma' legs;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' sma' sma' thees, and sat down on the muckle muckle

knees;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' muckle muckle hips, and sat down on the sma' sma'

thees;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a sma' sma' waist, and sat down on the muckle muckle hips;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' braid braid shouthers, and sat down on the sma'

sma' waist;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' sma' sma' arms, and sat down on the braid braid

shouthers;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a pair o' muckle muckle hands, and sat down on the sma' sma'

arms;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a sma' sma' neck, and sat down on the braid braid shouthers;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

In came a great big head, and sat down on the sma' sma' neck;

And aye she sat, and aye she reeled, and aye she wished for company.

"What way hae ye sic braid braid feet?" quo' the wife.

"Muckle ganging, muckle ganging."

"What way hae ye sic sma' sma' legs?"

"_Aih-h-h_!--late--and _wee-e-e_ moul."

"What way hae ye sic muckle muckle knees?"

"Muckle praying, muckle praying."

"What way hae ye sic sma' sma' thees?"

"_Aih-h-h_!--late--and _wee-e-e_ moul."

"What way hae ye sic big big hips?"

"Muckle sitting, muckle sitting."

"What way hae ye sic a sma' sma' waist?"

"_Aih-h-h_!--late--and _wee-e-e_ moul."

"What way hae ye sic braid braid shouthers?"

"Wi' carrying broom, wi' carrying broom."

"What way hae ye sic sma' sma' arms?"

"_Aih-h-h_!--late--and _wee-e-e_ moul."

"What way hae ye sic muckle muckle hands?"

"Threshing wi' an iron flail, threshing wi' an iron flail."

"What way hae ye sic a sma' sma' neck?"

"_Aih-h-h_!--late--and _wee-e-e_ moul."

"What way hae ye sic a muckle muckle head?"

"Muckle wit, muckle wit."

"What do you come for?"

"For YOU!"

345. "CHRISTABEL."

I have included only these few stanzas of this familiar magical poem

because a book is but one book, and to print everything as lovely or

almost as lovely would need many.

In reading it, as Coleridge explained, all that is necessary to ensure

its lilt and cadence is to remember that every line, however few or

many its words or syllables, has four accents, and that these fall in

accord with the meaning of the lines as one reads them with clear eyes,

attentive ear, and understanding. In his tale of Genevieve there is yet

another false and lovely Fiend:

... But when I told the cruel scorn

That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,

And that he crossed the mountain-woods,

Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,

And sometimes from the darksome shade,

And sometimes starting up at once

In green and sunny glade,--

There came and looked him in the face

An angel beautiful and bright;

And that he knew it was a Fiend,

This miserable Knight----

"A TOOTHLESS MASTIFF BITCH."

Here is a description of one _with_ teeth--a dog seldom seen now. It is

taken from a German book on husbandry, translated by Barnaby Goodge,

and is quoted in _Animal Lore_:

"First the mastie that keepeth the house: for this purpose you must

provide you such a one, as hath a large and a mightie body, a great

and a shrill voyce, that both with his barking he may discover, and

with his sight dismay the theefe, yea, being not seene, with the

horror of his voice put him to flight; his stature must neither be

long nor short, but well set, his head great, his eyes sharpe, and

fiery, ... his countenance like a lion, his brest great and shaghayrd,

his shoulders broad, his legges bigge, his tayle short, his feet very

great; his disposition must neither be too gentle, nor too curst, that

he neither fawne upon a theefe, nor flee (fly) upon his friends; very

waking, no gadder abroad, not lavish of his mouth, barking without

cause. Neither maketh it any matter though he be not swift: for he is

but to fight at home, and to give warning of the enemie." And his name

is little Bingo!

347. "ONCE A FAIR AND STATELY PALACE."

The radiant palace of this poem is indeed far away--the other side of

dream and night. Its monstrous word, _Porphyrogene_, means a prince, a

child-Royal, one born in the chamber of some Eastern palace walled with

rare porphyry.

350. "SWEET WHISPERS ARE HEARD BY THE TRAVELLER."

(stanza 6)

On a poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept;

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aërial kisses

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.

He will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,

Nor heed nor see, what things they be;

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living man,

Nurslings of immortality!...

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

352. "MY A DILDIN."

This, 353, 355 and 356 are four more Singing-Game Rhymes, worn down

into almost nonsensical jingle by multitudinous tongues in long long

usage. (See No. 41, page 36).

And--since in my humble opinion it is not easy to get too much of this

kind of good thing--here is another:

Bobby Shaft is gone to sea,

With silver buckles at his knee;

When he'll come home he'll marry me,

Pretty Bobby Shaft!

Bobby Shaft is fat and fair,

Combing down his yellow hair;

He's my love for evermair,

Pretty Bobby Shaft!

352. "WE ARE COME TO COURT."

King Edelbrode cam owre the sea,

_Fa la lilly_.

All for to marry a gay ladye,

_Fa la lilly_.

Her lilly hands, sae white and sma',

_Fa la lilly_.

Wi' gouden rings were buskit braw,

_Fa la lilly_....

