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IN RESIDENCE:
THE DON’S GUIDE TO CAMBRIDGE
I Dedicate
THIS VOLUME TO
IVOR GORDON BACK
WHO SO WORTHILY CARRIED ON THE
TRADITIONS OF HIGH THINKING
AND NOBLE LIVING
INAUGURATED BY MYSELF
WHEN AT CAMBRIDGE
BUT I AM TOO LAZY TO WRITE
AN ODE TO HIM
IN RESIDENCE:
THE DON’S GUIDE
TO
CAMBRIDGE
BY
ALEISTER
CROWLEY
SOMETIME TUTOR1 OF
TRINITY
ELIJAH JOHNSON
CAMBRIDGE
1904
1 So-called because the
College
interests were safe (Lat.,
tutus-a-um, safe) in his hands,
as proved by its continued
existence.
I thank the papers, living and dead,
who
first published these masterpieces,
for
their tacit and unnecessary
permission
to reprint them in a collected form.
ARTISTE’S FOREWORD
These
poems are all or nearly all reprinted from the otherwise
dull pages of the “Granta,” “Cantab,” “Cambridge Magazine,”
“Silver Crescent,” and other tony sheets. [Tony sheets is
good, and free from the no ’count English accent.]
People who wanted to read them had
to buy these papers, which were messy and lumpy, while the
reader’s attention was unpleasantly distracted by the dung
heap on which these pearls were cast. This volume meets the
crying need of millions of what some people will call
“undergrads.” The price for Cash will be One Shilling for
Credit One Thousand Guineas, in the proportion familiar to
all “scions of Alma Mater,” as some other people always say.
Damn ’em!
IN RESIDENCE:
THE DON’S GUIDE TO CAMBRIDGE
CONTENTS
Artiste's
Foreward
Ballade
of Bad
Verses
Ballades
Ballade of Tripos Fever
Ballade of Bowling
Ballade of Bicycling
Ballade of Whist
Ballade of New Criticism
Ballade of the Tyranny of a Commercial
Empire
Ballade of Ursa and Ursula
Ballade of the May Term
Ballade of Summer Joys
Ballade of the Mutability of Human
Affairs
Ballade of Guideless Climbing
Ballade of the Backs
Ballade of Cambridge Papers
Ballade of the New Humour
Ballade of the One-Eyed Tout
Ballade of Lawn Tennis
Ballade of Serious Ballades
Ballade of Old Admirals
A Refrain of a Far Country
A Ballade of Farewell
Mountain
Airss,
very Appropriate!
The Alps
Hut v. Hotel
“Bitte, Herr, Bezahlen!”
Mathematician, ne’er forget
The Mountaineer’s Father William
The Traverse of the Aiguilles Rouges
Mixed
Biscuits
To a Heteromita Rostrata
Principally Remigial
How to do a Rechauffé
The Village Champions
Two Sonnets in Praise of a Publisher
To an Unappreciative University
Sappho in Chic-a-go
A Rondel
A Sonnet of Spring Fashions
Mary Rogers
Ode to Gerald Festus Kelly
A Rondel
The Chemist’s Love-Song
Bal Masqué
Lines in Spring
Au Theatre du Grand Guignol
FORE!
BALLADE OF BAD VERSES
There
be songs of surrender and sighing,
Of sentiment noble and just,
Of lovers deserted and dying,
Of langour and lilies and lust.
There be visions of when we are dust;
There be sonnets and rondels
enough
To break the terrestrial crust—
Lord, keep us from reading the
stuff!
When Ajax, the lightning defying,
Was rude, his impertinent bust
Was shattered. The Editor, trying
To write (as an Editor must
Though his faculties rapidly rust)
Will speak in a manner that’s
rough:
“You poets deserve to be trussed!
Lord, keep us from reading the
stuff!”
My own little scheme of supplying
With fuel the realms of the cussed
Is to stoke all the fires with the
flying
MSS blown that way by a gust
Of wind, which I honestly trust
Will be quick and flamboyant and
bluff
And leave me to satisfy Fust:—1
Lord, keep us from reading the
stuff!
L’envoi
Prince Printer, in wait you are lying
For copy, and I’m in a huff.
You see even me versifying—
Lord, keep us from reading the
stuff!
1 R.
Browning’s Works, vol. xvi. A pet name for Mr. Spalding.
BALLADES
BALLADE OF TRIPOS FEVER
O
smug! in your
desolate room.
Whatever’s the matter with you?
Your face is a picture of gloom,
Your pulse is a hundred and two,
Your eyelids are glued as with
glue,
A towel is tied to your head,
You might be a man with the Flu!
“The Trip! and I wish I were dead!”
O blood! Mighty being re whom
Our novelists say what is true!
You swear, and you fuss, and you fume,
And the saddest of books—if the
view
That I catch of your dainty canoe
Be accurate—heavy as lead,
Are piled as you yawn and say
“Phew!”
“The Trip! and I wish I were dead!”
O ordin’ry persons! Who ’lume
Your College (you are but a few)—
You seem to consider your doom
A natural duty to do
You won’t paint the universe blue,
You won’t paint the universe red,
You’d better join in with us two:—
“The Trip! and I wish I were dead!
Envoi
Princess, if they ever exhume,
From the Corn Exchange, me, and we
wed,
I shall make this poor joke, with a
bloom
Of happiness which, I assume,
You will not consider ill-bred,
As we book for the Land of the Oom:—
“The Trip! and I wish I were
dead!”
BALLADE OF BOWLING
Many
a man is a dab at Greek,
Latin is easily learnt by
some,
Heaps of—Germans—in German speak,
French Verbs yield to the
rule of thumb.
Many a man a tune can hum
In a manner distinctly beyond all
praise,
Scrape on a fiddle, or beat a
drum:—
Not every bowler can break both
ways!
Men there have been who would
daily seek
Problems in Algebra—trebly
glum,
Work at them, groan at them, week
by week,
Grind like a matchmaker down
in a slum;
Slave all night, though no
answer come,
Smug all day, though the summer
blaze,
All may do that till the
brain succumb:—
Not every bowler can break both
ways!
Vain be the struggle of party
clique!1
The ground is iron, the
wicket is crumb,
The Oxford match is no time for
pique.
The double break says
“Fee-Fo-Fum,
I snick the balls, or go
plumb-plumb-plumb
Into the sticks.” No batsman stays
While the ball spins round
like a tee-to-tum;
Not every bowler can break both
ways!
Envoi
Prince, if your batting be mild
and meek,
Think on the burden of these
sweet lays,
So your revenge you may nobly
wreak,
And bowl for the ’Varsity all
your days;
Not every bowler can break both
ways!
1 In 1896-99,
the author was excluded from the Cambridge Eleven, owing to
the machinations of his relentless and Machiavellian
persecutors. Owing to this disgraceful jobbery, the Oxford
team were in no case dismissed without scoring
BALLADE OF BICYCLING
Little
use to weep over a spill,
When you chance to collide with a
chap
In a cart at the foot of a hill,
Or a clergyman out in a trap;
It is better to meet a mishap
With philosophy noble and sound,
And steer for Fortunia’s lap:
“Hi, Mister, your wheel’s goin’ round!”
Though Jack may be followed by Jill,
On the slope, a man’s claret to
tap;
There’s a way that is made by a will,
Like a river turned on from a tap.
You may cover the whole of the
map,
Your face with the sunlight is browned,
You smile when boys shout, with a
clap,1
“Hi, Mister, your wheel’s goin’ round!”
Thus good is the converse of ill
(Such truths are the moralist’s
pap),
And turbot makes excellent brill;
Verse goes with a tang and a snap.
In fact, I should plunge and go
nap
On the quite unassailable ground
Of Ace, King, Queen, Knave—verbum
sap—
“Hi, Mister, your wheel’s goin’ round!”
L'Envoi
I doubt if the verse I distill
Will be by th’ Academy crowned,
I don’t care a bit if it will,
As long as the voices are shrill;—
“Hi, Mister, your wheel’s goin’
round!”
