Parodies of the works of English & American authors, vol. VI (part 2 of 8)

Preface

[Illustration: I]t is now a little more than six years since this publication was commenced, and the completion of the Sixth Volume enables me to say that nearly every Parody of literary merit, or importance, has been mentioned in its pages, whilst some thousands of the best have been given in full.

To form such a collection required not only an intimate knowledge of English Poetical Literature, but involved the reference to many very rare and scarce books, English, American, and Colonial.

I beg to offer my sincere thanks to the Authors who kindly permitted their copyright poems to be inserted in this volume, particularly to F. Locker-Lampson, Esq., and G. R. Sims, Esq., as well as to the following gentlemen, for copies of Parodies and other information they have afforded――Messrs. Cuthbert Bede, G. H. Brierley, of Cardiff; F. W. Crawford, T. F. Dillon Croker, Frank Howell, J. H. Ingram, Walter Parke, F. B. Perkins, of San Francisco; C. H. Stephenson, C. H. Waring, and Gleeson White.

In nearly every case the permission of the authors has been obtained for the re-publication of their Parodies; in the few instances where this was not done, it was owing to the impossibility of finding the author’s address.

During the progress of the work, some further Parodies appeared of Authors already dealt with, it is proposed to include these in a supplementary volume, which will be published at some future date.

It is believed that the ample Bibliographical information relating to Parodies and Burlesques contained in this volume will be specially useful to Librarians, Managers of Penny Readings, and Professors of Elocution.

Editors of Provincial Papers who offer prizes for Literary compositions should be on their guard against unscrupulous persons who copy Parodies from this Collection, and send them in as original compositions.

In much of the compilation, and especially those portions requiring the exercise of taste, and in the somewhat dreary process of proof reading, I have been greatly assisted by my wife, whose cheerful co-operation in all my labours adds just the zest which renders Life worth living.

Whilst bidding my subscribers Farewell, I wish to add that the subject of Parodies will continue to engage my attention, and that I shall always be grateful for any information, or examples, that may be sent to me, addressed to the care of Messrs. Reeves and Turner.

WALTER HAMILTON.

CHRISTMAS, 1889.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

――――

[Illustration: M]r. Swinburne, son of Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne, and grandson of Sir John Edward Swinburne, sixth baronet, was born in 1838, and educated first at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford.

Despite his ancient pedigree, his aristocratic connections, and his university education, the early writings of Mr. A. C. Swinburne, both in prose and verse, were coloured by Radical opinions of the most advanced description. Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth and Southey commenced thus, with results which should have taught him how unwise it is for a poet, who wishes to be widely read, to descend into the heated atmosphere of political strife.

The Undergraduate Papers, published by Mr. Mansell, Oxford, 1857-8, contained some of Mr. Swinburne’s earliest poems, these were followed by “Atalanta in Calydon,” “Chastelard,” and “Poems and Ballads.”

It will be readily understood that only a few brief extracts can be given from Mr. Swinburne’s poems, sufficient merely to strike the key notes of the Parodies.

――――

THE CREATION OF MAN.

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven! Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite: Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And life the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years: And froth and drift of the sea; And dust of the labouring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love. With life before and after, And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. For the winds of the north and the south They gathered as into strife; They breathed upon his mouth, They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labour and thought, A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight, And beauty and length of days, And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep.

* * * * *

A. C. SWINBURNE.

――――

AMERICAN PARODY.

Before the beginning of years, There went to the making of man Nine tailors with their shears, A coupe and a tiger and span, Umbrellas and neckties and canes, An ulster, a coat, and all that―― But the crowning glory remains, His last best gift was his hat.

And the mad hatters took in hand Skins of the beaver, and felt, And straw from the isthmus land, And silk and black bear’s pelt: And wrought with prophetic passion, Designed on the newest plan, They made in the height of fashion The hat for the wearing of man.

――――

A POET’S VALENTINE.

Before the beginning of post There came to the making of love Rhyme and of follies a host; Ducks with a dart and a dove; Flow’rs with initials beneath, Cupid conceal’d in a cell, Lovers alone on a heath. A Parson pulling a bell. Follies all fetched afar, Mirth for a maid and a man, Jokes that jingle and jar, And lines refusing to scan.

And still with the change of things The annual craze comes back With knocks and riotous rings From the post piled up with a pack. Still letters of love and laughter, And verse in various time, With roars that reach to the rafter, And sheets of scurrilous rhyme. Of old we counted our money And played but a note for a kiss, But now we send hampers of honey And boxes of boisterous bliss.

Fun. February 15, 1868.

――――

SHILLING DREADFULS.

“A nervous and well red-wigged gentleman, Mr. Allburnon-Charles Swingbun, ran excitedly to our rescue, and rhapsodically chaunted the following chorus from his ‘Atlas in Paddington’:

“Now in the railway years There come to the making of books Crime with its gift of fears, Dream with mesmeric looks, Nihilist Czar-abhorrence, Acres of ‘snowy sward,’ Ouida, bottled in Florence, And Broughton in Oxenforde;

Length, to deserve twelve pence; Plot, to atone for pith; Not a shadow of sense, And boys the shadows of Smith. And the tourist takes in hand Paper with creasy back, And a type he can understand, As he sways with his rolling rack, And froth and drift of the French, And mirth that is meet to sell, And bodies of things that drench The diversions of Max O’Rell.

They are wrought with weeping for laughter, And in fashion for chap and cove, With Life before and after, And Truth beneath and above. For a day, for a night, for a nuisance That the novice may fling his flukes, And the publisher reap his usance―― The ‘Shillingsworth’ plague of books.”

Christmas Number of The World. 1885.

――――

A chorus in “Atalanta in Calydon” commences:――

“For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins.”

This passage was thus parodied by Mr. Austin Dobson:――

“For Mayfair’s balls and ballets are over, And all the ‘Season’ of drums and dins; The maids dividing lover and lover, The wight that loses, the knight that wins; And last month’s life is a leaf that’s rotten, And flasks are filled and game bags gotten, And from green underwood and cover Pheasant on Pheasant his flight begins.”

――――:o:――――

The peculiar metre in which “Dolores” and the Dedication of the “Poems and Ballads” Volume are written, although it invites parody, is difficult to imitate successfully. The ending line of each stanza abruptly cut short is a trick in composition which few but Mr. Swinburne himself have thoroughly mastered.

The following stanzas from the Dedication will enable readers to perceive how closely they have been parodied by Mr. Pollock.

The sea gives her shells to the shingle, The earth gives her streams to the sea; They are many, but my gift is single, My verses, the first-fruits of me. Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf, Cast forth without fruit upon air; Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf Blown loose from the hair.

* * * * *

Though the world of your hands be more gracious And lovelier in lordship of things, Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious Warm heaven of her imminent wings; Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting, For the love of old loves and lost times, And receive in your palace of painting This revel of rhymes.

* * * * *

Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the heaven has one; Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight, And the earth dispossessed of the sun, They have moonlight and sleep for repayment When refreshed as a bride, and set free, With stars and sea-winds in her raiment, Night sinks on the sea.

――――

“DEDICATION TO J. S.”

This parody, dedicated to the notorious “John Stiles,” of the old law-books, was written by Mr. Pollock, and originally appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette. It has since been included in a small volume (published by Macmillan & Co., London, 1875) entitled “Leading Cases done into English,” by an apprentice of Lincoln’s Inn.

When waters are rent with commotion Of storms, or with sunlight made whole, The river still pours to the ocean The stream of its effluent soul; You, too, from all lips of all living Of worship disthroned and discrowned, Shall know by these gifts of my giving That faith is yet found.

By the sight of my song-flight of cases That bears on wings woven of rhyme Names set for a sign in high places By sentence of men of old time; From all counties they meet and they mingle, Dead suitors whom Westminster saw; There are many, but your name is single, The flower of pure law.

When bounty of grantors was gracious To enfeoff you in fee and in tail, The bounds of your land were made spacious With lordship from Sale unto Dale; Trusts had you, and services loyal, Lips sovereign for ending of strife, And the names of the world’s names most royal For light of your life.

Ah desire that was urgent to Romeward, And feet that were swifter than fate’s, And the noise of the speed of them homeward For mutation and fall of estates! Ah the days when your riding to Dover Was prayed for and precious as gold, The journeys, the deeds that are over, The praise of them told.

But the days of your reign are departed, And our fathers that fed on your looks Have begotten a folk feeble-hearted, That seek not your name in their books; And against you is risen a new foeman, To storm with strange engines your home, We wax pale at the name of him Roman, His coming from Rome.

* * * * *

Yet I pour you this drink of my verses, Of learning made lovely with lays, Song bitter and sweet that rehearses The deeds of your eminent days; Yea, in these evil days from their reading Some profit a student shall draw, Though some points are of obsolete pleading, And some are not law.

Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle To divers Divisions of one, And no fire from your face may rekindle The light of old learning undone; We have suitors and briefs for our payment, While so long as a Court shall hold pleas, We talk moonshine, with wigs for our raiment, Not sinking the fees.

This “J. S.” was a mythical person introduced for the purposes of illustration, and constantly met with in old law books and reports. His devotion to Rome is shown by his desperate attempts to get there in three days: “If J. S. shall go to Rome in three days,” was then a standing example of an impossible condition, which modern science has robbed of most of its point.

――――:o:――――

THE BALLAD OF BURDENS.

This poem will be found on page 144 of Mr. Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (first series). It is one of his best known ballads, and in 1879 it was chosen by the editor of The World as the model on which to found parodies describing the wet and gloomy summer of that year.

The successful poems in the competition were printed in The World, July 16, 1879. The first prize was won by a well known London Architect, the second by a Dublin gentleman who has since published several amusing Volumes of light poems.

FIRST PRIZE.

A burden of foul weathers. Dim daylight And summer slain in some sad sloppy way, And pitiless downpour that comes by night, And watery gleam that has no heart by day, And change from gray to black, from black to gray, And weariness that doth at each repine; Grief in all work, and pleasure in no play―― Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of vain blossoms. This is sore A burden of false hope in fruit-bearing: Upon thy strawberry-bed, behold, threescore―― Threescore dead blooms for one that’s ripening; And if that one to fulness thou dost bring, Thy shuddering lips the scanty feast decline, For ’tis a pallid and insipid thing―― Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of set phrases. Thou shalt hear The same drear murmurs breathed from every side: ‘Something is wrong with the Gulf Stream, I fear.’ ‘Through cycle wet the decade now doth glide.’ ‘The sun is “spot”-less, and ashamed would hide.’ Dull ign’rance with long words did aye combine! And thou shalt half believe and half deride Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of lost leisure. Thou shalt grieve By rain-vexed stream, drenched moor, or seashore dead; And say at night, ‘Would I had had no leave!’ And say at dawn, ‘Would that my leave were sped!’ The water of affliction and the bread For food and for attire shall then be thine, Goloshed beneath, umbrellaed overhead, Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of cold hearthstones. Thou shalt see Pale willow shreds and gold above the green; And as the willow so thy face shall be, And no more as the thing before-time seen. And thou shalt say of sunshine, ‘It hath been,’ And, chilling, watch the chilly light decline; And shivering-fits shall take thy breath between Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of sad sayings. In that day Thou shalt tell all thy summers o’er, and tell Thy joys and thy delights in each, and say How one was calm and one was changeable, And sweet were all to hear and sweet to smell; But now of passing hours scarce one doth shine Of twenty. In the rest deep gloom doth dwell. Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of mixed seasons. Snow in spring, Thaw, and then frost, with each its miseries; No summer, though the days be shortening; No autumn-promise from the fields and trees; With sad face turned towards Christmas, that foresees Huge bills for fuel, (and yet for fires doth pine;) Rheumatics, pleurisy, and lung-disease, Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of umbrellas. In thy sight Dawn’s gray or vesper’s red may promise much, Yet shalt thou never venture day nor night Without that ‘little shadow’ in thy clutch. Horn of rhinoceros and ebon crutch Shall unmolested in their stand recline; Thy trusty Penang shall forget thy touch, Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of sham gladness. In desire (The substance lost) for shadows of delight, Though underfoot the trodden lawn be mire, Tea, tennis, and Terpsichore invite. Go, then! and let thy face with smiles be dight, To hollow joy’s ordeal thyself resign Till dreary daylight yield to drearier night, Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

L’ENVOY.

Brave hearts, and ye whom hope yet quickeneth, Hope on; next summer may perchance be fine. The life grows short, and soon will come the death Anni Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

ZIEGELSTEIN. (Goymour Cuthbert.)

――――

SECOND PRIZE.

The burden of strange seasons. Rain all night, Blown-rain and wind co-mingling all the day; Perchance we say the morrow will be bright; But lo, the morrow is as yesterday: With sullen skies and sunsets cold and gray, With lights reverse, the heavy hours retire; And so the strange sad season slips away―― I pray thee put fresh coals upon the fire.

The burden of rheumatics. This is sore Damp, and east wind maketh it past bearing; When thy life’s span has stretched to threescore, No rest hast thou at dawn or evening. The shivering in thy bones, the shivering In all thy marrows through this season dire, Makes summer seem a shameful wretched thing―― For God’s love put fresh coals upon the fire.

The burden of dead apples. Lo, their doom, Decay and blight upon the tender trees, All fruit made fruitless, blossom bloomless bloom An eastern wind of many miseries. Naught has survived save pale-green gooseberries, The food in fools, of fools, who such desire. God wot, no lack have we of fooleries―― I prithee put fresh coals upon the fire.

The burden of bad harvests. For the gods, Who change the springing corn from green to red, Have scourged us for our sins with many rods, And left our grain and oil ungarnerèd. The market-men heap ashes on their head, And cry aloud and rend their best attire; The gods are just, prayers are unanswerèd―― I pray thee put fresh coals upon the fire.

The burden of lost peaches. Ah, my sweet, This year I seek them in the sunny South, To press them to thy sharp white tooth to eat, To kiss thy amorous hair and curled-up mouth. Lust and desire are dust and deadly drouth, For lust is dust and deadly drouth desire, And time creeps over all with wingèd feet―― For love’s sake put fresh coals upon the fire.

The burden of dull colours. Thou shalt see Strange harmonies in brown and olive-green, In curious costumes fashioned cunningly, And all unlike the things in summer seen; And thou shalt say of summer, it hath been. Or if unconsciously thou wouldst inquire What these my mournful music-measures mean, I bid thee heap fresh coals upon the fire.

L’ENVOY.

Tourists and ye whom Cook accomp’nies, Heed well before from him ye tickets hire―― This season is a mist of miseries; So once more heap fresh coals upon the fire.

FLOREANT-LAURI (J. M. Lowry).

This parody was afterwards included in A Book of Jousts, edited by James M. Lowry. London, Field and Tuer.

――――

BALLADE OF CRICKET.

The burden of long fielding: when the clay Clings to thy shoon, in sudden shower’s down-pour, And running still thou stumblest; or the ray Of fervent suns doth bite and burn thee sore, And blind thee, till, forgetful of thy lore, Thou dost most mournfully misjudge a skyer, And lose a match the gods cannot restore―― This is the end of every man’s desire!

The burden of loose bowling: when the stay Of all thy team is collared――swift or slower―― When bowlers break not in the wonted way And “yorkers” come not off as heretofore; When length-balls shoot no more, ah! never more, And all deliveries lose their wonted fire, When bats seem broader than the broad barn-door―― This is the end of every man’s desire!

The burden of free hitting; slog away, Here shalt thou make a five, and there a four. And then thy heart unto thy heart shall say That thou art in for an exceeding score; Yea, the loud Ring, applauding thee shall roar. And thou to rival HORNBY shalt aspire, And lo! the Umpire gives thee “leg before.” This is the end of every man’s desire!

ENVOY.

Alas, yet rather on youth’s hither shore Would I be some poor player, on scant hire, Than King among the old, who play no more. This is the end of every man’s desire.

A. L.

St. James’s Gazette. June 27, 1881.

BALLADE OF CRICKET. (To T. W. Lang.)

The burden of hard hitting: slog away! Here shalt thou make a “five” and there a “four,” And then upon thy bat shalt lean and say, That thou art in for an uncommon score. Yea, the loud ring applauding thee shall roar, And thou to rival THORNTON shalt aspire, When low, the Umpire gives thee “leg before,”―― “This is the end of every man’s desire!”

The burden of much bowling, when the stay Of all thy team is “collared,” swift or slower, When “bailers” break not in their wonted way, And “yorkers” come not off as heretofore. When length balls shoot no more, ah never more, When all deliveries lose their former fire, When bats seem broader than the broad barn-door,―― “This is the end of every man’s desire!”

The burden of long fielding, when the clay Clings to thy shoon in sudden showers downpour, And running still thou stumblest, or the ray Of blazing suns doth bite and burn thee sore, And blind thee till, forgetful of thy lore, Thou dost most mournfully misjudge a “skyer” And lose a match the Fates cannot restore,―― “This is the end of every man’s desire!”

Envoy.

Alas, yet liefer on youth’s hither shore Would I be some poor Player on scant hire Than king among the old who play no more,―― “This is the end of every man’s desire!”

ANDREW LANG.

This second Ballade of Cricket was included in a collection of “Ballades and Rondeaus” edited by Mr. Gleeson White, and published by Walter Scott, London, 1887.

――――

A BALLAD OF BURDENS.

The burden of Old Women. They delight In bulky bundles, always in the way; In ’busses close they wedge you tight at night, In railway trains they jam you up by day. Plump dames with pulpy cheeks and locks of grey, In weariness they waddle, puff, perspire. To banish them for ever one would say, This must be every busy man’s desire.

* * * * *

The burden of Sad Colours. Thou shalt see Gold tarnished, ghostly grey, and livid green, And lank and languorous thy face must be To harmonise with the lugubrious scene. And thou shalt say of scarlet, “It have been,” And sighing of old tints and tones shalt tire. To bring back brightness and to banish spleen, This must be every cheerful man’s desire.

The burden of Smart Sayings. In this day All wish as cynic wits to bear the bell. Men mock at honour, justice, love, and say The end of life “good stories” is to tell. The cad’s coarse jest, the cackle of the swell Are much alike, things that the most admire. To patter slang and tell side-splitters well, This is the end of every fool’s desire.

The burden of Bad Seasons. Rain in Spring, Chill rain and wind among the budding trees, A Summer of grey storm-clouds gathering, Damp Autumn one dull mist of miseries, With showers that soak, and blasts that bite and freeze; A drenching Winter with north-easters dire. To make an end of seasons such as these, This must be every suffering man’s desire.

The burden of Strange Crazes. Woman’s right To throng the polls, and join the spouting bands; Theosophy and astral bodies, sleight Of cunning jugglers from far foreign lands; Buddhistic bosh which no one understands, A thousand fads that ’gainst good sense conspire. To gag the crotcheteers and tie their hands, This must be every sober man’s desire.

L’ENVOY.

Donkeys, and ye whom frenzy quickeneth, Heed well this rhyme. Life’s many burdens tire. To lighten them a little, ere our death, This must be every kindly man’s desire.

Punch. August 7, 1886.

――――:o:――――

PARODIES OF DOLORES.

PAIN AND TRAVEL.

Perpetual swaying of steamers, Oh, terrible tumble of tides―― More dear than the drowsing of dreamers, Who ramble by rustic road-sides! Oh, lips that are pale with the anguish, Let me see you again and again; They are yours when so seasick they languish, Our Lady of Pain!

I gloat on the grins and the groaning, The torments that torture――not kill: And music to me is the moaning Of travellers terribly ill. A rapture I cannot unravel, Their throes set a-thrill in my brain: These――these are my pleasures of travel, Our Lady of Pain!

And on landing I lose not the longing, That mingles my manhood with mud: For the merry mosquitos come thronging, With lips that laugh blithely in blood: And fleas, with their kisses that burn me, Bite till cruel red mouths show the stain―― Into poesy passionate turn me, Our Lady of Pain!

And the donkeys Egyptian and spiteful Shall share in the shame of my hymns, For the jolting that brands the delightful Dark bruises on delicate limbs. And the Alps shall be ranked with the asses For the fracture, the frostbite, the sprain, And the mangling of flesh in crevasses, Our Lady of Pain!

And if――leaving me, though, unshattered―― An accident fell should betide, And the train that I ride in is scattered In ruin on every side―― Dislocations and discolourations, And gush of bright gore, not in vain Shall awake in me languid sensations, Our Lady of Pain!

Thus I roam through the universe vasty, O’er mountain, vale, meadow, and wood; And I venerate all that is nasty, And gird against all that is good; In the mire my delight is to linger, Although I to the heights might attain: But you don’t catch me scratching my finger, Our Lady of Pain!

Fun. October 12, 1867.

――――

MY LADY CHAMPAGNE.

Wayward, soft, luscious, and tender, Lightsome, and spotless from stain, Graceful of figure and slender, Decked with a golden crown’s splendour―― Our Lady Champagne.

Brilliantly sparkling and creaming, Haughty and lovely and vain, Gay ’midst the froth lightly beaming, Swift o’er the crystal edge streaming―― Our Lady Champagne.

Bubbling and seething and springing, Solace and soother of pain, Joys of an outer world bringing, Sweets to the air gaily flinging―― Our Lady Champagne.

Proud in the depth of deep scorning, Haughty and grand with disdain, Rosy as soft clouds at dawning, Fresh as the breeze of the morning―― Our Lady Champagne.

Kisses seductive in greeting, Falling like soft summer rain, Rapturous bliss of lips meeting, Sighing a woe at retreating―― Our Lady Champagne.

Frothy, light, bubbly and beady, Life to the overworked brain; Beer for the humble and needy, Wine for the wealthy and greedy―― Our Lady Champagne!

Judy. May 26, 1880.

――――

THE SOUTHERN CROSS. A Frustration.

Four stars on Night’s brow, or Night’s bosom, Whichever the reader prefers; Or Night without either may do some, Each one to his taste or to hers. Four stars――to continue inditing, So long as I feel in the vein―― Hullo! what the deuce is that biting? Mosquitos again!

Oh glories not gilded but golden, Oh daughters of Night unexcelled, By the sons of the North unbeholden, By our sons (if we have them) beheld; Oh jewels the midnight enriching, Oh four which are double of twain! Oh mystical――bother the itching! Mosquitos again!

You alone I can anchor my eye on, Of you and you only I’ll write, And I now look awry on Orion, That once was my chiefest delight. Ye exalt me high over the petty Conditions of pleasure and pain, Oh Heaven! Here are these maladetti Mosquitos again!

The poet should ever be placid. Oh vex not his soul or his skin! Shall I stink them with carbolic acid? It is done and afresh I begin. Lucid orbs!――that last sting very sore is; I am fain to leave off, I am fain; It has given me uncommon dolores―― The Latin for pain.

Not quite what the shape of a cross is―― A little lop-sided, I own―― Confound your infernal proboscis, Inserted well nigh to the bone! Queen-lights of the heights of high heaven, Ensconced in the crystal inane―― Oh me, here are seventy times seven Mosquitos again.

Oh horns of a mighty trapezium! Quadrilatoral area, hail! Oh bright is the light of magnesium!―― Oh hang them all, female and male! At the end of an hour of their stinging, What shall rest of me then, what remain? I shall die as the swan dieth, singing, Mosquitos again!

Shock keen as the stroke of the leven! They sting, and I change as a flash From the peace and the poppies of heaven To the flame and the firewood of――dash! Oh Cross of the South, I forgot you! These demons have addled my brain. Once more I look upward――――Od rot you! You’re at it again.

There! stick in your pitiless brad-awl, And do your malevolent worst! Dine on me and when you have had all, Let others go in for a burst! Oh silent and pure constellation, Can you pardon my fretful refrain? Forgive, oh forgive my vexation―― They’re at it again!

Oh imps that provoke to mad laughter, Winged fiends that are fed from my brow, Bite hard! let your neighbours come after, And sting where you stung me just now! Red brands on it smitten and bitten, Round blotches I rub at in vain! Oh Crux! whatsoever I’ve written, I’ve written in pain.

Ye chrysolite crystalline creatures, Wan watchers the fairest afield, Stars, and garters, are these my own features In the merciless mirror revealed? They are mine, even mine and none other, And my hands how they slacken and strain! Oh my sister, my spouse, and my mother! I’m going insane!

From Miscellaneous Poems, by J. BRUNTON STEPHENS.

――――

BRANDY AND SODA.

Mine eyes to mine eyelids cling thickly; My tongue feels a mouthful and more; My senses are sluggish and sickly; To live and to breathe is a bore. My head weighs a ton and a quarter, By pains and by pangs ever split, Which manifold washings with water Relieve not a bit.

My longings of thirst are unlawful, And vain to console or control, The aroma of coffee is awful, Repulsive the sight of the roll. I take my matutinal journal, And strive my dull wits to engage, But cannot endure the infernal Sharp crack of its page.

What bad luck my soul had bedevilled, What demon of spleen and of spite, That I rashly went forth, and I revelled In riotous living last night? Had the fumes of the goblet no odour That well might repulse or restrain? O insidious brandy and soda, Our Lady of Pain.

Thou art golden of gleam as the summer That smiled o’er a tropical sod, O daughter of Bacchus, the bummer, A foamer, a volatile tod! But thy froth is a serpent that hisses, And thy gold as a balefire doth shine, And the lovers who rise from thy kisses Can’t walk a straight line.

I recall, with a flush and a flutter, That orgie whose end is unknown; Did they bear me to bed on a shutter, Or did I reel home all alone? Was I frequent in screams and in screeches? Did I swear with a forcéd affright? Did I perpetrate numerous speeches? Did I get in a fight?

Of the secrets I treasure and prize most Did I empty my bacchanal breast? Did I button-hole men I despise most, And frown upon those I like best? Did I play the low farmer and flunkey With people I always ignore? Did I caricole round like a monkey? Did I sit on the floor?

O longing no research may satiate―― No aim to exhume what is hid! For falsehood were vain to expatiate On deeds more depraved than I did; And though friendly faith I would flout not On this it were rash to rely, Since the friends who beheld me, I doubt not, Were drunker than I.

Thou hast lured me to passionate pastime, Dread goddess, whose smile is a snare! Yet I swear thou hast tempted me the last time―― I swear it; I mean what I swear! And thy beaker shall always forebode a Disgust ’twere not wise to disdain, O luxurious brandy-and-soda; Our Lady of Pain.

HUGH HOWARD. 1882.

――――

DOLORES.

[MISS DOLORES LLEONART-Y-CASANOVAS, M.D., has just, at the age of 19, taken her doctor’s degree at Barcelona. July, 1886.]

With dark eyes that flash like a jewel, And red lips that flame like a flower Capricious, coquettish and cruel, When flirting in boudoir or bower; So shine Spanish girls in old stories. But thou’rt of a different strain, Oh learned and lucky DOLORES, Our M.D. of Spain.

Thy studies commencing, sweet virgin, At College when scarce more than seven, Now past mistress scalpel and purge in A full-blown Physician! Great Heaven! Sangrados no more to our sorrow Our veins shall deplete; the control Of our hearts goes to girls, whence we borrow Much hope――on the whole.

It startles us, though, the reflection That you are not twenty to-day, Yet our tongues may invite your inspection, Our pulses your touch may assay. Thou, a girlish she-Galen, arisest: In faith thou may’st fairly feel vain, O young among women yet wisest, Our M.D. of Spain!

Will you “fee” in the fearless old fashion, And dose like a horse-drenching Vet.? Ah! it is not alone the Caucasian Who’s nearly played out, I regret. However, unless luck desert you, Barcelona its fame may regain. Let us hope HAHNEMANN mayn’t convert you, Our M.D. of Spain.

(Five verses omitted.)

Punch. July 31, 1886.

――――

OCTOPUS.[1]

Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed, Whence camest to dazzle our eyes? With thy bosom bespangled and branded With the hues of the seas and the skies; Is thy home European or Asian, Oh mystical monster marine? Part molluscous and partly crustacean, Betwixt and between.

Wast thou born to the sound of sea trumpets? Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess Of the sponges――thy muffins and crumpets, Of the seaweed――thy mustard and cress? Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral, Remote from reproof or restraint? Art thou innocent, art thou immoral, Sinburnian or Saint?

Lithe limbs, curling free, as a creeper That creeps in a desolate place, To enrol and envelop the sleeper In a silent and stealthy embrace; Cruel beak craning forward to bite us, Our juices to drain and to drink, Or to whelm us in waves of Cocytus, Indelible ink!

Oh breast, that ’twere rapture to writhe on! Oh arms ’twere delicious to feel Clinging close with the crush of the Python, When she maketh her murderous meal; In thy eight-fold embraces enfolden, Let our empty existence escape; Give us death that is glorious and golden, Crushed all out of shape!

Ah thy red lips, lascivious and luscious, With death in their amorous kiss! Cling round us, and clasp us, and crush us, With bitings of agonised bliss! We are sick with the poison of pleasure, Dispense us the potion of pain; Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure, And bite us again!

The Light Green. Cambridge, 1872.

――――

PROCURATORES.

O vestment of velvet and virtue, O venomous victors of vice, Who hurt men who never have hurt you, Oh, calm, cruel, colder than ice; Why wilfully wage ye this war? Is Pure pity purged out of your breast? O purse-prigging Procuratores, O pitiless pest!

Do you dream of what was and no more is, When fresher and freer than air? Does it pain you, proud Procuratores, These badges of bondage to bear? In your youth were you greener than grass is, And fearful of infinite fines, Or casual, careless of classes, Frequenters of wines?

Was it woe for a woman who jilted, Or dread of your debts or a dun? Or was it your nose was tip-tilted, Or a frivolous fancy for fun? Did duty, dark despot, decide you, That fame to the dogs must be hurled Or was it a whim, woe betide you, To worry the world?

Five shillings ye fine the frail freshmen, Five shillings, which cads call a crown, Men caught in your merciless mesh, men Who care not for cap or for gown. When ye go grandly garbed in your glories, With your coarse, callous crew of canines, O pitiless Procuratores, Inflictors of fines.