And here is a Bride of Elizabeth's day whom I chanced on in that packed

and inexhaustible book, _Shakespeare's England_. When "buskit braw,"

she must have been as lovely to see as a hawthorn in May or a wax

candle in a silver shrine:

"The bride being attired in a gown of sheeps russet, and a kirtle of

fine worsted, her head attired with a billiment of gold, and her hair

as yellow as gold hanging down behind her, which was curiously combed

and pleated, according to the manner in those days: she was led to

church between two sweet boys, with bride-laces and rosemary tied about

their silken sleeves.... Then was there a fair bride-cup of silver and

gilt carried before her wherein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded

very fair, hung about with silken ribands of all colours: next was

there a noise of musicians, that played all the way before her: after

her came all the chiefest maidens of the country, some bearing great

bride-cakes, and some garlands of wheat, finely gilded, and so she

passed to the Church."

As for the silken ribands they may have been of Drakes colour or Ladies

blush or Gozelinge colour or Marigold or Isabel or Peas porridge tawny

or Popingay blew or Lusty gallant, but they were certainly not Judas

colour, Devil in the hedge, or Dead Spaniard.

355. "AND FEED HER WI' NEW MILK AND BREAD."

The Yellow-haired Laddie sat down on yon brae,

Cries--Milk the ewes, Lassie! let nane o' them gae!

And ay she milked, and ay she sang--

The Yellow-haired Laddie shall be my gudeman!

And ay she milked, and ay she sang--

The Yellow-haired Laddie shall be my gudeman!...

ALLAN RAMSAY

357. QUOTH JOHN TO JOAN.

This old song, which was set to music in the reign of Henry VIII.,

comes (like Dallyaunce of No. 35), out of a Morality Play, _Lusty

Juventus_, the author of which is said to be one "R. Wever," whose body

has now for many a century been slumbering on in its cocoon.

358. MILK-WHITE FINGERS, CHERRY NOSE.

This is the only poem I have ever seen in which the midmost feature of

a pretty face is compared to a cherry. And yet a frosty morning must

have given many a dainty nose that fair bright coral colour.

So too, Bob Cherry, in these lines _To His Lady_:

Black-heart were mine to love not thy

White-heart so sweet and tender;

Be kind, my dear, for--Summer by--

What fruits hath cold December?

359. "OR THE BEES THEIR CAREFUL KING."

In old times the "Governor" of a Bee Hive was sometimes referred to as

the King and sometimes as the Queen. The choice depended in part on

which kind of monarch was on the throne. There is an entrancing story

of the middle ages, told by Mr. Tickner Edwardes in his book on the

Honey Bee.

"A certaine simple woman, on finding that her bees were storing little

honey for her and were perishing of "the murraine," stole one of the

holy wafers from the priest, and for miraculous remedy concealed it

in one of her hives. "Whereupon the Murraine ceased and the Honie

abounded. The Woman, therefore lifting up the hive at the due time to

take out the Honie, saw there (most strange to be seene) a Chappell

built by the Bees, with an altar to it, the wals adorned by marvellous

skill of architecture, with windowes conveniently set in their places:

also a doore and a steeple with bells. And the Host being laid upon

the altar, the Bees making a sweet noise, flew around it." Apart from

"the singing masons building roofs of gold," the gluttonous drones,

the sentries, wax-makers, bread-kneaders, nurses, etc., there are the

Queen's Ladies-in-waiting. "For difference from the rest they beare

for their crest a tuft or tossell, in some coloured yellow, in some

murrey, in manner of a plume; whereof some turne downward like an

Ostrich-feather, others stand upright like a Hern-top." But for truths

even stranger than fantasy regarding bees and their kind, go to Henri

Fabre.

360. "AND HERE, AND HERE."

As Flora slept and I lay waking,

I smiled to see a bird's mistaking,

For from a bough it down did skip

And for a cherry pecked her lip....

362. "MY HEART IS GLADDER THAN ALL THESE."

How many times do I love thee, dear?

Tell me how many thoughts there be

In the atmosphere

Of the new fall'n year,

Whose white and sable hours appear

The latest flake of eternity:

So times do I love thee, dear!

How many times do I love again?

Tell me how many beads there are

In a silver chain

Of evening rain

Unravelled from the tumbling main,

And threading the eye of a yellow star:

So many times do I love again!

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES

363.

The word screen (line 4) means, I think, "Hide and shelter those smiles

away that in their beauty seem to burn in the air": for all beauty

resembles radiance in its influence on the mind. And this recalls to

memory Southwell's poem, _The Burning Babe_, No. 256.

364. "A SONNET OF THE MOON."

The closer one looks at and examines a fine _sonnet_--its way of

rhyming, its rise, poise, flight and fall, the ease and exactitude with

which what is said in it fills its mould or form--the more, I was going

to say, one should hesitate before attempting to write another. This

particular sonnet (like No. 361), is of the English or Shakespearean

kind, and is so lovely a thing that only a close attention would notice

the carelessness of its rhymes. No. 342 is an example of the form which

our sixteenth century poets borrowed from Italy. Comparison of them

shows that, as with the old Chinese ginger jars, so in poetry: not only

is the syrup delightful, but even the pot may be interesting.

Coleridge wrote few sonnets, and this is his explanation of the length

one must be: "It is confined to fourteen lines, because as some

particular number is necessary, and that particular number must be a

small one, it may as well be fourteen as any other number. When no

reason can be adduced against a thing, Custom is a sufficient reason

for it."

When I read this last remark for the first time it was as if my mind

had been startled into attention as one's body is when it collides

with a stranger in the street. There is a wide wisdom in it. How many

natural, human and delightful things there are in this world indeed for

which Custom is a sufficient reason: Children, for instance, daisies

in the grass, skylarks in the clouds, dreams in sleep, rhymes, gay

clothes, friendship, laughter.