1 The phrase is adverbial.
BALLADE OF WHIST
You
play with a full pack,
And deal them one by one;
You lead the Ace with Queen and Jack
(As you have rightly done);
But lo! a spot upon your sun,
A worm in your pea-pod—
I trump you, when you have begun
To reckon on the odd.
With what a mighty smack
Your King of Trumps is won!
Your partner’s face grows very black;
He doesn’t think it fun.
A Yankee would have used a gun,
A schoolmaster a rod—
A ten ace may be led of none
Who reckon on the odd.
And now, amid the wrack
Of your position,
Their old established suit comes back,
With an unfettered run;
It is no time for jibe or pun,
But to beseech the sod
To yawn for you, who did not shun
To reckon on the odd.
L'Envoi
At Ulm the troops of Mack
Surrendered in a bod-
Y, in a cul-de-sac,
At Bonaparte’s attack;
Be wary lest, strong clod,1
You reckon on the odd.
1 The author
is indebted to Mr. Francis Thompson for this felicitous and,
withal, epigrammatic way of writing “man.”
BALLADE OF NEW CRITICISM
(After
Andrew Lang)
There's
a joy like the joy of a lark,
There’s a pleasure that’s known to
the few,
’Tis to listen all day to the bark
Of a critic’s vitriolic review.
Corroding the centuries through,
It eats since the first poet sang,
And they cursed him, and called
him a Jew,
Before the good æon of Lang.
These critics (their style, you remark,
Into forests of verbiage grew)
Ere Carroll invented the Snark
Were ready to eat me and you;
They snorted, they snapped, and
they slew,
They were mighty of quill and of slang,
Till they quenched the Philistian
crew
Before the good æon of Lang.
Here’s an article mystic and dark
In a manner as fluent as glue,
Which (though lovers meet deep in a
park,
The wearisome tome of it through)
Has forgotten the venom we knew;
Nor sting as those articles stang
When Keats wrote a poem or two
Before the good æon of Lang.
L'Envoi
There is a young lady, it’s true,
Who finds that their tongues have
a tang
But—the sorrows of Satan were few
Before the good æon of Lang.
BALLADE OF THE TYRANNY OF A
COMMERCIAL EMPIRE
It
is a funny thing
That now and then we see
A poor and harmless king
A-getting up a tree
As fast as he can flee;
Much faster than his liking;
And you explain to me—
“That’s Freedom’s Eagle striking!”
A poet cannot sing
When lofty liberty
Conceals beneath her wing
Such lots of misery.
Though labourers drink tea
And all the girls are biking,
I’m not so sure that we
See Freedom’s Eagle striking!
Philosophers may bring
Their logic—I may be
A fool or anything
An out-of-date, a he
Behind the century,
And blind to modern psyching;
But are we really free?
Is Freedom’s Eagle striking?
L'Envoi
Prince, this retort I fling
When trouting or when piking
In rivers with a string
For truth (which comes for
spiking):—
“I wish the Shipping Ring
Felt Freedom’s Eagle striking.”
BALLADE OF URSA AND URSULA
Fair
Maid,
Sair
Afraid,
Bade
Me
Ald
She.
Lair,
Shade
Scare
Dismayed.
“Blade,
Tree!”
Said
She.
Bear
Flayed;
Hair
Laid.
Played
We.
Strayed
She.
L'Envoi
Dare?
Qui.
Mère
She.
BALLADE OF THE MAY TERM
Tennis
and cricket have come to stay,
Five o’clock is the time to bring
Tea and strawberry ice, and play
Various dulcet jargoning;
Lazy paddle all day to swing,
Lazy pipe to kill ennui’s germ,
Lazy, lazy everything:—
Sing heigh-ho for the glad May Term!
O hooray! merry boys, hooray!
Flannels are pleasures that have
no sting.
Everyone’s white and cool and gay;
Everyone looks as if a wing
Might any moment sprout and
spring,
Turning him into an “alb’ inerm’
Angelum,” like Aladdin’s ring;
Sing heigh-ho for the glad May Term!
O the trees are out to-day!
O the buds are blossoming!
O the snow and the wind are away!
O the sun of the late sweet
spring!
O the birds that are glad to sing
After the meal on the early worm!
O I am happier now than a king!
Sing heigh-ho for the glad May Term!
Envoi
Prince, or pauper, be what you may,
Business is quiet, but stocks are
firm;
Never believe in the “bears” in May!
Sing heigh-ho for the glad May
Term!
BALLADE OF SUMMER JOYS
Someone
has foolishly observed
That everything is vanity,
Nor even mentally reserved
A possible exception. I
Propose to mention musically
The pleasures of a lazy laze
With aspic and with strawberry
And lots of Salmon Mayonnaise.
One’s father may be much unnerved
When, like a pigeon (pigeon-pie!—
Smack, lips!) that elegant and curved
Comes homing through the summer
sky,
The kitchen bill before his eye
Looms. Grammar? Do you think to raise
Grammar on wines divinely dry
And lots of Salmon Mayonnaise?
I was about to ask—Lunch served?
Right! I am coming—to ask why
These innocent delights deserved
From Solomon the old and sly
The epithet he certainly
Appears to have employed. He prays
No fizz, nor will to heaven apply
For lots of Salmon Mayonnaise.
Envoi
King of the Israelites, lay by
Austere looks and ascetic ways!
You would condone polygamy—
I only ask for length of days
With lots of Salmon Mayonnaise.
BALLADE OF THE MUTABILITY OF
HUMAN
AFFAIRS
Wild
briar’s a blossom that fades;
The lily as easily dies;
And the love of terrestrial maids
Is tender, too tender to prize.
In a minute it droops and it dies,
And happiness spills at the brink;
Love opens the window and flies:—
But Smith’s is a permanent ink.
Prosperity favoureth trades.
An hour, and then troubles arise.
The workers drop axles and spades,
And Brandenburg labour supplies
The goods. It is very unwise
Your money in labour to sink.
It will vanish, the blue in the
skies:—
But Smith’s is a permanent ink.
And even the woe that invades
Will pass, I make bold to surmise,
Like a man who for salmon trout wades
Till the water comes over his
thighs.
He’s wet, but he speedily dries,
More quickly than pessimists think.
His gaff he repeatedly plies:—
But Smith’s is a permanent ink.
Envoi
Prince, we sell it in various shades,
In azure and purple and pink.
Things change by perceptible grades:—
But Smith’s is a permanent ink.
BALLADE OF GUIDELESS CLIMBING
“The
climbers who guidelessly scale
The rocks of the Eiger are rash.
Far wiser the tourists”1 who
fail
On the Breithorn, and horribly
gnash
Their teeth as they shell out the
cash
To their leaders decidedly drunk;
They stick to the full calabash
And turn from the wall of the Mönch.
The climber should never be frail,
Should thrive on a morsel of hash.
At cliffs he must not become pale
Not tremble when glaciers crash.
At cliffs he must carelessly knock
out the ash
From his pipe while a terrible chunk
Of rock hurtles by like a flash,—
Or turn from the wall of the Mönch.
His courage owes nothing to ale;
His nerve needs not alcohol’s
lash;
He’d sniff if a cachalot whale
Came out of a pool with a splash
And inflicted a terrible gash
On the person behind in a funk2—
A mixture of prudence and dash
Turns not from the wall of the Mönch.
Envoi
Prince, both of us, axe and hobnail,
Surmounted it, fellows of spunk!
It would be a terrible gale
Turned us from the wall of the
Mönch.
1 The
quotation is from the English Alpine Club.
2 Any member
of the English Alpine Club.
BALLADE OF THE BACKS
In
May one often sees a fool
(A fool one guesses him to be)
Canoeing up to Byron’s Pool,
Or downward toward the salty sea.
One of them necessarily,
Unless one absolutely slacks
(Say under King’s or Trinity)
Upon the backs—upon the backs.
The garb this person wears is cool,
As his own self-complacency.
He wears a blazer made of wool
Or flannel (This is poetry,
And tailoring is nought to me)
Whose colours might be filed in stacks;
A straw in speechless harmony!
