Lang Andrew
New Collected Rhymes

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Jeanne d’Arc

The honour of a loyal boy,
   The courage of a paladin,
With maiden’s mirth, the soul of joy,
   These dwelt her happy breast within.
From shame, from doubt, from fear, from sin,
   As God’s own angels was she free;
Old worlds shall end, and new begin
            To be

Ere any come like her who fought
   For France, for freedom, for the King;
Who counsel of redemption brought
   Whence even the armed Archangel’s wing
Might weary sore in voyaging;
   Who heard her Voices cry “Be free!”
Such Maid no later human spring
            Shall see!

Saints Michael, Catherine, Margaret,
   Who sowed the seed that Thou must reap,
If eyes of angels may be wet,
   And if the Saints have leave to weep,
In Paradise one pain they keep,
   Maiden! one mortal memory,
One sorrow that can never sleep,
            For Thee!

CRICKET RHYMES

To Helen

(After seeing her bowl with her usual success.)

St. Leonard’s Hall

Helen, thy bowling is to me
   Like that wise Alfred Shaw’s of yore,
Which gently broke the wickets three:
   From Alfred few could smack a four:
      Most difficult to score!

The music of the moaning sea,
   The rattle of the flying bails,
The grey sad spires, the tawny sails —
   What memories they bring to me,
      Beholding thee!

Upon our old monastic pitch,
   How sportsmanlike I see thee stand!
The leather in thy lily hand,
   Oh, Helen of the yorkers, which
      Are nobly planned!

Ballade of Dead Cricketers

Ah, where be Beldham now, and Brett,
   Barker, and Hogsflesh, where be they?
Brett, of all bowlers fleetest yet
   That drove the bails in disarray?
And Small that would, like Orpheus, play
   Till wild bulls followed his minstrelsy? ²
Booker, and Quiddington, and May?
   Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

And where is Lambert, that would get
   The stumps with balls that broke astray?
And Mann, whose balls would ricochet
   In almost an unholy way
(So do baseballers “pitch” to-day)
   George Lear, that seldom let a bye,
And Richard Nyren, grave and gray?
   Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

Tom Sueter, too, the ladies’ pet,
   Brown that would bravest hearts affray;
Walker, invincible when set,
   (Tom, of the spider limbs and splay);
Think ye that we could match them, pray,
   These heroes of Broad-halfpenny,
With Buck to hit, and Small to stay?
   Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

Envoy

Prince, canst thou moralise the lay?
How all things change below the sky!
Of Fry and Grace shall mortals say,
“Beneath the daisies, there they lie!”

Brahma

After Emerson

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
   Or if the batsman thinks he’s bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
   They too shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
   I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
   The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.

CRITICAL OF LIFE, ART, AND LITERATURE

Gainsborough Ghosts

In The Grosvenor Gallery

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.