Lang Andrew
Rhymes a la Mode

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ALMAE MATRES

(ST. ANDREWS, 1862. OXFORD, 1865)

St. Andrews by the Northern sea,
   A haunted town it is to me!
A little city, worn and grey,
   The grey North Ocean girds it round.
And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,
   The long sea-rollers surge and sound.
And still the thin and biting spray
   Drives down the melancholy street,
And still endure, and still decay,
   Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.
Ghost-like and shadowy they stand
Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.

St. Leonard’s chapel, long ago
   We loitered idly where the tall
Fresh budded mountain ashes blow
   Within thy desecrated wall:
The tough roots rent the tomb below,
   The April birds sang clamorous,
We did not dream, we could not know
   How hardly Fate would deal with us!

O, broken minster, looking forth
   Beyond the bay, above the town,
O, winter of the kindly North,
   O, college of the scarlet gown,
And shining sands beside the sea,
   And stretch of links beyond the sand,
Once more I watch you, and to me
   It is as if I touched his hand!

And therefore art thou yet more dear,
   O, little city, grey and sere,
Though shrunken from thine ancient pride
   And lonely by thy lonely sea,
Than these fair halls on Isis’ side,
   Where Youth an hour came back to me!

A land of waters green and clear,
   Of willows and of poplars tall,
And, in the spring time of the year,
   The white may breaking over all,
And Pleasure quick to come at call.
   And summer rides by marsh and wold,
And Autumn with her crimson pall
   About the towers of Magdalen rolled;
And strange enchantments from the past,
   And memories of the friends of old,
And strong Tradition, binding fast
   The “flying terms” with bands of gold, —

All these hath Oxford: all are dear,
   But dearer far the little town,
The drifting surf, the wintry year,
   The college of the scarlet gown,
      St. Andrews by the Northern sea,
      That is a haunted town to me!

DESIDERIUM

IN MEMORIAM S. F. A

The call of homing rooks, the shrill
   Song of some bird that watches late,
The cries of children break the still
   Sad twilight by the churchyard gate.

And o’er your far-off tomb the grey
   Sad twilight broods, and from the trees
The rooks call on their homeward way,
   And are you heedless quite of these?

The clustered rowan berries red
   And Autumn’s may, the clematis,
They droop above your dreaming head,
   And these, and all things must you miss?

Ah, you that loved the twilight air,
   The dim lit hour of quiet best,
At last, at last you have your share
   Of what life gave so seldom, rest!

Yes, rest beyond all dreaming deep,
   Or labour, nearer the Divine,
And pure from fret, and smooth as sleep,
   And gentle as thy soul, is thine!

So let it be! But could I know
   That thou in this soft autumn eve,
This hush of earth that pleased thee so,
   Hadst pleasure still, I might not grieve.

RHYMES A LA MODE

BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE

Our youth began with tears and sighs,
With seeking what we could not find;
Our verses all were threnodies,
In elegiacs still we whined;
Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,
We sought and knew not what we sought.
We marvel, now we look behind:
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!
Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!
What? not content with seas and skies,
With rainy clouds and southern wind,
With common cares and faces kind,
With pains and joys each morning brought?
Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”
To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;
We set our souls on salmon flies,
We whistle where we once repined.
Confound the woes of human-kind!
By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;
Who hum, contented or resigned,
“Life’s more amusing than we thought!”

Envoy

O nate mecum, worn and lined
Our faces show, but that is naught;
Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

THE LAST CAST

THE ANGLER’S APOLOGY

Just one cast more! how many a year
   Beside how many a pool and stream,
Beneath the falling leaves and sere,
   I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!

Dreamed of the sport since April first
   Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,
Adown the pastoral valleys burst
   Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.

Dreamed of the singing showers that break,
   And sting the lochs, or near or far,
And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”
   From Urigil to Lochinvar.

Dreamed of the kind propitious sky
   O’er Ari Innes brooding grey;
The sea trout, rushing at the fly,
   Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!

