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Lang Andrew
Rhymes a la Mode
HOMERIC UNITY
The sacred keep of Ilion is rent
By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow
Through plains where Simois and Scamander went
To war with Gods and heroes long ago.
Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low
In rich Mycenæ, do the Fates relent:
The bones of Agamemnon are a show,
And ruined is his royal monument.
The dust and awful treasures of the Dead,
Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee,
Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,
And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see
The crown that burns on thine immortal head
Of indivisible supremacy!
IN TINTAGEL
LUI
Ah lady, lady, leave the creeping mist,
And leave the iron castle by the sea!
ELLE
Nay, from the sea there came a ghost that kissed
My lips, and so I cannot come to thee!
LUI
Ah lady, leave the cruel landward wind
That crusts the blighted flowers with bitter foam!
ELLE
Nay, for his arms are cold and strong to bind,
And I must dwell with him and make my home!
LUI
Come, for the Spring is fair in Joyous Guard
And down deep alleys sweet birds sing again.
ELLE
But I must tarry with the winter hard,
And with the bitter memory of pain,
Although the Spring be fair in Joyous Guard,
And in the gardens glad birds sing again!
PISIDICÊ
The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island allied with Troy.
The daughter of the Lesbian king
Within her bower she watched the war,
Far off she heard the arrows ring,
The smitten harness ring afar;
And, fighting from the foremost car,
Saw one that smote where all must flee;
More fair than the Immortals are
He seemed to fair Pisidicê!
She saw, she loved him, and her heart
Before Achilles, Peleus’ son,
Threw all its guarded gates apart,
A maiden fortress lightly won!
And, ere that day of fight was done,
No more of land or faith recked she,
But joyed in her new life begun, —
Her life of love, Pisidicê!
She took a gift into her hand,
As one that had a boon to crave;
She stole across the ruined land
Where lay the dead without a grave,
And to Achilles’ hand she gave
Her gift, the secret postern’s key.
“To-morrow let me be thy slave!”
Moaned to her love Pisidicê.
Ere dawn the Argives’ clarion call
Rang down Methymna’s burning street;
They slew the sleeping warriors all,
They drove the women to the fleet,
Save one, that to Achilles’ feet
Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he:
“For her no doom but death is meet,”
And there men stoned Pisidicê.
In havens of that haunted coast,
Amid the myrtles of the shore,
The moon sees many a maiden ghost
Love’s outcast now and evermore.
The silence hears the shades deplore
Their hour of dear-bought love; but thee
The waves lull, ’neath thine olives hoar,
To dreamless rest, Pisidicê!
FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST
Returning from what other seas
Dost thou renew thy murmuring,
Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of these
To tell, the shores where float and cling
My love, my hope, my memories?
Say does my lady wake to note
The gold light into silver die?
Or do thy waves make lullaby,
While dreams of hers, like angels, float
Through star-sown spaces of the sky?
Ah, would such angels came to me
That dreams of mine might speak with hers,
Nor wake the slumber of the sea
With words as low as winds that be
Awake among the gossamers!
LOVE THE VAMPIRE
Ο ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ’Σ ΤΟΝ ΤΑΦΟ
The level sands and grey,
Stretch leagues and leagues away,
Down to the border line of sky and foam,
A spark of sunset burns,
The grey tide-water turns,
Back, like a ghost from her forbidden home!
Here, without pyre or bier,
Light Love was buried here,
Alas, his grave was wide and deep enough,
Thrice, with averted head,
We cast dust on the dead,
And left him to his rest. An end of Love.
“No stone to roll away,
No seal of snow or clay,
Only soft dust above his wearied eyes,
But though the sudden sound
Of Doom should shake the ground,
And graves give up their ghosts, he will not rise!”
So each to each we said!
Ah, but to either bed
Set far apart in lands of North and South,
Love as a Vampire came
With haggard eyes aflame,
And kissed us with the kisses of his mouth!
Thenceforth in dreams must we
Each other’s shadow see
Wand’ring unsatisfied in empty lands,
Still the desirèd face
Fleets from the vain embrace,
And still the shape evades the longing hands.
BALLADE OF THE BOOK-MAN’S PARADISE
There is a Heaven, or here, or there, —
A Heaven there is, for me and you,
Where bargains meet for purses spare,
Like ours, are not so far and few.