We have smote and made redder than roses, With juice not of fruit nor of bud, The truculent town’s-people’s noses, And bathed brutal butchers in blood; And we, all aglow with our glories, Heard you not in the deafening din, And ye came, O ye Procuratores, And ran us all in.

I write not as one with no knowledge, Unaware of your weird, wily ways, For you’ve often inquired my college, And fined me on subsequent days. Oft stopped, I have stuffed you with stories, When wandering wildly from wines; Pawned property, Procuratores, To find you your fines.

E. B. IWAN-MÜLLER.

This parody originally appeared, anonymously, in “The Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford.” 1874.

――――

A SONG.

Oh, vanished benevolent Bobby! Ah, beautiful wearisome beats, Where rascals range, ready to rob ye, In dim and disconsolate streets! When I meet with a murderous nature, And welcome thy bludgeon would be, Two dirty hens tearing a ’tatur Are all that I see.

In cosy recesses of kitchens, Secure from the shrieking of slums; Where cook’s so uncommon bewitching, And the infinite tea kettle hums. Yet art thou misled and mistaken, Though served with celestial cheer, Though feasted on liver and bacon, And beauty and beer.

Oh, leisurely, helmeted Bobby! Hast never with jealousy shook; Lest Mercury, Jeames in the lobby, Should chisel thee out of thy cook? Ah, mark thou what mischief is hatching, By love who doth nothing by halves; What chance hast thou, Bobby, of matching Those marvellous calves!

Oh, there are more perilous places Than horrible hovering seas! Come! Radiant the area space is With the beams of the emerald cheese. Thou art bold and thy uniform nobby, But subtle are Syrens, and sweet! Oh, fiery, melodious Bobby, Come back to thy beat!

The Figaro. October 11, 1876.

――――

FOAM AND FANGS.

O, Nymph with the nicest of noses; And finest and fairest of forms; Lips ruddy and ripe as the roses That sway and that surge in the storms; O, buoyant and blooming Bacchante, Of fairer than feminine face, Rush, raging as demon of Dante―― To this, my embrace!

The foam, and the fangs, and the flowers, The raving and ravenous rage, Of a poet as pinion’d in powers, As condor confined in a cage! My heart in a haystack I’ve hidden, As loving and longing I lie, Kiss open thine eyelids unbidden―― I gaze and I die!

I’ve wander’d the wild waste of slaughter, I’ve sniff’d up the sepulchre’s scent, I’ve doated on devilry’s daughter, And murmur’d much more than I meant; I’ve paused at Penelope’s portal, So strange are the sights that I’ve seen, And mighty’s the mind of the mortal, Who knows what I mean!

From Patter Poems, by WALTER PARKE,

London, VIZETELLY & CO., 1885.

――――:o:――――

A MATCH.

One of the cleverest parodies on Swinburne was written by the late Mr. Tom Hood, the younger, on the above named poem, and first appeared in Fun, whence it has frequently been copied without proper acknowledgment.

The parody will be better appreciated after reading a few stanzas of the original which, as will be observed, is written in a difficult and very uncommon metre:

If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pleasure or gray grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf.

If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune, With double sound and single Delight our lips would mingle, With kisses glad as birds are That get sweet rain at noon; If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune.

* * * * *

If you were April’s lady, And I were lord in May, We’d throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady, And night were bright like day; If you were April’s lady, And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain, We’d hunt down love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein; If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain.

A. C. SWINBURNE.

――――

A CATCH. (By a Mimic of Modern Melody.)

If you were queen of bloaters, And I were king of soles, The sea we’d wag our fins in Nor heed the crooked pins in The water dropt by boaters, To catch our heedless joles; If you were queen of bloaters And I were king of soles.

If you were LADY MILE-END, And I were DUKE OF BOW, We’d marry and we’d quarrel, And then, to point the moral Should LORD PENZANCE his file lend, Our chains to overthrow; If you were LADY MILE-END, And I were DUKE OF BOW.

If you were chill November, And I were sunny June; I’d not with love pursue you; For I should be to woo you (You’re foggy, pray remember) A most egregious spoon; If you were chill November, And I were sunny June.

If you were cook to Venus And I were J. 19; When missus was out dining, Our suppetites combining, We’d oft contrive between us To keep the patter clean; If you were cook to Venus And I were J. 19.

If you were but a jingle, And I were but a rhyme; We’d keep this up for ever, Nor think it very clever, A grain of sense to mingle At times with simple chime; If you were but a jingle And I were but a rhyme.

TOM HOOD, the younger.

Fun. December 30, 1871.

――――

IF!

If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet, Then who would care to borrow A moral from to morrow―― If Thames would always glitter, And joy would ne’er retreat, If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet!

If care were not the waiter Behind a fellow’s chair, When easy-going sinners Sit down to Richmond dinners, And life’s swift stream flows straighter―― By Jove, it would be rare, If care were not the waiter Behind a fellow’s chair.

If wit were always radiant, And wine were always iced, And bores were kicked out straightway Through a convenient gateway; Then down the year’s long gradient ’Twere sad to be enticed, If wit were always radiant, And wine were always iced.

MORTIMER COLLINS.

As a parody this is scarcely inferior to that of Mr. Tom Hood, but the poet has let the sound run away from the sense, and has forgotten that a wit who is always a radiant wit is apt to become tiresome; whilst if “wine were always iced,” all red wines would greatly suffer, especially Port and Burgundy.

――――

THE UNIVERSITY ELECTION. A Candidates Carol.

If you were an elector, And I a candidate, I’d send you round a notice, And say “I trust your vote is A thing I may expect, or Request at any rate.” If you were an elector, And I a candidate.

If you were influential, And I of no renown, I’d say, “It is a pity You’re not on my committee, Your name is consequential So let me put it down,” If you were influential, And I of no renown.

If I were well supported, And you of little weight, I’d say, “I hope to rank you Among my voters――thank you.” Your promise once extorted, I’d leave you to your fate; If I were well supported, And you of little weight.

If you were at the polling, And I were in the booth, And if your vote you gave, or Recorded in my favour, I’d find it both consoling, And powerful to soothe, If you were at the polling, And I were in the booth.

If you should vote against me, And I were standing by, I might be forced to fell you, And then should simply tell you That having so incensed me You ought to mind your eye; If you should vote against me, And I were standing by.

If I were not elected, And you would keep alive, You oughtn’t to come nigh me, But shun, avoid, and fly me, And go about protected (For vide stanza 5). If I were not elected, And you would keep alive.

If you were not a voter, Nor I a candidate, I would not give a penny, To know your views (if any), Contingency remoter I can’t enunciate, If you were not a voter, Nor I a candidate.

From Dublin Doggerels, by Edwin Hamilton, M.A. Dublin. C. Smyth, Dame Street. 1877.

――――

A MATCHER.

If you were what your nose is, And I were like the red, Then should we glow together, Sunned in the singing weather, Blown well as winter closes, And colds come in the head―― If you were what your nose is, And I were like the red.

If I were what your words are, And you H aspirate, We ne’er should dwell together; For you would snap your tether, And leave me where the birds are, And drop at hailstone rate―― If I were what your words are, And you H aspirate,

If you were “call to-morrow,” And I an unpaid bill, You’d meet me at all seasons, With plaintive looks and reasons, And leave me then to sorrow, And all unsettled still―― If you were “call to-morrow.” And I an unpaid bill,

If you were what’s called “shady,” And I were quarter-day, You’d take French leave some hours Ere I arrived; no powers, Could make you meet me, Lady, Nor make me stay away―― If you were what’s termed “shady” And I were quarter-day.

If you were Queen of Pleasure, And I were King Champagne, We’d hunt the bard together, Pluck out his inked goose-feather, And leave him “feet” and “measure,” But muddle his poor brain―― If you were Queen of Pleasure, And I were King Champagne.

From Lunatic Lyrics, by Alfred Greenland, Junior. London, Tinsley Brothers. 1882.

――――

A PHILISTINE TO AN ÆSTHETE. (_By an Oxford Under grad who “makes hay” in an Æsthete’s room “while the sun shines.”_)

If I were big NAT LANGHAM, And you the Suffolk Pet, I’d strike out from the shoulder, Between your eyes, you’ll bet, And give you such a drubbing, As you would not forget; If I were big NAT LANGHAM, And you the Suffolk Pet.

If I were Jockey ARCHER, And you my racing horse, I’d give you such a breather Across a stiff race-course, That you would think your fortunes Had altered for the worse; If I were Jockey Archer, And you my racing-horse.

* * * * *

If I were a wild Indian, And you were my canoe, I’d shoot with you the rapids, Like the wild Indians do, And care not if by drowning Myself I could drown you; If I were a wild Indian, And you were my canoe.

Punch. April 1, 1882.

――――

In Pictures at Play, by two Art-Critics, illustrated by Harry Furniss (Longmans, Green & Co.), a dialogue is given between a portrait of Mr. Gladstone by Frank Holl (No. 499), and a bust of the same gentleman by Albert Toft (No. 1,928). The Bust (supposed to represent Mr. Gladstone in his younger days) thus addresses the Portrait:――

I am your Dr. Jekyll And you’re my Mr. Hyde, On my head mortals wreak ill, (I am your Dr. Jekyll) Of me they often speak ill, By you left undenied,―― I am your Dr. Jekyll And you’re my Mr. Hyde!

They say I’ve turned my coat, sir, ’Tis you should bear the blame, Sold England for a vote, sir, They say I’ve turned my coat, sir, Made friends with “Skin the Goat,” sir. Or Ford, who’s much the same; They say I’ve turned my coat, sir, ’Tis you should bear the blame.

Be either you or I, sir, Be Jekyll please, or Hyde, The Statesman pure and high, sir, (Be either you or I, sir) Or cast your virtues by, sir, And take the darker side, Be either you or I, sir, Be Jekyll, please, or Hyde.

――――:o:――――

In October 1885 the English Illustrated Magazine published a short poem by Mr. Swinburne, which the Editor of the Weekly Dispatch shortly afterwards reprinted, in his competition column, and invited Parodies upon it:――

THE INTERPRETERS.

Days dawn on us that make amends for many Sometimes, When heaven and earth seem sweeter even than any Man’s rhymes, Light had not all been quenched in France, or quelled In Greece, Had Homer sung not, or had Hugo held His peace, Had Sappho’s self not left her word thus long For token, The sea round Lesbos yet in waves of song Had spoken.

And yet these days of subtler air and finer Delight, When lovelier looks the darkness, and diviner The light, The gift they give of all these golden hours, Whose urn Pours forth reverberate rays or shadowing showers In turn, Clouds, beams, and winds that make the live day’s track Seem living―― What were they did no spirit give them back Thanksgiving?

Dead air, dead fire, dead shapes and shadows, telling Time nought, Man gives them sense and soul by song, and dwelling In thought. In human thought their being endures, their power Abides: Else were their life a thing that each light hour Derides. The years live, work, sigh, smile, and die, with all They cherish; The soul endures, though dreams that fed it fall And perish.

In human thought have all things habitation; Our days Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station That stays. But thought and faith are mightier things than time Can wrong, Made splendid once with speech, or made sublime By song, Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls Wax hoary, Gives earth and heaven, for song’s sake and the soul’s Their glory.

A. C. SWINBURNE.

Three of the competition poems were printed in the Weekly Dispatch, October, 18, 1885, the first prize was awarded to the following:――

Lays dawn on us that have few charms for many, Sometimes, Sure heaven and earth were seldom rack’d for any Worse rhymes. Light would not all be quench’d were bards compelled To cease, Had Tennyson sung not, or Swinburne held His peace―― Had Algy’s self not writ these lines so long And broken: ’Tis sad to see our Swinny rave in song Mad spoken!

And yet few lays or subtler airs give finer Delight, Or soar from out the darkness with diviner A flight, Than his whose gift, in his most golden hours, Can earn Reverberate praise for all his varied powers In turn; Grand, grave or gay, that make his verse at times Seem living, But where are they who yield him for these rhymes Thanksgiving?

Dull verse, queer style, dim tropes and rhythm, telling Us nought; One looks for sense and shape in song, compelling Sweet thought! In this what thought there is all clouded o’er Abides, And ev’ry one the more he reads the more Derides! The words start, jump and jerk, and rise and fall So funny, That one endures, yet deems such stuff is all For money!

A poet’s thoughts should please in all their stages. This lay Seems cobbled up to find a home in pages That pay. But thought and rhythm flighty have this time Gone wrong, Though splendid once his speech, and oft sublime His song! (Remembrance tells the powers of poet-souls Wax hoary) This song may give him guineas, but enrols No glory!

HERBERT L. GOULD.

Highly commended:――

THE LADIES.

Faces we see that make amends for many Most plain, When English girls seem sweeter e’en than any From Spain, Beauty had not been rare with us, or quelled In Greece, Had Tom Moore sung not, or Anacreon held His peace. Had Aphrodite never cleft the sea, In splendour, Our modern belles would still as winsome be And tender.

And so these girls of gentle air and manner Delight: Who lovelier looks than Hilda, as you scan her? Sweet sight! The gleam that shines from every golden tress, Whose wealth The sunbeam kisses, or the winds caress By stealth. Hair, lips, and eyes, with which our nymphs prepare For action―― What were they, did no esprit give them rare Attraction?

Dead lips, dead eyes, dead silken tresses, telling Men nought; Wit only gives them life and soul and dwelling In thought. In memory must their grace endure, their spell Abide: Else were their sway a thing that we might well Deride. The “darlings” flirt, sigh, smile, wax old, with none To cherish; Their hope endures, though charms fail one by one And perish.

In faces sweet seek all men consolation; Our “fair” Laugh, lisp, and lighten life, and find flirtation A snare. But wit and soul are mightier things than Time Can wrong, Linked with a silv’ry voice that is sublime In song. Dreams of fair girls illume, like stars on pall, Life’s story; Give rapture rare, and our soft slumbers all Their glory.

F. B. DOVETON.

Truths take live forms that make a hope for labour, Though rare, When life seems sweeter with each bright hope’s neighbour―― Dreams fair. Progress had not been crushed nor lost its spell For men, Had Rousseau never found the tyrant’s knell, His pen. Had Gladstone’s self ne’er poured the words that burn For token, The voice of Right for myriads who earn Had spoken.

And yet these truths which show to us immortal To-day, When swart Injustice sees through its last portal Decay; The joy these truths can give to heart and soul, And pour Glory on prophets gone who filled the roll Of yore; Truths, gifts, and hopes that make our life’s hard track Worth living―― What were they did no voices thunder back Thanksgiving?

Mere thoughts, mere hopes, mere dreams, mere visions showing No form; The statesman gives their shape in language glowing Heart-warm. In deathless speech their life is found, their power Is seen, Else were their names the shadows of an hour That’s been. Mere theories rise, fall, and fade, though all May cherish. The fact endures, free speech forbids its fall To perish.

In champions’ tongues has truth its full progression: Bare thought Dawns, shines, and fades, through finding no expression, Though sought. But speech and Press are mightier than all sway Can bind, Made potent by wide utterance their way To find. Progress and Freedom, though Time’s tide that rolls Wax hoary, Give to a nation’s life, both mind’s and soul’s, Its glory.

A. PRATT.

――――:o:――――

LOFTY LINES. (By a Swinburnean Lofty Liner.)

Imparadised by my environment, In rhymes impeccably good, Let me scribble, as poor proud Byron meant To have scribbled, if he could! I’ll strain, as the sinuous cameleopard Strains after the blossomy bough, And with faculties that develop hard Let me write――I can’t say how.

Impish idiom’s idiosyncrasy Shall my verse festoon with flowers; In a kingdom of pen-and-inkrasy I shall wield prosodian powers. Through innumerous apotheoses The future my name shall learn, And like passionate plethoric peonies My perpetual poems burn.

Let my glory grow as the icicle Accrues between night and morn; As the bicyclist rides his bicycle Let me on my metre be borne. Flashing thus on verses vehicular, With Pegasus ’neath my touch, My method can’t be too particular, Nor the public see too much.

The critics are all anthropophagous, And feed on poetic flesh; My heart nestles in my esophagous, To think I’ve been in their mesh. As vessels that sail on the Bosphorus Catch Constantinople’s beams, So my soul from prosody’s phosphorus Still gathers Dædalian gleams.

Funny Folks, May 11, 1878.

――――

The Family Herald (London) for July 28, 1888, contained an amusing article on Parodies, from which the following is an extract:

“But we wish to get away from well-trodden tracks, and we will for once forsake our usual purely didactic groove in order that we may give our readers an idea of what we regard as artistic drollery, Take this dreadful imitation of Mr. Swinburne’s manner. The parodist seems to have genuinely enjoyed his work; and we have no doubt but that Mr. Swinburne laughed as heartily as anybody. The poet is supposed to be attending a wedding of distinguished persons in Westminster Abbey, and the naughty scoffer represents him as bursting forth with the following rather alarming clarion call――

There is glee in the groves of the Galilean―― The groves that were wont to be gray and glum―― And a sound goes forth to the dim Ægean, To Helen hopeless and Dido dumb―― The sound of a noise of cab or carriage, A rhythm of rapture, a mode of marriage. Sing “Hallelujah!” Shout “Io Pæan!” Hymen――O Hymen, behold, they come!

What shall I sing to them? How shall I speak to them? Whose is the speech that a groom thinks good? Oh that a while I might gabble in Greek to them―― Gabble and gush and be understood, Gush and glow and be understanded, Apprehended and shaken-handed! Yea, though a minute should seem a week to them, I would utter such words as I might or could!

For winter’s coughs and cossets are over, And all the season of sniffs and snows, The rheums that ravish lover from lover, The eyes that water, the nose that blows; And time forgotten is not remembered, And cards are wedded and cake dismembered, And in the Abbey, closed, under cover, Blooms and blossoms and breaks love’s rose.

A masterpiece! And there is not a touch of malignity in the lines; the poet’s curious way of writing occasionally in the Hebraic style, his vagueness, his peculiar mode of procuring musical effects, are all picked out and shown with a smile. No one has quite equalled Caldecott, but this anonymous wit runs him hard.”

Unfortunately the author of the article omits to state the source from whence he derived the parody he praises so highly.

――――

HOME, SWEET HOME.

As Algernon Charles Swinburne might have wrapped it up in Variations.

(’Mid pleasures and palaces――)

As sea-foam blown of the winds, as blossom of brine that is drifted Hither and yon on the barren breast of the breeze, Though we wander on gusts of a god’s breast shaken and shifted, The salt of us stings, and is sore for the sobbing seas. For home’s sake hungry at heart, we sicken in pillared porches Of bliss made sick for a life that is barren of bliss, For the place whereon is a light out of heaven that sears not nor scorches, Nor elsewhere than this.

(An exile from home, splendour dazzles in vain――)

For here we know shall no gold thing glisten No bright thing burn, and no sweet thing shine; Nor Love lower never an ear to listen To words that work in the heart like wine.

What time we are set from our land apart, For pain of passion and hunger of heart, Though we walk with exiles fame faints to christen, Or sing at the Cytherean’s shrine.

(VARIATION: An exile from home.)

Whether with him whose head of gods is honorèd With song made splendent in the sight of men Whose heart most sweetly stout, From ravished France cast out, Bring firstly hers, was hers most wholly then―― Or where on shining seas like wine The dove’s wings draw the drooping Erycine.

(Give me my lowly thatched cottage――)

For Joy finds Love grow bitter, And spreads his wings to quit her, At thoughts of birds that twitter Beneath the roof-tree’s straw―― Of birds that come for calling, No fear or fright appalling, When dews of dusk are falling, Or day light’s draperies draw.

(Give me them, and the peace of mind.)

Give me these things then back, though the giving Be at cost of earth’s garner of gold; There is no life without these worth living, No treasure where these are not told. For the heart give the hope that it knows not, Give the balm for the burn of the breast―― For the soul and the mind that repose not, O, give us a rest!

H. C. BUNNER.

This Parody originally appeared in Scribner’s Monthly, May, 1881, with imitations of Bret Harte, Austin Dobson, Oliver Goldsmith, and Walt Whitman. They were afterwards republished in a volume, entitled Airs from Arcady, by H. C. Bunner. London, Charles Hutt, 1885.

――――:o:――――

A SWINBURNIAN INTERLUDE.

Short space shall be hereafter Ere April brings the hour Of weeping and of laughter, Of sunshine and of shower, Of groaning and of gladness, Of singing and of sadness, Of melody and madness, Of all sweet things and sour.

Sweet to the blithe bucolic Who knows nor cribs nor crams, Who sees the frisky frolic Of lanky little lambs: But sour beyond expression To one in deep depression Who sees the closing session, And imminent exams.

He cannot hear the singing Of birds upon the bents. Nor watch the wild-flowers springing. Nor smell the April scents. He gathers grief with grinding, Foul food of sorrow finding In books of beastly binding And beastlier contents.

Our hope alone sustains him, And no more hopes beside, One only trust restrains him From shocking suicide: He will not play nor palter With hemlock or with halter, He will not fear nor falter, Whatever chance betide.

He knows examinations Like all things else have ends, And then come vast vacations And visits to his friends: And youth with pleasure yoking, And joyfulness and joking, And smilingness and smoking, For grief to make amends.

The University News Sheet. St. Andrews, N. B. March 31, 1886.

――――:o:――――

VACCINE. Written after reading “Faustine.”

Hail! sacred salutary nymph, Fair freckless queen; Pure and translucent flows thy lymph, Potent Vaccine!

“Each shapely silver arm” receives The lancet keen; E’en warriors trembling raise their sleeves For thee, Vaccine.

“Let me go over your good gifts,” That plain are seen; Thou sav’st the face from scars and rifts, Clear-browed Vaccine.

Belovèd maid of many charms, Calm and serene, Fondly we take thee in our arms, Lovely Vaccine!

Virtue of inoculation, To try we mean; We’re now a humour-us nation, You’ll own, Vaccine.

Doctors, like ancient knights again, With lances keen, Daily go “pricking o’er the plain,” With thee, Vaccine.

It would have gladdened Jenner’s heart, Could he have seen Such thousands suffering from the smart Of thee, Vaccine.

And Jenner-ations yet to be Seen on life’s scene, Shall pæans sing in praise of thee, Saving Vaccine!

The Day’s Doings. March 4, 1871.

――――:o:――――

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI (A.D. 1875).

Oh, what can ail thee, seedy swell, Alone, and idly loitering? The season’s o’er――at operas No “stars” now sing.

Oh, what can ail thee, seedy swell, So moody! in the dumps so down? Why linger here when all the world Is “out of town?”

I see black care upon thy brow, Tell me, are I.O.U.’s now due? And in thy pouch, I fear thy purse Is empty, too.

“I met a lady at a ball, Full beautiful――a fairy bright; Her hair was golden (dyed, I find!) Struck by the sight――

“I gazed, and long’d to know her then: So I entreated the M.C. To introduce me――and he did! Sad hour for me.

“We paced the mazy dance, and too, We talked thro’ that sweet evening long, And to her――it came to pass, I breathed Love’s song.

“She promised me her lily hand, She seemed particularly cool: No warning voice then whispered low, ‘Thou art a fool!’

“Next day I found I lov’d her not, And then she wept and sigh’d full sore, Went to her lawyer, on the spot, And talked it o’er

“She brought an action, too, for breach Of promise――’tis the fashion――zounds! The jury brought in damages Five thousand pounds!

“And this is why I sojourn here Alone, and idly loitering, Tho’ all the season’s through and tho’ No ‘stars’ now sing!”

The Figaro. September 15, 1875.

――――:o:――――

A SONG AFTER SUNSET.

The breeze o’er the bridge was a-blowing, O’er wicked and wan Waterloo, The busses buzzed, coming and going, As busses will do.

Amid the cold coigns of the causeway. I secretly, silently sat, Aloof, out of laughter’s and law’s way, Hard-holding my hat.

In crowds that seemed never to cease, men Heaved, hurtled, home-hurried and howled, While pestilent prigs of policemen, Persistently prowled.

From pockets that penniless sounded Two tickets I’d drearily drawn, They prated of pledges impounded In pitiless pawn.

They seemed with a cynical sorrow, To sing the same sedulous strain: “Pay up, and redeem us to-morrow, Your watch and your chain!

We know you of old, sworn tormentor! You thriver on thriftless and thief! Spout-spider!――on spoiling intent, or Rapacious relief!

Avuncular author of anguish, We damn you with deepest disdain! We linger, we long, and we languish For freedom again.”

I smiled on the speakers unheeding, I grinned at their garrulous games―― When the breeze blew them, splendidly speeding, Right into the Thames.

They scattered, as seed that is sown, or The fringe of the fast flowing foam, And their hungry, hysterical owner Went hopelessly home.

Judy. June, 16, 1880.

――――:o:――――

THE MAD, MAD MUSE.

Out on the margin of moonshine land, Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs, Out where the whing-whang loves to stand, Writing his name with his tail on the sand, And wipes it out with his oogerish hand; Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs.

Is it the gibber of gungs and keeks? Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs, Or what is the sound the whing-whang seeks, Crouching low by winding creeks, And holding his breath for weeks and weeks? Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs.

Anoint him the wealthiest of wealthy things! Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs. ’Tis a fair whing-whangess with phosphor rings, And bridal jewels of fangs and stings, And she sits and as sadly and softly sings; As the mildewed whir of her own dead wings; Tickle me, dear; tickle me here; Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs.

ROBERT J. BURDETTE.

From S. Thompson’s Collection of Poems. Chicago. 1886.

――――

STUDIES IN EXOTIC VERSE. A Ballade of the Nurserie.

(After Mr. Swinburne’s “Dreamland.”)

She hid herself in the soirée kettle Out of her Ma’s way, wise wee maid! Wan was her lip as the lily’s petal, Sad was the smile that over it played. Why doth she warble not? Is she afraid Of the hound that howls, or the moaning mole? Can it be on an errand she hath delayed? Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul!

The nightingale sings to the nodding nettle In the gloom o’ the gloaming athwart the glade: The zephyr sighs soft on Popòcatapètl, And Auster is taking it cool in the shade: Sing, hey for a gutta serenade! Not mine to stir up a storied pole, No noses snip with a bluggy blade―― Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul?

Shall I bribe with a store of minted metal? With Everton toffee thee persuade? That thou in a kettle thyself should’st settle, When grandly and gaudily all arrayed! Thy flounces ’ill foul and fangles fade. Come out, and Algernon Charles ’ill roll Thee safe and snug in Plutonian plaid―― Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul.

ENVOI.

When nap is none and raiment frayed, And winter crowns the puddered poll, A kettle sings ane soote ballade―― Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul.

JOHN TWIG.

――――:o:――――

ON MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE’S SISTER.

O blood-bitten lip all aflame, O Dolores and also Faustine, O aunts of the world worried shame, Lo your hair with its amorous sheen Meshes man in its tangles of gold; O aunts of the tremulous thrill, We are pining――we long to enfold The Deceased Wife’s Fair Relative Bill.

G. R. SIMS.

――――:o:――――

A PARODY.

If it be but a dream or a vision, The life which is after the grave, The moil of the metaphysician Is vain,――but an answer I crave, Amid bright intellectual flambeaux I shall find no light clearer than thee, O sable and sensual Sambo, The servant of me!

I beheld thee beholding the ballet, Dumps doleful display’d deep despair, Thou didst think of thine own land, my valet, The land in which nought thou didst wear.

* * * * *

O statue, us Philistines loathing, Of Phœbus!――our tailors we fear, Come down, and redeem us from clothing, O nude Belvidere! We are wise――and we make ourselves hazy, We are foolish――and, so, go to church; While Sambo but laughs, and is lazy, (Vile Discipline! lend me thy birch); He dreams of no life save the present, His virtue is but when it suits; Sometimes, which is not quite so pleasant, I miss coat or boots.

ANONYMOUS.

Once a Week. January 16, 1869.

――――:o:――――

GILLIAN.

Jacke and Jille

I have made me an end of the moods of maidens, I have loosed me, and leapt from the links of love; From the kiss that cloys and desire that deadens, The woes that madden, the words that move. In the dim last days of a spent September, When fruits are fallen, and flies are fain; Before you forget, and while I remember, I cry as I shall cry never again.

Went up a hylle

Where the strong fell faints in the lazy levels Of misty meadows, and streams that stray; We raised us at eve from our rosy revels, With faces aflame for the death of the day; With pale lips parted, and sighs that shiver, Low lids that cling to the last of love: We left the levels, we left the river, And turned us and toiled to the air above.

to fetch a paile of water,

By the sad sweet springs that have salved our sorrow, The fates that haunt us, the grief that grips―― Where we walk not to-day nor shall walk to-morrow―― The wells of lethe for wearied lips. With souls nor shaken with tears nor laughter, With limp knees loosed as of priests that pray, We bowed us and bent to the white well-water, We dipped and we drank it and bore away.

Jacke felle downe

The low light trembled on languid lashes, The haze of your hair on my mouth was blown, Our love flashed fierce from its fading ashes, As night’s dim net on the day was thrown. What was it meant for, or made for, that minute, But that our lives in delight should be dipt? Was it yours, or my fault, or fate’s, that in it Our frail feet faltered, our steep steps slipt?

And brake his crowne, and Jille came tumblynge after.

Our linked hands loosened and lapsed in sunder, Love from our limbs as a shift was shed, But paused a moment, to watch with wonder The pale pained body, the bursten head. While our sad souls still with regrets are riven, While the blood burns bright on our bruisèd brows, I have set you free, and I stand forgiven―― And now I had better go and call my cows.

From a scarce little pamphlet entitled “Poems and Parodies, by Two Undergrads.” Oxford. B. H. Blackwell, 1880. Price one shilling.

HOW JACK HARRIS BECAME ÆSTHETIC.