"THE PALE QUEEN."

There is the apparition of a lovely face in the Moon--proud and

mute--to be discovered by careful eyes usually on the extreme right of

the disc, her own eyes gazing towards the left.

368. "IT WAS IN AND ABOUT THE MARTINMAS TIME."

This old Scottish song was a favourite of Oliver Goldsmith's in his

childhood. "The music of the finest singer," he said, "is dissonance

to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with _Johnny

Armstrong's Last Good-night_, or _The Cruelty of Barbara Allen_.

As with the Scottish ballads so with this last poem--it is the brevity

and bareness with which the story is told and is not told that sets it

apart. Without one express word to prove it so, we know that Sir John

had always loved the proud Barbara even though he had spoken lightly of

her, and that she too had always loved him, though she refuses the word

that would have saved his life.

371. "I NEVER HAD BUT ONE TRUE LOVE, IN COLD GRAVE SHE WAS

LAIN."

Yet another tragic and sorrowful poem of which, to some fancies, there

may be too many in this book already. Well, here is the story of the

beautiful Princess Uillanita: She cared only for flowers white and

colourless as dew in the first light of day, or as laundered linen

blanching on a hedge of thorn. And she came one still evening, when she

was in search of what she could not find, to a valley wherein a forest

gloomed above a deep but placid river. Within the forest, refreshed by

the mists of the river, grew none but flowers blue and dark and purple,

and such was the young Princess's hatred of them that she covered her

eyes with her hands, fled on, and so lost her way.

In the middle of the night and long after she had wept herself to

sleep, the wailing of a nocturnal bird pierced into her dreams, and she

woke to find one solitary star of the colourlessness of Vega shining

alone in radiance in the space of sky betwixt the branches above her

head. Its thin ray silvered down--spearlike in its straightness--and

of a beam easily sufficing to irradiate a tiny clustering flower

which stood scarcely visible in the moss at her hand's side, and was

drenching the air with its fragrance. It was a flower utterly strange

to her, whiter than hoarfrost, fairer than foam.

The enravished Princess gazed spellbound. "Why," whispered she to

herself, in the quiet of the dark gigantic forest; "if I had not wept

at the flowers of this sombre forest, if I had not lost my way, if I

had not been moved in my sleep to awaken, I never should have seen this

crystal thing; that is lovelier than I deemed Paradise itself could

bring to bloom." And she kissed the thin-spun petals, and happily fell

again asleep.

372. "A LAMENT."

Only two stanzas out of six, and these, maybe, a little difficult in

the old Scots:

Depart, depart, depart!

Alas! I must depart

From her that has my heart

With heart full sore;

Against my will indeed

And can find no remede--

I wait the pains of death--

Can do no more....

Adieu mine own sweet thing,

My joy and comforting,

My mirth and solacing

Of earthly gloir:

Farewell, my lady bright,

And my remembrance right,

Farewell, and have good night--

I say no more.

380. TO HELEN.

Who "the wayworn wanderer" is, I am uncertain; but apart from its rare

music, how long a journey awaits the imagination in this poem, and how

closely inwoven is its thought. Yet it is said to have been written

when Poe was in his early 'teens.

381. "THERE IS A LADY."

Mr. Nahum's picture for this poem was of a little winged boy at

evening, his quiver of arrows on his back, his bow the perch of a

nightingale, and himself lying fast asleep under a hawthorn bush in

full flower--a narrow green sun-dappled river nearby, rosy clouds and

birds in the air, and strange snow-peaked hills afar.

"TILL I DIE."

... Only our love hath no decay;

This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;

Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

JOHN DONNE

383. "IT IS NOT SO."

Silly boy 'tis ful Moon yet, thy night as day shines clearely.

Had thy youth but wit to feare, thou couldst not love so dearely.

Shortly wilt thou mourne when all thy pleasures are bereavèd;

Little knows he how to love that never was deceivèd....

Yet be just and constant still! Love may beget a wonder,

Not unlike a Summer's frost, or Winter's fatall thunder.

He that holds his Sweethart true, unto his day of dying,

Lives, of all that ever breathed, most worthy the envỳing.

THOMAS CAMPION

385.

In this poem, as in all Christina Rossetti's work, there is a rhythm

and poise, a serpentining of music, so delicate that on clumsy lips it

will vanish as rapidly as the bloom from a plum. Indeed, each stanza is

like a branch (with its twigs) of a wild damson-tree, its wavering line

broken and beautified with bud, flower and leaf. And certainly as fresh

an air, and as clear a light, stirs and dwells in the poem as on the

tree itself in April.

387.

This is from Part II., Act II., Scene i. of "Zapolya." Glycine sings

unseen in a cavern--her voice comforting her lover wandering forlorn by

night "in a savage wood."

389.

For I'll cut my green coat a foot above my knee,

And I'll clip my yellow locks an inch below mine ee.

_Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny._

I'll buy me a white cut, forth for to ride,

And I'll go seek him through the world that is so wide.

_Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny._

391. "CHIMBORAZO, COTOPAXI."

In medieval days it seems that a traveller here and there, happily

supposing the world to be a floating island of indiscoverable

dimensions, hung in the wilds of space, and not knowing that it was

merely an "oblate spheroid," would journey clean round it and so come

back, to his amazement, to the place from which he started. Here is

such an experience from Sir John Mandeville, in his own words: "It was

told that a certain worthy man departed some time from our Country for

to go search the World.... He passed India and the Isles beyond it,

where are more than 5000 Isles, and so long and for so many seasons he

went by Sea and Land, and so environed the World, that he came at last

to an Isle whereon he heard spoken his own language--a calling of oxen

in the Plough--such Words in fact as men were wont to speak to Beasts

in his own country. Whereof he greatly marvelled, knowing not how that

might be." For there--as if it were a ghost or spectre--_there_ was

the chimney of his own house smoking up into the clear morning air!

And what did he do, maybe? He stared; he sighed; he grew pale; he

shuddered: and--he turned back!

392. "HALLO MY FANCY."

For the first sight of this poem I most gratefully thank my friend Mr.

Ivor Gurney, though no doubt it was in Mr. Nahum's Book somewhere, and

I was too indolent at the time to copy it out. The poem was written

by William Cleland while he was still at St. Andrews. All else I

know of him is that he was born about 1661, and fell at Dunkeld in

1689. There is nothing in English to my knowledge that resembles

it. _Erra Pater_ (stanza 4) was the name given to a busy astrologer

and almanac-concocter, William Lilly, of the time. King Phalaris's

monstrous bull was of brass: he perished in it.

By "the tapers" (stanza 2) is meant, I fancy, those phosphor-like fires

that gather on the yard-arms of ships at sea when the air is electric

with tempest. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's sailors were fearful at sight of

this apparition, and of a monster, too, that appeared swimming in the

waves beside their frigate, the _Squirrel_, a little before she and her

riding lights disappeared for ever.

"... Men which all their life time had occupied the Sea, never saw

more outragious Seas. We had also upon our maine yard, an apparition of

a little fire by night, which seamen doe call Castor and Pollux. But we

had onely one, which they take an evill signe of more tempest.... The

same Monday night, about twelve of the clocke ... suddenly her lights

were out ... and withall our watch cryed, _the Generall was cast away_,

which was too true. For in that moment, the Frigat was devoured and

swallowed up of the Sea ..."

As for Cupid (stanza 5), he is said to be the slyest archer that ever

shot arrow--and a dangerous child either to entertain (as the poem

proves that begins as follows):

Cupid abroade was 'lated in the night,

His wings were wet with ranging in the raine;

Harbour he sought, to mee hee took his flight,

To dry his plumes I heard the boy complaine.

I opte the doore and graunted his desire,

I rose my selfe, and made the wagge a fire....

or--as yet another poem shows--to take as a scholar:

I dreamt by me I saw fair Venus stand,

Holding young Cupid in her lovely hand,

And said, kind Shepherd, I a scholar bring

My little son, to learn of you to sing....

And last, the pelican (in stanza 7). She was supposed in old days to be

"the lovingest bird that is," since at need she would pierce her breast

with her bill to feed her young ones. The plaintive singing of the

dying swan I have never heard, except in Tennyson's words:

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,

Wide, wild, and open to the air,

Which had built up everywhere

An under-roof of doleful gray.

With an inner voice the river ran,

Adown it floated a dying swan,

And loudly did lament.

It was the middle of the day.

Ever the weary wind went on,

And took the reed-tops as it went....

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,

And white against the cold-white sky,

Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept,

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;

Above in the wind was the swallow,

Chasing itself at its own wild will,

And far thro' the marish green and still

The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

Hearke canst thou heare me? I will play the Swan,

And dye in Musicke: Willough, Willough, Willough....

_Othello_

393. "COLUMBUS'S DOOM-BURDENED CARAVELS." (line 13)

"... The next day, Thursday, October 11, 1492, was destined to be for

ever memorable in the history of the world.... The people on the _Santa

Maria_ saw some petrels and a green branch in the water; the _Pinta_

saw a reed and two small sticks carved with iron, and one or two other

pieces of reeds and grasses that had been grown on shore, as well as

a small board. Most wonderful of all, the people of the _Nina_ saw 'a

little branch full of dog roses';.... The day drew to its close; and

after nightfall, according to their custom, the crews of the ships

repeated the _Salve Regina_. Afterwards the Admiral addressed the

people and sailors of his ship, 'very merry and pleasant,'.... The moon

was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o'clock. The

first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint starlight

into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the

forecastles of the three ships. At ten o'clock Columbus was walking on

the poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead. The

light seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern

held in some one's hand and waved up and down. The Admiral called Pedro

Gutierrez to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also

saw the light. Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he

saw the light; but he did not.... Dawn came at last, flooding the sky

with lemon and saffron and scarlet and orange, until at last the pure

gold of the sun glittered on the water. And when it rose it showed the

sea-weary mariners an island lying in the blue sea ahead of them: the

island of Guanahani; San Salvador....

_Christopher Columbus_, FILSON YOUNG

395. "TO SEA, TO SEA."

... To the ocean now I fly,

And those happy climes that lie

Where day never shuts his eye.

Up in the broad fields of the sky;

There I suck the liquid air

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three

That sing about the golden tree:

Along the crispèd shades and bowers

Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;

The Graces, and the rosy bosomed Hours,

Thither all their bounties bring;

There eternal Summer dwells,

And west winds, with musky wing,

About the cedared alleys fling

Nard and Cassia's balmy smells....

But now my task is smoothly done,

I can fly, or I can run,

Quickly to the green earth's end,

Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend;

And from thence can soar as soon

To the corners of the moon.

Mortals, that would follow me,

Love Virtue; she alone is free:

She can teach ye how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime;

Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

JOHN MILTON

_Master._ Steersman, how stands the wind?

_Steersman._ Full north-north-east.

_Master._ What course?

_Steersman._ Full south-south-west.

_Master._ No worse, and blow so fair,

Then sink despair,

Come solace to the mind!

Ere night, we shall the haven find.

JOHN DOWLAND

"CAVED TRITONS' AZURE DAY" (line 12)

--Dark-fated Clarence in _King Richard III_. dreamt of that "azure day":

... As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the Hatches,

Me thought that Glouster stumbled, and in falling

Strooke me (that thought to stay him) over-board,

Into the tumbling billowes of the maine.

O Lord, methought what paine it was to drowne,

What dreadfull noise of water in mine eares,

What sightes of ugly death within mine eyes....

Methought I saw a thousand fearfull wrackes:

A thousand men that Fishes gnawed upon:

Wedges of Gold, great Anchors, heapes of Pearle,

Inestimable Stones, unvalewed Jewels,

All scattered in the bottome of the Sea.

Some lay in dead-men's Sculles; and in the holes

Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,

(As 'twere in scorne of eyes) reflecting Gemmes,

That wooed the slimy bottome of the deepe,

And mocked the dead bones that lay scattred by....

396. "JEWELS MORE RICH THAN ORMUS SHOWS."

(line 20)

Mr. Nahum's picture to this was of a man clothed in rags that must

once have been rich and pompous. He sits, in the picture, gnawing his

nails upon a heap of what appears to be precious stones and lumps of

gold. All around him stretch the sands of the seashore, and there is

a little harbour with a decayed quay, its river-mouth silted up with

ooze and flotsam, so that nothing but a row-boat could find entrance

there. An immense sun burns in the sky; and, though a thread of fresh

water flows nearby, the man among the jewels seems to be tormented with

thirst. For Ormus, or Hormuz, on its narrow island of wild-coloured

rocks, date-palms, parrots and many birds, was once the rich mart

and treasure-house between Persia and India--spices, pearls, ivory,

gold, precious stones, and, in particular, the diamond, being its

merchandise. In 1507 the Portuguese Conqueror Alfonso Albuquerque stole

it from its dark princes. In 1622 Shah Abbas the Great razed it to the

ground. To-day it is but a waste, inhabited by a few fishermen and

diggers, its only commodities--that once were gems--salt and sulphur;

while still in the height of its Summer blows Julot, Harmatan, Il

Sirocco, the Flame-Wind, so deadly in its breath that the troops of

an army of 1600 horsemen and 6000 foot, says Marco Polo, marching to

punish the city for neglecting to pay tribute to the King of Kîrman,

and camping overnight without its walls, were baked next noon as dry

as pumice, and not a voice among them to tell the tale, though their

bodily shape and colour seemed to appearance unchanged. To protect

themselves against this Julot, the citizens of Ormus would build huts

of sheltering osier-work over the water, and in the heat of the morning

would stand immersed in its coolness up to the chin.

"APPLES" (line 23)

--these are pineapples, the "price" of the next line meaning

excellence. "Ambergris" (line 28), is a rare and costly stuff which, as

its name tells, resembles grey amber. It has a wondrously sweet smell,

was once used in cooking, and is disgorged by the whale that supplies

the world with the comforting ointment of childhood called Spermaceti.

In Shakespeare's day, Marvell's "remote Bermudas" were known as the

"Isle of Divels"--because of the nocturnal yellings, cries and yelpings

that were reported to haunt them. English sailors, wrecked and cast

away on Great Bermuda in 1709, however, brought home in their boats of

cedar-wood the news that this wild music was caused (at least in part)

by descendants of the hogs that had been left there by the long-gone

Spaniard, Juan Bermudez and his men! They told, too, that it was an

island fair and commodious, of a gentle climate, and a sweet-smelling

air; and Shakespeare almost certainly had its enchantments in

mind when he wrote of Ariel, Caliban and Miranda. Was not Ariel in

Prospero's more solitary days called up at midnight "to fetch dewe from

the still-vext Bermoothes"?

To the Puritan voyagers of Andrew Marvell's poem the Islands were as

welcome and angelic as the Hesperides. And no poet could better tell

of them than he. For in Marvell's verse dwells a curious happiness,

like sunshine on a pool of water-lilies. Yet he, too, like other

dreamers, was a man of affairs, and of endless industry and zeal. He

was thrice Member of Parliament for his birthplace, Kingston-on-Hull,

and, with Milton, was one of Oliver Cromwell's Latin Secretaries. John

Aubrey describes him as "of a middling stature, pretty strong sett,

roundish face, cherry-cheek't, hazell eie, brown hair. He was in his

conversation very modest, and of very few words. And though he loved

wine, he would never drink heartilie in company, and was wont to say,

that, _he would not play the good fellow in any man's company in whose

hands he would not trust his life_.... He lies interred under the pewes

in the south side of St. Giles' church-in-the-fields, under the window

wherein is painted in glass a red lyon...." And there George Chapman,

William Shirley, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury share his rest.

397. "THAT TALKATIVE BALD-HEADED SEAMAN CAME."

(line 23)

"... And now my name; which way shall lead to all

My miseries after, that their sounds may fall

Through your ears also, and shew (having fled

So much affliction) first, who rests his head

In your embraces, when, so far from home,

I knew not where t' obtain it resting room:

I am Ulysses Laertiades,

The fear of all the world...."

_The Odysseys_, GEORGE CHAPMAN

398.

The prose "argument" to the "Ancient Mariner," which is almost as rare

a piece of reading as the Rime itself, has been omitted. But here is

a fragment of it relating to the passage on pages 390-4: "...The

Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him; but the ancient

Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his

horrible penance. He despiseth the creatures of the calm, and envieth

that _they_ should live, and so many lie dead. But the curse liveth

for him in the eye of the dead men. In his loneliness and fixedness

he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still

sojourn, yet still move onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to

them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their

own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are

certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.

"By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great

calm--their beauty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his heart.

The spell begins to break. By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient

Mariner is refreshed with rain. He heareth sounds and seeth strange

sights and commotions in the sky and the element. The bodies of the

ship's crew are inspired and inspirited, and the ship moves on; but not

by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by

a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the

guardian saint...."

"Daemons of earth or middle air" have been told of also by land

travellers--by Friar Odoric, for example, in the account of his journey

through Cathay during the years 1316-1330:

"Another great and terrible thing I saw. For, as I went through a

certain valley which lieth by the River of Delights, I saw therein many

dead corpses lying. And I heard also therein sundry kinds of music, but

chiefly nakers, which were marvellously played upon. And so great was

the noise thereof that very great fear came upon me. Now, this valley

is seven or eight miles long; and if any unbeliever enter therein he

quitteth it never again, but perisheth incontinently. Yet I hesitated

not to go in that I might see once for all what the matter was. And

when I had gone in I saw there, as I have said, such numbers of corpses

as no one without seeing it could deem credible. And at one side of the

valley, in the very rock, I beheld as it were the face of a man very

great and terrible, so very terrible indeed that for my exceeding great

fear my spirit seemed to die in me. Wherefore I made the sign of the

cross, and began continually to repeat VERBUM CARO FACTUM,

but I dared not at all to come nigh that face, but kept at seven or

eight paces from it. And so I came at length to the other end of the

valley, and there I ascended a hill of sand and looked around me. But

nothing could I descry, only I still heard those nakers to play which

were played so marvellously. And when I got to the top of that hill I

found there a great quantity of silver heaped up as it had been fishes'

scales, and some of this I put into my bosom. But as I cared nought

for it, and was at the same time in fear lest it should be a snare to

hinder my escape, I cast it all down again to the ground. And so by

God's grace I came forth scathless. Then all the Saracens, when they

heard of this, showed me great worship, saying that I was a baptised

and holy man. But those who had perished in that valley they said

belonged to the devil."

As an Arab journeyeth

Through a sand of Ayaman,

Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue,

Lagging by his side along;

And a rusty wingèd Death

Grating its low flight before,

Casting ribbèd shadows o'er

The blank desert, blank and tan:

He lifts by hap to'rd where the morning's roots are

His weary stare,--

Sees, although they plashless mutes are,

Set in a silver air

Fountains of gelid shoots are,

Making the daylight fairest fair;

Sees the palm and tamarind

Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;--

A sight like innocence when one has sinned

A green and maiden freshness smiling there,

While with unblinking glare

The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her....

_The Mirage_, FRANCIS THOMPSON

Thou to me art such a spring

As the Arab seeks at eve,

Thirsty from the shining sands;

There to bathe his face and hands,

While the sun is taking leave,

And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.

Thou to me art such a dream

As he dreams upon the grass,

While the bubbling coolness near

Makes sweet music in his ear;

And the stars that slowly pass

In solitary grandeur o'er him gleam.

Thou to me art such a dawn

As the dawn whose ruddy kiss

Wakes him to his darling steed;

And again the desert speed,

And again the desert bliss,

Lightens thro' his veins, and he is gone!

GEORGE MEREDITH

399. "HE TOLD OF WAVES." (line 28)

So, too, does the Ship's Captain in yet such another ore-loaden poem

of the marvellous, "The Sale of St. Thomas," by Lascelles Abercrombie,

telling how the saint in terror of the unknown would turn back from his

mission, is rebuked by his Master, and sold by him for twenty pieces of

silver to the Captain of a slant-sailed vessel bound for the barbarous

Indies. Here is but a fragment of the poem:

"... _A Ship's Captain._ You are my man, my passenger?

_Thomas._ I am.

I go to India with you.

_Captain._ Well, I hope so.

There's threatening in the weather. Have you a mind

To hug your belly to the slanted deck,

Like a louse on a whip-top, when the boat

Spins on an axle in the hissing gales?

_Thomas._ Fear not. 'Tis likely indeed that storms are now

Plotting against our voyage; ay, no doubt

The very bottom of the sea prepares

To stand up mountainous or reach a limb

Out of his night of water and huge shingles,

That he and the waves may break our keel. Fear not;

Like those who manage horses, I've a word

Will fasten up within their evil natures

The meanings of the winds and waves and reefs.

_Captain._ You have a talisman? I have one too;

I know not if the storms think much of it.

I may be shark's meat yet. And would your spell

Be daunting to a cuttle, think you now?

We had a bout with one on our way here;

It had green lidless eyes like lanterns, arms

As many as the branches of a tree,

But limber, and each one of them wise as a snake.

It laid hold of our bulwarks, and with three

Long knowing arms, slimy, and of a flesh

So tough they'ld fool a hatchet, searcht the ship,

And stole out of the midst of us all a man;

Yes, and he the proudest man upon the seas

For the rare powerful talisman he'd got.

And would yours have done better?

_Thomas._ I am one

Not easily frightened. I'm for India...."

400. "PARROTS OF SHRILLY GREEN"

--this gaudy and longevous bird, that seems to contain all the wisdom

of Solomon and more than the craft of Cleopatra in his eye, perched

first upon England many centuries ago. Skelton speaks of him:

My name is parrot, a bird of Paradise ...

With my becke bent, my little wanton eye,

My fethers fresh, as is the emrawde grene,

About my neck a circulet, lyke the ryche rubye,

My little legges, my fete both nete and cleane....

And so, too, John Maplet, a "naturalist" who in 1567 wrote _A Greene

Forest_:

"The Parret hath all hir whole bodie greene, saving that onely about

hir necke she hath a Coller or Chaine naturally wrought like to Sinople

or Vermelon. Indie hath of this kinde such as will counterfaite redily

a mans speach: what wordes they heare, those commonly they pronounce.

There have bene found of these that have saluted Emperours...."

But which Emperors, and when and to what end he does not relate.

A parrot of price indeed would be she that had held converse with

"Ozymandias, king of kings."

402. "THE MARCH OF TIME." (line 2)

Say, is there aught that can convey

An image of its transient stay?

'Tis an hand's breadth; 'tis a tale;

'Tis a vessel under sail:

'Tis a courser's straining steed;

'Tis a shuttle in its speed;

'Tis an eagle in its way,

Darting down upon its prey;

'Tis an arrow in its flight,

Mocking the pursuing sight;

'Tis a vapour in the air;

'Tis a whirlwind rushing there;

'Tis a short-lived fading flower;

'Tis a rainbow on a shower;

'Tis a momentary ray

Smiling in a winter's day;

'Tis a torrent's rapid stream;

'Tis a shadow; 'tis a dream;

'Tis the closing watch of night,

Dying at approaching light;

'Tis a landscape vainly gay,

Painted upon crumbling clay;

'Tis a lamp that wastes its fires,

'Tis a smoke that quick expires;

'Tis a bubble,'tis a sigh:

Be prepared, O Man! to die.

They are like strings of precious stones, rosaries, these Tudor

laments, one image following another, and however sad in colour, all

making beauty:

As withereth the primrose by the river,

As fadeth summer's sun from gliding fountains,

As vanisheth the light-blown bubble ever,

As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains:

So melts, so vanisheth, so fades, so withers,

The rose, the shine, the bubble, and the snow,

Of praise, pomp, glory, joy, which short life gathers,

Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy.

The withered primrose by the mourning river,

The faded summer's sun from weeping fountains,

The light-blown bubble vanishèd for ever,

The molten snow upon the naked mountains,

Are emblems that the treasures we uplay,

Soon wither, vanish, fade, and melt away....

403. "THE WILD HYAENA." (line 11)

In old times it was believed that if a hungry hyaena or jaccatray--who

cannot wry his neck "because his backbone stretches itself out to the

head"--dreams, he dreams so vividly that he calls into his sleeping

brain a vision of the beasts he covets for prey. And this vision is so

lifelike that he howls out of his sleep in mockery of the beasts--and

thus decoys them to his den! He is a nocturnal scavenger, haunting

graveyards, and "when" says Lyly, he "speaketh lyke a man," he

"deviseth most mischief."

404. "IN XANADU DID KUBLA KHAN."

"Now, this lord (the Great Caan)," says Friar Odoric in his _Cathay_,

"passeth the summer at a certain place which is called SANDU, situated

towards the north, and the coolest habitation in the world. But in the

winter season he abideth in Cambalech. And when he will ride from the

one place to the other this is the order thereof. He hath four armies

of horsemen, one of which goeth a day's march in front of him, one at

each side, and one a day's march in rear, so that he goeth always as

it were, in the middle of a cross. And marching thus, each army hath

its route laid down for it day by day, and findeth at its halts all

necessary provender. But his own immediate company hath its order of

march thus. The king travelleth in a two-wheeled carriage, in which is

formed a very goodly chamber, all of lign-aloes and gold, and covered

over with great and fine skins, and set with many precious stones. And

the carriage is drawn by four elephants, well broken in and harnessed,

and also by four splendid horses, richly caparisoned. And alongside

go four barons, who are called CUTHE, keeping watch and ward over the

chariot that no hurt come to the king. Moreover, he carrieth with him

in his chariot twelve gerfalcons; so that even as he sits therein upon

his chair of state or other seat, if he sees any birds pass he lets

fly his hawks at them. And none may dare to approach within a stone's

throw of the carriage, unless those whose duty brings them there. And

thus it is that the king travelleth."

"A SUNLESS SEA."

Our English eyes, loving light, weary a little of the short cold days

in our country, when the sun makes "winter arches." Sadder still would

be our state in the regions told of by Marco Polo in the following

passage:

"Beyond the most distant part of the territory of the Tartars, ...

there is another region [thick set with dark impenetrable woods] which

extends to the utmost bounds of the north, and is called the Region

of Darkness, because during most part of the winter months the sun

is invisible, and the atmosphere is obscured to the same degree as

that in which we find it just about the dawn of day, when we may be

said to see and not to see. The men of this country are well made and

tall, but of a very pallid complexion. They are not united under the

government of a king or prince, and they live without any established

laws or usages, in the manner of the brute creation. Their intellects

also are dull, and they have an air of stupidity. The Tartars often

proceed on plundering expeditions against these people, to rob them of

their cattle and goods. For this purpose they avail themselves of those

months in which the darkness prevails, in order that their approach may

be unobserved; but, being unable to ascertain the direction in which

they should return homeward with their booty, they provide against the

chance of going astray by riding mares that have young foals at the

time, which latter they suffer to accompany the dams as far as the

confines of their own territory, but leave them, under proper care, at

the commencement of the gloomy region. When their works of darkness

have been accomplished, and they are desirous of revisiting the region

of light, they lay the bridles on the necks of their mares, and suffer

them freely to take their own course. Guided by maternal instinct, they

make their way directly to the spot where they had quitted their foals;

and by these means the riders are enabled to regain in safety the

places of their residence."

406. "ONE HELD A SHELL UNTO HIS SHELL-LIKE EAR."

(line 6)

... Gather a shell from the strown beach

And listen at its lips: they sigh

The same desire and mystery,

The echo of the whole sea's speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not anything but what thou art:

And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

407. "LIKE SOLEMN APPARITIONS LULLED SUBLIME TO EVERLASTING

REST." (line 11)

... In the caves of the deep--lost Youth! lost Youth!--

O'er and o'er, fleeting billows! fleeting billows!--

Rung to his restless everlasting sleep

By the heavy death-bells of the deep,

Under the slimy-drooping sea-green willows,

Poor Youth! lost Youth!

Laying his dolorous head, forsooth,

On Carian reefs uncouth--

Poor Youth!

On the wild sand's ever-shifting pillows!...

O could my Spirit wing

Hills over, where salt Ocean hath his fresh headspring

And snowy curls bedeck the Blue-haired King,

Up where sweet oral birds articulate sing

Within the desert ring--

Their mighty shadows o'er broad Earth the Lunar

Mountains fling,

Where the Sun's chariot bathes in Ocean's fresh headspring--

O could my Spirit wing!...

GEORGE DARLEY

Full fathom five thy Father lies,

Of his bones are Corrall made:

Those are Pearles that were his eies,

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a Sea-change

Into something rich, and strange:

Sea-Nimphs hourly ring his knell--

_Ding dong_.

Harke now I heare them, _ding-dong bell_.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

411. "THE GOLDEN VANITY."

This is a patchwork of stanzas from three versions of the old ballad.

In one version the "Golden Vanity" is said to be the "Sweet Trinity,"

and to have been built by Sir Walter Raleigh in the Netherlands.

According to yet another, the Cabin-boy, after threatening to sink the

"Goulden Vanitie" as he had "sunk the French gallee," is taken on board

and the Captain and merchant adventurers proved "far better than their

word." But if stanza 12 is any witness, this seems unlikely. Can one

not actually _see_ the cold faces mocking down upon the water?

412.

To an eye and ear new to them, these old Scottish ballads may seem a

little difficult and forbidding. But read on, and their enchantment has

no match--the very strangeness of the words, the rare music, the colour

and light and clearness and vehemence, and, besides these, a wildness

and ancientness like that of an old folk-tune which seems to carry with

its burden as many lost memories as an old churchyard has gravestones.

The stories they tell are world wide. How they came into that world

(for of some of them there are as many as twenty to thirty different

versions), how they have fared in their long journey, and even when and

by whom they were made, are still questions on which even scholars are

not yet agreed.

"Kevels" in line 5 of "Brown Robyn," means _lots_, and recalls a far

older story:

"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their

wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto

Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he

found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof, and went

down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the

Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a

mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then

the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast

forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of

them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay,

and was fast asleep.... And they said every one to his fellow, Come,

and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is

upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.... Then said

they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm

unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto

them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be

calm upon you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon

you.... So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the

sea ceased from her raging."

415. "A SEAL MY FATHER WAS."

Notes of music for the enticement of seals, with other beautiful old

Gaelic airs and poems and tales, will be found in Journals 23/5 of The

Folk-Song Society, collected by Mr. Martin Freeman.

418. "SIR PATRICK SPENCE."

The longer version of the ballad into which the genius of Sir Walter

Scott wove a few new stanzas is the better known. But this, I think, is

the best. Indeed, the secret art of this naked and lovely poetry seems

nowadays to be lost: its marvel is how much it tells by means of the

little it says.

"LATE, LATE YESTREEN." (stanza 7)

With money in his pocket and bewaring of glass, the Man of

Superstitions bows low and seven times to the new moon. If he sees a

dim cindrous light filling in the circle of which this crescent is the

edge, he "looks out for squalls"--the new moon has "the auld moone in

hir arme." That light is the earth-shine. The sun illumines the earth;

the earth like a looking-glass reflects his radiance upon the moon;

and she thus melancholily returns it; whereas the silver blaze on her

eastern edge is light direct: eyes looking upward thence into her black

skies are lit with her prodigious mornings.

419. "ALLISON GROSS."

Here I have changed only two words of the original.

420. "SIR HUGH."