* * * * *

Brief are man’s days at best; perchance
   I waste my own, who have not seen
The castled palaces of France
   Shine on the Loire in summer green.

And clear and fleet Eurotas still,
   You tell me, laves his reedy shore,
And flows beneath his fabled hill
   Where Dian drave the chase of yore.

And “like a horse unbroken” yet
   The yellow stream with rush and foam,
’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,
   Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!

I may not see them, but I doubt
   If seen I’d find them half so fair
As ripples of the rising trout
   That feed beneath the elms of Yair.

Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,
   And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,
And Autumn in that lonely vale
   Where wedded Avons westward sweep,

Or where, amid the empty fields,
   Among the bracken of the glen,
Her yellow wreath October yields,
   To crown the crystal brows of Ken.

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,
   Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,
You never heard the ringing reel,
   The music of the water side!

Though Gods have walked your woods among,
   Though nymphs have fled your banks along;
You speak not that familiar tongue
   Tweed murmurs like my cradle song.

My cradle song, – nor other hymn
   I’d choose, nor gentler requiem dear
Than Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,
   Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!

TWILIGHT

SONNET

(AFTER RICHEPIN.)

Light has flown!
Through the grey
The wind’s way
The sea’s moan
Sound alone!
   For the day
   These repay
And atone!

Scarce I know,
Listening so
   To the streams
      Of the sea,
   If old dreams
      Sing to me!

BALLADE OF SUMMER

TO C. H. ARKCOLL

When strawberry pottles are common and cheap,
Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,
When midnight dances are murdering sleep,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And far from Fleet Street, far from here,
The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,
And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When clamour that doves in the lindens keep
Mingles with musical plash of the weir,
Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And better a crust and a beaker of beer,
With rose-hung hedges on either hand,
Than a palace in town and a prince’s cheer,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When big trout late in the twilight leap,
When cuckoo clamoureth far and near,
When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer,
Where kine knee deep in the water stand,
On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

Envoy

Friend, with the fops while we dawdle here,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS GHOSTS

Between the moonlight and the fire
In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire
To make your merry blood run slow!
How old, how grave, how wise we grow!
No Christmas ghost can make us chill,
Save those that troop in mournful row,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

The beasts can talk in barn and byre
On Christmas Eve, old legends know,
As year by year the years retire,
We men fall silent then I trow,
Such sights hath Memory to show,
Such voices from the silence thrill,
Such shapes return with Christmas snow, —
The ghosts we all can raise at will.

Oh, children of the village choir,
Your carols on the midnight throw,
Oh bright across the mist and mire
Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas glow!
Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,
Let’s cheerily descend the hill;
Be welcome all, to come or go,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

Envoy

Friend, sursum corda, soon or slow
We part, like guests who’ve joyed their fill;
Forget them not, nor mourn them so,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

LOVE’S EASTER

SONNET

Love died here
Long ago; —
O’er his bier,
   Lying low,
   Poppies throw;
      Shed no tear;
      Year by year,
   Roses blow!

Year by year,
Adon – dear
   To Love’s Queen —
      Does not die!
   Wakes when green
      May is nigh!

BALLADE OF THE GIRTON GIRL

She has just “put her gown on” at Girton,
   She is learned in Latin and Greek,
But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on
   That the prudish remark with a shriek.
In her accents, perhaps, she is weak
   (Ladies are, one observes with a sigh),
But in Algebra —there she’s unique,
   But her forte’s to evaluate π.

She can talk about putting a “spirt on”
   (I admit, an unmaidenly freak),
And she dearly delighteth to flirt on
   A punt in some shadowy creek;
Should her bark, by mischance, spring a leak,
   She can swim as a swallow can fly;
She can fence, she can put with a cleek,
   But her forte’s to evaluate π.

She has lectured on Scopas and Myrton,
   Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique,
Old tiles with the secular dirt on,
   Old marbles with noses to seek.
And her Cobet she quotes by the week,
   And she’s written on κεν and on καὶ,
And her service is swift and oblique,
   But her forte’s to evaluate π.