Upon the backs—upon the backs
He smokes the weed of Istamboul;
He vaguely feels that he is free.
He seems to challenge Nature: “Who’ll
Dare to constrain my liberty?”
He paddles like a honey-bee;
His golden boots are made at Flack’s;
You often see a man like he
Upon the backs—upon the backs.
Envoi
Prince, you may storm Sevastopool,
With Maxim’s thwacks and axe
attacks;
I ply the deft Canadian tool
Upon the backs—upon the backs
BALLADE OF CAMBRIDGE PAPERS1
The
Cantab “to the interest
Of undergraduates” is wed,
Gimbles and gyres as one possessed
On how the ’Varsity is bled.
It paints with unassuming red
The hebdomary interview
With ladies who on legs and head
Dance until everything is blue!
The Granta with a throbbing breast
Watches, with eager passion fed,
The track, the field, the statesman’s
nest,2
The wicket and the river bed.
The evildoer comes to dread
Its scathing scorn, its charges true.
It makes the heart as dull as lead
Dance until everything is blue.
The reverend Review (suppressed
The rising laugh, the smile
ill-bred)
Bakes for the Fellows that infest
This University, a bread
Of Pedantry on which is spread
No butter of Good Style undue;
Before one’s eyes the types unread
Dance until everything is blue.
Envoi
Prince, of three bads who wants the
best?
Off, Granta, Cantab, and Review!
Stick to the “Mag” and let the rest
Dance until everything is blue!
1 Written for
the Cambridge Magazine.
2 The
Union!!!
BALLADE OF THE NEW HUMOUR
When
you at ninety paces
Fill up a snipe with shot,
Find dons with pretty faces,
“New” dramas with a plot,
Find money on a Scot,
Find beauty in a bloomer—
We’ll read your little lot
And label it as humour.
You think to break our braces
With hidden jokes and hot;
Kick over manners’ traces,
Reins tangle in the knot
Of boredom—Never trot
Your spavined mare, but groom her!
You snigger at a sot,
And label him as humour.
Some pseudo-bloods at races,
Some scholar’s polyglot,
Some torpid Don’s grimaces,
Some spouting Hottentot;
Some toady’s risky “mot,”
Some cad’s malicious rumour:—1
All’s porridge for your pot.
You label it as humour!
Envoi
A swollen head you’ve got,
A suppurating tumour!
You write infernal rot,
And label it as humour!
1 Mr. Back,
myself, the O.B., any member of Christ’s College, any member
of Corpus Christi College, any member of Emmanuel College,
are here severally enumerated.
BALLADE OF THE ONE-EYED TOUT
O
solitary-eyed
one, who
Sportest a Diamond Jubilee
Tie, of pure white and red and blue,
Or something green, like
absinthee,
Or purple like a purple bee,
If bees are purple, which I doubt.
O product of the Varsity,
Thou dear and noble1
one-eyed tout!
Whom dost thou cadge for? For I view
With envy thy sweet liberty.
Thy tie’s invariably new,
Although thy face we never see
Even on Sunday changed! Ah me!
That face, at which the lillies pout,
That face extraordinararee,
Thou dear and noble one-eyed tout.
Fragrant as dawn and light as dew
Thy dainty presence! Or a tree
Some poets would compare thee to:
Some poets to a common flea.
I doubt if any end there be
To similes a bard might spout:—
Thou stirr’st the Springs of
poetry,
Thou dear and noble one-eyed tout!
Envoi
How fortunate that very few
Can chatter on like this, about
Nothing at all! Good-bye to you,
O dear and noble one-eyed tout!
1 Mr. Robert
Browning, not the author, is responsible for this iniquitous
conjunction of epithets.
BALLADE OF LAWN TENNIS
[We
have long held Mr Swinburne and Mr W. S. Gilbert to be the
greatest poets of all time. This attempt to combine their
metres and styles ought consequently to produce the finest
poem of all time. We affirm unhesitatingly that it has!]
In the godlike golden glory of the vast
irremeable insuperable weather
(Where those perfectly beastly bad
Rembrandt effects are, over by the sunset that looks so very
much as if to-morrow would be wet)
They have bridled the sun with a
beautiful bit of black and purple clouds, to tie the Poor up
in an intolerable tether,
(It’s enough to make a ’eathen
slave, ’ow much more a gennelman as ’as allus been a
gennelman and a free-born son of Brittania’s ’earts of oak
and no negro fret.)
Notwithstanding boys beautiful with
youth bounce in the efflorescent sunlight two each sweet
side of a maiden’s forelock worked into a semblance of a
net.
Mr Swinburne is a person who can’t
say a thing straight out, you know. What we’re driving at (a
little obscurely, you’ll say) but certainly driving, driving
furiously like Ahab or one of those ridiculous characters of
which we hear so much and see so little, is to point out the
analogy of lawn-tennis and life in a light and humorous way
which even on the most blasé of Freshmen will be unlikely to
pall.
I will quote you the Walt that was
Whitman, the Wilde that was Oscar, the Vincent O’Sullivan,
paean and chant of the classical world, songs from America
due to the lyre of the Harte that was Bret.
And all these estimable
personages, very useful in their way, but to be strenuously
opposed if they should endeavor to put their oar into
morals, religion, or more important still, politics, say as
with one voice (of course we do not insinuate any charge of
plagiarism) in other words, substantially this, that is to
say of course it must be put mystically, because if a truth
is important, it should be the duty of every thinking man to
conceal it from the masses, this, I say, that the score of
life (what-ever the score at Tennis may be, that doesn’t
matter) is at Love-all.
O Gilbert gyrates like a grouse in the
green of the horrible heather,
(Mr Swinburne cannot abide my
straightforward English (that’s one to me) way of talking,
though his morality is imported and perfectly well known to
be as black as jet)
But, he’s right in the main, though he
does so lovingly bleat and so blether,
(If I do bore him, I’m not in a
disgusting music hall set!)
Though he chatter and chortle and
chuckle, at last to the point he will get,
Which as I have previously observed is
to make it perfectly plain to the initiated, whether by
force of language or mere loudness of call,
That this truth is a type of true
triumph beyond the bad odds of a bet,
In fact I won’t take your money (the
first law of betting is that you mayn’t bet on a certainty)
so perfectly convinced by this time are all wise men that
the score of life is at Love-all.
So we twain will sing together;—
Spring regilds her coronet;
Summer comes and don’t go neither,
[This line is neither grammar nor
rhyme, I’m afraid; it’s my mistake entirely, I took a
perfectly absurd word to begin with, and after getting as
far as this it would be a pity to turn back; the rhymes’ll
get worse for certain, so don’t be surprised if they do, but
I haven’t lost hope of sticking to grammar yet.] It is
goodly and glad to see Gilbert express his poetic regret.
I can find nothing better to add than
that the son of Kish was Saul:—
Good Gilbert’s forgotten agin! The
piece of advice he had in his mind was “Trust Heaven and
distrust Baphomet!”
And a very good piece of advice it was
too (Chorus, please!) The score of life is at Love-all.
Envoi
Nothing is like leather.
The rhyme is passable—a task
by no means small.
Though its connection is certainly
not obvious—still our cap has lost no feather:—
Done it, by Jupiter! We can only
say farewell, gentle reader, impressing on you the truth
(put in Tennis language because this ballade is all about
Tennis) that the score of life is at Love-all.
BALLADE OF SERIOUS BALLADES
Light
verses are these you’ve been reading—
Slim-waisted and elegant-necked,
As a maiden on water-cress feeding
If a simile splendidly decked
Appeals to your excellent sect)
But humour must pall—it’s too true.
I think you ought not to object
To a serious ballade or two.
All folk at odd times may be needing
A voice to advise or protect;
The heart of a maid may be bleeding;
The sky of your life may be
flecked
With clouds, and you cannot expect
The flowers to grow without dew—
Please listen with proper respect
To a serious ballade or two!
The sprinkling of thought I am seeding
May gather, take root, and reject
The things that would hinder its
breeding
(Comme il faut, that’s to say, and
correct)
And one day you may recollect
That I always said Heaven was blue,
And you owe, that your life is not
wrecked,
To a serious ballade or two.
Envoi
Princess, it is ill superseding
The old and well-tried with the
new,
Still, for once, lend your ear not
unheeding
To a serious ballade or two.
BALLADE OF OLD ADMIRALS
When
England’s children needed most
The wall of wood, the naked sword,
There ever stood at duty’s post
A sailor, commoner or lord,
Ready at once to step aboard,
And bid the top-sails heavenward shake,
And smite the foe’s unwieldy
horde:—
Nelson and Rodney, Howe and Drake.
Like some white softly-stealing ghost,
The wide-winged ships, with iron
stored,
Drop down the Channel, with a toast
To England, Home, and Beauty.
Roared
All in a sudden wild accord
The broadside for old England’s sake:
The enemy could not afford
Nelson and Rodney, Howe and Drake.
On every English heart, engrossed
In golden letters, tall and broad,
Are the achievements of our host
And the brave ships, whose horns
have gored
Our foes whose flanks are ever
scored
With the great gashes that they make—
These names shall strike a ringing
chord—
Nelson and Rodney, Howe and Drake.
L’Envoi
England, thy sons shall guard thy
coast,
While the white waves in thunder
break;
While in these names we make our boast—
Nelson and Rodney, Howe and Drake.
A REFRAIN OF A FAR COUNTRY
Where
flower and foam draw close to kiss,
And seabirds call to nightingales,
And olives mix with clematis;
Where the sun seeks a path, and
fails
To burn the beechen groves, and
rails
On the cool leaves, that bend and meet
To shape us arches in the dales
Where love has chosen our retreat!
No tide is lapping on the sand
Where the stream sleeps along the
glade;
No nymphs are bathing on the strand,
Nor in the pools a Tuscan maid;
Nor lurks a fawn within the shade;
Nor springs the moss to foxes’ feet;
For all the world in sleep is laid
Where Love has chosen our retreat.
They wake when drops the spring sun
down
Beyond the poplar yonder set,
Beyond the quiet little town,
Beyond the distant coronet
Of fire-crowned waves of foaming
jet
That England rules with iron feet—
The England we may not forget
Where Love has chosen our retreat.
The beeches wave, the poplar dips;
I know the breeze is here at last;
I see the dainty-masted ships
Leap like young fawns beneath the
blast:
The water beats the shingle fast
As if its heart with passion beat,
And the sweet hour of sleep is
past
Where Love has chosen our retreat.
The moon is up; the star-sky dawns;
My lover turns a ruby lip:
There gather nymphs, and eager fauns
To watch us play; the shadows
slip,
And sylph and fountain-fairy dip
Between the leaves, to scent the sweet
Perfume of kisses, when we clip,
Where Love has chosen our retreat.
Envoi
Princess, the fishing-boats are free,
Whose brown sails kiss the zephyrs
fleet.
Come to my arms beyond the sea
Where Love has chosen our retreat!
A BALLADE OF FAREWELL
Now
the May term is gone at last.
In merriment its days have sped;
Now our brief sojourning is past,
And Cambridge days for us are
dead.
The springtime of our youth is
fled,
And Summer comes too fierce and dry.
With pale cheek and averted head
The time is come to say Good-bye.
On Life’s rough road we travel fast;
Some to be great, and some to wed.
We are small men, the world is vast;
With our desires God is not fed.
Some wield gold swords, or steel,
or lead;
Some lose good heart, lay weapons by.
Each lies in his own self-made
bed.
The time is come to say Good-bye.
May God defend us from the blast,
And smooth our path, and keep our
head!
Be with us when we stand aghast,
And quicken Faith when Hope has
bled.
Now, ere our last sun sinks in
red,
Clasp hands in friendship, ere we die,
Nor shame us if a tear be shed:—
The time has come to say Good-bye.
Envoi
Prince, whether in Life’s Tripos
classed
Or ploughed quite irretrievably,
Our friendship for all time is cast.
The time is come to say Good-bye.
MOUNTAIN AIRS
THE ALPS
(Translated from the French)
All
hail! ye glaciers splendid
That meet the azure sky,
Across you we have wended
With joyous heart and high.
The snow is tinged with morning,
The air is keen and pure,
Away! to seek the dawning
Upon the loftiest tower!
Below the silent passes
The chamois browse in peace:
The distant roar of masses
And city clamours cease.
’Tis here we leave the sadness
Of cruel earth behind;
This is the land of gladness
Of every noble mind!
This is the summit regal
Of boldly-sculptured form.
’Tis hence the audacious eagle
Soars high to stem the storm
Oh! heavenly frozen fountains!
O! Nature! vastly grand!
Come! sing upon the mountains
The song of Freedom’s land!
HUT V. HOTEL
I
love the birds
that swell
Their songs of divers flutes;
But I hate the new hotel
And all its civilised brutes.
I love the streams that pour
With loud melodious throat;
But I hate the ill-bred roar
Of the evening table d’hôte.
I love the mountains proud
That throng on their thrones of
snow;
But I hate the snobbish crowd
That throng in the hold below.
I love in the hut to dwell,
With its maze of mountain routes;
But I hate the new hotel,
And all its civilised brutes.
“BITTE, HERR, BEZAHLEN!”
“There was a young fellow at
Sulden
Possessed of a number of
gulden.
He spent and expended
Until they were ended
And then he departed from
Sulden!”
Goethe.
If
e’er to Austrian or Swiss
(My plural’s faulty) Thalen
You go, these words you cannot miss,
“O, bitte, Herr, bezahlen!”
By night the “gemsen” you may hunt,
(The fleas, in common parlan-
Ce), and for your sport the bill
confront-
Eth, “Bitte, Herr bezahlen!”
And if you will call the waitress neat
“Mein liebchen—little darlin’!”
Her pretty mouth will murmur sweet,
“O, bitte, Herr, bezahlen!”
And when your guide, divinely drunk,
As helpless as a carline.
Deserts the party in a funk,
Yet “Bitte, Herr, bezahlen!”
And when, your cash and patience gone,
You leave the valley snarlin’,
The gleesome echoes chase you down,
With “ Bitte, Herr, bezahlen! ”
Mathematician,
Ne’er forget
The number not to fix
Of thy prolific brood of yet
Unincubated chicks!
Let newly-wedded couples name
No visionary son;
And let not Quatre Bras exclaim
That Waterloo is won.
Let fiancées (of fifteen years)
No furniture discuss;
Let mountains never pose as seers
Of the expected “mus.”
Let glories of a novel climb
Before that climb be dumb;
Nor of a record-breaking time
Before the achievement hum.
Let no man of his doings boast
Before those deeds be wrought;
No cook proceed his hare to roast
Before that hare be caught
Let no man shout before the wood
Encloseth him no more;
Nor gaily say his gamp is good
Before the heavens pour.
Let no man say “I go to climb
A ridge of danger dread!”
But wait till that successful time,
And say “I have!” instead!
THE MOUNTAINEER’S FATHER WILLIAM
“You
are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your waistcoat is awfully
tight,
And yet you persistently plough up Sty
Head,
Do you think, at your age, it is
right?”
“In the days of my youth,” Father
William replied,
“I fostered each Sybarite taste;
But now I strive hard my tum-tum to
retard,
By wasting to limit my waist!”
“Ye are old Father William,” the young
man cried,
“Relinquish a passion so dread!
Lay ice axe and rope and dementia
aside!—
Remember the years o’er your
head!”
“In the days of one’s youth,” Father
William replied,
“A passion more deadly appears;
It is better for years to be over my
head,
Than for me to be head over ears!”
“You are old, Father William,” the
young man said,
“And your legs are as flabby as
suet,
Yet you gloat in a week on a
second-rate peak,
Pray, how in the world do you do
it?”
“In the days of my youth (Young men
will be young men),
I was peaked on my skill at
Peak-et!
And the muscular strength (which I
didn’t use then)
Comes in for a subsequent day!”
“You are old, Father William,” the
young man said,
“Yet your tongue is as trusty as
ever;
You consistently lie in a manner that I
Consider infernally clever!”
“I have answered three questions, and
that is enough,
Come on, if you’re coming at all!
I’ll hold you—this Buckingham’s capital
stuff—
I’ll hold—but I’m hanged if I’ll
haul!”
THE TRAVERSE OF THE AIGUILLES
ROUGES
(I)
We
slept at the Sign of the Beautiful Star;
We dined upon Maggi1
and Cotton;2
We said of the couloir “on pourrait en
vouloir”;
We said of the rocks—they are
rotten.
(2)
We said “ ’Twill be cold, not
improbably wet,”
We sneered at the ridge we had
passed,
We said of the sun “His day’s work he
has done.”
We said of the sky—“it is vast.”
(3)
We spoke of the snow—“it is notably
cold ”;
We supped upon Cotton and Maggi;
We observed to the moon “Be a dear and
come soon.”
We remarked of the crags—“they are
craggy.”
(4)
Intelligent talk will most surely
beguile
The longest night out on the
rocks;
So we made of the guides the remarks
that revile;
Of their Herrs we said “sheep go
in flocks.”
(5)
It was three o’ the morn and the night
was outworn;
We broke fast on Maggi and Cotton,
We said Cecil’s jest was a gibe of the
best,
And of Morris’s yarns—“that’s a
hot ’un.”
(6)
We spoke of the mountains, the weather,
the rope,
In a tongue that was doubtfully
British;
We summed up in three words
Philosophy’s scope;
Of women we said—“they are
skittish.”
(7)
We gained the low snows, and each
rubbed his cold nose
As we lunched upon Cotton and
Maggi;
We observed, “we are neat from our
felts to our feet,”
But remarked of our chins—“they
are shaggy.”
(8)
Arolla appears. There were no hearty
cheers
And no one was anxious about us:
“If horrid young fools will break
Alpine Club rules”—
In fact, they could get on without
us!
(9)
We sprawled in the sun when the banquet
was done
(We had feasted on Bouvier3
and Mauler4),
You said of my knickers—they are not a
vicar’s;
It isn’t a hole, it’s a howler!
(10)
Superior persons in collars and cuffs
Said we ought to be grateful to
Heaven.
“If young fools will scale inaccessible
bluffs
They’re killed—It’s a hundred to
seven.”
(11)
They said, “Without guides, which the
Commune provides
No party for big hills should go.”
They said of our pluck “ ’twas the
devil’s own luck,”
And they said of our pace—“it was
slow.”
(12)
They spoke but we heard not—We slept
like the dead,
Having feasted on Mauler and
Bouvier;
And the wind echoed Cecil’s olfactory
vessels
That snored “Jolly climb!
Alleluvia!”
1 His soup.
2 His
tobacco.
3 His
champagne.
4 His
champagne.
MIXED BISCUITS
“Paderewski sticks
sixty-six mixed biscuits in frisky
Trixy’s sixth whiskey.”—Emerson
TO A HETEROMITA ROSTRATA
Sweet
microscopic beauty; born one day
In not imperishable head of cod!
Young organism
Sporting flagella in a cheerful way,
But neither cilium nor pseudopod;
Produced by schism!
Thou dost not browse on pastures bright
and green,
Or feed on palm trees in sublime
oases
In lands Semitic.
Not holophytic is thy food I ween,
Nor holozoic, as in other races,
But saprophytic.
When bliss conjugal is thine object
praiseworthy
A swimming form approaches to an
anchored
With zeal ecstatic:
Affection of a healthy length of days
worthy,
Your fusion is by motion all
uncankered;
Unkinematic!
Your spores burst forth. O parents fond
and dutiful,
What lot in life could be much
more felicitous
Or any brighter?
You little being chlorophylly
beautiful,
Who in high cod’s head dost
descend to visit us,
Heteromita!
PRINCIPALLY REMIGIAL
It
is the duty of a righteous editor, when May Term comes, to
take his pen and spread it o’er the surface of his paper in
indicting what we consider the best kind of writing, a
leader to congratulate our crews or comment on their conduct
should they lose, to mention how we won (or lost) the
sports, and how we battled in the Raquet-Courts. Another
column will refer to Fletcher, and technicalities of thwart
and stretcher, and how the wind—I almost might have written
this article within the groves of Ditton before the race was
won (so easy as it scenes to describe without an actual
visit to the stern waters of the Thames at Hammersmith or at
Mortlake). In the noblest grammar, with hardly any words
really misspelt at all, I could describe how neither
coxswain felt at all nervous a quarter of an hour before the
race; how both the crews felt sure that they would score the
race, how Oxford drew away at Chiswick Eyot amid a most
extraordinary spate of pocket-handkerchiefs waved idly; how
Cambridge crept up with wave-dividing prow with even louder
cheers; my sex forbids I should describe how seven’s
stretcher skids; but, generously giving up his briar, Bow
(who sits next him) with unwonted fire holds it in place
with his divine white ivories; how stroke increased to 50,
which is high—very! Six (who’s a villian) sees upon a
steamer the woman he has wronged by some bad scheme; her
face makes him faint and fall into the water. But Oxford
getting fortunately shorter they could not quite recover the
lost yard, and Cambridge consequently wins a hard-fought
contest by two inches and a half; at which the people who
had backed them laugh, and Bow gets his commission in the
guards. Our authoress, who reels off yards and yards of fine
romance, is far too serious to make the pun to her so
obvious about his being still a Beau, undér the impression
that we all pronounce the worthy who occupies the foremost
thwart as if he were archer’s joy or a division whiffy in
London East. The space at my disposal is getting, alas! too
small, and pretty Rosalys (the girl I saw the race with)
must be slurred over. Conclude. A thousand kind words and a
word over to those who won and those who gamely stuck to it
though they were beaten. (Next time better luck to it!)1
1 As a direct result of these remarks
the boat-race was indeed won by us the very next year but
three or four.
HOW TO DO A RECHAUFFE
When
from a maid her lover goes,
Her little heart is full to
burstin’.
She goes and dons at once the clothes
Her fickle lover kissed her first
in.
She argues “if I reconstruct
That situation accurately,
Beneath his arm I’ll soon be tucked,
If any virtue lie in Whately.”
With Huxley it appears to her,
Mutatis, that’s to say,
mutandis,
The situation will recur,
Unhelped by artibus nefandis.
She will not recognise the fact,
That probably a change would snare
’em!
A person of superior tact,
Would purchase bloomers, ay, and
wear ’em.
The jaunty jump, the cigarette,
The little hat (or toque) all
skew-wise
Might claim his errant fancy yet—
This seems to me (I hope to you)
wise.
There! dry your eyes, my lass, put on
A pretty costume to surprise him,
Don’t wait till he is really gone!
(Like Ahab did, on Mount Gerizim).
Don’t read “Félise” or any thing
That naughty Mr Swinburne
scribbles;
The human heart with love enring;
Don’t dig right into it with
dibbles!
Good luck, my lass, you now your way
can see!
—I feared she might have taken me
to
Replenish the unusual vacancy;
And I have other things to see to.
THE VILLAGE CHAMPIONS
(Founded
on Fact)
“The way to Dorking, mister? Ay!
I wean’t, a-fearin’ to deceive;
I bean’t a man as can rely,
To speak on, as you might
perceive.
You go an’ ax that chap you see
A-sitting by the villidge tree.”
“And who is he?” the stranger said.
“He seems more aged than you, my
friend!”
“Why, bless you, so ’e be,” his head
He sadly scratched from end to
end,
“But sich a hintellect, I’ll lay
You don’t see, mister, hevery day!
“Why, Billy Stoke ’e were the cove
A matter o’ ten year agone
What beat Jim Buskett out o’ ’Ove,
What used to be the champion—
Jim Buskett, wi’ the wooden legs,
What were the champion fur heggs!
“It weren’t a hole-an’-corner lay.
We painted up a board as said:
‘The Goat-and-Compasses—to-day—
An’ hentrance tuppence hevery
’ead.
The wummen-folk may henter free,
An’ likewise babies under three.
“ ‘A challenge to the world do I,
Jim Buskett, with the wooden legs,
Give forth to all men and sundry
To win the championship fur heggs;
An’ this stake o’ twenty pound
To any heater ‘ere around.’
“Now, mister, we ’ad never thought
To ’ave a heater sich as ’e,
An’ yet, opined as summon ought
To take the challenge, fair an’
free;
Fur Jim ’e seemed to us to boast,
The which our villidge hates the most.
“Well, arter ’arf-a-’our ’ad gone,
Why, sudden-like there up an’
spoke:
‘I’ll challenge this ’ere champion!’
An’ this was this ’ere Billy
Stoke.
So ups we gets upon our legs,
An’ tells the girl to fetch the heggs.
“Says Jim, ‘Bring mine as hard as
bricks,
An’ boil ’em ’arf-a-‘our or more,
An’ bring ’em ’ere in plates of six.’
When Billy Stoke ’e up an’ swore;
‘Bring mine,’ ’e says, an’ swore like
mad,
‘An’ bring ’em raw,’ ses ’e, ‘by Gad!’
“So Jimmy Buskett sits ’im down,
An’ Billy Stoke ’e ups an’ stands;
An’ Parson Bimmins starts to frown.
But Sawbones Smith ’e rubs ’is
’ands,
An’ whispers. as ’e wags ’is ’ead,
‘ ’Ere’s work fur me an’ Sexton Ned!’
“So Jimmy Buskett takes ’is seat,
An swallers ’is’n ’ard an’ ’ole;
An’ Billy stands upon ’is feet,
An’ drinks ’em from a chiny bowl.
So by the time a ’our were gone,
They eats between ’em forty-one.
“But Jimmy’s mouth were gitting dry,
An’ so ’e ’as to wash ‘em down,
While Billy looked ’most fit to die,
An’ turned from green to
dirty-brown;
An’ Sawbones Smith was a’most mazed,
An’ Parson Bimmins fairly dazed.
“Well, mister, Jimmy Buskett ses,
’E ses. ses ’e, at fifty-two,
A-chokin’ an’ a-blowin’ es
A rileway ingin go to do—
’E ses, ses ’e. ‘ I claims a win;
Bill Stokes ain’t got ’is fifty in!’
“But Bill ’e give a glorious gulp,
An’ swallers six as soon as
snakes,
An’ mashes more’n ’em inter pulp,
While Jim another couple takes.
‘My lords,’ ses Bill, ‘ I’m easy fust,
An’ threescore yet afore I bust!’
“Then Jimmy Buskett up ’e riz,
An’ tries to bolt a plateful more,
When green ’e turns about the phiz,
An’ falls presumptious on the
floor.
So Sawbones swears upon the spot
A nappleplectic fit ’e’s got.
“Then Billy Stoke ’e ups and’ calls
Fur men to carry ’im to bed,
When likewise ’e permiscuous falls
An’ ’its the fender with ’is ’ead
Ses Sawbones, ‘ ’E’s a lucky chap,
An’ wean’t be ’urt by that
mis’ap.
“ ‘They’ve appleplectic fits,’ ’e ses,
‘An’, though their lives I’m sure
to save,
Yet each’ll carry, I’ll confess,
A ruin’ stummick to ’is grave.’
An’ ’e were right as soon as not:
A ruin’ stummick ’tis they’ve got.
“Well, mister, that’s the facs as seen
Ten year ago come Chris’mas day,
An’ so our villidge always been
The leadin’ villidge down our way;
But Billy Stokes ’ull always ’ave
A ruin’ stummick to ’is grave.
“An’ when ’e tell the story now,
’E seem to gasp fur want of
breath—
Yes, mister, Sawbones ses as ’ow
’E wean’t be better till ’is
death;
‘Unto ’is grave.’ ’e ses, ses ’e,
‘A ruin’ stummick’s what ’e be!’ ”
TWO SONNETS IN PRAISE OF A
PUBLISHER
who sought to infect our youth with his
noxious wares
The ordure of this goat, who is called
“Master Leonard.”—Eliphaz
Levi.
He’s the man for muck. —Browning.
I.
Small
coffin-worms that burrow in thy brain
Writhe with delight; thy rotten body
teems
With all infesting vermin, as beseems
The mirror of an obscene mind. In vain
Thy misbegotten brutehood shirks the
pain
Of its avenging leprosies: death steams
In all thy rank foul atmosphere: the
gleams
Of phosphorescent putrefaction wane
Thy sordid hands reach through the
filth to snatch
The offal money of a prurient swarm.
Thy liar’s tongue licks liquid dung to
hatch
From fetid ulcers with its slimy warm
Venom some fouler vermin, in their nest
Thy rotten heart and thy polluting
breast!
II.
Egg of the slime! Thy loose abortive
lips
Mouth hateful things: thy shifty
bloodshot eyes
Lurk craftily to snare some carrion
prize,
The dainty morsel whence the poison
drips
Unmarked: the maskéd infamy that slips
Into an innocent maw: corrupter wise!
Sly worm of hell! that close and
cunning lies
With sucking tentacles for finger-tips.
Earth spits on thee, contagious
Caliban!
Hell spits on thee; her skin is
spiritual.
Only the awful slime and excrement
That sin sheds off will own thee for a
man.
Only the worms in dead men’s bowels
that crawl
To lick a loathlier brother are
content.
TO AN UNAPPRECIATIVE
UNIVERSITY
With
all my mental pabulum I like to be a ruminant,
Not gobble up too hastily my
fodder;
My mind is busy as a bloomin’ spider or
a bloomin’ ant,
But I don’t despise the necessary
plodder.
I’m assured by all who knew me I’m a
most transcendent genius;
I’m as clever as a Cayley or a
Newton;
I breast the tape with Kelvin, and with
Ramsay, and Arrhenius,
But I copy the Stolidity that’s
Teuton.
I envy not the lightning of the insight
of an Oscar Wilde;
My mental motto is Festina lente;
I might have made the eminent
composerman of “Tosca” wild,
I admit that I have certainly made
plenty.
But I find that in a Tripos (’tis the
Moral Scientific)
I have never time to understand
the question;
When the clock strikes I am only just
beginning a terrific
Answer after the completest of
digestion.
It’s a pity that they’ll plough me, for
I should have made my mark at last,
If I only became master of a
College;
My mighty mind was bound to have
dispelled the dark at last,
That covers all the rudiments of
knowledge.
I should not have been expected in that
station to produce a thought,
Or do anything but draw a little
salary;
And I would one day eventually most
graciously let loose a thought
On some subject such as
Maeterlinck or Malory.
But good-bye to thoughts of greatness
amid men of Major Schol. degree!
It’s the first step that regards
me with defiance;
They’ll allow me, p’raps, the General,
or possibly the Poll Degree,
For my papers in the Trip. of
Moral Science.
So I, who might have risen to the fame
of such a man as Hobbes,
Or Leibnitz, or St Paul, or Dr
Whewell,
Remain a mediocrity (excuse a water-can
o’ sobs!)
Exactly for my excellence—it’s
cruel.
SAPPHO IN CHIC-A-GO.
“Come Muse migrate from Greece and
Ionia,
Cross out please those immensely
overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy and Achilles’
wrath, and Aeneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings,
Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the
rocks of your snowy Parnassus,
Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice
high on Jaffa’s gate and on Mount Moriah
The same on the walls of your German,
French and Spanish castles, and Italian collections,
For know a better, fresher, busier
sphere, a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you.
Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs’d
inclination,
Join’d with an irresistible, natural
gravitation,
She comes! I hear the rustling of her
gown,
I scent the odour of her breath’s
delicious fragrance,
I mark her step divine, her curious
eyes a-turning, rolling,
Upon this very scene.
The dame of dames! can I believe then,
Those ancient temples, sculptures
classic, could none of them retain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, not
myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and hold
on to her?
Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can
plainly see her,
The same undying soul of earth’s,
activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come,
ended the strata of her former themes,
Hidden and cover’d by today's,
foundation of to-day's,
Ended, deceas’d through time, her voice
by Castaly’s fountain
Silent the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in
Egypt, silent all these century-baffling tombs,
Ended for aye the epics of Asia’s,
Europe’s helmeted warriors, ended the primitive call of the
muses,
Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio,
Melpomene, Thiala dead,
Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and
Oriana, ended the quest of the Holy Graal,
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by
the wind, extinct,
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy
midnight troops sped with the sunrise,
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone,
Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone
Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the
turrets that Usk from its water reflected,
Arthur vanish’d with all his knights,
Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly
like an exhalation;
Pass’d! pass’d! for us, forever pass’d,
that once so mighty world, now void inanimate, phantom world
Embroider’d, dazzling, foreign world,
with all its gorgeous legends, myths,
Its kings and castles proud, its
priests and warlike lords and courtly dames
Pass’d to its charnel vault, coffin’d
with crown and armor on,
Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page.
And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad
rhyme.
I say I see, my friends if you do not,
the illustrious emigré (having it is true in her day,
although the same, changed, journey’d considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous,
vigourously clearing a path for herself, striding through
the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill
steam-whistle undismay’d
Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipe
gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleas’d with palpable
intent to stay,
She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen
ware!”
Walt
Whitman
The lady proved to be Sappho herself.
She proceeded to rival her Ode to Aphrodite with one to a
publisher who had met her on the wharf, thinking her to be
the normal brand of poetess, as manufactured at Boston. But
Sappho justifies her pre-eminence: she replies to his
overtures:
Would you play me down for a sucker, stranger?
Plank down fifty bucks for a gold brick? No, sir!
I should smile! A dern silly proposition.
Not on yer tintype!
The above astonishing farrago of bombast, bad grammar, and
schoolboy blunder is the actual writing of this unpleasant
psychopath.
(Bugschbloscherheim attributes the subjointed fragment, from
the Scholiast amended by Dr. A. W. Verrall to suit the
theory that Sappho was a rationalist (in costume), to the
latter portion of this superb ode.)
Abskise, all-fired altemal shucksters, savey?
Chowder-headed bushwhackers, hop the clothesline!
Dago speelers! Artichoke, am I? That lie’s
Nailed to the counter.
Black-eyed Susan bloviates nits, my Bourbons!
Snicks for craps why-high the Arkansaw toothpick?
Amerace ˇ ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ
Block Island Turkey!
Deuce a bucket ˇ ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ
ˉ ˇ stave ˇ ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ
ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ chinmusic ˉ
amusers
ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ Scuds.
ˉ ˇ ˉall sorts of ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ
ˇ ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ
ˇ ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ
Ambia ˉ ˉ
ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ Lach ˇ ˇ ˉ his Jiglets
ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ on jawbone ˉ ˇ
ˉ
ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˇ ˉ ˇ ˉ ˇ
ˉ ˇ ˇ We-uns.
Such the famous fragment. It is a pity that Whitman himself
never answered Swinburne’s passionate appeal: “Send but a
song over sea for us!”
A RONDEL
Say, how long shall our love remain
Keen as the sea and strong,
Light as the wind, and glad as the rain:—
Say, how long?
Say, to whom shall the lips belong
This year, next year, never again?
Say, whose lips will have done me wrong?
Tell me, little shy bird, if pain
Dwell in thy heart at an idle song;
Now we are one; we shall soon be twain!
Say, how long?
A SONNETT OF SPRING FASHIONS
My
Chloe has asked for a sonnet
To hymn her cœrulean hat.
Of course I mayn’t call it a bonnet
(Though the rhyme would come awfully pat).
It has cherries and strawberries on it,
It’s trimmed with the tail of a rat.
I think that this verse, if she con it,
Is likely to fall very flat.
Better luck, as I hope, with the sestet.
I cannot write sonnets, my Chloe,
They turn out so terribly doughy!
I only write this, as you pressed it.
Though now, you’ll admit it, it looks showy,
In writing I heartily blest it!
MARY ROGERS
A Rondel
by uncle podgers (né Blondel)
Mary Rogers! Woe to men,
Parsons, lawyers, sailors, sodgers!
Ca’ me canty but1 and ben?
Mary Rogers!
Does she live by taking lodgers?
She is beautiful, but then
Quaint old jossers, queer old codgers—2
How she does it, do ye ken?3
Women are such artful dodgers!
Lord! I’d love to be there when
Mary Rogers.1
1 But and ben—a Scots expression, very powerful and chaste.
2 This sentence is left unfinished for effect.
3 Does what? This is a problem rondel.
4 i.e. when yet unmarried.
ODE TO GERALD FESTUS KELLY
CURLED eyelids that hide like a beetle
Black eyes that grow green for an hour;
The weary wide limbs and the leetle
White hands, like a boot in a bower;
When thou art gone down, as a jelly,
What shall rest of us then, as we part,
O mystic and dolorous Kelly,
Apostle of Art!
Seven sorrows are sung by the Herald:1
But thy daubs, which are seventy times seven,
Will kill me my militant Gerald,
And then thy will haunt me in the heaven;
Fierce eyebrow or famishing bosom,
Rossetti or Aubrey or Jones,
Some buxom, some frail as the dew, some
Mere bags full of bones.
You shift and bedeck and bedrape them
(Though some are both nude and antique):—
Your epigrams, who shall escape them?
Your metaphors often oblique?
With words you have beaten and blessed us,
You caused us to shudder and smart,
O subtle, spontaneous Festus,
Apostle of Art!
By the ravenous teeth that have bitten
Through the salad of lobster and cheese;
By the silliest lines I have written
(Though none are as silly as these);
By remarks I have made that were rude-io!
By the epigrams cruel and tart,
We beseech thee respond from thy studio,
Apostle of Art!
On canvas by paints never covered,
Nor wet with the washing of turps;
On blocks where thy pen never hovered,
Nor pencil that crumbles and chirps.
(My fingers with ink are so inky,
I want to give vent to a phrase,
That would shock even Wee Willie Winkie
Or t’ Owd ’n of Days.2)
We shall know what the darkness discovers
When bald are the hairs of our head;
For “love and the pleasures of lovers
Are only well known to the dead.”3
We shall know if your heaven is helly,
Find out if your liver is heart;
And if brains be the whole of thee, Kelly,
Apostle of Art!
1 This phrase is, and must remain obscure, as I can’t
remember what, if anything, I meant by it.
2 Macrophages, the “Vast Countenance.”
3 Original epigram, by G. F. K. Copyright in the United
Sates of America.
A RONDEL
A
brief half-hour is man’s allotted bliss,
A space of sunshine and eternal shower;
A little time for love, as short as is
A brief half-hour.
Hell hath no witchcraft, heaven hath no power,
To change, prolong, delay, or hasten this.
It comes and flits, a bee from bud to flower.
No strength hath love, no virtue hath love’s kiss,
To move one jot fate’s doom, man’s meed, sin’s dower.
Between birth’s darkness and the gates of Dis,
A brief half-hour!
THE CHEMIST’S LOVE-SONG
My love’s deep purple wondrous eyes
Would melt a saint, howe’er obdurate;
Their gorgeous colour even vies
With cuprammonium cyanurate.
As beauteous as the acetate
Of tri-methyl-ros-aniline,
Or ferric chloride made to mate
With di-hydroxy-toluene.
Her hair the gorgeous golden hue
That is so marked in isatin,
Or the sulphonic acid, too,
Of naphthol-diazo-benzene.
Her cheeks approach the lovely shade
Of tetra-brom-flourescein,
Or that of alkalies displayed
On exquisite phenol-phthalein.
And my desire for her is more
Than that of meta-ethylene-
Benzoyl-tri-methyl-phenyl-clor-
Di-β-nitro toluene.
For oxidising agents all:
And if my love she were to spurn,
Like tetra-nitro-di-benzal-
Tolu-ethylidene I’d burn.
My heart would break up like the mol-
Ecule of para-toluene-
Diazo-y-amidol-
Hydroxy-tri-mesitylene.
BAL MASQUE
Yes, rose domino, eyes so grey,
Did you believe that I could not guess
Whose pretty face beneath it lay?
Yes!
Who but yourself could adorn that dress,
Though it be dainty—( are you a fay,
Or a pink-and-white Dresden Shepherdess?)
Dominoes must not say love nay.
Surely my skill can deserve no less
Than—so you smile—I am sure I may—
Yes?
LINES IN SPRING
Note.—In these musical lines I have attacked the problem of
Phonetic Spelling from an entirely original standpoint. The
result is the vindication of my noble theories on this
matter.
Though through and hiccough have nough rhyme, enough
Yough ought tough grant, remain tough make on cough.
Here goughs — Ough! sweet tough rough oughoughn the lough
Though, trough, I might through ough, if it were rough,
My sougher. Hough I loughve the oughx sough tough
That goughs, loughed loughing, where the ripples sough
With the blough blough-bloughsed ploughman tough the trough,
Though the blough bloughs are soughre. Woughd friend Hough
Clough
Sing yough a songhng sough sweet? Nough! Nough! The slough
Ough poughets’ rivalry we shoughn, although
Yough ought tough knough hough I oughtclass him. Bough,
Blossom, and frought, my flougher exceeds. The dough
I oughse is yeastier. Goughed speed the plough!
AU THEATRE DU GRAND GUIGNAL1
Le
systeme du Docteur Goudron
et du Professeur Plume
What this system really implies.
Poe!
Poe by the gift of the Lord!
Poe in his tragedy,
Black melodrama,
Horrid, overwhelming,
Nerve-shattering maniacal effort
Dictated by morphia, Poe
The American poet
Translated by Baudelaire,
Stephen Mallarmé
And other people
Of singular and perhaps
Unique talent
(Now joined by
André de Lordes)
Is a splendid success
At the quaint little theatre
Of Montmartre.
Speed!—I mean Poe!
[Unhappily our contributor
returned alive from watching the
start of the Paris-Madrid race. He had provided himself with
a copy of Mr Henley’s “Imperishable Poem,” and the metre,
in which there is but one rule, viz. “anything scans,”
seems to have run away with him. Would the motor had done as
the metre! He will be printed as prose.—Ed.]
Filled with anticipations of the most blood-curdling order,
we sought the breezy heights of Montmartre. The Sacré Cœur,
looking more than ever like a compromise between an Indian
mosque and a Buzsard cake, towered above us in the frosty
twilight.
It is, however, invisible from the theatre itself, so that
we were able to give our undivided attention to the system
of Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume, and it is our
interpretation alone which has any real value. It will be
necessary first to call the attention of the reader to our
own system, without some account of which he may find
himself embarrassed, even bewildered.
Mr George Macdonald in his
masterpiece of Haggardized
Rabbinical tradition, “Lilith” (Off, Lilith!),2 has broken
the wind of the poor phrase to this effect:
“To grow and not to grow; to grow larger and to grow
smaller at one and the same time; yea, even to grow by the
simple process of not growing.”
In these unpretending and innocent words lies hid (for the
eye of the wise to discover) the germ of the most stupendous
and far-reaching system of philosophy that has
ever been presented to the astounded consciousness of mortal
men. Quickly overrunning the civilized world, it has
penetrated (auspice Teucro) into the very remotest steppes
of Central Asia, the wildest savannahs of the American
prairie, where dog and oyster burble in plethoric harmony
among the verdant shoots of cactus and coyote, where the
giant Appomattox rolls in sulky majesty to the red bays of
the Pacific. The Society formed to exploit this unheard-of
invention is, naturally, of a most secret nature: perhaps
permitted to inscribe after their names the letters L.A.L.
By the New Method, therefore, let us continue our
interesting studies of the system of Doctor Goudron and
Professor Plume. Laure, the first of three curtain (and
hair) raisers, is a charming little drama. An ingénue comes
by accident into possession of a letter compromising her
mother. Discovered by her father, she saves her mother by
accusing herself. The mother, secure once more, bullies and
ill-treats the heroic child, so that the curtain falls on
her despairing shriek of “Misérable!” Here then is truth!
Not in a well, as lewd fellows have impotently pretended:
but here, on the stage of the Grand Guignol. It was just
what happens every time, when anyone is fool enough to
sacrifice themselves. It was magnificent; it was war!
Curtain-lifter No. 2 was a still wittier scene, yet the
element of improbablility3 damped, not indeed the
enthusiasm of the mob, but our own more sober and
judicious pleasure. You ask therefore in vain for detail. “La Mineure” (No. 3) was, on the other hand, even more
life-like than No. I.
A witness retained by justice to identify a criminal
discovers him by chance in the person of the President of
the Court himself. She is hauled to the deepest dungeons of
Saint Lazare, and everything thus ends happily. For one
moment the nerves of the spectator are braced up to meet the
sword of Damocles—and then, with a single blow, the Juge
d’Instruction subtly and delicately strikes in, and we can
breathe again.
The Docteur Goudron was now to appear, and it was a
spectacle saddening to the serious philosopher to observe
everybody pretending, often most elaborately, that they had
read Poe’s story on which the play is based. Alas! that we
should have been among them! Yet so it was. Many years have
elapsed since our feet trod civilized MacAdam; many years
since we spent hour after happy hour poring over our Poes.
Surprising? Ay, but true. Yet some dimmest recollection of
Dr Tarr and Professor Feather does hurtle heavenward to us
across the mist-kissed abyss of memory: so much, no more.
The actor who represented Doctor Goudren—his
name is worthy to be graven on tablets of brass: it is consequently not to
be printed here. His self-restraint, his command of
expression, his elocution were alike wonderful.
Booth, Irving, could not have done it better: it could have
barely been equalled even by Wilson Barrett in his prime.
Horror holds one from the outset: but when from words we go
to deeds, the formulation of the Logos in the plastic, alas!
the element of music-hall supervenes—O Catulle Mendès.!
didst thou say, forced like Galileo to thy knees by an
iniquitous tribunal; Personne ne croit à ces cadavres!”?
Yet we do so. The director’s murder is done magnificently;
better then Macbeth, better than the Cenci; better than the
Mother’s Tragedy.4 No! this praise is too fulsome, too
indiscriminate; but any way, better than the other two. He
groans like laurelled Martial in Burn’s poem; yet his
assassin does not tickle the ears of the groundlings with a
coarse “Crévé, nom de D——!” but in supreme self-mastery, the
iron control of a lunatic whose sanity is at stake,
enters stern and silent,, his eyes glittering with fiendish
joy —Bavière, thy poster is superb!—and develops with calm
and scientific precision his system to the raving crowd of
madmen and madwomen. Peer Gynt! ay! but Peer Gynt with a
tang! Peer Gynt vital, real, terrible.
What is the system? That is fine; but remember, my friends,
that our own system comes first! Charity begins at home and
ends in the workhouse: so the new method must absorb our
space—ay! and infinite space!—to the exclusion of our
unworthy imitators, Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume. To
Montmartre then, reader! to the Grand Guignol! To the
Madhouse,
ha, ha, ha! Shudder, shiver, shake, shriek, do everything
that begins with sh, except hush—and that is Irish, after
all.
Of one thing only do I warn you: from start to finish there
is not a word or a gesture that could shock the most
innocent maiden, or bring a gleam to the eye of the least
hardened roué, or the most expert member of the Vigilance
Society.
This, in a French theatre, is as rare as it is delightful;5
and though it is conditioned, like all phenomena, by space,
time and causality, it is none the less refreshing.6
Vladimir Svareff, P.L.A.L.
1 A review on “the Soothing System” in its original French
dress.
2 The Qabalah.
3 A débutante with her mother finds herself by inadvertence
at a “gros numéro.” But we betray our correspondent’s
reticence. Enough.—Ed.
4 We have discovered too late that this is a despicable
effort of our cor-respondent’s jejune graphomania. Had we
suspected that he was a poetaster as well as a degenerate
and imbecile, we should not have printed this rubbish.—Ed.
5 The MS. is almost illegible; the word might be “disappointing.”
6 Ditto. ditto. ditto. “refrigerating.” |