Ye Muses nine that in Arcadia dwell, Quit Pindus and the cold Castalian well, And me your lowliest follower inspire With such clear flame as long ago did fire The mighty lips of Blackstone; so may I, A feeble trump of truth that cannot die, Clearly proclaim and on the roll of fame Inscribe, however humbly, my poor name.

Jack Harris before his Conversion.

Come down to me, cling to me, lay thy red lips on me, love, Let me drown in thy bountiful beauty, O glorious consecrate dove, Made fit for the vigil of Venus, made fair by the Cyprian dame, Made fair in the form of a maiden, a medley of music and flame; For the world grows giddy around us, and swoons, and the pale souls preach Poor fables of sorrow and virtue, and all that the grey gods teach, But we clasp and we bite and we madden, and I worship your throat and your hair. We have strayed in the cold sea places, we have laughed on the altar stair, We have eaten and drunken of love, and the lesson of living is this, That the high sky bends above us, and life is a curse and a kiss. Make me glad, O thou rare hand-maiden, with the sound of thy passionate sighs, While I sing of thy body’s white beauty and live in the light of thine eyes, For save me there’s no man living made worthy to utter thy praise, Who art come as new moon to our night-tide, new sun toour days.

Jack Harris after his Conversion.

From an article by Mr. Justin H. McCarthy, which appeared in Belgravia (London). March, 1880.

――――:o:――――

THE LAY OF MACARONI.

As a wave that steals when the winds are stormy From creek to cove of the curving shore, Buffeted, blown, and broken before me, Scattered and spread to its sunlit core: As a dove that dips in the dark of maples To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade, I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples, I bathe in thine beauty, by thee embayed.

What is it ails me that I should sing of her? The queen of the flashes and flames that were! Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her, The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her! I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters, I have danced her dances of dizzy delight, I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars, Between the nightingale’s song and the night!

What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee? What is it now I should ask at thine hands? Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee? Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands? Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni, And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold, She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni, The choice of her children when cheeses are old!

And over me hover, as if by the wings of it, Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet, The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it, Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat: Lo! and the beautiful Queen, as she brings of it, Lifts me the links of the limitless chain, Bidding mine mouth chant the splendidest things of it, Out of the wealth of my wonderful brain!

Behold! I have done it: my stomach is smitten With sweets of the surfeit her hands have unrolled. Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten: I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered, and sold! No man of thy millions is more macaronied, Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me: The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied, And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee!

From Diversions of the Echo Club, by Bayard Taylor.

――――:o:――――

BALLAD OF DREAMLAND.

I.

I hid my heart in a nest of roses, Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart; In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is, Under the roses I hid my heart. Why should it sleep not? why should it start, When never a leaf of the rose tree stirred? What made sleep flutter his wings and part? Only the song of a secret bird. * * * * *

III.

The green land’s name that a charm encloses, It never was writ in the traveller’s chart, And sweet as the fruit on its tree that grows is, It never was sold in the merchants’ mart. The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart, And sleep’s are the tunes in its tree tops heard; No hound’s note wakens the wild wood hart, Only the song of a secret bird. * * * * *

A. C. SWINBURNE.

――――

A BALLAD OF AFTER DINNER. A Month after Swinburne.

I hid my head in a rug from Moses, From the clatter of moving dishes apart, And curled up my feet for forty dozes, Just for to soothe my beating heart. Why did it sleep not? Why did it start, When never a dish remained to shock? What made the fluttering doze depart? Only the tick of an eight day clock.

Be still, I said, for hope pre-supposes A still mild mood for the sleep-slain hart; Be still, for the wind, with its curled-up toes, is Silent and quieter yet than thou art. Doth a wound in thee deep as a thorn’s wound smart? Dost thou fretfully languish for Clicquot and hock? What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart; Only the tick of an eight-day clock.

I wait in vain for the charm that encloses The green land of dreams in sleep’s mystical chart, For the fruit of its trees and the breath of its roses, More sweet than are sold in the merchants’ mart. So close to its border, why fails my heart? What holdeth it back, tho’ my dim brain rock? Without, the noise of the nightman’s cart, Within, the tick of an eight-day clock.

Envoi.

Erewhile in hope I had chosen my part, To sleep for a season as sound as a block, With never a thought of a nightman’s cart, Or the hateful tick of an eight-day clock.

――――

A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND.

The sorest stress of the Season’s over; Out of it’s crush I am lying alone, My face to the sky, and my back in the clover. Hark to that lark! Its jubilant tone Is a cheery change from St. Stephen’s drone; And ah! that whift from the wind-swept brine! With nought to do but absorb ozone―― Should there be ballad more blythe than mine?

Song of a haven-welcoming lover! Rare rose-scents from our garden blown Reach me here, and my eyes discover, Shimmering there, in a tangle thrown, Sunny locks. “She is coming, my own!” The green bowers sever, her blue eyes shine. Sweet love nearing, sore labour flown,―― Should there be ballad more blythe than mine?

What to me though weariness hover Still o’er Town where the toilers groan? Lazy lounger, leisurely lover, What care I for the Members’ moan At the Irish incubus, heavy as stone? For Biggar’s bullying, Whalley’s whine? Peace unchequered, and care unknown, Should there be ballad more blithe than mine?

ENVOI.

Eh! What! Drowsing? A dream? Ochone! St. Patrick’s curse on those Irish swine, Who have burst the bubble by slumber blown, And broken a ballad so blithe as mine!

Punch. August 11, 1877.

――――:o:――――

The following parody appeared in The Tomahawk (London) on the occasion of a visit paid by Ada Isaacs Menken to M. Alexandre Dumas, in Paris. “Miss Menken,” who was really the wife of John C. Heenan the pugilist, will be best remembered for her appearance (in very scanty attire) as “Mazeppa,” at Astley’s Theatre. She had a fine stage appearance, but was a very indifferent actress. She published a small volume of poems, entitled Infelicia, which is now eagerly sought after by collectors, because it contains an introduction written by Charles Dickens.

TO ADA.

So must the sinewy Centaur snort and rear, As some sweet maiden-mare trots wickedly Across his pagan path, burning his very heart; Flicking the flies from off her heaving flanks, The amorous flies who fill their lips with blood; And while his life-blood riots in his hocks, She spreads her cunning heels and whisks her tail; Then kicks the bitter sand into his eyes, Still gazing smarting on the supple form―― For I have felt a joy new-born to pain! For I have seen that silken syren glide Across the desert, hight old Astley’s Fane. My breast could hardly flutter as she came Bare-backed before my timorous sight; my nails Curved inward to my palms, and such a sweet Soft tremor crept around my nervous knees. I swooned but for the kindly guardian of the box, Who brought me welcome water at my wish, And damped my throbbing temples. On my bed I rolled and rioted in frenzied fret, For turn howe’er I would, upon the walls, Across the sheets, the beauteous Ada rode, Scenting the air with black-head clustering hair, Loading the senses with soft-thrilling sighs; While through the rosy lips pale pearls of teeth Flashed hungrily. Strapped to her showy steed, She bites her charger in the side, till lips Run red with the brave beast’s blood; and as the sting Of her small fangs urges his wild career, So this hot flame that chars me to the bones, Spreads out the fire of jealousy, and cries, Mazeppa flies across the sea to greet Great Athos-Porthos-Aramis.

――――:o:――――

On page 9, an imitation of Mr. Swinburne’s style written by Mr. Walter Parke, was given; the following, which is a parody of Dolores, appears in “Lays of the Saintly,” (London, Vizetelly & Co.), a clever work written by the same gentleman:――

ST. SIMEON STYLITES.

* * * * *

Talking of bards, one day a pagan poet Approach’d the pillar, and began to sing; The blessed Simeon could not choose but know it, So high the minstrel pitch’d his voice and string. This bard was Greek in sentiment and style; A Venus-worshipper――profuse of curses On those who deem’d his ethics loose and vile: I give you a translation of his verses:――

Stylites.

“Closed eyelids that hide like a shutter, Hard eyes that have visions apart, The grisly gaunt limbs, and the utter And deadly abstraction of heart; Whence all that is joyous and bright is Expell’d as both vicious and vain O, stony and stolid Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!”

“There can be but warfare between us, For thine is a spiritual creed, And mine is the worship of Venus, On “raptures and roses” I feed; Self-torture’s thine only employment, We both feel the bliss and the bane, For woe will oft spring from enjoyment, Our Patron of Pain!”

“Can joys be of Martyrdom’s giving? Men seek them, and change at a breath The leisures and labours of living, For the ravings and rackings of death: To stand all alone on that height is An action unsought and insane, O, moveless and morbid Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!”

“There are those who still offer to Bacchus, There are men who Love’s goddess still own, What right have new faiths to attack us? And why are our shrines overthrown? There are poets, inspired by Castalia, Whose lyres have Anacreon’s strain, Whose lives are one long saturnalia, Our Patron of Pain!”

“We sing of voluptuous blisses, Of all that thy rigour would spurn, Of “biting” and “ravenous” kisses, Of bosoms that beat and that burn; To all that is earthy and carnal, Our votaries’ souls we would chain, We breathe of the chamber and charnel Our Patron of Pain!”

“Oho! for the days of sweet vices, The glory of goddess and Greek! (For all that most naughty and nice is Most purely and surely antique). Oho! for the days when Endymion Thro’ love o’er Diana did reign! These, these were Elysian, St. Simeon, Our Patron of Pain!”

“We’ll crown us with myrtle and laurel, We’ll wreathe us in Paphian flowers, To be and make others immoral, We’ll ply our poetical powers; Our worship shall be Aphrodite’s, To woman the wine we will drain, O, loveless and lonely Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!”

“By the hunger thine abstinence causes, By the thirst of unbearable heat, By thy pray’rs which have very few pauses, By thy lodging devoid of a seat, By sleep that so meagre at night is, ’Twere better awake to remain, Come down from thy pillar, Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!”

The holy man, it need not be remark’d, Turn’d as deaf ear to such lascivious singing As when a serpent hiss’d or wild dog barked, Or raven croak’d around his column winging; Immovable in body as in mind, He bore his life’s insufferable tedium, It seems a pity that he could not find ’Twixt vice and virtue’s height some “happy medium.”

――――:o:――――

In 1872, the late Mr. Mortimer Collins published “The British Birds, a communication from the Ghost of Aristophanes.” Extracts from this very clever satire are still often quoted. The following passages contain parodies of A. C. Swinburne, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson, whose identities are thinly veiled under the names of Brow, Beard, and Hair.

SCENE. In the Clouds.

PEISTHETAIRUS, discovered.

(Enter three Poets, all handsome. One hath redundant hair, a second redundant beard, a third redundant brow. They present a letter of introduction from an eminent London publisher, stating that they are candidates for the important post of Poet Laureate to the New Municipality which the Birds are about to create.)

PEISTHETAIRUS. Gentlemen: Happy to see you in the Realms of Air As yet the worthy Mayor and Aldermen And Councillors of the Town have not decided Whether they want a Poet Laureate. But, if ’twill ease your minds to sing a little, I’ll try and listen. As my memory Fails me entirely in regard to names, Let me without the least discourtesy Name you by your appearance. Amorous Naso Was named from his chief feature. So I beg To call you HAIR, and BEARD, and BROW.

THE THREE POETS. Agreed.

EUELPIDES. For this delightful tourney of rhyme I hunger: Who’s to begin, my master?

PEISTHETAIRUS. Why, the younger. For the topic――as ’tis tropic Heat at present――perhaps ’twere pleasant If each Paladin His ballad in Put salad in. But there must be no single metre, please That’s not allowed by Dr. Guest, of Caius,

BROW. (Swinburne.)

“O cool in the summer is salad, And warm in the winter is love; And a poet shall sing you a ballad Delicious thereon and thereof. A singer am I, if no sinner, My Muse has a marvellous wing, And I willingly worship at dinner The Sirens of Spring.

Take endive――like love it is bitter; Take beet――for like love it is red; Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter, And cress from the rivulet’s bed: Anchovies foam-born, like the lady Whose beauty has maddened this bard, And olives, from groves that are shady; And eggs――boil ’em hard.”

BEARD. (Browning.)

Waitress, with eyes so marvellous black, And the blackest possible lustrous gay tress, This is the month of the Zodiac When I want a pretty deft-handed waitress. Bring a china-bowl, you merry young soul; Bring anything green, from worsted to celery; Bring pure olive-oil from Italy’s soil―― Then your china-bowl we’ll well array. When the time arrives chip choicest chives, And administer quietly chili and capsicum―― Young girls do not quite know what’s what ’Till as a Poet into their laps I come). Then a lobster fresh as fresh can be (When it screams in the pot I feel a murderer); After which I fancy we Shall want a few bottles of Heidsieck or Roederer.

HAIR. (Tennyson.)

King Arthur, growing very tired indeed Of wild Tintagel, now that Launcelot Had gone to Jersey or to Jericho, And there was nobody to make a rhyme, And Cornish girls were christened Jennifer, And the Round Table had grown rickety, Said unto Merlin (who had been asleep For a few centuries in Broceliande, But woke, and had a bath, and felt refreshed): “What shall I do to pull myself together?” Quoth Merlin, “Salad is the very thing, And you can get it at the Cheshire Cheese” King Arthur went there; verily, I believe That he has dined there every day since then. Have you not marked the portly gentleman In his cool corner, with his plate of greens? The great knight Launcelot prefers the Cock, Where port is excellent (in pints), and waiters Are portlier than kings, and steaks are tender, And poets have been known to meditate―― Ox-fed orating ominous ostasticks.

* * * * *

The first edition of The British Birds soon went out of print, and became very scarce. But in December, 1885, Mrs. Mortimer Collins wrote a letter to the editor of Parodies, which has now a melancholy interest:――“I believe copies of British Birds can still be had at Mr. Bentley’s, as I brought out a second edition there some eight years ago. Yes, there are some parodies of Swinburne, Tennyson and Browning. But the best known bits of the book are not parodies, unless you call the whole book a parody of Aristophanes.

“The ‘Positivists’ is the most famous piece in the book, containing the lines:――

“There was an APE in the days that were earlier; Centuries passed, and his hair became curlier; Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist―― Then he was MAN, and a Positivist.”

“and ‘Skymaking’ is another oft quoted bit. I thought, perhaps, that you had written parodies on these; though it seemed unlikely, because satiric verse does not lend itself to parody. I am always interested in anything connected with my husband’s works, because I truly believe in his genius. I may perhaps be somewhat partial in my judgment, for Mortimer was a more brilliant talker than writer. Day after day I enjoyed his wit, and I used to be so sorry there were not more to hear it: but he was quite content with his audience of one.

“My husband has written many parodies. If you would like to quote them I can refer you to them.”

But this kind offer of assistance was not to be fulfilled, for Mrs. Collins complained at the end of the letter of her failing strength, and in less than three months she passed away.

――――:o:――――

A MATCH.

(Matched.)

If I were Anglo-Saxon, And you were Japanese, We’d study storks together, Pluck out the peacock’s feather And lean our languid backs on The stiffest of settees; If I were Anglo-Saxon, And you were Japanese.

If you were Della-Cruscan, And I were A.-Mooresque, We’d make our limbs look less in Artistic folds, and dress in What once were tunics Tuscan In DANTE’S days grotesque; If you were Della-Cruscan, And I were A.-Mooresque.

If I were mock Pompeian, And you Belgravian Greek, We’d glide ’mid gaping Vandals In shapeless sheets and sandals, Like shades in Tartarean Dim ways remote and bleak; If I were mock Pompeian, And you Belgravian Greek.

If you were Culture’s scarecrow, And I the guy of Art I’d learn in latest phrases Of either’s quaintest crazes To lisp, and let my hair grow, While yours you’d cease to part; If you were Culture’s scarecrow, And I the guy of Art.

If I’d a Botticelli, And you’d a new Burne-Jones, We’d doat for days and days on Their mystic hues, and gaze on With lowering looks that felly We’d fix upon their tones; If I’d a Botticelli, And you’d a new Burne-Jones.

If you were skilled at crewels, And I, a dab at rhymes, I’d write delirious “ballads,” While you your bilious salads Where stitching upon two ells Of coarsest crass, at times; If you were skilled at crewels, And I, a dab at rhymes.

If I were what’s “consummate,” And you were quite “too too,” ’Twould be our Eldorado To have a yellow dado, Our happiness to hum at A teapot tinted blue; If I were what’s “consummate,” And you were quite “too too.”

If you were what “intense” is, And I were like “decay,” We’d mutely muse or mutter In terms distinctly utter, And find out what the sense is Of this Æsthetic lay; If you were what “intense” is, And I were like “decay.”

If you were wan, my lady, And I, your lover, weird, We’d sit and wink for hours At languid lily-flowers, Till, fain of all things fady, We faintly――disappeared! If you were wan, my lady, And I, your lover, weird.

This Parody appeared in Punch, (June 18, 1881), at the time when the Æsthetic revival in art and literature was the subject of much undeserved ridicule, because of the absurd extent to which it was carried by a few senseless fanatics.

――――:o:――――

BETWEEN THE SUNSET AND THE SEA. An American Imitation.

Between the gate post and the gate I lingered with my love till late; And what cared I for time of night Till wakened by the watch dogs bite, And thud of leathering boxtoed fate Between the gate post and the gate.

Between the seaside and the sea I kissed my love and she kissed me; But rapturous day was grewsome night And what is love but bloom and blight? And what is kiss of mine to thee Between the seaside and the sea.

Between the sunshine and the sun I saw a face that hinted fun; But what is fun and what is face When driven at life’s killing pace? I simply say that I have none Between the sunshade and the sun.

Between the bumble and the bee Full many a soul has had to flee; And what is love may I inquire When asked to build the kitchen fire? Or who would not leap in the sea Between the bumble and the bee.

Between the tea store and the tea There is a wide immensity; A dollar twenty five a pound And not a nickel to be found; Then what has fate in store for thee Between the tea store and the tea.

R. W. ANSWELL.

――――:o:――――

A SONG AFTER SUNSET.

(Being a Word from the Hanley Dog by the Cynic Poet Laureate, ALG-RN-N SW-NB-RNE.)

Lo, from my Black Country flung for thee, Raving, red-eyed, scarred and seared; To a bran-new sensation tune sung for thee, With red lips, white teeth, underhung for thee, Beauty begrimed and blood-smeared! Vice-jawed, retractile, snub-snouted―― Tushes for fists swift to smite; Round by round felled but not routed, Rare of bark, bitter of bite!

If with grapplings and pluckings asunder―― If with throat-thirst for worry unslaked―― If with rush on growl, flash on low thunder―― Knocked over, but ne’er knocking under―― With cash on me lavishly staked―― If eye against eye glimly glaring, Biped BRUMMY could quadruped scan, Ring and chain with me, blood with me, sharing,―― Say which was brute, which was man? * * * * *

Punch. August 1, 1874.

――――:o:――――

The following is a parody of another favourite metre of Mr. Swinburne, which has been sent in, unfortunately without any information as to when and where it originally appeared:――

APRIL SHOWERS.

Oh, April showers Are good for flowers, And fill the bowers With perfumes rare; But twinge erratic, And pang rheumatic And not ecstatic Do they prepare!

And though the leanness And arid meanness Of lawns with greenness They hide and clothe; They, past disputing, Set corns a-shooting, Which makes your booting A thing to loathe!

And of the Future Although they suit your Bright dreams, compute you’re The Past’s sad prey; The while you yell a Vain ritornello For that umbrella That’s stolen away!

――――:o:――――

In 1880, Messrs. Chatto and Windus, of Piccadilly, published an anonymous volume of Poems, entitled “The Heptalogia, or the seven against sense, a cap with Seven Bells.” In this there are parodies of Robert Browning, Tennyson, Coventry Patmore, and others, but it is more than doubtful whether the general public appreciated the sarcasm of these clever skits. Amongst reading men much curiosity was felt as to the author, but in answer to enquiries on the subject, the publishers replied they were not at liberty to mention the author’s name. Eventually public opinion assigned the work to Mr. Swinburne, although it contains an exquisite parody on his own style, entitled Nephelidia. This is a charming specimen of rhythmical, musical nonsense. A few of the opening lines may be quoted, without injury to themselves, or to the rest of the poem, as the conclusion is perfectly irrelevant to the beginning, or to anything else:――

NEPHELIDIA.

From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat? Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor’s appalled agitation, Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error, Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude’s breath. Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh; Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses―― ‘Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die.’

Another parody, which was generally attributed to Mr. Swinburne, appeared in The Fortnightly Review for December, 1881. It was entitled “Disgust; a Dramatic Monologue,” and was a parody of Tennyson’s “Despair, a Dramatic Monologue” published in The Nineteenth Century, November, 1881.

The original poem contained arguments of a most unpleasant and absurd description, these were ably ridiculed in the burlesque, which will be found on page 184, Volume 1, of this collection.

The following parody was also printed with the initials “A. C. S.,” but clever as it is, few would venture to assert that it was actually written by Mr. Swinburne.

THE TOPER’S LAMENT.

Oh, my memory lovingly lingers Around the sweet sound of thy name, And the spell of those magical fingers That kindled my heart into flame; But the joy that I think on no more is, And my throat feels an ominous lump, As I muse o’er the wreck of thy glories, Thou Magpie and Stump!

For day after day have I sought thee, As flowers are sought by the gale; And night after night have I brought thee A lip for thine exquisite ale. Thy portals have welcomed me ever, Mine hostess was pleasant and plump, And her handmaids attentive and clever, O Magpie and Stump!

Did I rage with the thirst of a Hector (A thirst that she nimbly foresaw) For a cup of thy ravishing nectar, Who drew it as Nancy could draw? While for grilling a steak that was juicy, Or a chop that was chopped from the chump, Had’st thou ever an equal to Lucy, My Magpie and Stump?

Ah! thy votaries flocked beyond number, And worshipped full oft at thy shrine; And we poured forth libations to slumber, And we censed with tobacco divine; And then haply some bibulous fellow Would fall to the floor with a bump―― For thy potions were potently mellow, Our Magpie and Stump.

But I rave――for the past of my pleasure Has left me a little intense, And the lolloping lilt of my measure Is stronger in sound than in sense. Yet an ecstasy must have its morrow, And an ace may succumb to a trump; So my spirit is sunken in sorrow, Dear Magpie and Stump.

Farewell! nevermore shall thy chalice Of barleycorn bubble for me; They have altered thee into a palace Devoted to coffee and tea. Thy courts are now trod by the teacher, Thy fountains the cow and the pump, And thy priest is a temperance preacher, Poor Magpie and Stump!

Farewell! But if e’er in the distance Of time that we cannot foresee, Thou return to thy pristine existence―― For I cannot, alas! come to thee! As the prodigal found from his father Forgiveness, again shalt thou jump To the height of my patronage――rather! Rare Magpie and Stump!

A. C. S.

St. James’s Gazette. March 19, 1881.

――――:o:――――

SONG OF THE SPRINGTIDE.

O Season supposed of all free flowers, Made lovely by light of the sun, Of garden, of field, and of tree-flowers, Thy singers are surely in fun! Or what is it wholly unsettles Thy sequence of shower and shine, And maketh thy pushings and petals To shrivel and pine?

Why is it that o’er the wild waters That beastly North-Easter still blows, Dust-dimming the eyes of our daughters, Blue-nipping each nice little nose? Why is it these sea-skirted islands Are plagued with perpetual chills, Driving men to Italian or Nile-lands From Albion’s ills?

Happy he, O Springtide, who hath found thee, All sunlit, in luckier lands, With thy garment of greenery round thee, And belted with blossomy bands. From us by the blast thou art drifted. All brag of thy beauties is bosh; When the songs of thy singers are sifted, They simply won’t wash.

* * * * *

What lunatic lune, what vain vision, Thy laureate, Springtide, may move To sing thee――oh, bitter derision!―― As season of laughter and love? You make a man mad beyond measure, O Spring, and thy lauders like thee: Thy flowers, thy pastimes and pleasures, Are fiddlededee!

Punch. May 22, 1880.

――――:o:――――

SWINBURNISM.

I trow, wild friends, God’s soul wots well by rote My sweet soft strains and lovely lays of love, And all the white ways of her sweet sharp throat, Which, not right yet, I have waxed weary of.

* * * * *

I never left off kissing her, I well think, But wrapped in rich red raiment of her hair, Kissed her all day, till her lips parch’d for drink As the parch’d often lips of a flute-player.

No maid of a king’s blood, but held right high In God’s sharp sight, from whom no things are hid. “You must not tell,” she sighed and turned to cry. “That I should tell your mother, God forbid!”

Said so I kept my word, I never told her You drink pure water? I, sir, I drink wine! Your cool clear brain must needs yield verse-water, But, sweet strong drunken maniac music, mine.

S. K. COWAN.

From A Book of Jousts. London, Field and Tuer.

――――

A VALENTINE.

Ah, Love! if love lie still betwixt us twain, Through all these years――yea, love, before love wane Lift up thine eyes and slay me; the desire Of death consumes me, like the sun-god’s fire. Slay me, and kill me, dearest, deal me death. Lo! I will murmur with my latest breath, Laying this lily at thy gracious feet, How precious, nay, how utter art thou, sweet.

J. M. LOWRY.

――――

SWINBURNESE.

Also thine eyes were mild as a lowlit flame of fire, When thou wovest the web whereof wiles were the woof and the warp was my heart. Why left’st thou the fertile field whence thou reapedst the fruit of desire? For the change of the face of thy colour I know thee not whence thou art!

Alas for the going of swiftness, for the feet of the running of thee, When thou wentest among the swords, and the shoutings of Captain’s made shrill! Woe is me for the pleasant places! yea, one shall say of thy glee, “It is not,” and as for delight the feet of thy dancing are still.

Translation.

Where are those eyes that were so mild When of my heart you me beguiled? Why did you skedaddle from me and the child? O, Johnnie, I hardly knew you. Where are those legs with which you run When first you went to shoulder the gun? Indeed, your dancing days are done―― O, Johnnie, I hardly knew you.

R. Y. TYRRELL.

From A Book of Jousts. London, Field and Tuer.

――――

In The World Christmas Number, 1879, there was an exquisite satire on Mr. Burne Jones’s art entitled “The God and the Damosel”; it was accompanied by the following verses, and a prose criticism (too long to quote in full) written in imitation of the intensely Æsthetic jargon familiar to the frequenters of the Grosvenor Gallery. To fully appreciate the poem and the criticism, the burlesque picture by Mr. E. B. T. Burnt Bones should be seen, once seen it could never be forgotten.

THE GOD AND THE DAMOSEL. By A. C. Sinburn.

THE GOD.

Look in my face, and know me who I am. I smite and save; I bless, and, lo, I damn. Incline thine head, thy browless brow incline; I touch thee, and I tap thee, and proclaim, For ever and for ever thou art mine!

O long as grief, and leaner than desire! O sweet retreating breasts and amorous-kissing knees! O grace and goodliness of strait attire! A robe of them who sport in summer seas.

By these, and by the eyelids of thine eyes, Ringed round with darkness, swollen weeper-wise, By these I know thee; these are for a sign, Surer, yea, even than thy most splendid size Of spreaden hands: I know thee, thou art mine.

THE DAMOSEL.

Master and lord, I know thee who thou art; Lo, and with homage of the stricken heart, I hail thee, I adore thee, and obtest: I am thine own, I know no better part; Do with me, master, as thee seemeth best.

O loose as thought and bodiless as dream! O globular grand eyes, a bane of maidenhood! O miracle of tunic-folds, that seem Self-balanced, firm, a glory of carven wood!

By these, and by the crown thy temples wear, Holy, a cauline flower of wondrous hair; By thy red mouth, a bow without a chord, And shaftless, yea, but deadly, O most fair, I knew thee, and I know thee for my lord!

THE GOD.

Ay, now the flicker of a nauseate smile Bestirs thy cheek and wan lips imbecile; Thy pale plucked blossom droops; its day is done.

THE DAMOSEL.

Nay, let me deck my bosom therewithal, It were ill-ominous to let it fall, The faithful mistress of Hyperion Sun.

THE GOD.

Stoop thou, what ails thee, child, to shudder? stoop and brush Hair with tow-towzled hair, that for a space I breathe my godhead through thy thirsting veins, and flush The soft submalar hollows of thy face, And thrill thee, crown to sole, till that in downward rush Of eager ecstasy with fair flat feet thou crush The beetle, Virtue, in the lowly place.

THE DAMOSEL.

Ah, master and lord, I feel it; the wind of thy fierce delight, Hell-hot as the blast from the furnace, sea-cold as a gust of the sea. O deaf blind Love, that art deaf as a poker and blind as the night! O my flushed faint cheeks and my chin! O mine eye and the elbow of me!

I bow to thy might, O my lord, to the keen blown breath of thy lips, With a loathing of love that longs, and a longing of love that loathes, With shiver of angular shoulders, and shake of invisible hips, As boweth the light slight stake in the torture of wind-whirled clothes!

Thou hast rent me enough, O Divine! … and behold, thou stayest thine hand, And leavest me crushed as a reed, that I wot not whether I tread Upon Earth, our holy old mother, with feet down-pressing, or stand Inverse, in a fearless new fashion, uplift on my passionate head!

The Criticism.――“I have judged it good and helpful to prefix to my few words in appreciation of Mr. Bones’s noble picture this exquisite lyric of Mr. Sinburn’s. It may serve to a better understanding of the one master’s work to note in what wise it has inspired the other. The scene of Mr. Bones’s picture is a garden; the time, high noon. A damosel, tall and gracious, stands before us, clad, but ‘more expressed than hidden,’ in a robe of subtle tissue; which, loyal through three parts of its length to the lines of her sinuous figure, breaks loose round her finely-modelled knees into a riot of enchanting curves and folds; yet, withal, an orderly revolt, and obedient to its own higher law of rebellious grace. At her side stands the fatal Eros, the divine, the immortal, bow in hand, a glory of great light about his head. Behind him rise his outspread wings, which, by one of those eloquently significant touches whereof this painter possesses, one must think, the exclusive secret, are made to simulate the expanded tail of the bird of Heré. What he has here set down for us, in reporting of the lower limbs of this Immortal, he may well have noticed when he himself was last set down at his own house-door; since we see that for the knees of the young Eros of the ancients he has not disdained to study from the ancient Kab-os of the moderns. In the form of the maiden who bends towards him, quivering like a shot bird at the touch of his long lithe finger, we have another triumph of the master’s unique powers. The mere volume of her frame is, let us allow it, spare to the verge of the penurious; its curves are sudden to precipitancy, abrupt even to brusquerie; without being at all exaggerated, the charm of morbidezza is certainly insisted upon to the full limits of the admissible; but the charm is there, victorious and exultant, a voluptuousness not of the flesh, nor appealing thereto, yet a voluptuousness the more subtle and penetrating, perhaps, for that very reason. One sees that the burden of the great mystery has passed upon this woman; one sees it in the heavy-lidded eyes, in the chastened, even ascetic, lines of the face, and above all, in the thin, almost fleshless, figure consumed by inner fires, a conception only capable, perhaps, of being realised in the sympathetic imagination of a Burnt Bones. To the colour-harmonies of the whole picture I despair of doing justice. It may be remembered that I likened Mr. Bones’s last work to a cantata; this one is an oratorio, full of exquisitely tuneful fancies, grand instrumental combinations, profound contrapuntal erudition.”

――――

DREAM POEM A LA SWINBURNE. (After a Supper of Pork Chops.)

Soft is the smell of it, sweet the sad sound of it, Mournfully mingled on yon mountain’s top, Grateful, and green, and caressing the ground of it, Calm as a calyx, and deep as a drop.

Ah! the enlivenment, dark as the distance! Ah! the allurements that lavish and lave! Is there no sound but the sun’s sweet insistance, Night in the forest, and noon on the wave?

Fierce as a festival, fragrant and fading―― Grim as the grandeur that dreams of a day―― Is there no balm in Love’s lavish unlading, Born in the brightness, and grieving, and gray?

Lo! in the glimmering, sweet Aphrodite, Ghastly and gracious, and groaning and grave, Brilliant in banishment, mournful and mighty, Soft as the samite that sinks in the wave!

Light are the longings that listen and linger: Ah! the sick kingdoms that grapple and groan Red as Republics that point the far finger, Or hail the horizon, aghast and alone.

Sinks in the distance the Dream and the Dreaming, Leaves the wide world to its pining and pain; From the great Universe, lo! in the gleaming, Blazes the bandersnatch, faithless and fain!

――――

PARODY ON A POEM IN MR. SWINBURNE’S TRAGEDY “ERECHTHEUS.”

I see the sad sorrow that hangs like a shadow From ocean to ocean obscuring the light, Till hamlet and farm upon mountain and meadow Are blasted and bare with the blight. O, Erin, to me as my mother, O, Irishmen, each one a brother, Whose wrongs are remembered to-day, Whose tyrants their terrors betray; O, Erin, the fairest outvying, Quail not at their fearfullest frown; Hear this that I breathe to thee dying, O land of renown. Though landlord and agent with breathings of slaughter Unite to assail and oppress thee again, Secure thou shalt stand in the midst of the water, The hate of their hearts shall be vain. For their power shall be past and made idle, And their pride shall be checked with a bridle, And the height of their heads bow down At the loss of their rents and renown. Be cherished and loved as I love thee, Of all that to thee owe their breath; Be thy life like the stars up above thee―― Now, come to me, death.

D. EVANS.

The Weekly Dispatch. June 25, 1882.

――――

LES POETES S’AMUSENT.

Swinburne chez Hugo.

The Banquet of the two distinct demigods is over. The dinner, a two-franc Palais Royal feast fit for Parnassus, came off last night; and I was there ready to watch and to wink at the matchless mouthfuls of the two mighty Masters. As these disappeared amidst rich rhythm and rhapsody, I stood in a corner, note-book in hand, mutely worshipful.

There was a hungry hush, the Elder Master had a message to deliver, and catching the reporter’s eye, did not halt or hesitate.

“What,” he asked, addressing the lady presiding at the bureau behind the little plated saucers of sugar, “what is Swinburne? Is he,” he proceeded, “a costermonger? No. What then. A sweep? You cannot be a sweep without singing a Song before Sunrise. But this Swinburne has written Chastelard. That sounds like Bacon. Is he then a philosopher? Yes, and No. Which? Never mind. But there is this remarkable thing about a philosopher: he produces fruits. Sometimes they are nuts to crack, and when Civilisation has a nut to crack it holds its jaw. This is a paradox, and suggests the question, ‘Am I Civilisation?’ To this there is an answer. It is again ‘No and Yes.’ Last time it was ‘Yes and No.’ Now it is ‘No and Yes.’ Why? Is there a reason for this? None. And when there is no reason for anything, it becomes a subject of reference. To whom? To the Marines: and you cannot refer a subject to the Marines without asking them a riddle. And this is the riddle that posterity will ask them: ‘What is Victor Hugo?’”

There was a pause; but in an instant the Younger Master had sprung on to a velvet fauteuil, and, thrumming the back of an entrée dish as an impromptu lyre, with a high-piped treble cry of “I’ll tell you,” had soon sufficiently and signally silenced the Elder with the following unsung and understudied Ode:――

“You are he who,――ere upon my noisome nurses Large limbèd lap I coughed my first shrieked shrill-throated choke of curses, In pulp of pap,―― Rose in reek made rich of decomposing matter Round kinglets curled, To greet with white-soul’d yell of ‘Yah!――who’s your hatter?’ An out-wash’d world:

“You who, with a wind of words in thuds of thunder, Of sense made hash; Blind, yet bleating in the blaze of your own blunder Whole yards of trash;

By your posing――your back somersaults of error That no one fire,―― By the frenzy and the cry of loud-tongued terror Your jokes inspire; By the promise of your early dawn reversèd Clean upside down, By your curst cloy of Pantomime, and thrice accursèd Cat-call for Clown;

“By the pasteboard heads that, beaten in in places, Smile on in pain, By sightless eyes and worsted hair, by large, mild faces,―― By Drury Lane; By all frolic, freak and fooling, food for laughter, Nor said nor sung, When next on spouting bent――pity your hereafter, And hold your tongue!”

* * * * *

Punch. December 2, 1882.

――――:o:――――

In 1883, Messrs. Chatto and Windus published a small quarto volume, entitled “A Century of Roundels,” by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Very soon afterwards, there was a parody competition on these little poems in The Weekly Dispatch, which published the following imitations on July 1, 1883.

The prize of two guineas was awarded to Mr. Henry William Hancock for:――

FAR-FETCHED AND DEAR-BOUGHT!

Far-fetched and dear-bought, sure this volume of verse is, Tho’ ever as clever in rhythm and thought; And yet tho’ a master each roundel rehearses, Far-fetched and dear-bought!

Tho’ perfect in beauty each ditty is wrought, Monotony much admiration disperses; Ye gods! a whole hundred! Is Swinburne distraught?

The appetite cloyed e’er with dainties far worse is Than hunger that waits till one’s dinner is caught; So this is my verdict condemning these verses―― Far-fetched and dear-bought!

Highly commended.

ULYSSES.

What gain were mine if I should anchor cast And soothe my senses with these songs divine When I had wearied of the sweet repast, What gain were mine?

Save for my skill, ye yet were Circe’s swine, And barking Scylla safe I led you past―― And past Charybdis, ambushed in the brine.

Then faithful comrades bind, and bind me fast―― My lips are fain for kisses and for wine; But so I fail of Ithaca at last, What gain were mine?

GOSSAMER.

TO ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

Magician of song and of sound that enslaves the ear, Subtle and sweet are the arts which to thee belong; Varied thy chant as the lark’s which is heard so clear, Magician of song.

Divine as the sound of billows that swell and throng And crash with a music that gods might love to hear; So gather thy waves of language rapid and strong,

Bursting in pæans of Love, and of Joy, and Fear, Welcome thy strain as a bird’s the flowers among, Welcome thy notes as blossoms that light the year, Magician of song.

APSLEY ROBERTS.

――――:o:――――

A TRIO OF ROUNDELS.

I was born like other men, And at last shall die. Who will live for ever then?

Just a smile, a sigh, Tears a few, a smile again, Some endeavours high. Who shines grander, truer, when Placed in contrast by Grunting swine or clucking hen?

Half-a-crown, that cannot last for ever, Yet who is there takes it with a frown? Who seeks not with passionate endeavour Half-a-crown?

Who despises it, in all the town, You shall find a human being never From the tinselled monarch to the clown.

Let a man be dull of brain or clever, Be his lot, or up in life or down, Easily from him you shall not sever Half-a-crown.

Around and about the singer his song disperses He flings to the heavens a crashing mellifluous shout. Vast harmonies mingled for ever of blessings and curses Around and about.

In melody filling and thrilling his voice rings out In strivings splendidly human. Better or worse is The joy of the poor or the rich, of the lord or the lout; What sirens ever sang sweeter? What wine of Circe’s, More quickly dispelled the fumes of a priestly doubt, Than this of the bay-crowned Man who is flinging his verses Around and about?

St. James’s Gazette.

――――:o:――――

THE NEW JACK HORNER.

The pigmy and portative Horner, Whom all men denominate Jack, Against an approximate corner Had set his exiguous back. On his knee, formed of paste that was puffy, Was a pie they for Yule-tide had made; Into which his fat fingers to stuff he No palpable moment delayed. And his voice told of raptures and roses, As, plucking a plum from that pie, He cried (as the legend discloses), “What a plump pie-ous urchin am I!”

Funny Folks Annual. 1884.

――――

CHRISTMAS MOTTOES. (By Eminent Hands.)

OUR LADY CHAMPAGNE. By A.C.S.

A Maiden makes moan, “Oh my motto Lies lost with its love-litten lay: ’Twas something on ‘green in a grotto,’ And ‘sad seas were sweeter than spray.’” O theme for the scorn of the scoffer, I hear my own verses again, And she ogles me well as I offer My Lady――Champagne.

THE BLOOMING DAMOZEL. By D.G.R.

The blooming damozel leaned o’er The station bar at even, And she was deeper than the depths Of water at Lochleven; She kept my change within her purse, It came to one-and-seven.

THE VOLSUNG TALE. By W.M.

Oh, fain for the wine was Sigurd, and wild were the songs he sang, Like the words from the Halls of Music, for glamour was on his tongue, And he dropped the sword of the Branstock, that trembled in his clutch, And said Gudrun, “Son of the Volsungs, methinks thou has ta’en too much.” Then up rose the King of Men-folk, and vowed he had drunk no ale; And that was the story of Sigurd――lo!――that was the Volsung tale!

THE MOTTO. By R.B.

A Motto! Just a catch-word such as lies Betwixt Imprimis and the colophon; French mot, Italian motto: for the rest Latin mutire. Body o’ me――the Greek Gives muthos. So this poem I write and leave To Jansenists, to lie i’ the brains o’ men, I sell you for a lira, eight pence just, Then home to Casa Guidi, by the Church. And, British Public, ye who like me not, I think i’ faith I’ve got the best of it!

――――:o:――――

MARCH: AN ODE.

Ere frost-flower and snow blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight, The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight; The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed. Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade. That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night, Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made, March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.

And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow, And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low, How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born. So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness, whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn? Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow As a lover’s that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn, Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow.

* * * * *

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

The Nineteenth Century. March, 1888.

――――

ANOTHER ODE TO MARCH.

(Being a Counterblast to Mr. A. C. Swinburne’s rhythmical rhapsody in the “Nineteenth Century.” By one who has certainly “learned in suffering” what he endeavours to “teach in song.”)

Ere frost-slush and snow-slopping dried up and went, and the horrors of Winter had slid out of sight, The ways of the wood pavement fouler were far than a clay-country lane on a mucky March night. The breath of the month of the winds had stabbed us through top-coats and mufflers, and made us afraid. Such bronchial bothers, such blossomy noses, such frostbitten fingers for man and for maid! The sea was not lovelier then than the land, each appeared in a dismal and desolate plight; But the Winter is not so much worse than the Spring-time; each plays up the mischief with pleasure and trade. March, master of winds, is a flatulent fraud, a marshal of banes and a bringer of blight.

And now that the rage of your rhythmical rapture, your revel of rhyming has finished its flow, Oh, incontinent ALGERNON CHARLES, what the dickens you mean by such rubbish I should like to know. How, how can you love and rejoice, you, leader and lord of the lyrists of curses and scorn, In a beast of a month that half drives one to madness, and makes a man wish he had never been born? Have you shaken the snow from your shoes on a doormat, with frost have your nose and your lips been aglow? Have you met a March wind coming sharp round a corner, your mackintosh drenched and your gingham all torn, And tried to take breath in the nip of North-Easters? No, ALGERNON CHARLES, or you’d never talk so!

(Four verses omitted.)

The body is drenched one dismal moment, the next one’s skin is as dry as starch. Its rains that chill us are most disgusting, and equally so are its gales that parch. What! kindle mortals to love and laughter by lauding the beastliest winds that blow? Arouse our fondness for wintry wetness, for choking dust or for blinding snow? No, no, your lips are eloquent, ALGERNON, set in Apollo’s own genuine arch; But neither the flame that fires your tropes, nor the fervour that setteth your figures aglow, Shall gammon us into the fatuous folly of making a god of the wind of March!

Punch. March 17, 1888.

――――

LINES A LA SWINBURNE.

I sing of the months of the whirligig years that are fading far out of sight and of sound and of motionless mind; Of the days without dreams and the dreams without days, and the days and the dreams and the dreams and the days grown silent and blind; Gone mad with the vigor of spring and the blush of the radish new blown in the meadows far kissed by the lips of the Sound: The maddest and gladdest and saddest and baddest and sweetest, completest and fleetest and neatest of days ever found.

I sing of them often in words that are winding, in adjectives blinding, in dactyles and trochees with cunning combined, In lines that are long as a sentence of Evarts, in lines on the plan of the Washington Monument deftly designed; With wildering fancy of words and of musical syllables weighted with little of thought and with much less of rhyme, I cover ten pages a sitting with verse that has value in market, and readily getteth there every time.

And when the idea is the thinnest, new burst from the void of the infinite nothing, the zenith of space where the nebulous ether is pregnant with cobwebs of fancy bestrewn with the dew-drops of slush, I build up long lines such as never a poet, who was not a crank on the subject of versification, built up for the purpose of drowning a suffering public with torrents of stupid and meaningless gibbering gush. If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had made of the past and hereafter a single adorable season whose life was a rapture of love and of laughter for all of the maidens and lads, I’d write you a poem with lines like the city of Rome, and with rhymes on beholders and shoulders; on measure and pleasure; on closes and roses; on sterile, imperil; remember, September; and hither and thither and whither; on slacken and bracken; on season and reason; defrauded, applauded; on dwindled, rekindled; on giving and living; on slumbers and numbers; beholden and golden; on glory and story and Morey; on wizard and gizzard and blizzard; on Blaine and on Maine; and each rhyme would be stuck on the end of a line just like this one I’m writing; and oh, and heyday, and yea, marry, they’d run about eight to the page, and they’d collar the scads.

TRICOTRIN.

Harper’s Monthly Magazine, June, 1888.

――――:o:――――

In Pictures at Play (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1888), a picture by J. W. Waterhouse, A.R.A., is supposed to sing the following parody of the “Masque of Queen Bersabe”:――

I am the Lady of Shalott, And if you say you love me not, I shall reply, I wis, That Bastien-Lepage has been Much marked of Waterhouse, I ween, And the result is――this! The A.R.A. who painted me Is young and popular, and free To gratify his whim; Where on a couch of pain I lay, He came and called me up one day, And bade me follow him. In strange attire he vestured me, Yea, in the silks of Liberty, He set me thus afloat; He bade me seem to have the shakes, And ope my mouth as one that takes A high and hopeless note. And painting merely what he saw, According to the last-found law Of values and of tones, He made me, much to my amaze, A thing whereon the public gaze, And mock me for the nones.

I am the Lady of Shalott And if you tell me I am not, I say but this one thing: That here be “Values” rare and quaint, A goodly “quality of paint,” And “workmanlike hand-ling.”

I am the Lady of Shalott, And, though you recognize me not, Denied it may not be That I am of the things right good, Albeit scantly understood, In this Acadamee.

――――:o:――――

STROPHES FROM A SONG AFTER MOONRISE.

Strophe I.

I bowed my laurel’d head Above my lyre and said:―― “What new song shall I sing across the strings? Madden’d for whose new sake What new noise shall I make?” And I answered: “Lo, I will sing of no new things, I will turn to her once more, I have sung so oft before―― Freedom! and worship her, and curse some Kings.”

Set on her motherly knee, Her nursing arms round me, I will cling about her neck as a child clings, Re-wounding with my kiss Each scarce-healed cicatrice Doing to her divers and disgusting things Whilst in her ears my chaunt, Re-risen and reboant, Sounds as one sounds, who, being senseless, sings.

Strophe II.

On one cant name of many names I have chosen―― Freedom――lo, once again I call to thee; By the cold earth’s iron-bound ends and oceans frozen, By the rivers that run billowing to the sea, By the lisp and laughter of spring in leafy places, By the storms that follow and the calms that flee, By the pale light flung in men’s funeral faces From holocausts of kings we burn to thee; By the seas that link us and the lands that sever By the foes upon our weather-side and lee―― By all these things and all other things whatever, We call, and howl, and squeak, and shriek to thee, Calling thee early and late, Wild, inarticulate, Calling and bawling that thou set something free.

Strophe III.

But where is the something――a land In the east or the uttermost west―― A land with a grievance, a curse? I heed not her name or her place. So shame on her brow be a brand, So she have but a scourged white breast, And a name that will scan in verse; And I ask for the royal race, For the land opprest.

But where shall I find her――where? I mean the land with a wrong Not already outworn By those that have sung for her sake For Byron and bards that were, Were singing of Freedom long Before I was thought of or born, And they plucked all the plums from the cake From the cake of song.

Strophe IV.

Ah, but would that I Had been the first of these! I would have drained them dry, These themes of war and peace, Nor have left one song to sing of Italy, Nor a poet’s picking on the bones of Greece.

Then with flowers and fire, And bitter foam and wine, And fangs and fierce desire, And things I call divine, would nauseate so the world that no man’s lyre Should again be struck to a note I had once made mine.

* * * * *

Epode.

I hung my laurel’d head, Down on my lyre and said: “What answer does my sovereign, Freedom, make?” And in the air I heard Not even a whisper’d word From her for whom my very lungs do ache, And as an addled egg is, is my brain: Wherefore for her most royal and holy sake I think I will behowl her once again. “Hear me, O goddess! for it indeed is I That call thee, at thy knees, And don’t be frightened, please, At the many things I shall adjure thee by. Come to us, bright, in clear re-arisen ascendency, Loosen o’er us all thine orient oriflamme! By the power Mat Arnold calls: ‘A stream of tendency,’ By the Christianity we have proved a sham, By the lowering name that darkened Hebrew story We have turned to ‘Thou art not,’ that was once ‘I Am;’ We thy singers, we thy sons that work thee glory With the unburnt offerings of our worthless verses Heaped on thy shrine, adjure thee and adore thee: I, the clamouring herd’s choragus, I implore thee: By all the things that we bemire with curses―― That is, by all the holy things that are, Rise and make manifest upon us thy mercies, Rise o’er us all a large and lonely star. For the night is now far spent: the air gives warning With a dewy stir and chillness of the morning, And the wan dark whitens on the eastern hill. Burn through the east, grow large, and lighten, until In the saffron of the sunrise we discern thee Shining and trembling like a tear of gladness. Draw near to us, we will love thee, we will learn thee―― Learn thee to the heart, and love thee even to madness, If thou wilt only hear us in our crying Across the night, Conjuring thee by this our rhythmic sighing―― Our songs which might Have many senses but which have not one sense A man may see; By the sounding and the fluent form of nonsense We shower on thee; By the shallow and the babbling things, our mothers, From whom we spring; By the barking and the braying things, our brothers Like whom we sing; By all the fatuous things, our near relations, That chaunt and cheer us; By Leeds, and Liberal associations Oh, Freedom, hear us!”

St. James’s Gazette.

――――:o:――――

PARODIES OF MR. SWINBURNE’S POLITICAL POEMS.

Numerous parodies have been written of Mr. Swinburne’s political poems, and of these some have already appeared in this collection.

Thus, in Volume III (p. 187), will be found Swinburne’s The Commonweal, which had originally appeared in The Times of July 1, 1886, together with four parodies upon it. And, in Volume IV. (p. 147), Swinburne’s The Question, from The Daily Telegraph, April 29, 1887, was given, together with the caustic Answer, which appeared in The Daily News of April 30, 1887.

The following parody is from Truth May 5, 1887:――

MR. SWINBURNE’S “QUESTION” ANSWERED.

Come, frenzied poet, first, then, pray Just tell us what those verses meant Which to the Telegraph you sent Last Thursday; since we, sad to say, Can’t fathom their intent,

That you were very wild, ’twas clear, With some one; for you were profuse In that alliterative abuse, And in those epithets severe You aptly can produce.

But who it was you wished to curse, Or what it was had roused your ire, Or why you wrote, with wroth so dire, So much involved Swinburnian verse, Why, that did not transpire

Something, of course, had put you out, Or, otherwise, why did you deem It meet to wildly rave and scream, And throw those adjectives about With which your stanzas teem?

And as you always in past time Have been a struggling nation’s friend, And hastened Freedom to defend, So doubtless now your angry rhyme Has the same worthy end.

And, granting this, we then can find Who are the men you would asperse, And why you wrote such raving verse:―― Of course, it must have been designed To Ireland’s tyrants curse!

“The clamorous crew” you write about; The fierce “blood-mongers” you decry; The men who “stand in shame so high” These are the landlord-set, no doubt, Who pity’s plea deny.

The men who “steal and skulk and flee”―― Why, it is plain you mean by these Those heartless, greedy absentees, Who, to live on in luxury, Their cruel rack-rents seize.

These are the “shameless gang,” ’tis clear, From whose “red hands” nor “dew nor rain” Can ever “cleanse the blood again”; And to whose hearts, so hard and sere, Appealing is in vain.

Yes, ’tis these landlords, who disdain To pity, though poor “children die Starved”; and though helpless women lie On the hill-side, ’neath sleet and rain, Thrust from their homes hard by.

And ’tis their tenants, too, who fight Vainly against the ruthless power That leaves their lives “no joyful hour,” Nor gives them e’en the “natural right To claim life’s natural dower.”

Well may you ask, with stern surprise, Why men, who thus their duty shirk, And do, in sooth, “a murderous work,” Do not seem “hideous in our eyes As Austrian or as Turk?”

Well may you call the landlord crew, “The cowardliest hounds that blood e’er lapp’d;” And hint they should be “track’d and trapp’d,” Whilst we that “woful past undo,” Which chains on Erin clapp’d.

With reason you bid “England bow, Lest worst befall her yet”; and swear That nought, save pity, conscience, care, Truth and mercy, should be now Her sister Erin’s share.

But, frantic poet, none the less, When next your angry feelings egg You into verse like Silas Wegg, Do try your meaning to express More clearly, let us beg.

’Tis vain, in fact, for you to use Such very gory epithets, And terms involved, and sounding threats, If all the time your shrieking Muse Sense utterly forgets.

And truly, if you thus again Should in the Telegraph break out, Its readers, there is little doubt, When they have tried to find in vain Whom ’tis you fain would flout.

Will bid you to the fact recall That empty sound and fury blind, And words ambitiously designed, Must needs be worthless, one and all, Unless with sense combined.

And you will be assailed with blame, “The lips of all will laugh you dead,” “And mockery shriek round your head,” Whilst you live on to hear with shame Your reputation’s fled!

――――:o:――――

CLEAR THE WAY!

Clear the way, my lords and lackeys! you have had your day. Here you have your answer――England’s yea against your nay: Long enough your House has held you: up, and clear the way!

Lust and falsehood, craft and traffic, precedent and gold, Tongue of courtier, kiss of harlot, promise bought and sold, Gave you heritage of empire over thralls of old.

Now that all these things are rotten, all their gold is rust, Quenched the pride they lived by, dead the faith and cold the lust, Shall their heritage not also turn again to dust?

By the grace of these they reigned, who left their sons their sway: By the grace of these, what England says her lords unsay: Till at last her cry go forth against them――Clear the way!

By the grace of trust in treason knaves have lived and lied! By the force of fear and folly fools have fed their pride: By the strength of sloth and custom reason stands defied.

Lest perchance your reckoning on some latter day be worse, Halt and hearken, lords of land and princes of the purse, Ere the tide be full that comes with blessing and with curse.

Where we stand, as where you sit, scarce falls a sprinkling spray; But the wind that swells, the wave that follows, none shall stay: Spread no more of sail for shipwreck: out, and clear the way!

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

The Pall Mall Gazette. August 19, 1884.

――――

RAIL AWAY!

(Written by an aspiring young poet of the Neo-Billingsgate School in humble imitation of the “Clear the Way!” contributed by Mr. Swinburne to a recent number of the Pall Mall Gazette.)

Rail away, my budding bardlets! This hysteric day Shrieking lives so shrieking answers,――Journals say not nay; Long enough has reason held you: up and rail away!

Slang and slate, revile and bludgeon with assurance bold! Tongue of gentle, style of scholar, now are far too cold Go it like an angry fishwife when upon the scold.

Now that chivalry’s forgotten, knightly steel all rust Quenched the pride old poets lived by, dead their grace as dust, Shall their mild example bind us? Not a whit, I trust!

Blow the grace of Gentle Spenser, courtesy’s soft sway! Hang the grace of Wordsworth, leaving nothing to unsay! Let the Poet’s shriek go forth falsetto――Rail away!

By the grace of trust in reason dolts have lived and died By the fear of noisy folly tongues have oft been tied, By the strength of rabid ranting reason’s now defied.

Lest perchance your reckoning, with good manners mar your verse Halt and hearken lords of language, who would plump your purse Be not tied by taste’s restrictions; learn to howl and curse!

Where we stand of slang to come, scarce falls a sprinkling spray But the wave of Billingsgate that’s coming who shall stay? Spread your sails my budding bardlets,――up and rail away!

Punch, August 30, 1884.

It was formerly a frequent theme of Mr. Swinburne’s political verse, this violent abuse of the House of Lords:――

“They are worthy to reign o’er their brothers, To contemn them as clods and as carles, Who are Graces by grace of such mothers As brightened the bed of King Charles.”

Have the dukes of Buccleugh, Grafton, Richmond, and St. Albans forgotten and forgiven this humorous and playful allusion to their ancestresses, Lucy Waters, Lady Castlemaine, Louise de Querouaille, and Nell Gwynne, to whom they owe their dignities and estates?

――――

A WORD FOR THE POET. (The Rebuke Parodic.)

[Mr. Swinburne’s latest effusion, which has been eagerly quoted by Conservative journals, appears in “Sea Song and River Rhyme,” and is entitled “A Word for the Navy.”]

The lords of thy fate and thy keepers, O Swinburne, should padlock thy lips; It leaves us for genius weepers To hear thy Macdermottish tips. Such crowing and blowing, Such blatant British “side,” Will scatter and shatter Full soon thy poet’s pride.

“Smooth France, as a serpent for rancour”―― Fie! fie! what an insolent style! Pray slip the Conservative anchor, And be thy old self for awhile. Men deem thee, or dream thee, Less living now than dead; The news is, thy Muse is A little off her head.

Do thou, though the Blues should misdoubt thee, Resume thy first role on our boards; Bind on former armour about thee, And tilt at the “lackeys and lords.” Where you stood, the True stood, It stands not where you stand; Quit Jingo, and in go For Lib’ralism grand.

Funny Folks, March 5, 1887.

――――:o:――――

The Banquet, a Political Satire, by Mr. George Cotterell, was published in 1885 by William Blackwood & Sons. Like most political squibs its interest was somewhat ephemeral, but it contained several amusing parodies of Tennyson, and of Swinburne. Some of those on Tennyson have already been quoted, the following extracts are taken from a parody of Swinburne’s “Dolores,” entitled

THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. (After the Franchise Bill.)

The days of the dunces are over, The wiles of the Whigs are undone, They shall lie nevermore in the clover, And bask not again in the sun; In hip and in thigh will we smite them, Our rulers who ruled us of old, And nothing shall raise them or right them, Nor acres, nor gold.

They sought us with sweet condescension, They pledged us, a hand for a hand―― We were snobs, it is needless to mention, And they the best blood in the land: They bartered for place and we gave it, We staked for high game and we won, But their place goes and nothing can save it―― Our day has begun.

When this beggarly bill they conceded They thought we should ask for no more; Poor fools! it was all that we needed To make us more fierce than before: Now the game is our own and we’ll make it, Not a hand will we yield, not a trick; Here’s a notice to all who will take it To clear away quick.

To the Lords shall the mandate be spoken, The people’s behest and decree; For the bonds that have bound us are broken, We are mighty at last, we are free! Look, my lords, where the writing is written, On the walls of your House, on the door, You are weighed and found wanting, and smitten Behind and before.

* * * * *

Then hurrah for the bill that we carried, For the Caucus that carried the bill! The Lords would have tampered and tarried, But we swept them along with a will; We swept them and sweep them before us, The prize of our prowess to-day, While we march to the lilt of the chorus That bids us not stay.

It was time for another beginning, So we started the world with a spin And while it goes spinning and spinning We will gather the spoils that we win; For it spins out the Whigs and the Tories, The Lords and the Church and the Crown And it spins us this glory of glories―― To tread them all down.

――――:o:――――

HYMN TO GLADSTONIAN LIBERALS.

Is not this the First Lord of your choice? Sure its time that you put him to bed, For the kingdom is seared by his fires, O fools; He was Lord, and is dead. You will hear not again his fine speaking, His sophistry now as before And the tone of his wonderful lying will Humbug your senses no more; By the party he ruled as his slave, is he Slain who was mighty to slay; And the stigma that rests on his name He can raise not, nor roll it away. He is choked by his raiment of lies, Now the wane of his power is come; Truth hears he, and heeds not; and facts, And he sees not; and taunts, and is dumb.

Power and will hath he none of it left him Nor truth in his breath; Till his name be struck out of the lists Will ye know not the truth of his death! Surely, ye say, he is strong, but the Times Is ’gainst him and Parnell; Wait a little, ye say――nay too long He has made our fair island a hell; Let him then die, as all must die, that Use treason thus as a rod; Let him fade from the ranks of his Party Take his foot from the neck that he trod.

They cry out, his elect, his seekers for Office, who cling to his shame, They call him sweet light of his Party; They call him their Lord, by his name; The name that is written in Egypt, And in Africa stained by retreat, That name by our enemies loved, but Scorned by our army and fleet. He answers them not――he is fallen, Political death his reward, He is smitten! behold, he is smitten! As though by the stroke of a sword. The Conservative cause is triumphant, And peace and prosperity brings So glory to that in the highest, The healer and mender of things.

F.A.C.

The St. Stephen’s Review, May 28, 1887.

――――:o:――――

In Rhymes à la Mode, by Mr. Andrew Lang (Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1883), there are also two good parodies of Swinburne. In one, the “Palace of Bric-à-Brac,” the exquisite diction and appropriate rhythm of the “Garden of Proserpine,” are most amusingly caricatured:――

“Here, where old Nankin glitters, Here, where men’s tumult seems As faint as feeble twitters Of sparrows heard in dreams, We watch Limoges enamel, An old chased silver camel, A shawl, the gift of Schamyl, And manuscript in reams.

Here, where the hawthorn pattern On flawless cup and plate Need fear no housemaid slattern, Fell minister of fate, ’Mid webs divinely woven, And helms and hauberks cloven, On music of Beethoven We dream and meditate.”

* * * * *

But all lovers of dainty books and quaint old world ballades will go to the fountain head to taste this stream.

――――

Several excellent imitations of Swinburne’s style remain to be quoted from Punch, one, which appeared January 7, 1882, entitled “Clowning and Classicism,” contains some skits on Burne Jones, Oscar Wilde, and John Ruskin; another, dated December 11, 1886, commences as follows:――

BABYDOM.

A Contribution to the Poetry of Pap.

Baby, see the flowers! ――Baby sees Other things than these. Baby, our soft age’s first of powers.

Baby, hear the birds! ――Baby’s nose Cocks at sounds like those. Baby rules our deeds and thoughts and words.

Baby, want the moon? ――Baby’s eyes Blink in blue surprise. Baby is the boss of night and noon.

Baby, hear the sea! ――Baby’s face Permeates all space, Filled with noises of the nursery.

* * * * *

The next appeared on April 23, 1887:――

THE VULTURES; OR, WHAT OF THE FIGHT. (A Suggestion from Swinburne.)

England, what of the fight?―― The fight that may come again, When the ridge of the battle-plain By the last lurid sun-ray is lit, And thou in thine armèd might Hast fought the good fight, and thy men Lie low where the night-birds flit,―― What then, oh land, what then? Prophet, what of the fight? What is the vision you see? England the stubbornly free, Erect, ’midst the whirl of her waves. Harbours she traitors and slaves, Harpies, of gold-worship bred, Who grope for their gain amongst graves That hide the hosts of her dead?

(Four verses omitted.)

Vultures, what of the fight?―― Ah! but ye crowd for gain. Little care ye for the slain. Only your maws to cram. There they be in the night, Sold for your sakes to death. System? A scoundrel sham That leaves ye with wings and breath!

England, what of that fight?―― Rouse you, and raise a hand. These Vultures swarm in the land, Incompetence, traitrous greed. Scourge them to headlong flight, Vermin of office and mart, Ere the harpies batten indeed, Their beaks in the nation’s heart.

――――

“According to a certain critic,” said the Daily News in August, 1888, Mr. Swinburne “makes ‘services’ rhyme to ‘berries.’ How in the world does he manage that? Can it be in a poem on Lawn Tennis?”

‘Oh, thy swift, subtle, slanting, services That skim the net, and ’scape the racket of me, Oh, thy rich, red, ripe, ruby raspberries, Oh, thy straw hat, and dainty body of thee!’

Nothing exactly like this occurs in the English edition of Mr. Swinburne’s poems, but this, perhaps, shows how the thing could be done, if the poet were so inclined.”

――――

In the course of a singularly brilliant career it is not surprising that Mr. Swinburne should have been the subject of many fierce literary attacks. The history of these feuds must await the advent of another Isaac D’Israeli to add a Chapter to the “Calamities and Quarrels of Authors”; interesting as the topic most certainly is, it cannot be dealt with here. Suffice it to say that the principal grounds for adverse criticism have been the asserted voluptuousness and immoral tendency of his romantic poems, and the inconsistency of his political writings. As an instance of the latter failing The Daily News of May 2, 1887, reprinted a poem Mr. Swinburne wrote for The Morning Star (a Radical paper, now defunct) in November 1867 in favour of the Fenians then lying under sentence of death for the murder of Serjeant Brett. This poem Mr. Swinburne had also included in his volume, Songs before Sunrise, published in 1871, and it certainly presents a marked contrast to his recent utterances on the Irish question.

As to the alleged immoral tendency of his works much has been written, and by many pens, one of the bitterest of his assailants being Mr. Robert Williams Buchanan, whose own early writings were, most assuredly, open to adverse criticism on the same ground.

In his little work entitled, “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” published in 1872, Mr. Buchanan not only attacked Swinburne, but he was also most malignant in his criticisms of the poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the kindest, gentlest, and purest of men. The controversy this aroused raged for some years, and the last word was only spoken when Mr. Edmund Yates published his article on “A Scrofulous Scotch Poet,” severely castigating Mr. Buchanan, in The World, September 26, 1877. Long prior to this, the following verses relating to Swinburne, had been attributed to Buchanan. It is doubtful whether in 1866 Mr. Swinburne’s name was sufficiently established to entitle him to a place in such distinguished company as is here mentioned.

THE SESSION OF THE POETS.

“Di magni, salaputium disertum!”――――CAT. LIB. LIII.

“At the Session of Poets held lately in London, The Bard of Freshwater was voted the chair: With his tresses unbrush’d, and his shirt-collar undone, He loll’d at his ease like a good-humour’d Bear; ‘Come, boys!’ he exclaimed, ‘we’ll be merry together!’ And lit up his pipe with a smile on his cheek; While with eye like a skipper’s cock’d up at the weather, Sat the Vice-Chairman Browning, thinking in Greek.

“The company gather’d embraced great and small bards, Both strong bards and weak bards, funny and grave, Fat bards and lean bards, little and tall bards, Bards who wear whiskers, and others who shave. Of books, men, and things, was the bards’ conversation―― Some praised Ecce Homo, some deemed it so-so―― And then there was talk of the state of the nation, And when the unwash’d would devour Mr. Lowe.

“Right stately sat Arnold――his black gown adjusted Genteely, his Rhine wine deliciously iced,―― With puddingish England serenely disgusted, And looking in vain (in the mirror) for ‘Geist;’ He heark’d to the Chairman, with ‘Surely!’ and ‘Really?’ Aghast at both collar and cutty of clay,―― Then felt in his pocket, and breath’d again freely, On touching the leaves of his own classic play.

“Close at hand lingered Lytton, whose Icarus-winglets Had often betrayed him in regions of rhyme―― How glitter’d the eye underneath his gray ringlets, A hunger within it unlessened by time! Remoter sat Bailey――satirical, surly―― Who studied the language of Goethe too soon, Who sang himself hoarse to the stars very early, And crack’d a weak voice with too lofty a tune.

“How name all that wonderful company over?―― Prim Patmore, mild Alford――and Kingsley also? Among the small sparks who was realler than Lover? Among misses, who sweeter than Miss Ingelow? There sat, looking moony, conceited, and narrow, Buchanan,――who, finding when foolish and young, Apollo asleep on a coster-girl’s barrow, Straight dragged him away to see somebody hung.

“What was said? what was done? was there prosing or rhyming? Was nothing noteworthy in deed or in word? Why, just as the hour for the supper was chiming, The only event of the evening occurred. Up jumped, with his neck stretching out like a gander, Master Swinburne, and squeal’d, glaring out through his hair, ‘All Virtue is bosh! Hallelujah for Lander! I disbelieve wholly in everything!――there!’

“With language so awful he dared then to treat ’em,―― Miss Ingelow fainted in Tennyson’s arms, Poor Arnold rush’d out, crying ‘Sœcl’inficetum!’ And great bards and small bards were full of alarms; Till Tennyson, flaming and red as a gipsy, Struck his fist on the table and uttered a shout: ‘To the door with the boy! Call a cab! He is tipsy!’ And they carried the naughty young gentleman out.

“After that, all the pleasanter talking was done there―― Whoever had known such an insult before? The Chairman tried hard to re-kindle the fun there, But the Muses were shocked, and the pleasure was o’er. Then ‘Ah!’ cried the Chairman, ‘this teaches me knowledge, The future shall find me more wise, by the powers!’ This comes of assigning to yonkers from college Too early a place in such meetings as ours!”

CALIBAN.

The Spectator. September 15. 1886.

――――:o:――――

Although this collection is avowedly confined to Parodies which have previously appeared in print, it will be readily understood that numbers of original parodies are sent in, of which but a very small proportion can be inserted.

Some amusing incidents occur, thus a short time ago a gentlemen sent from Scotland the M.S.S. of new and original burlesques on Hamlet and Othello, the first containing about 850 lines, and the second about double that number. The author earnestly requested they should be inserted in Parodies, but whether he had succeeded in getting any “new and original” fun out of such fresh and lively topics as Hamlet and Othello, the world will never be able to judge through this medium.

Another, and almost equally humorous request was worded as follows:――“I enclose a parody on Mr. Algernon Swinburne’s Dolores in the form of an encomium on ‘Someone’s Essence of Something’ which is absurdly close to some of the original verses. If you accept it please send proof and remuneration to me at above address.”

It so happened that this parody was not devoid of literary merit, but the author was presuming a little too much in expecting to get a puff inserted gratis, and to be paid for it in the bargain.

A verse or two will suffice to indicate the author’s treatment of the topic:――

All pale from the past we draw nigh thee, And satiate with rollicking hours; And we know thee how none can deny thee, And we purchase the gift of new pow’rs, The draught that allays and recovers, The boons and the blessings that rain On the livers and lungs of thy lovers, Exorcist of Pain!

What care though disease be a fixture Which for ages has baffled all skill, Thou art more than the famous blood mixture, Superior to Cockle’s best pill; Thou canst cast out disordered secretion, Reduce the swelled kidney, revive The victim of constant depletion, And keep him alive!

Fruits fail, Autumn dies, and Time ranges, * * * have perpetual breath, The price of its bottles ne’er changes, Two-and-ninepence can wrestle with Death Our lives are rekindled and rallied, Our systems made wholesome and clean, Relieved of Dyspepsia, that pallid, And poisonous Queen!

Sick-headache, and sudden affliction, Carbuncles, and feverish skin, Epidemics, severe mental friction, Too much of a favourite bin; For these panacea thou devisest, For these, and for all other bane, O wise among chemists, and wisest, Exorcist of Pain!

* * * * *

The remainder of this Poem will be inserted with full details as to price, and number of cures effected, on receipt of the customary advertisement fee.

Another correspondent kindly sent in a lengthy rhymed criticism of Swinburne’s style, commencing as follows:――

PADDY BLAKE ON SWINBURNE.

Dear Bailey, I will not deny That of Swinburne’s great merit I’m sensible, But this one complaint I must cry―― “He’s exceedingly incomprehensible!”

He sings pretty songs about kisses, He christens them “red,” also “white”; I confess, in all lowliness, this is Beyond my intelligence quite.

It may well be that I’m very silly, But some of his songs seem to me Like a mixture of very weak skilly With ten times as much eau-de-vie.

His language is wrondrously charming, And falls like a spell on the ear; But there’s one thing that’s rather alarming―― Would it ever bring laughter or tear?

END OF PARODIES ON A. C. SWINBURNE.

VERNON AVICK.

Dedicated without permission to the Author of “Father O’Flynn,” by the Author of “The Blarney Ballads.”

Of all the gay “scions” and sprigs of nobility, Far renowned for their grace and agility, Faix i’d advance you for sheer volatility Vernon avick! as the flower of them all.

Here’s a health to you, Vernon avick! Long may you flounder through thin and through thick, Merriest mummer, And burliest “bummer,” And loudest big-drummer in Westminster Hall.

Don’t talk of your sages and seers of antiquity, Famous for rectitude――or for obliquity, Faix an’ the divils at mental ubiquity, Vernon avick! would make hay of them all. Come, I’ll wager that nobody quite Aiquals his elegant blatherumskite, Down from urbanity, Into inanity, Troth! and profanity――if he’d the call.

Arrah, Vernon machree! what were Bottom or Puck to you? Falstaff himself was a harmless ould buck to you; Look how you gather the Radical ruck to you; Whisha, bad luck to you, Vernon avick! Still, for all, you’re the prince of buffoons, Gad! you’ve the dash of a troop of dragoons, Firing the flagging ones, Bolstering the bragging ones, Leathering the lagging ones on wid the stick.

And though never crossing the confines of charity, Still, in your moments of mammoth hilarity, Who, without showing the widest disparity Vies in vulgarity, Vernon with you? Once Sir Ughtred was minded to frown, Till this remark broke his prudery down―― “Is it lave jollity All to the ‘quality,’ Cannot we masses be mountebanks too?”

Here’s a health to you, Vernon avick! Long may you flounder, through thin and through thick, Merriest mummer, And burliest “bummer,” And loudest big drummer in Westminster Hall.

The Globe. December 11, 1888.

George R. Sims.

Mr. George R. Sims was born in London on September 2nd, 1847. He was educated first, at Hanwell College, and subsequently at Bonn.

In 1874 Mr. Sims joined the staff of Fun, and about the same time he also became connected with the Weekly Dispatch, to which he communicated the humorous papers, entitled: “Mary Jane’s Memoirs.”

Since 1877 he has written much in The Referee, over the pseudonym of “Dagonet,” and most of his Ballads, which have now a worldwide fame, first appeared in the columns of that journal.

As a dramatic author Mr. Sims has also been both prolific and successful. “Crutch and Toothpick,” “Mother-in-Law,” “The Member for Slocum,” “The Gay City,” “The Half-Way House,” “The Lights o’ London,” “The Romany Rye,” and “The Merry Duchess,” are titles well-known to every modern play-goer.

Judging by the vast amount of work in essays, dramas, and poems, produced by Mr. Sims, he must be possessed of extraordinary energy, powerful imagination, and of rapid composition. Some of his prose articles and ballads display an intimate knowledge of the inner life of the miserable, and the poor of London, such as could only have been acquired by one having keen powers of observation, after considerable time spent in the haunts of dirt, danger, and disease.

In short, since Dickens left us, no writer has been so successful in this difficult and trying branch of literature, and Dickens himself was never so popular, nor were his works so widely read by the people as are those of Mr. Sims.

――――

Although there is much that is both droll and humorous in his prose writings, the principal feature in his Ballads is homely pathos, of which the following poem is one of the best known examples.

It is one of the Ballads of Babylon (London. John P. Fuller, 1880), and is given by Mr. Sims’s kind permission:――

OSTLER JOE.

I stood at eve, as the sun went down, by a grave where a woman lies, Who lured men’s souls to the shores of sin with the light of her wanton eyes, Who sang the song that the Siren sung on the treacherous Lurley height, Whose face was as fair as a summer day, and whose heart was as black as night.

Yet a blossom I fain would pluck to-day from the garden above her dust; Not the languorous lily of soulless sin nor the blood-red rose of lust; But a sweet white blossom of holy love that grew in the one green spot In the arid desert of Phryne’s life, where all was parched and hot.

* * * * *

In the summer, when the meadows were aglow with blue and red, Joe, the ostler of the Magpie, and fair Annie Smith were wed. Plump was Annie, plump and pretty, with a cheek as white as snow; He was anything but handsome was the Magpie’s ostler, Joe.

But he won the winsome lassie. They’d a cottage and a cow, And her matronhood sat lightly on the village beauty’s brow. Sped the months and came a baby――such a blue-eyed baby boy! Joe was working in the stables when they told him of his joy.

He was rubbing down the horses, and he gave them then and there All a special feed of clover, just in honour of the heir: It had been his great ambition, and he told the horses so, That the Fates would send a baby who might bear the name of Joe.

Little Joe the child was christened, and, like babies, grew apace; He’d his mother’s eyes of azure and his father’s honest face. Swift the happy years went over, years of blue and cloudless sky; Love was lord of that small cottage, and the tempests passed them by.

Passed them by for years, then swiftly burst in fury o’er their home. Down the lane by Annie’s cottage chanced a gentleman to roam; Thrice he came and saw her sitting by the window with her child, And he nodded to the baby, and the baby laughed and smiled.

So at last it grew to know him――little Joe was nearly four; He would call the “pretty gemplun” as he passed the open door; And one day he ran and caught him, and in child’s play pulled him in, And the baby Joe had prayed for brought about the mother’s sin.

’Twas the same old wretched story that for ages bards have sung: ’Twas a woman weak and wanton and a villain’s tempting tongue; ’Twas a picture deftly painted for a silly creature’s eyes Of the Babylonian wonders and the joy that in them lies.

Annie listened and was tempted; she was tempted and she fell, As the angels fell from heaven to the blackest depths of hell; She was promised wealth and splendour and a life of guilty sloth, Yellow gold for child and husband,――and the woman left them both.

Home one eve came Joe the Ostler with a cheery cry of “Wife!” Finding that which blurred for ever all the story of his life She had left a silly letter,――through the cruel scrawl he spelt; Then he sought the lonely bed-room, joined his horny hands and knelt.

“Now, O Lord, O God, forgive her, for she ain’t to blame!” he cried; “For I owt t’a seen her trouble, and ’a gone away and died. Why, a wench like her――God bless her!――’twasn’t likely as her’d rest With that bonny head for ever on a ostler’s ragged vest.

“It was kind o’ her to bear me all this long and happy time, So for my sake please to bless her, though you count her deed a crime; If so be I don’t pray proper, Lord, forgive me; for you see I can talk all right to ’osses, but I’m nervous like with Thee.”

Ne’er a line came to the cottage from the woman who had flown; Joe the baby died that winter, and the man was left alone. Ne’er a bitter word he uttered, but in silence kissed the rod, Saving what he told his horses, saving what he told his God.

Far away in mighty London rose the woman into fame, For her beauty won men’s homage, and she prospered in her shame; Quick from lord to lord she flitted, higher still each prize she won, And her rivals paled beside her, as the stars beside the sun.

Next she made the stage her market, and she dragged Art’s temple down To the level of a show place for the outcasts of the town. And the kisses she had given to poor Ostler Joe for nought With their gold and costly jewels rich and titled lovers bought.

Went the years with flying footsteps while her star was at its height; Then the darkness came on swiftly, and the gloaming turned to night. Shattered strength and faded beauty tore the laurels from her brow; Of the thousands who had worshipped never one came near her now.

Broken down in health and fortune, men forgot her very name, Till the news that she was dying woke the echoes of her fame; And the papers in their gossip mentioned how an “actress” lay Sick to death in humble lodgings, growing weaker every day.

One there was who read the story in a far-off country place, And that night the dying woman woke and looked upon his face. Once again the strong arms clasped her that had clasped her long ago, And the weary head lay pillowed on the breast of Ostler Joe.

All the past had he forgotten, all the sorrow and the shame; He had found her sick and lonely, and his wife he now could claim. Since the grand folks who had known her one and all had slunk away, He could clasp his long-lost darling, and no man would say him nay.

In his arms death found her lying, in his arms her spirit fled; And his tears came down in torrents, as he knelt beside her dead. Never once his love had faltered through her base unhallowed life; And the stone above her ashes bears the honoured name of wife.

* * * * *

That’s the blossom I fain would pluck to-day from the garden above her dust; Not the languorous lily of soulless sin nor the blood-red rose of lust; But a sweet white blossom of holy love that grew in the one green spot In the arid desert of Phryne’s life, where all was parched and hot.

In 1886, Mrs. James Brown Potter recited this poem at a soirée given in the house of Mr. Secretary Whitney, in Washington, U.S.A., before a large company of ladies and gentlemen. During the recital some of the ladies rose and left the room; the New York papers spitefully remarked of those ladies who remained to hear the poem to the end, that, being in evening dress, they were observed to blush almost down to their waists.

The poem was severely criticised in several of the prudish American papers, and assigned by some of them to the pen of A. C. Swinburne, although as unlike his style as anything could well be.

The controversy that arose created a tremendous demand for the poem, and many thousands of copies were sold in a few days, from which however, the author derived no benefit whatever, owing to the disgraceful state of the international copyright, or want of copyright.

As Mrs. Kendal has recited the poem in public on several occasions, it may be taken for granted that it contains nothing indelicate, or objectionable, although the outcry raised in the States was so great that the principal newspapers took sides on the question, and debated the merits of the poem with almost as much heat as a Presidential Election. One well-known humorist attempted to ridicule “Ostler Joe” in the following ballad:――

TEAMSTER JIM.

It ain’t jest the story, Parson, to tell in a crowd like this, With the virtuous maiden a-frownin’ an’ chidin’ the giggling miss, An’ the good old deacon a-noddin’, in time with his patient snores, An’ the shocked elect of the Capital, stalkin’ away through the doors.

But then, it’s a story that happened, an’ every word of it’s true, An’ sometimes we can’t help talkin’ of the things that we sometimes do. An’ though good society coldly shuts its door on to Teamster Jim, I’m thinkin’ ther’s lots worse people, that’s better known than him.

I mind the day he was married, an’ I danced at the weddin’ too; An’ I kissed the bride, sweet Maggie, daughter of Ben McGrew. I mind how they set up housekeepin’ two young, poor, happy fools, When Jim’s only stock was a heavy truck an’ four Kaintucky mules.

Well, they lived along contented, with their little joys an’ cares, An’ every year a baby came, an’ twice they came in pairs; Till the house was full of children, with their shoutin’ and playin’ and squalls, An’ their singin’ an’ laughin’ an’ cryin’ made Bedlam within its walls.

An’ Jim, he seemed to like it, an’ he spent all his evenin’s at home, He said it was full of music, an’ light, an’ peace from pit to dome. He joined the church, an’ he used to pray that his heart might be kept from sin―― The stumblin’est prayin’――but heads and hearts used to bow when he’d begin.

So, they lived along in that way, the same from day to day, With plenty of time for drivin’ work, an’ a little time for play. An’ growin’ around ’em the sweetest girls and the liveliest, manliest boys, Till the old gray heads of the two old folks was crowned with the homeliest joys.

Eh? Come to my story? Well, that’s all. They’re livin’ just like I said, Only two of the girls is married, an’ one of the boys is dead, An’ they’re honest, an’ decent, an’ happy, an’ the very best Christians I know, Though I reckon in brilliant comp’ny they’d be voted a leetle slow.

Oh! you’re pressed for time――excuse you? Sure, I’m sorry I kept you so long; Good-bye! Now he looked kind o’ bored like, an’ I reckon that I was wrong To tell such a commonplace story, of two such commonplace lives, But we can’t all git drunk, an’ gamble, an’ fight, an’ run off with other men’s wives.

ROBERT T. BURDETTE.

“OSTLER JOE” IN THE HANDS OF A “POTTER.”

She went into a soirée, Where was many a spotter, And she read of Ostler Joe, ――Naughty Mrs. Potter.

Ladies there “undressed by Worth,” Scowled at the simple cotter And his fickle wife, ha, ha! ――Wicked Mrs. Potter.

They might go to see Odette, Or some play that’s hotter, But Ostler Joe they wouldn’t stand, ――Horrid Mrs. Potter

Boston Courier.

HUSTLER JIM.

There warn’t nothin’ so blamed angelic Nor saintish-like about him; But, pard,――ef ever yer needed a friend―― Yer could “tie” to “Hustler Jim.”

Perhaps, if ther ’casion required it―― He would “cuss” a bit, now and then; But a tenderer, kinder heart nor Jim’s Haint frequently found in men.

There warn’t one parsimonious hair In that grizzled old mop o’his, There warn’t one deceitful line In his wizened and humbly phiz.

His sympathies at a dog-fight Allers backed up the smallest pup, And his last chaw of plug terbacker With er stranger he’d “divey” up.

Ef I wuz ter live fer er hundred years, I shell never fergit the night When he cleaned out “Plug” Kimberley’s bar room, A mile or so west of Fort White.

Ef I wuz ter live fer er thousand years, I kin never fergit the fun The two of us had when we broke up Smith’s Place Jest this side of Poverty Run.

If I wuz ter live fer er million years―― (Who was it remarked: “Git out.” Was it you? Bartender? all right――I’ll “skip”――Dont shove please, I’ll travel without!)

* * * * *

Out in the dark, damp, dreary night, They ruthlessly “hustled” him,―― Ere he had a chance his sad tale to recite, Concerning “Hustler Jim.”

Washington Hatchet, 1886.

――――:o:――――

BILLY’S ROSE. (Inserted by Mr. Sims’s permission.)

Billy’s dead, and gone to glory, so is Billy’s sister Nell: There’s a tale I know about them, were I poet I would tell; Soft it comes, with perfume laden, like a breath of country air Wafted down the filthy alley, bringing fragrant odours there.

In that vile and filthy alley, long ago, one winter’s day, Dying quick of want and fever, hapless, patient Billy lay, While beside him sat his sister, in the garret’s dismal gloom, Cheering with her gentle presence Billy’s pathway to the tomb.

Many a tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child, Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled: Tales herself had heard hap-hazard, caught amid the Babel roar, Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round their mother’s door.

Then she felt his wasted fingers tighten feebly as she told How beyond this dismal alley lay a land of shining gold, Where, when all the pain was over――where, when all the tears were shed―― He would be a white-frocked angel, with a gold thing on his head.

Then she told some garbled story of a kind-eyed Saviour’s love, How He’d built for little children great big playgrounds up above, Where they sang and played at hop-scotch, and at horses all the day, And where beadles and policemen never frightened them away.

This was Nell’s idea of Heaven――just a bit of what she’d heard, With a little bit invented and a little bit inferred. But her brother lay and listened, and he seemed to understand, For he closed his eyes and murmured he could see the Promised Land.

“Yes,” he whispered, “I can see it――I can see it, sister Nell; Oh, the children look so happy, and they’re all so strong and well; I can see them there with Jesus――He is playing with them, too! Let us run away and join them, if there’s room for me and you.”

She was eight, this little maiden, and her life had all been spent In the garret and the alley, where they starved to pay the rent; Where a drunken father’s curses and a drunken mother’s blows Drove her forth into the gutter from the day’s dawn to its close.

But she knew enough, this outcast, just to tell the sinking boy, “You must die before you’re able all these blessings to enjoy. You must die,” she whispered, “Billy, and I am not even ill; But I’ll come to you, dear brother――yes, I promise that I will.

“You are dying, little brother,――you are dying, oh, so fast; I heard father say to mother that he knew you could’nt last. They will put you in a coffin, then you’ll wake and be up there, While I’m left alone to suffer in this garret bleak and bare.”

“Yes, I know it,” answered Billy. “Ah, but, sister, I don’t mind, Gentle Jesus will not beat me; He’s not cruel or unkind. But I can’t help thinking, Nelly, I should like to take away Something, sister, that you gave me, I might look at every day.

“In the summer you remember how the mission took us out To a great green lovely meadow, where we played and ran about, And the van that took us halted by a sweet bright patch of land, Where the fine red blossoms grew, dear, half as big as mother’s hand.

“Nell, I asked the good kind teacher what they called such flowers as those, And he told me, I remember, that the pretty name was rose. I have never seen them since, dear――how I wish that I had one! Just to keep and think of you, Nell, when I’m up beyond the sun.”

Not a word said little Nelly; but at night when Billy slept, On she flung her scanty garments, and then down the stairs she crept. Through the silent streets of London she ran nimbly as a fawn, Running on and running ever till the night had changed to dawn.

When the foggy sun had risen, and the mist had cleared away, All around her, wrapped in snowdrift, there the open country lay. She was tired, her limbs were frozen, and the roads had cut her feet, But there came no flowery gardens her poor tearful eyes to greet.

She had traced the road by asking――she had learnt the way to go; She had found the famous meadow――it was wrapt in cruel snow; Not a buttercup or daisy, not a single verdant blade Showed its head above its prison. Then she knelt her down and prayed.

With her eyes upcast to heaven, down she sank upon the ground, And she prayed to God to tell her where the roses might be found. Then the cold blast numbed her senses, and her sight grew strangely dim; And a sudden, awful tremor seemed to seize her every limb.

“Oh, a rose!” she moaned, “good Jesus――just a rose to take to Bill!” And as she prayed a chariot came thundering down the hill; And a lady sat there, toying with a red rose, rare and sweet; As she passed she flung it from her, and it fell at Nelly’s feet.

Just a word her lord had spoken caused her ladyship to fret, And the rose had been his present, so she flung it in a pet; But the poor, half-blinded Nelly, thought it fallen from the skies, And she murmured, “Thank you, Jesus!” as she clasped the dainty prize.

* * * * *

Lo that night from out the alley did a child’s soul pass away, From dirt and sin and misery to where God’s children play. Lo that night a wild, fierce snowstorm burst in fury o’er the land, And at morn they found Nell frozen, with the red rose in her hand.

Billy’s dead, and gone to glory, so is Billy’s sister Nell; I’m bold to say this happened in the land where angels dwell:―― That the children met in heaven, after all their earthly woes, And that Nelly kissed her brother, and said, “Billy here’s your rose.”

G. R. SIMS.

BILLY’S NOSE.

Listen to a striking story. Billy and his sister Nell Were a pair of gutter youngsters, in an alley had to dwell (I am not a noted poet, but to tell you I shall try, Since it “comes with perfume laden”――as a moral――that is why.)

Simple toys had made them happy through a sultry summer day (Two old boots and one dead kitten), then they quarrelled in their play, ’Mid the grime on Billy’s visage shone in streaks the angry red, And he seized a handy brickbat, which he threw at Nellie’s head.

Little boys should love their sisters――here I might have had to paint How the pretty, hapless maiden suddenly grew pale and faint; How anon she drooped and faded, looking dove-like all the while, Rending Billy’s little bosom with the sweetness of her smile!

But she didn’t. Nellie started――darted up each creaking stair Till she reached their dismal garret, for she knew a stick was there; This she held behind her slyly, meaning to avenge her woes, Sought the unsuspecting Billy, and she hit him on the nose.

Billy’s missile missed its object, Nellie’s stick descended hard, And the boy from all his pleasures was for three whole weeks debarred; Could he hop-scotch in the alley――in the gutter take his place, With that lattice work of plaster――very dirty――on his face?

Little boys should love their sisters――that’s the moral that I meant, Seeing Billy’s nasal feature now, alas! is sadly bent; And he has a secret sorrow, for whene’er his temper glows, Nellie stands with lean arms folded, saying “Billy, how’s your nose?”

FRED RAWKINS (HAROLD WYNN.)

The Weekly Dispatch, 25 June, 1882.

Another Parody of “Billy’s Rose” appeared in The Umpire (Manchester) 30 September, 1888. But it does not follow the original very closely, and is rather too coarse to be inserted.

――――:o:――――

“THE TRICYCLE.” A Parody upon “The Lifeboat,” by G. P. Sims.

Been out on the Tricycle often? Yes, sir, I ride a lot. When it’s hotter than this? Lor’, bless you, this ain’t what we call hot. It’s when the sun is a-shining with a heat like a furnace strong, When the air is close and stifling, and when for a breeze you long,

When a drink seems life’s sole object, and parched and dry is the breath, When the leader’s cry, “Spurt! Forward” sounds like a sentence of death. That’s when we call it hot, sir; but if we can manage a day, There is always enough crack riders ready to pedal away.

You’ve heard of Tunbridge Wells, sir, down in the valley of Kent? Here are the fellows who rode there――gone is the money we spent. The day that we went was reckoned the hottest this summer has seen, And this was a year when summer was hot as Egypt, I ween.

The trip was planned by the others, and two of them volunteered―― I only heard of it after, and then I was well-nigh skeered―― For roasting that day seemed certain, and I thought of the skin on my nose; I thought of the Bank in the City, the books I had to close.

We pedalled away in the heat, sir; the “Wells” was the goal in view, And never a one but doubted if the riders could live it through. Our Tricycles stood it bravely, and thirsty and hot and weak, We drew in sight of the hopfields we had dared so much to seek;

And then we rested and turned, and homeward again we faced, When one machine collapsed, sir, as down a hill we raced! That was an awful moment, and the stoutest held his breath, And watched the wreck on the road, sir, as if he looked on death.

The road was strewn with pieces, and, to tell you the truth, sir, then I thought of the Bank in London I never might see again. I thought of the manager’s look, sir, if vacant my seat were seen On the morrow when I was due there――and all through a friend’s machine!

However, I thought I’d risk it; I couldn’t desert a friend, So we set to work with a will, sir, the broken wheel to mend, And after some skilful hammering our joy can well be guessed When we saw the wheel go round again, though shaky at the best.

Well, we stopped at a neighbouring “public”――of the rest I know no more; But I spent next day at the Bank, sir, with limbs both tired and sore, And as I sat calm and quiet my memory clouded grew As I thought of that awful journey, that ride I had just gone through.

Cassell’s Saturday Journal. May 1, 1886.

――――:o:――――

THE TERROR OF TADGER’S RENTS. A “Dagonet Ballad” Gone Wrong.

Ain’t heard of Tadger’s Rents? My eye! where was you bred and born? Such ignorance it do excite a feller-creature’s scorn. The Rents is down the Dials way――a proper kind o’ lair, Where happy dossers come each night, and doss upon the stair.

I’ve done it many times and oft;――but never mind ’bout me, It’s of Bill Basher I would jaw this arternoon, d’ye see? The “Terror o’ the Rents” he was, and well deserved the name, And yet, I hold, his heart was soft and tender all the same.

He couldn’t bear no cant, poor Bill, and humbug driv him wild, They made a savage of a chap as was by nature mild; And so it came to pass as he would always have his knife Into a cove as paid his way and lived a decent life.

Joe Tomkins, he was one o’ these――a mean and sneaking cuss, Who for no sort o’ boose that’s brewed had ever been the wuss. “Let’s have a wet,” said Bill one day. Said Joseph, “Not for Joe!” No wonder Bill was riled at that――he would be, don’t you know.

So later on, when he’d got screwed, he made for Joseph’s room, As sat at tea, all unprepared to meet his orful doom. Bill landed him upon the nose a wunner, so he did, And then perceeded for to kick Joe’s missis and his kid.

He jumped upon the three of them, and then he come away―― You can’t see where his heart was soft, I think I heard you say. Hold on; don’t take a feller up so precious sharp as that―― Bill came away and didn’t hurt the Tomkins’ tabby cat.

I see that animile last week, a-looking sleek and well, But Bill he’s picking of his hemp inside a prison cell. A martyr’s crown? I guess you’re right, for his deserts is plain, As does his best, when on the bust, to study the humane.

Funny Folks’ Annual.

――――:o:――――

ANOTHER “BAGONET” BALLAD. Told by the One-armed Man.

What? A “queer place” to look for a hero? A Seven Dials pothouse? No fear! I’ll find heroes, I’ll bet, just as good as you’ll get, Though perhaps they may owe to their beer

A grain――just a grain――of the courage That stamps them the bulldogs of war. “But, lor, where’s the hurt in a pint or a quart? And, blow you! whoever you are――

“If you rob a pore man of his lotion, And go turning him out of his pubs, Whilst, half Sunday, he sits on the kerbstone, and spits, You’re a guzzlin’ champagne in your clubs.

“Go and ’ang yerself――d’yer――did ye ’ear me? Why you ain’t fit to live with my moke! Mr. Stead says the toffs is all cut-throats and toffs, Go and bust yerself――go an’ eat coke!”

A hero has spoken, as valiant A fellow as ever broke bread―― As fly as a cop. He could hammer a slop, And then do his “month’s hard” on his head.

He’s a thorough-blown hero, I tell you (Though I fear I’m not much at portraiture), P’raps he’s rough in a tiff, but, good gracious me――if There’s a “Mr. Hyde” side to his nature,

Sure it’s not to be wondered at greatly; For Seven Dials air’s hardly otto Of roses. And more――as he’s told you before―― You don’t uphold “Fair Play” as your motto.

But let him run loose. Over there, sir, You see a man sit on the bench; Not that one with the pot――he’s a terrible sot; Nor that one that is kissing the wench;

But that grey-haired old chap, whose right sleeve, sir, Is empty, and pinned to his breast; And I’ll bet you he says that he’s seen better days. I can see it. That fine manly chest

I’ll warrant has heaved ’neath the scarlet, Those grey eyes, so earnest and grave, That look full of scorn, ne’er in plebeian born; He’s a soldier――or has been――and brave.

I wonder if, speaking politely, I’m able to somewhat unmask him, To learn ’bout his arm. He seems passive and calm, There’s nothing like cheek――no――I’ll ask him.

* * * * *

“How did I lose my arm, sir?” (The grey-headed veteran rose), “Well, come, fill up my pot, I’d as lief tell as not,” (And he fell in a “Bagonet” pose――

You know――stand at ease――right leg forward The right arm――or sleeve――on the breast-ee’s, The left hanging dead by the side. And the head Thrown well back to give play to the chest-ee’s.)

“How did I lose my arm, sir? Ah, that’s too long a story, I fear, Though I don’t wish to brag, it was lost for the flag Of the Queen――and for England so dear.

“It was lost, sir, upholding the honour That means to an Englishman life. In the thick of the battle, midst guns’ deathly rattle, One last thought of home and of wife――”

Then he strikes. Hark, now “Up guards, and at ’em, Bang! Victory! On Stanley, on! Send a volley in there――on the point of the square, So――another like that, and we’ve won.”

See your foemen and comrades all lying On the blood-stained heath, gory and red, Hear the groans and the prayers of the dying And the agonised shrieks of the dead.

Poor Jack! What, a drink from my flask, son, And leave you to die? Save myself? You and I, who’ve been cronies together, Have a pull at the brandy. A Guelph

Isn’t dearer to me at this moment―― My charger’s been shot in both flanks, But we can both straddle somehow in the saddle, And I’ll get you back to the ranks.

What’s this dark hull that looms up against us? This great rush of steam, and this dash? For the ones that we love all things earthly above Great heavens! she’s on us! A crash――

Yes, we’re struck by the Bywell Castle. She has cut us in two with her prow, And our boat, The Princess, in five minutes, or less, WILL SUCK THREE HUNDRED CREATURES BELOW!

“Let the women get into the boats there, Stand back-let the critters get in!” But some great hulking tramps crowd the boat, and she swamps, And loud o’er the engines dim,

From the waves of the murky Thames, sir, Come the wails of the souls in the stream. “Keep afloat for God’s sake――sure some effort she’ll make, No――one last shriek――one horrible scream;”

As our vessel she takes a plunge, sir, Ah! it sickens my heart with fears; The life-belts are thrown, as the vessel goes down, AND THE OLD MAN SITS IN TEARS!

He looks at the glowing embers, He watches the straggling flame; But never a word from his lips is heard As he thinks of his daughter’s shame.

How her sunny face, in the village, As a ray of sunshine was shown; Beloved by them all, both great and small, Till――till the gay young squire came down.

Ah, me, ’twas the same old story, Of the trusting girl and the scamp, The careless miner――the unlit pipe―― AND THE UNCLOSED DAVY LAMP!

A flash and a terrible rumbling, As loud of smoke from the shaft, Of wailing dread at the grim pit’s head, But along the wires was waft

A word from the junction signals, “THE FLYING SCOTCHMAN’S THROUGH! Clear the line; she’s late.” And the 12.48 Is ten minutes overdue!

I’ve hardly a second for thought, sir, The 12.48’s in sight. “Put steam, on, men, run her through, and then We may still pull ye through all right.”

They hear my shout on the engine, And they run her through at a rate That the company never had dreamed about, But alas! for it’s all too late.

But one more second and they’d have gained The siding. But down she swept, AND FEW IN THAT FATED HOUSE AFIRE That knew――for most sound they slept.

The firemen hammered the door down. Is there life to be saved, and where? They plunge in the haze of the house ablaze; Their helmets lit up with the glare.

A window opens above us, That’s on the second floor. And a maiden we sight――in the raiment of night―― And she calls midst the flaming roar――

“WILL NOBODY SAVE MY FATHER?” We are turned near to stone at the shock. We are glued to the street. I can hear my heart beat Like a five-bob American clock.

A ladder is put to the window, A young fellow pulls off his hat, He springs up that ladder as lithe as an adder, And climbs with the skill of a cat.

WE SWEEP LIKE A WAVE PAST THE RED POST! It’s now that the battle begins. Ev’ry eye’s on the blue. In a second or two They’ll be shouting out “Kissing Cup wins!”

We’ve got ’em all settled, I think, sir, No! Here comes the Captain’s colt, He’s us at five seven! He’ll beat us――Oh, heaven! But no――he has shot his bolt.

I can see the face of a girl, sir, A standing there in the ring, She’s a maiden to meet――(out of Winchester Street), And she’s “backed us like everyding.”

I must win this race FOR HER, sir, For hereon there rests a name. Her virgin caresses――her “Empire” dresses, And Victoria Station’s shame.

THE AERONAUT CLINGS TO THE CORD, SIR, And owns with too well shown fright That he’s surely come to a chosen tomb In the Channel’s billows so bright.

When we sailed from the Crystal Palace, There was scarce a breath of air, And the glitt’ring sun on our huge balloon Made a picture divinely fair.

She looked like a golden ball, sir, As she mounted into the skies. Sailed from the crowds and sought the clouds The cynosure of all eyes.

But two short hours have passed us, And here we hang o’er the sea, In a terrible plight――not a sail in sight, And descending rapid-lee, A few feet below us――THE OCEAN! We are fully ten miles from the land. Good God! see――she dies――not an inch can we rise FOR WE’VE THROWN OUT THE LAST BAG OF SAND!

To recourse――ah, I had but an instant. I leapt――with a cry――to the ground. And, Heaven be praised for its mercy! I stood with the girl safe and sound.

* * * * *

“And that’s how I lost my arm, sir. If the thing don’t strike you as clear, Put it down to a few o’ the trials I’ve gone through, Or――perhaps it’s along o’ this beer.”

The Sporting Times. October 20, 1888.

――――:o:――――

THE LIGHTS OF LONDON TOWN.

The way was long and weary, But gallantly they strode, A country lad and lassie, Along the heavy road. The night was dark and stormy But blithe of heart were they, For shining in the distance The Lights of London lay.

O gleaming lamps of London that gem the City’s crown, What fortunes lie within you, O Lights of London Town.

* * * * *

GEORGE R. SIMS.

See Ballads of Babylon. London. John P. Fuller. 1880.

――――

THOSE WIGHTS OF LONDON TOWN. The Correct Version.

The way was long and dreary, But jauntily they strode, Bill Sikes and Jim the Leary Along the frosty road. The night was nice and dusky, The sky was dark and grey; And Bill, in accents husky, Opined they’d fix the lay! “O gleaming lamps of London! I’d like douse your glim, What “crackings” lie within you when you are faint and dim!”

The hours passed on and found them A-burgling of a “shop” And scattered all around them, They’d got a golden crop. And from the office window, That lonely moonless night The “swag” they dropped, and grinn’d O! It was a lovely sight! “O sleepy slops of London, who crawl about the town, I think you must be jolly green, for we have done you brown.”

With faces black with sorrow―― With words we dare not speak, Upon the fateful morrow, They stood before the beak. The “slops” had watched their capers, And soon their way had barred, And, according to the papers, They each got six months hard! “Oh cruel lights of London, why do you shine so gay? A-showing up poor burgulars, to steal their peace away.”

S. J. ADAIR FITZ-GERALD.

――――

THE LIGHTS O’ ASCOT HEATH.

The way was long and dusty, But joyfully they drove, A London lad and lassie, Along the Ascot road; The day was hot and muggy, But blithe of heart were they, For shining in his pocket Some twenty dollars lay. Oh! gleaming heath of Ascot, That gem of racing sights, What fortunes you could tell of; What sad and sorry flights.

With faces torn and beery, That told a loser’s load, That day a man and woman Crept up the London road: They sought their native alley, “Regular broke” from the fray, Yet shining still behind them The heath of Ascot lay. Oh! cruel heath of Ascot, If D’s your race could win, Your victims’ mouths would yell them, To get their favourite in.

The Sporting Times. June 20, 1885.

――――:o:――――

THE BALLAD MONGER.

It was a ballad monger, Of the gruesome, morbid type, And he told of cold and hunger, “Little alls” sent “up the pipe.” And he piled on high the agony, As with sobs we gasped for breath, When he sang us――à la Dagonet, Of murder, want, and death.

Doth a child convert a burglar, Or that burglar kill that child, Then this sentimental gurgler, “Airs his slush”――to put it mild. He will tell you how it’s mother―― Yes, the child’s of course not Sykes’―― Was a relative of t’other, By a natural son of “Mike’s!”

How this “Mike” was Sykes’ father, And the father himself betwixt A duke and an earl――or rather, When the parentage got mixed. And so on and yet so forth, Will this “poet” meander on, Till he proves my Lord of Beauforth, Was undoubtedly Mike’s son.

And the child was Sykes’s daughter, And the mother wife to he, Though their grandma wasn’t sorter, Everything that she might be. Yet the moral indicated, In this tale that is bedeckt, Troubles not this addle-pated, Jerry-plotting architect.

Should occasion demand a sonnet, On a “starve” or on a “freeze,” Then our ballad monger is “on it,” With his dismal, doleful, wheeze, And he’s safe upon this track, sir, To his muse he ne’er resorts, For his scenes are based on facts, sir, Solid facts from police reports.

Oh, the unction of this whiner, Of a tune pitched in a key, Which the clef is B flat minor, And as dirge-like as can be. Not content with dying father, Teething babe and wasting wife, With his licensed poetic lather, He must needs call in the knife.

Need I wade through scenes of torture, To the climax strong and hot, When the son, himself a “scorcher,” Takes and massacres the lot. No! I needn’t, for it’s certain. That in sympathy you’d choke, With emotion at the burden, Of this ballad-slinging bloke.

HEBER K. DANIELS.

From The South Western Star.

――――

Truth for October 14th, 1886, contained half-a-dozen ballads written in the style of Mr. Sims’s poems. The three following may be quoted as interesting imitations, but it will be seen that they do not parody any particular poem:――

LITTLE FLO.’

Tell you the tale o’ Flo, sir, and how she came to die? ’Twere a sad time in my life, tho’ it’s so long gone by. I was a drunken brute then――never thought much o’ Flo; Nearly al’ays in liquor――got jolly screwed, you know.

Yes, I treated her shockin’! life must ha’ been pretty bad, She’d prom’sed her dyin’ mother al’ays to look after dad. I used to laugh at her notions, she was but a gal o’ seven, And ’ad got it fixed in her ’ead to bring me along to heaven.

“Dad!” she’d say to me sometimes, “it’s beau’ful bright in there; Everyone’s al’ays ’appy, and got golden crowns to wear.” How I laughed at the child then, to think o’ a crown on my head; I told her to shut up cantin’, I didn’t want to be dead.

Still some’ow I wasn’t ’appy, for ’appen I’d got a fright, And wondered whatever’ud’appen if I should die that night, So to keep down her pleadin’s I off on a pretty good spree, Down at the pub at the corner, along o’ my mates and me.

We was pretty gone on the wrong side, stagg’rin’ ’ome that night, And there was Flo sittin’ and watchin’, with the room clean and bright. With a curse at her for waitin’ I flung myself on the bed, Catchin’ the lamp with my arm, and pullin’ it down on my ’ead.

Flo flung herself down upon me, and then I woke from my daze, We smoth’rd the flames with a rug, but Flo was all a blaze. I flung the blanket upon her, I seemed to go off my ’ead; But when I got back to my senses, they told me that Flo was dead.

She’d given her life for her father, for such a wretch as me, And mainly because she knew, sir, that I warn’t fit to die. When I got better they told me the last words ’o little Flo “They wouldn’t have ’im in ’eaven, if he was drunk, you know.”

On my word, sir, that fetched me, I never drank since that night; And I prays as I’ll follow Flo up to her ’ome ’o light. For as that child forgave me, I believes by and by As He’ll forgive me too, sir, who came for sinners to die.

So little Flo’s life warn’t lost, she showed me the way to live; She showed me what goodness meant, the way that a girl can forgive. When I am tempted to drink, I thinks o’ the last words o’ Flo, “He couldn’t be let into ’eaven if he was drunk, you know.”

MAGNUM BONUM.

――――

THE COSTER’S PLEA.

What ’ave I got to say, Mr. Beak, about the row last night, When I knocked the peeler down twice? Well, it was just a fight For liberty for me, sir――me an’ me old dawg Jack; The bobby tried to cop ’im, and I put ’im on ’is back.

I tried to fight ’im fair, sir, but ’e pulled ’is trunchin out To brain my dear old dawg with, an’ the people round about Cried “Shame!” but it ony made him madder like, yer see, And then ’twas a matter ’o fists for to set my old dawg free.

Why did I fight for a dawg so an’ try to injer the perlice? Well, cos if they ’ad took ’im I’d ’ave never ’ad no peace. Just cos that faithful dawg years ago did that for me What I could’nt, sir, forget if a ’underd I should be.

Twelve years ago old Jack, ’e, when not much mor’n a pup, One night lay in ’is corner――’e’d ’ad neither bit nor sup; For times ’ad bin rare bad――’e lay down an’ shet ’is eyes, ’E was ’ungry, an’ wet, an’ tired, an’ ’ad ’ardly strength to rise.

The missus an’ me went off up ter bed ter try ’an sleep, But when your stummick’s empty, its apt yer awake to keep; But at last we went sound off, an’ dead beat as we ’ad bin, A sleep as ’eavy as death, by-an’-bye, we both was in.

I suppose we’d been asleep nigh upon a couple o’ hour, When Jack ’e woke me barkin’, an’ I see ’is tew eyes glower, Then I looked an’ missed our kiddy from ’er bed on the floor, But I spied ’er little bed things layin’ close again the door.

I turned ter Poll to wake ’er, when I see a awful glare Cornin’ in the bedroom winder, an’ the ’eat was ’ard to bear, The ’ouse was all ablaze, an’ we’d dropped out ter the ground ’Bout ten minits, when it fell in scatt’rin fire all around.

Jumpin’ out Jack broke ’is leg bad, and our kiddy’s life he’d saved; ’E ’ad took ’er out in safety, an’ ’ere on me ’earts engraved, The deed o’ that there dawg, who come back through fire to us, An’ can ye wonder now, sir, that last night I made a fuss?

’E braved a burnin’ staircase, an’ ’ed stayed till we had dropped, An’, when my Poll, soon after, straight away to glory popped, She said, “Jim, keep our Jack safe,” an’ I’ve allus’ kep’ me vow, An’ you’ll let me off, sir, won’t you, so that I don’t break it now;

The kid ’as gone to her mother, wi’ the angels up above, An’ if I should lose old Jack, why, I’d nothin’ ave ter love, Ah! don’t be ’ard, sir, this time――don’t break a poor cove’s ’eart; What, sir? I’m free! God bless yer! me dawg an’ me won’t part!

AGLAUS.

――――

SALLY.

What’s the matter down the alley Don’t yer know? I thought as ’ow Every one ’ad ’eard of Sally―― Killed last week in a drunkin row. Come aside, then, out of the mob, sir. A drink? I don’t mind if I do. I don’t like talkin’ of this job, sir; But any ’ow I’ll tell it you.

Well, I think ’twas last December―― ’Bout as near as I can tell―― Joe Hale, then a stiddy member, Lost ’is wife an’ kid as well. That upset ’im altogether, Drove ’im nearly off ’is head; Whether it was that, or whether It was not, it’s what was said.

Fightin’ every night an’ boozin’, Doin’ weeks an’ months in quod, Sellin’ all ’is sticks, an’ losin’ All he ’ad, when on the cod; An’ he’d leave pore little Sally (Sally was ’is daughter, sir) For days a starvin’ in the alley, Givin’ not a thought to ’er.

This night Joe was fightin’ madly In a gang of drunkin’ brutes, Who, if things was goin’ badly, ’Ud down a man an’ use their boots; An’ little Sally, screamin’ “Murder!” With a face just like a sheet, Rushed among the fightin’ herd, sir, An’ fell down beneath their feet.

Trampled on, an’ crush’d, an’ moanin’, They carried Sal out of the fight; She lay a little while a groanin’, An’ then she died the selfsame night. An’ now they’re goin’ to bury Sally―― An’ Joe? Ah, Joe, too, ended bad, For when he seed ’er dead in the alley, He went stark, starin’ ravin’ mad.

PHIL. LASCELLES.

The pathetic ballads of Mr. Sims are frequently chosen for recitation, and good parodies of them are much sought after, as a relief to the overwrought feelings of the auditors.

There is a recitation written by Mr. Richard H. Douglass, which is often given by him with success, entitled “Christmas Day in the Beer-house.”

In its opening lines it somewhat resembles Mr. Sims’s “Christmas Day in the Workhouse,” but it does not follow that poem sufficiently to be styled a parody, and is, moreover, rather coarse in its style.

Every one remembers “The Manual for Young Reciters,” which appeared in Punch in 1887, and has since been issued in a small volume, entitled “Burglar Bill,” by J. Anstey, (London, Bradbury, Agnew & Co.) Two of the papers contained in this are imitations of Mr. Sims; Burglar Bill is one, but a far more amusing specimen is A Coster’s Conversion. A poor harmless costermonger relates how he

“Give a copper a doin’, As ’ad said my barrer was blockin’ the way, And they took me afore a beak, And he see what I wanted was change o’ hair, So he sent me to quod fur a week.”

Whilst he is away in durance vile some well meaning, but mistaken, philanthropist converts his wife to Æstheticism, and on his return to his humble roof, he is much amazed, and by no means pleased, with the alterations made in his home:――

“I’ll not ’ave none of it, Betsy,” I sez――and I chucked the lot of it out, And I did’nt recover my self-respeck till I see it go up the spout! For we all on us has our feelings, Sir, and my pride it was cruel ’urt, To think as a swell could ha’ gone so fur as to rob a poor man of his dirt! But I never ’anker for Culcher now, nor henvy no harristocrats, For I’m cured fur life of the longing I ’ad fur a roomful of brick-a-bats. Of spadgers and pea-green paint you’ll find in the attic ’ardly a trace, And, when me and my old woman ’as words――there’s allus plenty o’ space!

* * * * *

This appeared originally in Punch, May 14, 1887.

Mr. Sims has recently published (London, Chatto and Windus) The Dagonet Reciter, which contains most of the poems which have been referred to in this Collection, “Ostler Joe,” “The Life-boat,” “Keeping Christmas” etc., as well as a selection of his humorous prose writings.

Before leaving this author, there remains a parody of his to be quoted, it should have appeared in Volume IV., which contained other parodies of “The Lost Chord.”

THE LOST CORD.

Seated one day in a carriage, I was frightened and ill at ease, For a fellow, behaving wildly, Was up to his drunken sprees.

I knew not if he was playing, Or what I was doing then, But I pulled the cord like winking, While the lunatic shrieked “Amen.”

It rattled against the ceiling As I clasped it in my palm, Then it broke and fell on the cushion, Where it lay in a holy calm.

It startled the next compartment, On the lunatic’s nerves it jarred; It reached the length of the carriage, But it never reached the guard.

It may be a grand invention At the distant guard to get; But I’ve tried it in twenty cases, And I’ve never succeeded yet.

GEORGE R. SIMS.

From The Lifeboat, and other Poems. 1883.

The following Volunteer parody, of the same original, recently appeared in the First Lanark Gazette.――

THE LOST SHOT.

Shooting one day at the targets, In a steady three-o’clock breeze, I watched my score rise quickly―― I was making bulls’-eyes with ease.

I knew well what I was doing, And what I was thinking then, As I fired my one last bullet, And awaited the signal again.

It sped thro’ the Golden Ether, With the speed of an angel’s wing, And it must have reached the target, For I’m certain I heard the “ping.”

I waited with utmost confidence For the signal that never came; I challenged, and paid my sixpence, But the marker ignored my claim!

I raged with perplexed feelings, And swore like a big dragoon; Then I fretted away into silence O’er the loss of the silver spoon.

I have sought, and I still seek vainly The value of that one last shot, For which I claimed a bull’s-eye, Only the scorer said it was not.

It may be that playful zephyrs Wafted it over the plain; It may be that only in dreamland I shall find my last shot again.

CORPORAL.

CLEMENT W. SCOTT.

Many poems written by this distinguished dramatic critic are chosen for recitation, notably “The Women of Mumbles Head” which is to be found in “Lays of a Londoner” (London, Carson and Comerford, 1886.) A very funny parody of this, entitled “The Wreck of the Steamship ‘Puffin,’” is in Burglar Bill, by J. Anstey, and would form an amusing contrast to the original, in the second part of an entertainment.

Another well-known poem by Mr. Clement Scott was the Tale of the Tenth Hussars, in favour of the late Colonel Valentine Baker, which originally appeared in Punch, and was quoted, with a parody on it, on p. 87, vol. iv. Parodies.

THE GARDEN OF SLEEP. (With compliments to Messrs. Clement Scott and Isidore de Lara)

There’s a crib in Whitechapel is used by a heap, An’ the deppity calls it ’is Garden o’ Sleep! Where the Heast Hend hexotics are bloomin’ in rows, An’ the fake an’ the cadger find blameliss repose. For a double or single you settles the boss, An’ you dumps down your coppers an’ goes for your doss; Though if turn out you won’t when your time’s fairly sped, They’ve a ’abit of lettin’ you down by the ’ead, An’ a bump on your Barnet you commonly keep All the day hafter leavin’ the Garden o’ Sleep. Sleep! sleep! Never mind things wot creep! Sleep, my dossy ones, sleep!

If you’ve ’tecs on your track there’s but foppence to pay, You can set in the kitching the ’ole of the day, Smoke your clay, brile your bloater, or swill down the booze, While you reads o’ your deeds in the Hecko or Noos, An’ you splits the bone buttons right orf of your west Wen they brings you the word of your latest harrest; An’ you larfs till the water runs out of your heyes Wen you thinks of the slops goin’ round in disguise, And the ’andsome reward as no cully won’t reap, ’Cept some pal blows the gaff in the Garden o’ Sleep! Sleep! sleep! for the slops we’re too deep! Sleep, my dossy ones, sleep!

Once a swell come a-slummin’ in second-’and slops, And my pal, which is William, the needle ’e cops, And ’e twigged ’im a-takin’ down notes on the sly, An’ arranged for to cure ’im o’ doin’ Poll Pry; For ’e kep’ on a-sniffin’ and saying, “Ho, dear! There’s a state o’ things ’ighly deplorable ’ere!” An’ ’e cussed at the blankits, which all was ’is spite, As the gent as ’ad used ’em since Wensday fortnite Was a gifted an’ ’ighly respectable sweep, As is werry well known in the Garden o’ Sleep! Sleep! sleep! A respectable sweep! Sleep, my dossy ones, sleep!

Then my pal an’ me pulls that there swell out o’ bed, An’ we gets a young lady to set on ’is ’ead, An’ we searches ’is pockets and collars the mags, Takes ’is coat an’ ’is weskit, and also ’is bags, An’ we tenderly pitches ’im out in the street, Where ’e is copped by the bobby as b’longs to the beat; An’ we watches an’ watches, but watchin’ is wain, ’Cos that swell ’e won’t never try slummin’ again, As a fine for disorderly drunks gets ’im cheap Orf that night as ’e spent in the Garden o’ Sleep! Sleep! sleep! Two ’arf bulls does it cheap! Sleep, my dossy ones, sleep!

Judy. November 28, 1888.

ROBERT BROWNING.

In dealing with Parodies of the works of living authors, the chief difficulty to contend with is, that some of the parodies may read rather flat and uninteresting to those who are unacquainted with the original poem.

Such familiar poems as Lord Tennyson’s “May Queen,” or “Lady Clara Vere-de-Vere,” it would of course be quite unnecessary to reprint, but now that more modern poems are under consideration it is desirable to give such of the originals as can be inserted, with the authors’ express permission. Hitherto the necessary authority has been gracefully accorded, and, in several instances, supplemented by valuable bibliographical information. Thus showing that some of the leading poets of the day recognise the value of this Collection as a literary record, and fully appreciate the strict line that is drawn to exclude vulgar, personal, or malicious lampoons.

In accordance therefore with the usual custom, a courteously worded letter was sent to Mr. Robert Browning, asking his permission to quote a few extracts from his shorter poems, with the assurance that no offensive parody of his works should be inserted.

Mr. Browning’s reply was to the effect that as he disapproved of every kind of Parody he refused permission to quote any of his poems, adding in somewhat ungracious language, that his publishers would be instructed to see that his wishes were complied with.

Perhaps the world does not greatly care whether Mr. Browning approves of Parody, or does not; neither can he very well expect that the completeness of this Collection should be sacrificed in deference to his distaste for a harmless branch of literature which has amused many of our greatest authors, and best of men. Byron and Scott could laugh at the Rejected Addresses, and enjoy a merry jest, even at their own expense, but let no dog bark when the great Sir Oracle opens his lips, and no daring humourist venture to travesty the poems of Mr. Robert Browning!

This injunction comes rather late, for numerous parodies of his works have already been written, of which some of the best must be included here. It is to be hoped that the perusal of them may induce some readers to seek in the originals those beauties which herein are only dimly shadowed forth.

Mr. Robert Browning was born at Camberwell in 1812, and educated at the London University. In September 1846, he married Miss Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess (who died in 1861), by whom he had one son, Mr. Robert Browning, the well-known artist.

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.

This is probably the best known of Mr. Browning’s earlier poems, it is given in Bell’s Standard Elocutionist, and various other collections.

On January 23, 1882, Mr. Browning wrote to the Oracle――“There is no sort of historical foundation for the poem about ‘Good News from Ghent.’ I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel, off the African coast, after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse, ‘York,’ then in my stable at home.

“It was written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartolio’s ‘Simboli,’ I remember.”

This Poem was chosen as the original for a Parody Competition in The World, and the two following parodies appeared in that entertaining journal on August 13, 1879.

HOW THE GOOD NEWS WAS BROUGHT FROM ULUNDI TO LANDSMAN’S DRIFT.

First Prize.

One turn in the saddle to look at the smoke, Then into a canter the stout pony broke. “All right!” cried the laager’s last picket; and I, “Right!” cheerily answered, as, cantering by, I took in the very last hole in my belt, And, alone with my tidings, rode into the veldt.

Not a word from a comrade to cheer me, no beat From an answering hoof to make him more fleet, For the nag; but I gave, with the flat of my hand, A friendly rib-binder he’d well understand. Each strap was in place, each buckle was right, As is custom with me ere I ride for the night.

I started at noon, and at Panda’s old kraal We stayed, where there tinkled a thin waterfall, To wash out our mouths; and I ran for a spell, With my hand on the pommel, then into the selle―― The stouter the pair of us, so for the rest―― We swished through the grass to the crimsoning west.

By the river, and up through the pass in the range; By track of the troops and trail that was strange Down donga and drift, past koppie and stone, We galloped while daylight should last all alone. And thankful enough, God wot, too was I, To be free from the Zulu and his company.

Babinango to northward, and south by the map Must be Umblabankosi through yon azure gap. “Half-way, my tough garron, half-way! We shall do If the next merry moiety you’ll travel so!” I groomed his hot legs with the African herb And he snuffled responsive and rattled his curb.

Then a thick fog crawled to us and shut up the moon, And the stars too; nor did I a minute too soon, With compass and chart, once more strike the trail, And shake the staunch pony together to sail―― Like a stout ship, keen watch at the bows, and steered small Mid berg and mid mist――to a guessed-at landfall.

Well, we fetched it at last; nor did I refuse A draught of good wine in return for my news. The battle was fought, and the tidings were brought By a man and a horse, thirty leagues at a bout. I’ve no story to tell; it’s a matter of course When a Briton on duty bestrides a good horse.

PLUNX (Mr. George Heaton).

Second Prize.

I sprang to the stirrup; my friend the D.T. Should gallop right fast if he meant to beat me. “Good luck!” cried the rearguard, as past them I sped. “There are Zulus about; keep a bright look ahead!” ’Twas noontide, and near the full heat of the day, As through the fierce sunlight I galloped away.

Not a being to speak to; I kept the great pace Alone o’er the desolate grass-covered space; Turned round in my saddle, and saw through the glare The smoke of the burning kraals rise in the air; Then again facing forward each tuft well I scanned, And strapped my revolver more ready to hand.

Good news――over hill, over dale, speeding fast―― Ere sundown Fort Evelyn had heard as I past; Then gratefully over us flew the cool spray, As through Umlatoosi we splashed on our way: With twilight there came a fresh breeze sweeping by, And the bright stars peeped forth from the darkening sky.

At moonrise Fort Marshall lay close on the right, And still my stout galloper sped through the night, With nostrils dilated, stretched neck, and clenched teeth, While his hoofs dashed the dew from the grass underneath In ceaseless, monotonous, regular beat, Till Sandwhlana lay steeped in white mist at my feet.

Rorke’s Drift and the Buffalo River were nigh, When a bank of black clouds rose and darkened the sky; The bright moon was hidden, and hidden each mark, And I came near to missing the ford in the dark: As we left the cold river I patted my steed, And urged him again to his uttermost speed.

On, on still I rode, as the wild huntsman rides: In the dawn I could just see the foam-covered sides, See the head sinking low, see the staggering knees, Feel the shudder that shook him as wind shakes the trees; Yet onward he struggled with fast-failing strength, And safe into Landsman’s Drift galloped at length.

And all I remembered was, “Now it is done; I was first with the news of the victory won; And no voice but will praise this long gallop of mine, When ’tis talked of at breakfast or over the wine.”

ODD FISH (Mr. Charles McIntyre).

――――

HOW I WON THE CHALLENGE SHIELD.

I sprang to the saddle and Wheeler and Lea; I treadled, Lea treadled, we treadled all three: “Five mile!” cried the judge, decked in rosette of blue; Whiz! went our front wheels as past him we flew: And loud were the public with cheer and with jest, As round the first lap we sped on abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Yard by yard, wheel by wheel, never changing our place: And firm in my saddle――prepared for each swerve―― I steadied each muscle and braced up my nerve, Reserving my whole strength, kept pace with the two, And neither was favourite, at least to the view.

We were scratch all at starting; but when we drew near The first mile I led, amid deafening cheer; At two the “crack” wheeler was the first of the three; The third mile was led by the resolute Lea; And from ropes and pavilion was heard the loud roar As the judge’s gruff voice gave the mileage at “Four!”

At five miles I spurted and kept up the run, And gained the lost lead that the others had won, And bent o’er my wheel and went inch by inch past My sturdy opponents and left them at last, With sure-footed pedals each spinning away, And still on the watch like a cat for its prey.

I now kept the inside and heard them at my back―― Saw their shadows athwart on the smooth cinder track, And each eye’s sharp look-out lest they neared on the right, Kept my bi. well in hand as each wheel came in sight; And the roar of the people which aye and anon Would quicken each pedal and hasten it on.

Next moment Lea fell; cried the judge, looking grim, “Poor fellow, fought bravely, the fault’s not in him, ’Tis cursed ill-luck!” For he saw by his face, Scarred and cut, and white lips, he was out of the race, And carried him off to the shade of the tent And came back to criticise us as we went.

So we were left treadling, Wheeler and I, To spin for the prizes――no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above shed its pitiless shine, Down my face rolled the sweat and stung me like brine; Then loudly the judge, coming near as we passed, Said, “Go it, my hearties, this lap is the last!”

How they shouted! and all in a moment a spurt Gave him an inch lead――but he found me alert, And then was my stamina put to its test: He and I fought the battle, and onlooked the rest, With his head near the wheel, and his teeth firmly set, He still kept my side and no farther could get.

Then I called up my energies; loud was the cry That came from the thousands of spectators nigh; Gripped firmly the handles, the grasp of grim death, And steadied the pedals, then took a deep breath, Clenched my teeth, gained a yard, as we flew down the track, Till the shouts told me plainly I’d beaten the “crack.”

And all I remember, is friends flocking round, Who bore us both shoulder high then off the ground, And the club all en masse cheered this record of mine, And my health was the pretext for bumpers of wine. And the fellows all voted three cheers from the field, For the victor and vanquished, who fought for the shield.

W. H. SMITH.

The Wheeling Annual. 1885

――――:o:――――

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.

This poem is given in full in The Comic Poets of the Nineteenth Century, published by Routledge & Sons, London. It has been the subject of several political parodies, one of the best being that which appeared in Punch, May 1, 1880, entitled “The Bagpiper of Midlothian.” This described how the Liberals in Midlothian despaired of their cause, and the Tories were jubilant, when suddenly Wandering Willie the Piper appeared.

And “Please your Worships,” said he, “I’m able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures――with ears――beneath the sun; After me they are bound to run In such a style as you never saw. I’m willing,” said he, “to try my charm On the Tories――they’re doing the country harm. I’m also possessed of a spell, you’ll see, To strengthen limp Libs, who’ve gone weak at the knee; The time-serving Rat and the envious Viper; And they call me Wandering WILLIE the Piper.” And here they observed that he carried his pipes, This man of the breeze-blown Galashiels stripes, And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying, As if impatient to be playing. But the Big-Whigs looked just a little bit cool, Inclined to believe that the man was a fool; Whilst the Tories yelled “You may do your worst, And blow away till your Bagpipes burst.”

Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling a little sardonic smile, As if he knew what music slept, In his quiet pipes the while. Then like a regular Scotch adept, To blow the pipes his lips he bagged, His fingers flew, ne’er a moment they lagged, And e’er three notes the pipes had uttered You heard as if all Scotland muttered; And the muttering grew to a mighty roaring, And out of their strongholds the Tories came pouring, With many a grunt and many a groan: And not the Tory hosts alone, But the Liberal rats. There were swell rats, seedy rats, Bold rats, timid rats, plump rats, greedy rats, Nor the rats and the Tories alone came forth, But the long-silent Radical hosts of the North, Willingly, gleefully, shouting and cheering, Heedless of “fagots,” of jibe, and of jeering, Grave old plodders, and gay young friskers, Grandfathers, fathers, sons, uncles, and cousins; Greybeards, boys with scarce-budding whiskers, Valiant voters, by twos, tens, dozens. And as still that Piper (a plague on him!) played. Not the North alone in his train was arrayed, But the Voters flocked from east, west, south, And the Midlands, witched by that magical mouth; Voters from counties, and cities, and boroughs, From toil at the furnace, from work at the furrows; Voters from mansion, mart, meadow, and mine, Voters of all sorts and sizes, in fine, Rushing and crushing, ran eagerly after That wonderful music, with shouting and laughter. Then the Big-Whigs stared, and the Tories stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to fashion a fetching cry To rally those Voters hurrying by―― Could only follow with envious eye, Hearts in the doldrums and heads on the rack, That numberless crowd at the Piper’s back, A mighty flood whose resistless roll Swept that Piper’s foes from their place at the Poll.

* * * * *

OFF FOR THE HOLIDAYS.――THE PIED PIPER OF WESTMINSTER LEADING THE WAY.

Have ye not in memory kept How, when out into the street Hamelin’s Pied Piper stept, From his reed pass’d notes so sweet That the children all came running, Captivated by his cunning, Follow’d at his heels, and then Never more returned again? A spectacle like to that kind of thing At Westminster now is happening; The piper there, thinking the time is ripe, Tootles aloud on his festive pipe. And at once there’s a bustling and scrambling and hustling To flee in hot haste from debate and its tussling, Peers’ shoes are pattering, Commons’ boots clattering, All of them blithely of holidays chattering, Eager to show they at least have a smattering Of yachting or sport, Or pursuits of a sort That are currently thought to supply health and pleasure To overworked statesmen whene’er they get leisure. But here the case grows different; For while these children of Parliament Dance over the hills and far away Directly they hear the Piper play, Though they go to the mountain or up to the moon, They’ll return to St. Stephen’s――and that pretty soon.

Fun. August, 1884.

――――:o:――――

POETS AND LINNETS. After Robert Browning.

Where’er there’s a thistle to feed a linnet And linnets are plenty, thistles rife―― Or an acorn-cup to catch dew drops in it There’s ample promise of further life Now, mark how we begin it.

For linnets will follow, if linnets are minded, As blows the white-feather parachute; And ships will reel by the tempest blinded―― Ay, ships, and shiploads of men to boot! How deep whole fleets you’ll find hid.

And we blow the thistle-down hither and thither Forgetful of linnets, and men, and God. The dew! for its want an oak will wither―― By the dull hoof into the dust is trod, And then who strikes the cithar?

But thistles were only for donkeys intended, And that donkeys are common enough is clear. And that drop! what a vessel it might have befriended, Does it add any favour to Glugabib’s beer? Well, there’s my musing ended.

TOM HOOD, the younger.

Fun. September, 1865.

――――

THE QUEST OF BARPARLO.

So, gat me to the oaken, gnarlèd man, That sat within the sounding-gate, half-wrapt, Encumbered by three-cornered phantasies, Hard-lipped, and low’ring like an autumn sky When winter jostles in before his time, Powdering his silvern breath against the brown. Now, thought I, if mayhap by time or tide, Or swiftly confluent imaginings, Or great Potentialities (which thrive On weakness,――for the doubtful gains on doubt As doubt grows yet more weakly in its doubt!) I may achieve to speech with this old man, Tho’ barrel-hooped with yellow waistcloth,――propped By king’s-cord on the nether, nerveless knees, He seems yet unattainable: the sky, Th’ imponderate vast æther――every star Have by the climbing-ladder brain of man Been searched and labelled. Nature, once so coy, Has yielded to her noble ravisher, And I, BARPARLO, in whose pulses run The golden blood of fearless ancestors, Will――must――bespeak this rustic sage, or die! But now the old man sudden turned, and so He spied me, and with scoop’d hand to his ear Attentive listened, glow’ring as I spoke. “Oh, age! Conglomerate youth! For such is age, If age be age amid the ages! For The ages know not age, but ever run In youth――yet youthless, for they bring us age―― Why sit you in the sun that sinks to show Man’s self a parable; not inchoate Like something self-revolving on itself To something pre-sublime, co-ordinate With the eternal justice of the Poles!” To whom, with bitter smile, the enraptured sage Curling a blue spire from his hollow clay―― “Oh, ax the Parson. I don’t know no French!”

Judy. July 7, 1880.

――――:o:――――

Parodies of Mr. Browning’s poem “Wanting is――What?” in Jocoseria.

BROWNING IS――WHAT?

Browning is――what? Talent redundant, Verbiage abundant, ――Where is his blot? Beaming his verses, but blank all the same. ――Framework that waits for some reason to frame: What of his meaning?――Strive for an hour―― Posies unreal, grapes that are sour! No neatness, completeness, O lyrical mummer! Panting for vagueness, unmusical strummer! Breathe o’er thy lyre, Apollo! and thence Into his mire Throw life, throw sense, Throw sense!

H. W. HANCOCK.

LOVING IS――WHAT?

Loving is――what? Nothing material, Essence ethereal. ――Say, is it not? More than a myth, yet unreal all the same. ――Vapour electric with passion and flame; What is love’s glory, what is love’s power? Something devouring what nought can devour! Love, then, content discontentment, O lover! Feast on the phantom round which you hover! Feed on the gleam Revealed from above, For youth’s fervid dream Is life, is love, Is love!

CHARLES A. COOPER.

Wanting is――what? Lemon redundant, Sugar abundant. ――Water made hot! Shining the glass, yet a blank all the same. ――Framework that waits for a liquid to frame: What of the whisky, what of its power? Spirits devouring with nought they devour! Come, then, O bright brain!――bewildering body, Gleam through the goblet, and perfect the toddy! Who drinks may remark How all that was near Grows distant and dark, Grows dim, grows queer, Grows――queer!

MYNIE.

WOOING IS――WHAT?

Wooing is――what? Sighing redundant, Blisses abundant. ――What is it not? “Balmy”’s the word, yet it’s rough all the same. ――Fretwork which warps both the mind and the frame: What of her temper, what of her dower? Posers o’erpowering which come in a shower! Come it, O pleasing perplexity, come it A trifle less strong, while I venture to sum it Up in one breath: The absence of gold To wooing is death―― Calf-love grows cold, Grows cold!

EXE.

WANTING IS――WHAT? (A Billiard Mystery. From the new volume “Jomilleria.”)

Wanting is――what? Scoring addition, Getting position, Here on the spot? Seamy his clothes, yet a crack at the game. ――Marker he knows, and addresses by name: What of the sharper, what of his power? Gloomily glowering with nought to devour! Come then, complete ignoramus, O comer, Flush in thy greenness, needy the bummer! One game he lets You make,――that’s enough! Trebles the bets, Goes slow, gives snuff, Gives snuff!

A. S. W.

From The Weekly Dispatch, April 1, 1883.

――――

The following imitation, written by Miss Fitzpatrick, appeared in the Red Dragon Magazine, (Cardiff), September, 1884:――

Come is the Comer! Wild Winter railing, Snow storms prevailing, Gone is the Summer! Bleak looks the world, Yet a something is here, A Picture, but waiting the Frame to appear. Bare are the branches, Ne’er a flower blooms, The Roses lie dead, unbemoaned in their tombs, Yet come has Completion! that marvellous tinter, That maketh a Paradise even in winter! Happiness rife, Though Death reigns around, For sweeter than Life Is Love when found, Love’s found!

――――:o:――――

THE LOST LEADER

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat―― Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allow’d:

How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags――were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, follow’d him, honour’d him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learn’d his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die!

* * * * *

THE LATEST NEWS.

[The young ladies of Girton have given up their Browning Society, and expended the funds thereof on the purchase of chocolate.]

They just for a handful of chocolate left us―― Just for some sweetmeats to put in their throats: Of their sweet converse these girls have bereft us, Scorning Bard Browning, the deepest of “potes,” Once they professed they would worship the Master, And help to expound him to lit’rature clubs; But now――oh, most direful and dreadful disaster!―― Those girls have in chocolate spent all their “subs.”

Just for some mouthfuls of chocolate only, Quit they the Browning Society’s fold; Leaving their male fellow-worshippers lonely, Puzzling out lines of mysterious mould. Oh! say what is sweetstuff to sentences mystic, That Girton girls should thus forsake the true “cult”? Oh, when they might pore o’er B.’s lines aphoristic, Wherein can “sweets” makes girl-graduates exult!

Oh! think what they might have taught Philistine readers, Expounding, maybe, Browning’s foggiest line! Instead of which now of mere worldly joys heeders, They look upon sweetmeats as something divine.

Once as apostles our teaching they aided―― Even contributing cash with much glee; But now to mere chocolate-worship degraded, On Sweets, not on song, do they spend £ s. d.!

Fun. March 31, 1886.

And on April 17, 1886 Punch had also a parody founded on this topic of the Girton Ladies, containing the following verses:――

A STORY OF GIRTON.

Oh, the scholary girls, too blue, Who lived at Girton, down by the Cam, Just where the Cam bids the town adieu! And who would ever have thought them a sham―― These girls, and the lots they knew?

Too blue, for the colour of health is red; And their eyes had the dull, boiled-gooseberry look Of maids who are meant to go to bed When down from their laps flops the out-spread book, But consume night’s oil instead.

Yet I noticed, like a flowering shrub A bloom in a desert, one striking grace: They might “screw” like mad when afloat in a “tub,” And never get up the ghost of a pace, But they had a “BROWNING Club”!

So, when one waxed ill, it did not seem strange That the Lady Principal sighed, and said, “A stoppage of work I must arrange; To studies recondite she’s too much wed, And from books she needs a change.”

“Not my books,” the patient cried; “Take not the desk that my books contains! For o’er the ‘BROWNING Club’ I preside, And the mystic masterly fruit of his brains Is my solace, glory, and pride!”

Her request being granted, asleep fell she; The Lady Principal joyed at that; But when the Doctor dropped in, said he, “It’s only a bilious attack, that’s flat. Brain trouble? Fiddle-de-dee!”

The desk, it chanced, was not quite closed: “Why does she clutch it so?” asked the leech; The Lady Principal supposed That to have her dear Bard within reach Consoled her as she dozed.

“Let’s look inside!” And at once――oh, dreams Of “Female Culture,” and the rest! They found――no masterly mystic themes, No Pippa, no Duchess, but――who would have guessed?―― A box of Chocolate Creams!

* * * * *

――――:o:――――

THE PATRIOT.

It was roses, roses all the way, With myrtles mixed in my path like mad. The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels, But give me your sun from yonder skies!” They had answered “And afterward what else?”

* * * * *

A PARODY.

It was pouring, pouring, all the way, As we scampered along the road like mad; The trees were a mist of shadows grey As past them we swept――such nags we had!―― A week ago, on the Gold Cup Day.

The air was rent with a myriad yells, Our ears were shocked with the crowd and cries, As they strained for the sound of the saddling bells; The sun was a-sulk in the clouded skies, Though he shone out afterward. What else?

What else? I know that the wrong horse won, Though over the luncheon I fell asleep, For I woke to find myself all undone; I had sown the wind, and I needs must reap The whirlwind after the race was run!

There’s nobody on the Grand Stand now, Where a week ago such a concourse met; The best of the sight after all, I vow, Was the ladies lawn, with its luncheons set, Though that looks sad enough now, I trow!

GOSSAMER.

The Weekly Dispatch. June 25, 1882.

Another parody also appeared in Punch, July 24, 1886, entitled:――

THE PARTY LEADER. A very old story.

It was cheering, cheering, to the close O’ my speech that day I launched the Bill: From serried ranks the row uprose, And hats are waved, and voices thrill; And I!――I thought I’d dished my foes.

* * * * *

――――:o:――――

A PARLEYING WITH A CERTAIN PERSON OF NO IMPORTANCE IN HIS DAY.

No, Joseph Chamberlain, near Premier, no. You promise Gladstone quarter? Not for Joe. Perpend this allegory――pauca verba. A vagrom Viper, latitans in herba, Seeing a grand old Mongoose passing, cried, “Come, let’s be amicable――side by side Excogitate alliance――great and good, Rule the whole roast, dukes of this wandering wood.”―― “With pleasure,” put in t’other. While they went En camarade, ostensibly content, Serpens, observing all associates own Obedience to his brother-beast alone, Waxed parlous wrath, within adumbrate Vale Bit unsuspecting Mongoose sharp on tail. “Excuse me Sir,” rejoinder came unshaken, “Meseems such step’s thaumaston hôs mistaken. Quid hoc?”――one! two! a momentary flummock―― X (quadruped) sat an Y (snake) his stomach. “Spt, spt――grr, grr――awk, awkrr,” spluttered latter, “You mar my meaning monstrously. No matter. Get off my epigastrium. Make amends. Brr――give me breath (confound you, brute!)――Be friends.” Verb. sap.――What quotha grand old Mongoose?――Oh, Referred said reptile-thing to Jericho.―― Explain? Not I, save this much; then I’m dumb: Snake, Mongoose, Vale, equal Joe, Gladstone, Brum.

Pall Mall Gazette. March 17, 1887.

――――:o:――――

TWO SIDES.

Browning’s.

Love-making, how simple a matter! No depths to explore, No heights in life to ascend――no disheartening before―― No affrighting hereafter. Love will be love evermore.

Ours.

Love-making, how awful a matter! We’ve been there before; The father determined we shouldn’t――the mother watching the door; Till even the girl was affrighted, and wrote us to see her no more.

――――:o:――――

MY KATE.

(On Miss Kate Vaughan’s quitting the Gaiety Company in order to come out in a New and Serious Line.)

Her air has a meaning, her movements a grace, You turn from the fairest to gaze at her face; And when you have once seen her dance, ’tis a treat That you may encore, but which she won’t repeat―― MY KATE!

Renouncing burlesque, she’s about to enact The fair Amy Robsart――I hope ’twill attract. And when thou art gone, who will here take your part, While you’re starring the country as Amy Robsart, MY KATE?

We praise you as charming, and ask if you mean To give up burlesque and play Tragedy Queen? The Mashers will cry, o’er this doleful event, “The charm of her presence was felt when she went!”―― OUR KATE!

Punch. June 16, 1883.

――――:o:――――

LAYS OF A LOVER. (A Roasting, after Browning.)

Oh, to be out of London now that no one’s here, For who ever sleeps in London dreams each morning of a pier, And a flowing sail, and a burnished sea, And an azure sky that is not for me, While my darling sings at the Seagul’s bow In Venice now. For after Goodwood, when Cowes follows, And the blue-blood leaves us like the swallows, Hark! where the blooming flower-cart in the street Leans ’neath its weight and scatters for the drover Petals and old clothes――’neath the bovine feet. That’s the harsh voice: that cries each ware twice over Lest you should miss the purport of his jargon, And this cheap matchless bargain. For though our streets are hot, and skies are blue, The air is not so fresh as breathed by you; The butterflies are thirsting for a shower; The milk of human kindness turning sour.

Fun. August 13, 1884.

Two parodies of the same poem appeared in Punch, one on April 14, 1883, the other on June 7, 1888.

These can be readily obtained at Punch office, as also the following: “The Losing Leader” Punch, July 26, 1884. “Stanley,” after Waring, Punch, June 2, 1888.

“Gladstone Unmasked” which appeared in Punch as long ago as 1866, was written by the late Shirley Brooks, as a parody on Browning. The poem, which is long and quite out of date now, may be found in “Wit and Humour” by Shirley Brooks, London, 1883.

――――:o:――――

POST CHRONOLOGY.

A chronologic skull sir! ’twas a poet’s; But ’tother’s wasn’t my friend’s friend’s, I say. Our first, a Lombard, were the wind to blow its Loudest, could not daunt him, loved to pray Too, in all the English language is no rhyme Describes him thoroughly. You should have watched him knit Those brows of his, black brows, sir, scarred by time And scowling like a pent-house. But your sonnet Should have a moral, let’s to it, tooth and nail. You’d never catch it, were you to fall on it Without premeditation. Work like a snail Gnawing a lotus leaf, you’re on the brink of it―― How now Sir Numbskull turn and think of it.

The above burlesque sonnet is given in Mr. John H. Ingram’s biography of “Oliver Madox Brown,” although it is doubtful whether that talented young poet was the author of it or what it means.

――――:o:――――

Mr. Browning wrote the following elegant and luminous lines for the window in honour of Her Majesty’s Jubilee, presented by the parishioners to St. Margaret’s, Westminster:――

Fifty years’ flight! wherein should he rejoice Who hailed their birth, who as they die decays? This――England echoes his attesting voice; Wondrous and well――thanks Ancient Thou of days.

A correspondent, who is not a member of the Browning Society, thinks that the following quatrain might be substituted,――

Seventy-five years! Wherein do they rejoice Who read his work, who, as he writes, decays? This――plain folk echo their protesting voice―― “Wondrous! but no more, thanks! old thou of days.”

――――:o:――――

On page 103, Volume 5 of this Collection some extracts were given from “The Poets at Tea” a series of short parodies which appeared in The Cambridge Fortnightly, for February 7, 1888. The three following verses, which were then omitted, may be given here:――

THE POETS AT TEA.

Tennyson, who took it hot.

I think that I am drawing to an end, For on a sudden came a gasp for breath, And stretching of the hands, and blinded eyes, And a great darkness falling on my soul. O Hallelujah!... Kindly pass the milk.

Swinburne, who let it get cold.

As the sin that was sweet in the sinning Is foul in the ending thereof, As the heat of the summer’s beginning Is past in the winter of love: O purity, painful and pleading! O coldness, ineffably gray! O hear us, our hand-maid unheeding, And take it away!

Browning, who treated it allegorically.

Tut! bah! We take as another case―― Pass the bills on the pills on the window-sill; notice the capsule. (A sick man’s fancy, no doubt, but I place Reliance on trade-marks, sir)――so perhaps you’ll Excuse the digression――this cup which I hold Light-poised――bah! its spilt in the bed――well, let’s on go―― Held Bohea and sugar, sir; if you were told The sugar was salt would the Bohea be Congo?

* * * * *

――――:o:――――

Of Mr. Browning’s later poetry, or, what may be termed his involved and complicated style, some excellent parodies exist. They are rather long, and would be somewhat tedious reading to those who are unfamiliar with the originals; as the books in which most of these parodies occur are easily obtainable a few extracts will suffice.

First, may be mentioned Diversions of the Echo Club, an American work written by the late Mr. Bayard Taylor, published, in London, by Chatto and Windus.

This contains no less than four imitations of Robert Browning’s poetry, they are all good, but perhaps the following is the most characteristic in style:――

ANGELO ORDERS HIS DINNER.

I, Angelo, obese, black garmented, Respectable, much in demand, well fed With mine own larder’s dainties, where, indeed, Such cakes of myrrh or fine alyssum seed, Thin as a mallow-leaf, embrowned o’ the top, Which, cracking, lets the ropy, trickling drop Of sweetness touch your tongue, or potted nests Which my recondite recipe invests With cold conglomerate tidbits――ah, the bill! (You say,) but given it were mine to fill My chests, the case so put were yours, we’ll say, (This counter, here, your post, as mine to-day,) And you’ve an eye to luxuries, what harm In smoothing down your palate with the charm Yourself concocted? There we issue take; And see! as thus across the rim I break This puffy paunch of glazed embroidered cake, So breaks, through use, the lust of watering chaps And craveth plainness: do I so? Perhaps; But that’s my secret. Find me such a man As Lippo yonder, built upon the plan Of heavy storage, double-navelled, fat From his own giblets’ oils, an Ararat Uplift o’er water, sucking rosy draughts From Noah’s vineyard,――... crisp, enticing wafts Yon kitchen now emits, which to your sense Somewhat abate the fear of old events, Qualms to the stomach,――I, you see, am slow Unnecessary duties to forego,―― You understand? A venison haunch, haut gout, Ducks that in Cimbrian olives mildly stew, And sprigs of anise, might one’s teeth provoke To taste, and so we wear the complex yoke Just as it suits,――my liking, I confess, More to receive, and to partake no less, Still more obese, while through thick adipose Sensation shoots, from testing tongue to toes Far-off, dim-conscious, at the body’s verge, Where the froth-whispers of its waves emerge On the untasting sand. Stay, now! a seat Is bare: I, Angelo, will sit and eat.

Leading Cases done into English, by an Apprentice of Lincoln’s Inn. London, Macmillan & Co. 1876. This amusing little volume (said to be the work of Mr. Pollock) contains a case, entitled Scott v. Shepherd, which is reported in true Browningese diction:――

ANY PLEADER TO ANY STUDENT.

Now, you’re my pupil! On the good ancient plan I shall do what I can For your hundred guineas to give my law’s blue pill (Let high jurisprudence which thinks me and you dense, Set posse of cooks to stir new Roman soup ill): First volume of Smith shall give you the pith Of leading decision that shows the division Of action on case from plain action of trespass Where to count in assault law benignantly says “Pass.” Facts o’ case first. At Milborne Port Was fair-day, October the twenty and eight, And folk in the market like fowls in a crate; Shepherd, one of your town-fool sort, (From Solomon’s time they call it sport, Right to help holiday, just make fun louder), Lights me a squib up of paper and powder, (Find if you can the law-Latin for ’t) And chucks it, to give their trading a rouse, Full i’ the midst o’ the market-house. It happ’d to fall on a stall where Yates Sold gingerbread and gilded cates (Small damage if they should burn or fly all); To save himself and said gingerbread loss One Willis doth toss the thing across To stall of one Ryall, who straight an espial Of danger to his wares, of selfsame worth, Casts it in market-house farther forth. And by two mesne tossings thus it got To burst i’ the face of plaintiff Scott. And now ’gainst Shepherd, for loss of eye, The question is, whether trespass shall lie.

* * * * *

Well――liquor’s out, why look more at old bottle? Gulp down with gusto, you that are young, These new Rules’ ferment, tastes ill in my throttle Since Justice, in nubibus no more on high sitter Descends to speak laymen’s vulgar tongue. So be it! Explicit-parum feliciter.

It is usually considered that The Cock and the Bull, by the late C. S. Calverley, is the best parody extant of Robert Browning’s “The Ring and the Book,” the following are the opening lines:――

“THE COCK AND THE BULL.”

You see this pebble stone? It’s a thing I bought Of a bit of a chit of a boy i’ the mid o’ the day. I like to dock the smaller parts o’ speech, As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur (You catch the paronomasia-play ’po’ words?) Did, rather, i’ the pre-Landseerian days. Well, to my muttons! I purchased the concern, And clapt it i’ my poke, having given for same By way o’ chop, swop, barter or exchange―― “Chop” was my snickering dandiprat’s own term―― One shilling and fourpence, current coin o’ the realm. O-n-e one and f-o-u-r four Pence, one and fourpence――you are with me, sir? What hour it skills not: ten or eleven o’ the clock, One day (and what a roaring day it was Go shop or sightsee――bard spit o’ rain!) In February, eighteen sixty-nine, Alexandrina Victoria, Fidei. Hm――hm――how runs the jargon? being on the throne.

Such, sir, are all facts, succinctly put, The basis or substratum――what you will―― Of the impending eighty thousand lines. “Not much in ’em either,” quoth perhaps simple Hodge. But there’s a superstructure. Wait a bit.

* * * * *

From Fly Leaves, by C. S. Calverley. London. George Bell & Sons.

――――:o:――――

In The Heptalogia (Chatto and Windus, 1880) there is an imitation of Browning, entitled “John Jones,” and in Recaptured Rhymes, by H. D. Traill (W. Blackwood and Sons, 1882) there is a parody from “The Puss and the Boots.” These cannot be quoted in full, and extracts would convey little idea of the humour of the pieces. The latter (by Mr. Traill) is modelled somewhat upon Mr. Calverley’s “Cock and the Bull.”

In July 1888, The Family Herald (London) had a long article on parodies, which contained some amusing examples, but the writer of the article committed the unpardonable literary crime of not giving references to the authorities from whom he quoted. His note on Robert Browning’s poetry, and his parodies, is given below:――

“Mr. Browning is far too great a man to be mentioned lightly; but we must own that to some natures his later work is distasteful, and even repulsive. His early poetry ranks among the highest in English; and, if we were compelled to write down the names of, say, six poems which we regard as the best in the language, two of the six――“The Last Ride Together” and “The Flight of the Duchess”――would be Mr. Browning’s. Perhaps he is too great now to be content with mere brilliant work that haunts the memory for life, and inspires the innermost soul. If so, we are sorry, for we would not give the two poems which we have named, with perhaps the “Ride from Ghent to Aix,” for a library of exasperating Sordellos. We cannot cure Mr. Browning, and we must be content to endure him for the sake of old times. The great, crabbed, formless poet gives the buffoons a rare innings; for his jagged, ramshackle blank verse, with its conjunctions protruding at the ends of lines, its parentheses, its small jokes, its puns, its pedantic display of useless learning, its aimless wanderings, its half-hints, all tend to make the reader feel as if he were taking a little walk with a halting cripple who persisted in digging him in the ribs, and kicking up dust before his eyes. When we get a gleam of lucidity from Browning, he is matchless; but he refuses to write plain English and so the parodists have him on the hip. Here is a parody by a skilled craftsman who handles the poet with affection――

_Not that I care for ceremonies――no; But still there are occasions, as you see (Observe the costumes――gallantly they show To my poor judgment!), which, ’twixt you and me, Not to come forth, one’s few remaining hairs Or wig――it matters little――bravely brushed And oiled, dress-coated, sprucely-clad, the tears And tweaks and wrenches people overflushed With――well, not wine――oh, no, we’ll rather say Anticipation, the delight of seeing―― No matter what!――inflict upon you (pray Remove your elbow, friend!), in spite of being Not quite the man one used to be, and not So young as once one was, would argue one Churlish, indifferent, hipped, rheumatic, what You please to say. So, not to spoil the fun――_ Comprenez-vous?――_observe that lady there, ‘In native Worth.’ Aha, you see the jest? Not bad, I think? My own too! Woman’s fair, Or not――the odds, so long as she is dressed? They’re coming! Soh! Ha, Bennett’s ‘Barcarole’―― A poor thing, but mine own! That minor third Is not so bad, now! Mum, sirs! (Bless my soul, I wonder what her veil cost?) Mum’s the word!_

The strange thing is that the rickety stuff above is a perfectly fair burlesque. The cadence――or lack of cadence――the horrid involutions, the breaks into bald dulness, are all Browning’s to the very essence.”

――――:o:――――

This is not the place in which to enter upon a dissertation on the style of Mr. Robert Browning. Profundity of thought is not necessarily accompanied by obscurity of language, and yet the admirers of Mr. Browning contend that it is precisely in those poems which are the most difficult to understand, that his chief excellencies are to be found. Hence several “Browning Societies” have been started for the express purpose of explaining this obscure writer to persons of only average intelligence. Now a Homer society, or a Shakespeare society, one can understand, these poets are dead and cannot be appealed to, for the solution of doubtful readings, or confused passages. But Mr. Browning is alive and well, and should be able, if he were willing, to clear up the meaning of any obscurity in his own writings. Were he to do this, however, a few amiable hero-worshippers, and fussy founders of Societies, would lose their vocation, and perhaps the public would not greatly gain.

――――

Many anecdotes are told of Browning’s obscurity.

When Douglas Jerrold was recovering from a severe illness, Browning’s “Sordello” was put into his hands. Line after line, page after page, he read; but no consecutive idea could he get from the mystic production. Mrs. Jerrold was out, and he had no one to whom to appeal. The thought struck him that he had lost his reason during his illness, and that he was so imbecile that he did not know it. A perspiration burst from his brow, and he sat silent and thoughtful. As soon as his wife returned he thrust the mysterious volume into her hands, crying out: “Read this, my dear.” After several attempts to make any sense out of the first page or so, she gave back the book, saying: “Bother the gibberish! I don’t understand a word of it!” “Thank heaven!” cried Jerrold, “then I am not an idiot!”

――――

THE BROWNING SOCIETY.

A BITTER ERROR.

A long haired man, with a look of unutterable yearning in his deep set eyes, stole into the well filled auditorium, and took a seat in the rear pew. He listened to the speaker with the closest attention, and seemed to derive the most intense enjoyment from words which were incomprehensible to the majority of the audience.

“Magnificent! sublime!” he was heard to murmur.

“You understand him, sir?” inquired the man next the long haired stranger.

“Perfectly, perfectly. Did you ever hear anything more”――――

“But I can’t understand a word he says.”

“Indeed! You are to be pitied. Ah, this seems like home. You see, I arrived from New York only an hour ago, and happening to hear of this meeting came here at once.”

“It is not possible that you are a Chinaman?”

“A Chinaman! What do you mean, Sir? I am from Boston.”

“From Boston, eh? How is it that you understand Chinese?”

“I don’t understand Chinese, sir. What do you mean?”

“Why, the man who is speaking is a missionary who has just returned from Hong Kong, and he is exhibiting his proficiency in the Chinese language by reading a chapter in the Bible in that tongue.”

The Bostonian’s face paled.

“Why,” he gasped, “isn’t this a Browning Club?”

“Certainly not.”

“And isn’t he reading one of the great master’s”――――

“Great Scott, no! The Browning club is on the next floor.”

Then the sad eyed man arose and staggered thence, a hopeless, despairing look in his fathomless orbs.

――――:o:――――

ONE WORD MORE.

(_Written in a Gift-copy of “Parodies,” by a Contributor to its pages._)

Take them, Chum, the book and me together; Where the heart goes, let the art go also.

Hamilton collated many verses, Grouped and set them in sequential volumes, Wrote them, may be, with the self-same stylus Else he used for “The Æsthetic Movement.” Good for most, save one who in this volume (Who that one you ask?) did dreadful rhymings, Take it then to treasure for a life-time, Not to slumber, neighbour to my sonnets, But at times brought out, to tell its story. This is cheek, say you! Well, if it be so, Cheek me back again in self-same fashion, Then my cheek may turn you to a poet. You I think, would rather have this volume, Even though I sadly mar its pages, Would you not? Mate, linger over Ouida, Yea, man read, those very red Gaboriaus, Pall Malls, Globes, or blushing racy “Pink-un,” Dear to travellers on the Inner Circle.

What of all this scribble? All this nonsense? This; no rhymer lives that loves and longs not, Often, more than once, yea, frequently, (Like the Major-General to the “Pirates”) To make fun, of stately solemn subjects, Turning upside down what’s art to others, Not, mind you, deriding its true nature, But the while its maker truly loving. Does he paint? then straight burlesque his picture, Does he write? then parody his poems, Show, as proof how well you know your author, Once, or twice, and then the last time going (Like an auction) then knock down your hero. Gain the fool’s laugh, dare the author’s sorrow. I shall never in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, lucky that for you, chum! Nor make music, that would send your fingers Straight to plug your ears, but my delusion This of rhyming letters, bear in patience Verse and worse, I have and still will send you, Others’ rhymes and others’ poems twitting, All their jokes and mine for you――my own chum.

J. W. G. W.

Frederick Locker-Lampson.

The refinement of taste which has marked the second half of the nineteenth century has been highly favourable to the production of the lighter forms of poetry, and no other age has been so prolific in writers of vers-de-société and of those other more exotic forms of composition known as Ballades, Rondeaus, and Villanelles.

It is true that Praed, who led the way as the writer of vers-de- société, died fifty years ago, but for one who now reads Praed, there are twenty who know by heart the poems of Frederick Locker.

And there can be no hesitation in assigning him the leading position amongst those of our living Poets who write to please, and instruct, by their playful wit, gentle satire, and tender pathos, without deeming it necessary to compose sermons in epics, or poems which require as much labour to disentangle as to solve a problem of Euclid.

――――

Mr. Frederick Locker, for in that name he achieved fame, was born in 1821, coming of an old and distinguished Kentish family. His father was a Civil Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, and his grandfather was the Captain W. Locker, R. N., under whom both Lord Nelson and Lord Collingwood served. Lord Nelson attributed much of his success in battle to the maxim inculcated by his old commander, “Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him.”

Captain Locker died Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital.

The literary career of Mr. Frederick Locker has been so uniformly successful that there is little to recount.

His original poems were mostly published in the magazines, until in 1857 he issued his volume entitled “London Lyrics.” The first edition, which is now very scarce, and much sought after by collectors, had a frontispiece by George Cruikshank. This book has passed through many editions, and is now published by Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., London.

In 1867, Mr. Locker published “Lyra Elegantiarum,” containing a collection of the best English vers-de-société, with an introduction in which he enumerated the qualifications which should be possessed by any poet who aspired to produce perfect specimens of vers-de-société.

Mr. Locker-Lampson has also written a few humorous parodies, one of which, “Unfortunate Miss Bailey,” was given p. 47, Vol. I., Parodies.

It only remains to be said that in the following pages the extracts from his poems are inserted by the kind permission of Mr. Locker-Lampson.

One of his best known poems, “St. James’s Street,” was published in 1867. This was stolen, and spoiled in the stealing, by a piratical editor, the two versions are here given side by side:――

ST. JAMES’S STREET.

St. James’s Street, of classic fame, The finest people throng it. St. James’s Street? I know the name, I think I’ve passed along it! Why, that’s where Sacharissa sigh’d When Waller read his ditty; Where Byron lived, and Gibbon died, And Alvanley was witty.

A famous street! To yonder Park Young Churchill stole in class-time; Come, gaze on fifty men of mark, And then recall the past time. The plats at White’s, the play at Crock’s, The bumpers to Miss Gunning; The bonhomie of Charlie Fox, And Selwyn’s ghastly funning.

The dear old street of clubs and cribs, As north and south it stretches, Still seems to smack of Rolliad squibs, And Gillray’s fiercer sketches; The quaint old dress, the grand old style, The mots, the racy stories; The wine, the dice, the wit, the bile―― The hate of Whigs and Tories.

At dusk, when I am strolling there, Dim forms will rise around me;―― Lepel flits pass me in her chair, And Congreve’s airs astound me! And once Nell Gwynne, a frail young sprite, Look’d kindly when I met her; I shook my head, perhaps,――but quite Forgot to quite forget her.

The street is still a lively tomb For rich, and gay, and clever; The crops of dandies bud and bloom, And die as fast as ever. Now gilded youth loves cutty pipes, And slang that’s rather scaring,―― It can’t approach its prototypes In taste, or tone, or bearing.

In Brummell’s day of buckle shoes, Lawn cravats and roll collars, They’d fight, and woo, and bet――and lose Like gentlemen and scholars: I’m glad young men should go the pace, I half forgive Old Rapid; These louts disgrace their name and race,―― So vicious and so vapid!

Worse times may come. Bon ton, indeed, Will then be quite forgotten, And all we much revere will speed From ripe to worse than rotten: Let grass then sprout between yon stones, And owls then roost at Boodle’s, For Echo will hurl back the tones Of screaming Yankee Doodles.

I love the haunts of old Cockaigne, Where wit and wealth were squander’d; The halls that tell of hoop and train, Where grace and rank have wander’d; Those halls where ladies fair and leal First ventured to adore me! Something of that old love I feel For this old street before me.

1867. FREDERICK LOCKER.

ST. JAMES’S STREET.

OLD BALLAD.

St. James’s-Street, of classic fame, The finest people throng it! St. James’s Street? I know the name! I think I’ve passed along it! Why, that’s where Sacharrissa sighed When Waller read his ditty; Where Byron lived, and Gibbon died, And Alvanley was witty.

A famous street. It skirts the Park Where Rogers took his pastime; Come, gaze on fifty men of mark, And then call up the fast time. The plâts at White’s, the play at Crock’s, The bumpers to Miss Gunning; The bonhomie of Charlie Fox, And Selwyn’s ghastly funning.

The dear old street of clubs and cribs, As north and south it stretches, Still smacks of William’s pungent squibs, And Gilray’s fiercer sketches; The quaint old dress, the grand old style, The mots, the racy stories; The wine, the dice; the wit, the bile, The hate of Whigs and Tories.

At dusk, when I am strolling there, Dim forms will rise around me; Old Pepys creeps past me in his chair, And Congreve’s airs astound me, And once Nell Gwynne, a frail young sprite, Looked kindly when I met her; I shook my head, perhaps――but quite Forgot to quite forget her.

The street is still a lively tomb For rich and gay and clever; The crops of dandies bud and bloom, And die as fast as ever. Now gilded youth loves cutty-pipes And slang that’s rather rancid, It can’t approach its prototypes In tone――or so I’ve fancied.

In Brummel’s day of buckle-shoes, Starch cravats, and roll collars, They’d talk, and woo, and bet――and lose Like gentlemen and scholars, But now young nobles go the pace With blacklegs, grooms, and tailors; And scions soon of noblest race May pass the night with jailors.

Worse times may come, Bon ton, alas, Will then be quite forgotten, And all we much revere will pass From ripe to worse than rotten; Rank weeds will sprout between yon stones, And owls will roost at Boodle’s, And shame will echo back the tones Of Coachington, Lord Noodle.

F. L.

The Queen’s Messenger. August 12, 1869.

――――

ST. GILES.

A London poet sang of late In exquisitely tender verses, How in their whirl the wheels of Fate, Changed cars of triumph into hearses. He said St. James’s wit and smiles Were trodden under foot by shoddy―― Bah! let me sing about St. Giles, And chronicle the sin of toddy.

Long years ago, St. Martin’s Fields Were ripe with grain and purple clover Where grisly thieves the kitchen shields, And yellow ’busses topple over. The very spot, where rose the lark To sing its song to all creation, Is given over after dark To deathly deeds and desolation.

Just where the parson from his door Relieved the sorrows of the humble, The workhouse shields the houseless poor, Who execrate the mighty Bumble. A thousand nightingales in song Have warbled melodies for ages, Where now canary-sellers throng, And linnets chirp in tiny cages.

Where Strephon sighed and sighed to win, And dainty Phyllis churned her butter, The costermonger shrieks for gin, And helpless rolls about the gutter; Where Sacharissa ’neath her fan Was smiling at his lordship’s raving, The ragged wife adores the man, Who beats her head against the paving.

There’s not a spot and not a stone, But spoke a poem when we met it, That does not echo to the moan Of poverty――do we regret it? If we have sorrow for St. James, And sing about its loss of swelldom, We needs must weep St. Giles’s shames, Although we think about them seldom.

HENRY S. LEIGH.

Fun. November 16, 1867.

――――:o:――――

TEMPORA MUTANTUR!

Yes, here, once more a traveller, I find the Angel Inn, Where landlord, maids and serving-men Receive me with a grin: Surely they can’t remember Me, My hair is grey and scanter; I’m changed, so changed since I was here―― O tempora mutantur!

* * * * *

The curtains have been dyed; but there, Unbroken, is the same, The very same crack’d pane of glass On which I scratch’d her name. Yes, there’s her tiny flourish still; It used to so enchant her To link two happy names in one―― O tempora mutantur!

FREDERICK LOCKER.

――――

TEMPORA MUTANTUR!

No pea-shooters upon the way No careless chaff and banter No passing blows to take and pay! O Tempora mutantur!

The traps go soberly along, Scarce one is in a canter, The language even isn’t strong―― O Tempora mutantur!

The times were very different when I went with my enchanter; Young men in those days were young men; O Tempora mutantur!

Of course you’ll say its for the best (My Boy, pass the decanter!) But now your Derby’s lost its zest O Tempora mutantur!

CATULLUS of Fleet Street.

――――:o:――――

BRAMBLE-RISE.

What changes meet my wistful eyes In quiet little Bramble-Rise, The pride of all the shire; How alter’d is each pleasant nook;―― And used the dumpy church to look So dumpy in the spire?

This village is no longer mine; And though the Inn has changed its sign, The beer may not be stronger; The river, dwindled by degrees, Is now a brook, the cottages Are cottages no longer.

The mud is brick, the thatch is slate, The pound has tumbled out of date, And all the trees are stunted: Surely these thistles once grew figs, These geese were swans, and once these pigs More musically grunted.

Where boys and girls pursued their sports A locomotive puffs and snorts, And gets my malediction; The turf is dust――the elves are fled―― The ponds have shrunk――and tastes have spread To photograph and fiction.

Ah! there’s a face I know again, There’s Patty trotting down the lane To fill her pail with water; Yes, Patty! but I fear she’s not The tricksey Pat that used to trot, But Patty,――Patty’s daughter!

* * * * *

FREDERICK LOCKER.

――――

A SONG AT SIXTY.

My boyhood’s home! How clearly rise Thy varied scenes before mine eyes In fair perspective. I hear the bull-frogs in the pond―― The whippoorwill’s weird notes respond To thoughts reflective.

Again I see the old “worm fence,” Around the pasture-lot from whence The cows lowed over At milking time, as if they smelled The many-windowed barn, that held The corn and clover.

I see, beyond the garden-gate The gray bull-calf, that used to wait To “hook” that gate off―― And flower-beds, where browsed the bees ’Neath overhanging cherry-trees Whose twigs he ate off.

’Twas there, above the hollyhocks, The blue birds thronged the martin-box That wrongly housed them. There too, from out the red oak grove, Their brother bandits came and strove In vain to oust them.

And there, a flock of noisy geese Down to the brimming pond in peace Would oft meander―― To come again when day declined, Wide-waddling homeward, strung behind Their valiant gander.

All’s past――I only thought to spin Gold thread of sunny dreams within This cushioned “rocker.” My blood’s too slow――too weak my nerves For poaching on the choice preserves Of Frederick Locker.

C. H. L.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

――――:o:――――

HIS GIRL.

Oh, she wears a sealskin sacque, When it snows; And her stunning suit is black As a crow’s; Short; and thinks it is a pity, Charming, jolly, wise, and witty: Has a retroussé――so pretty―― Little nose.

In her basket phaeton, When it blows, With her striking glasses on, Out she goes; And she’s just as sweet as stately, And she sits there so sedately, With her cheeks and lips so greatly Like a rose.

She plays Chopin, Liszt, and Spohr For her beaux. And she speak of “Pinafore”―― Heaven knows! With a naughty “D” and “Never!” But she’s awful nice and clever; If she liked me, I’d endeavour To propose.

Detroit Free Press. 1882.

――――

AN INVITATION TO ROME

Oh, come to Rome, it is a pleasant place Your London sun is here, and smiling brightly; The Briton, too, puts on his cheery face, And Mrs. Bull acquits herself politely. The Romans are an easy going race, With simple wives, more dignified than sprightly; I see them at their doors, as day is closing, Prouder than duchesses, and more imposing.

* * * * *

1863. FREDERICK LOCKER.

――――

MR. GLADSTONE IN ROME.

“Caffè-latte! I call to the waiter,――Non c’e latte. This is the answer he makes me, and this is the sign of a battle.”

CLOUGH in 1848.

1.

Old Rome in December. Take out your umbrella For we picnic no more with CÆCILIA METELLA, While flirtation is wholly unheard in the sheeny And shadowy paths of the Aldobrandini. MR. LOCKER, to Rome a poetical rover, Has, sketched us the flirts, and the croquet moreover, He’ll smile as he sees, in the shade of St. Peter’s How coolly we’ve stolen his phrases and metres.

2.

But though English are few on the Pincian Hill, One grave politician is lingering still; From Montorio looks down on the Tiber, and thinks That the problem of Rome beats the crux of the Sphinx; That no one can tell us the ultimate bias Of the city of CÆSAR, and PASQUIN, and PIUS; That the milk of the She Wolf meant bloodshed and sorrow; And――will there be milk at the Caffè to-morrow?

The Globe. London.

――――:o:――――

FROM THE CRADLE.

They tell me I was born a long Three months ago, But whether they are right or wrong I hardly know. I sleep, I smile, I cannot crawl, But I can cry―― At present I am rather small―― A babe am I.

The changing lights of sun and shade Are baby toys; The flowers and birds are not afraid Of baby-boys. Some day I’ll wish that I could be A bird and fly; At present I can’t wish――you see A babe am I.

FREDERICK LOCKER.

――――

FROM THE CRADLE.

They tell me I was calved a long Three weeks ago; But whether they are right or wrong I hardly know. I sleep, I suck, I cannot bawl, But I can cry; At present I am rather small―― A calf am I.

With changing food from swede to blade, My mammy toys, Nor she nor I are yet afraid Of butcher-boys. Some day I’ll wish that I could be A bird, and fly. At present I can’t wish, you see―― A calf am I.

Funny Folks, May 15, 1880.

――――:o:――――

A GALLERY OF FAIR WOMEN. Mrs. Golightly.

Her piles of hair are ultra-blonde; Her tints are ultra-splendid; Her eyes are shallow, brilliant, fond, And belladonna――friended. An air of langorous command About her always lingers. She has a very shapely hand, With long, bejewelled fingers.

Her foot is neat――not oversmall, But exquisitely booted. Her figure, faulty after all, Is admirably suited. Her teeth are good, and if her lip Glow with a warmer crimson Than lovers care to see or sip, Why, blame her woman, Simson.

A bishop’s daughter, born to dare, She made a reckless marriage. She has a cottage in Mayfair, No children, and a carriage, And is an universal pet, An innocent Bohemian, A Dian feigning to forget The legalised Endymion.

With many a bachelor she plays A dainty little whimsy, Like Musset’s acts, or Locker’s lays, Brief, elegant, and flimsy. She loves to woo, to win, to part; Forsaken and forsaking, Her heart――she says she has a heart―― Will bear a deal of breaking.

She shines in all things strange and new―― Plays, pictures, Prince’s, polo. She gives the odds on either Blue, She never answers “Nolo.” To-day she raves of Rubinstein, To-morrow of Albani; To-day “Aïda” is divine, To-morrow “Don Giovanni.”

But dress is, after all her dream, Her veritable passion. Her costume’s always an extreme, A nightmare of the fashion. The style that now-a-days we know, Has from the first revealed her As ruthlessly as long ago Its opposite concealed her.

She waltzes well, she does not sing, She loves to chatter, chatter Of anything and everything―― It really doesn’t matter! She skims a novel now and then To get at the sensations, And thinks Invention made the pen To answer invitations.

Her little head’s so vain and light It whirls in all directions, And yet you smile on her, despite Her host of imperfections. Her heaven is one of summer skies, And dreams that bloom to wither, And like a love bird, when she dies, Her little soul will thither.

London, 1877.

――――:o:――――

SOMETHING PRAEDESQUE.

I’ve many sweethearts; which shall I Make just a pretty bit of rhyme to, Now as the midnight moments fly, And I have the caprice and time to? “Be,” says my editor, “Praedesque: That is, omit the fiery particle.” He thinks my heart is in my desk―― Indeed, I have not such an article.

And of my sweethearts, one or two Would almost fly into a passion, If I desired their lips to woo In that old easy worn-out fashion. Praed, though no poet, had some power; He is defaced by many a mocker: I’m criminal this very hour, And so is Dobson, so is Locker.

“O give us something new and fresh!” The girls exclaim, they’re right, the beauties, To catch their hearts in merrier mesh Is chiefest of a lover’s duties. How easy is this rambling rhyme! Eight syllables, with rhymes that double; It makes one fancy at the time That neither rhyme nor love’s a trouble.

No trouble ’tis to scribble off Verse to the girls you little care for; To flatter, satirize, or scoff, Amused, and hardly knowing wherefore. But love――or hate――or be afraid Of any woman … when you greet her, It won’t be in the rhythm of Praed; You’ll have to find Peculiar Metre.

MORTIMER COLLINS.

――――:o:――――

LONDON’S ‘SUEZ CANAL.’

What pretty girls one sees about At rink and race, at ball and rout, At drums and dinners! In books, where Ænids find Geraints, In pictures Mr. Millais paints In church――I’m fond of such young saints And sinners.

A score at least one’s sure to meet From Charing Cross to Oxford Street, Or climbing hilly St. James’s, where of clubdom sick, Old fogeys voted at old nick, Fond glances turn at four towards Pic- ――cadilly.

Muse-favored haunt of all that’s gay! Whose every stone has had its day Of loves and graces! Your triumphs many a bard can tell, