THEY smile upon the western wall,
The lips that laughed an age agone,
The fops, the dukes, the beauties all,
Le Brun that sang, and Carr that shone.
We gaze with idle eyes: we con
The faces of an elder time—
Alas! and _ours_ is flitting on;
Oh, moral for an empty rhyme!
Think, when the tumult and the crowd
Have left the solemn rooms and chill,
When dilettanti are not loud,
When lady critics are not shrill—
Ah, think how strange upon the still
Dim air may sound these voices faint;
Once more may Johnson talk his fill
And fair Dalrymple charm the Saint!
Of us they speak as we of them,
Like us, perchance, they criticise:
Our wit, they vote, is Brummagem;
Our beauty—dim to Devon’s eyes!
Their silks and lace our cloth despise,
Their pumps—our boots that pad the mud,
What modern fop with Walpole vies?
With St. Leger what modern blood?
Ah, true, we lack the charm, the wit,
Our very greatest, sure, are small;
And Mr. Gladstone is not Pitt,
And Garrick comes not when we call.
Yet—pass an age—and, after all,
Even _we_ may please the folk that look
When we are faces on the wall,
And voices in a history book!
In Art the statesman yet shall live,
With collars keen, with Roman nose;
To Beauty yet shall Millais give
The roses that outlast the rose:
The lords of verse, the slaves of prose,
On canvas yet shall seem alive,
And charm the mob that comes and goes,
And lives—in 1985.
_A Remonstrance with the Fair_.
THERE are thoughts that the mind cannot fathom,
The mind of the animal male;
But woman abundantly hath ’em,
And mostly her notions prevail.
And why ladies read what they _do_ read
Is a thing that no man may explain,
And if any one asks for a true rede
He asketh in vain.
Ah, why is each “passing depression”
Of stories that gloomily bore
Received as the subtle expression
Of almost unspeakable lore?
In the dreary, the sickly, the grimy
Say, why do our women delight,
And wherefore so constantly ply me
With _Ships in the Night_?
Dear ladies, in vain you approach us,
With books to your taste in your hands;
For, alas! though you offer to coach us,
Yet the soul of no man understands
Why the grubby is always the moral,
Why the nasty’s preferred to the nice,
While you keep up a secular quarrel
With a gay little Vice;
Yes, a Vice with her lips full of laughter,
A Vice with a rose in her hair,
You condemn in the present and after,
To darkness of utter despair:
But a sin, if no rapture redeem it,
But a passion that’s pale and played out,
Or in surgical hands—you esteem it
Worth scribbling about!
What is sauce for the goose, for the gander
Is sauce, ye inconsequent fair!
It is better to laugh than to maunder,
And better is mirth than despair;
And though Life’s not all beer and all skittles,
Yet the Sun, on occasion, can shine,
And, _mon Dieu_! he’s a fool who belittles
This cosmos of Thine!
There are cakes, there is ale—ay, and ginger
Shall be hot in the mouth, as of old:
And a villain, with cloak and with whinger,
And a hero, in armour of gold,
And a maid with a face like a lily,
With a heart that is stainless and gay,
Make a tale worth a world of the silly
Sad trash of to-day!
_Rhyme of Rhymes_.
WILD on the mountain peak the wind
Repeats its old refrain,
Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned,
And fain would sin again.
For “wind” I do not rhyme to “mind,”
Like many mortal men,
“Again” (when one reflects) ’twere kind
To rhyme as if “agen.”
I never met a single soul
Who _spoke_ of “wind” as “wined,”
And yet we use it, on the whole,
To rhyme to “find” and “blind.”
We _say_, “Now don’t do that _agen_,”
When people give us pain;
In poetry, nine times in ten,
It rhymes to “Spain” or “Dane.”
Oh, which are wrong or which are right?
Oh, which are right or wrong?
The sounds in prose familiar, quite,
Or those we meet in song?
To hold that “love” can rhyme to “prove”
Requires some force of will,
Yet in the ancient lyric groove
We meet them rhyming still.
This was our learned fathers’ wont
In prehistoric times,
We follow it, or if we don’t,
We oft run short of rhymes.
_Rhyme of Oxford Cockney Rhymes_.
(Exhibited in the _Oxford Magazine_.)
THOUGH Keats rhymed “ear” to “Cytherea,”
And Morris “dawn” to “morn,”
A worse example, it is clear,
By Oxford Dons is “shorn.”
G—y, of Magdalen, goes beyond
These puny Cockneys far,
And to “Magrath” rhymes—Muse despond!—
“Magrath” he rhymes to “star”!
Another poet, X. Y. Z.,
Employs the word “researcher,”
And then,—his blood be on his head,—
He makes it rhyme to “nurture.”
Ah, never was the English tongue
So flayed, and racked, and tortured,
Since one I love (who should be hung)
Made “tortured” rhyme to “orchard.”
Unkindly G—y’s raging pen
Next craves a rhyme to “sooner;”
Rejecting “Spooner,” (best of men,)
He fastens on _lacuna_(_r_).
Nay, worse, in his infatuate mind
He ends a line “explainer,”
Nor any rhyme can G—y find
Until he reaches Jena(r).
Yes, G—y shines the worst of all,
He needs to rhyme “embargo;”
The man had “Margot” at his call,
He had the good ship _Argo_;
Largo he had; yet doth he seek
Further, and no embargo
Restrains him from the odious, weak,
And Cockney rhyme, “Chicago”!
Ye Oxford Dons that Cockneys be,
Among your gardens tidy,
If you would ask a maid to tea,
D’ye call the girl “a lydy”?
And if you’d sing of Mr. Fry,
And need a rhyme to “swiper,”
Are you so cruel as to try
To fill the blank with “paper”?
Oh, Hoxford was a pleasant plice
To many a poet dear,
And Saccharissa had the grice
In Hoxford to appear.
But Waller, if to Cytherea
He prayed at any time,
Did not implore “her friendly ear,”
And think he had a rhyme.
Now, if you ask to what are due
The horrors which I mention,
I think we owe them to the U-
Niversity extension.
From Hoxton and from Poplar come
The ’Arriets and ’Arries,
And so the Oxford Muse is dumb,
Or, when she sings, miscarries.
_Rococo_.
(“My name is also named ‘Played Out.’”)
_When first we heard Rossetti sing_,
_We twanged the melancholy lyre_,
_We sang like this_, _like anything_,
_When first we heard Rossetti sing_.
_And all our song was faded Spring_,
_And dead delight and dark desire_,
_When first we heard Rossetti sing_,
_We twanged the melancholy lyre_.
(_And this is how we twanged it_)—
_The New Orpheus to his Eurydice_.
WHY wilt thou woo, ah, strange Eurydice,
A languid laurell’d Orpheus in the shades,
For here is company of shadowy maids,
Hero, and Helen and Psamathoë:
And life is like the blossom on the tree,
And never tumult of the world invades,
The low light wanes and waxes, flowers and fades,
And sleep is sweet, and dreams suffice for me;
“Go back, and seek the sunlight,” as of old,
The wise ghost-mother of Odysseus said,
Here am I half content, and scarce a-cold,
But one light fits the living, one the dead;
Good-bye, be glad, forget! thou canst not hold
In thy kind arms, alas! this powerless head.
_When first we heard Rossetti sing_,
_We also wrote this kind of thing_!
_The Food of Fiction_.
TO breakfast, dinner, or to lunch
My steps are languid, once so speedy;
E’en though, like the old gent in _Punch_,
“Not hungry, but, thank goodness! greedy.”
I gaze upon the well-spread board,
And have to own—oh, contradiction!
Though every dainty it afford,
There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
“The better half”—how good the sound!
Of Scott’s or Ainsworth’s “venison pasty,”
In cups of old Canary drowned,
(Which probably was very nasty).
The beefsteak pudding made by Ruth
To cheer Tom Pinch in his affliction,
Ah me, in all the world of truth,
There’s nothing like the food of fiction!
The cakes and ham and buttered toast
That graced the board of Gabriel Varden,
In Bracebridge Hall the Christmas roast,
Fruits from the Goblin Market Garden.
And if you’d eat of luscious sweets
And yet escape from gout’s infliction,
Just read “St. Agnes’ Eve” by Keats—
There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
What cups of tea were ever brewed
Like Sairey Gamp’s—the dear old sinner?
What savoury mess was ever stewed
Like that for Short’s and Codlin’s dinner?
What was the flavour of that “poy”—
To use the Fotheringay’s own diction—
Pendennis ate, the love-sick boy?
There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
Prince, you are young—but you will find
After life’s years of fret and friction,
That hunger wanes—but never mind!
There’s nothing like the food of fiction.
“_A Highly Valuable chain of Thoughts_.”
HAD cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne’er a thorn,
No man would be a funker
Of whin, or burn, or bunker.
There were no need for mashies,
The turf would ne’er be torn,
Had cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne’er a thorn.
Had cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne’er a thorn,
The big trout would not ever
Escape into the river.
No gut the salmon smashes
Would leave us all forlorn,
Had cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne’er a thorn.
But ’tis an unideal,
Sad world in which we’re born,
And things will “go contrairy”
With Martin and with Mary:
And every day the real
Comes bleakly in with morn,
And cigarettes have ashes,
And every rose a thorn.
_Matrimony_.
(Matrimony—Advertiser would like to hear from well-educated Protestant
lady, under thirty, fair, with view to above, who would have no objection
to work Remington type-writer, at home. Enclose photo. T. 99. This
Office. Cork newspaper.)
T. 99 would gladly hear
From one whose years are few,
A maid whose doctrines are severe,
Of Presbyterian blue,
Also—with view to the above—
Her photo he would see,
And trusts that she may live and love
His Protestant to be!
But ere the sacred rites are done
(And by no Priest of Rome)
He’d ask, if she a Remington
Type-writer works—at home?
If she have no objections to
This task, and if her hair—
In keeping with her eyes of blue—
Be delicately fair,
Ah, _then_, let her a photo send
Of all her charms divine,
To him who rests her faithful friend,
Her own T. 99.
_Piscatori Piscator_.