Thuanus’ bees go humming through
The learned groves, ’neath rainless skies,
O’er volumes old and volumes new,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There treasures bound for Longepierre
Keep brilliant their morocco blue,
There Hookes’ Amanda is not rare,
Nor early tracts upon Peru!
Racine is common as Rotrou,
No Shakespeare Quarto search defies,
And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There’s Eve, – not our first mother fair, —
But Clovis Eve, a binder true;
Thither does Bauzonnet repair,
Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup!
But never come the cropping crew
That dock a volume’s honest size,
Nor they that “letter” backs askew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
Envoy
Friend, do not Heber and De Thou,
And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise,
La chasse au bouquin still pursue
Within that Book-man’s Paradise?
BALLADE OF A FRIAR
(Clement Marot’s Frère Lubin, though translated by Longfellow and others, has not hitherto been rendered into the original measure, of ballade à double refrain.)
Some ten or twenty times a day,
To bustle to the town with speed,
To dabble in what dirt he may, —
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
But any sober life to lead
Upon an exemplary plan,
Requires a Christian indeed, —
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
Another’s wealth on his to lay,
With all the craft of guile and greed,
To leave you bare of pence or pay, —
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
But watch him with the closest heed,
And dun him with what force you can, —
He’ll not refund, howe’er you plead, —
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
An honest girl to lead astray,
With subtle saw and promised meed,
Requires no cunning crone and grey, —
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
He preaches an ascetic creed,
But, – try him with the water can —
A dog will drink, whate’er his breed, —
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
Envoy
In good to fail, in ill succeed,
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
In honest works to lead the van,
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. 1
I have scribbled in verse and in prose,
I have painted “arrangements in greens,”
And my name is familiar to those
Who take in the high class magazines;
I compose; I’ve invented machines;
I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”;
For my county I played, in my teens,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”
I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows;
I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens;
I have climbed the Caucasian snows;
I abstain, like the ancients, from beans, —
I’ve a guess what Pythagoras means,
When he says that to eat them’s a crime, —
I have lectured upon the Essenes,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”
I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s,
I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,”
I have breasted the river that flows
Through the land of the wild Gadarenes;
I can gossip with Burton on skenes,
I can imitate Irving (the Mime),
And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”
Envoy
So the tower of mine eminence leans
Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime;
I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”
BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS
Let others praise analysis
And revel in a “cultured” style,
And follow the subjective Miss 2
From Boston to the banks of Nile,
Rejoice in anti-British bile,
And weep for fickle hero’s woe,
These twain have shortened many a mile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.
These damsels of “Democracy’s,”
How long they stop at every stile!
They smile, and we are told, I wis,
Ten subtle reasons why they smile.
Give me your villains deeply vile,
Give me Lecoq, Jottrat, and Co.,
Great artists of the ruse and wile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!
Oh, novel readers, tell me this,
Can prose that’s polished by the file,
Like great Boisgobey’s mysteries,
Wet days and weary ways beguile,
And man to living reconcile,
Like these whose every trick we know?
The agony how high they pile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!
Envoy
Ah, friend, how many and many a while
They’ve made the slow time fleetly flow,
And solaced pain and charmed exile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.
THE CLOUD CHORUS
(FROM ARISTOPHANES.)
Socrates speaks
Hither, come hither, ye Clouds renowned, and unveil yourselves here;
Come, though ye dwell on the sacred crests of Olympian snow,
Or whether ye dance with the Nereid choir in the gardens clear,
Or whether your golden urns are dipped in Nile’s overflow,
Or whether you dwell by Mæotis mere
Or the snows of Mimas, arise! appear!
And hearken to us, and accept our gifts ere ye rise and go.
The Clouds sing
Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore
Of the father of streams, from the sounding sea,
Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar.
Dewy and gleaming, and fleet are we!
Let us look on the tree-clad mountain crest,
On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice,
On the waters that murmur east and west
On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice,
For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air,
And the bright rays gleam;
Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare
In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere
From the height of the heaven, on the land and air,
And the Ocean stream.
Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Rain,
Let us gaze on Pallas’ citadel,
In the country of Cecrops, fair and dear
The mystic land of the holy cell,
Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,
And the gifts of the Gods that know not stain
And a people of mortals that know not fear.
For the temples tall, and the statues fair,
And the feasts of the Gods are holiest there,
The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers
And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring,
And the musical voices that fill the hours,
And the dancing feet of the Maids that sing!
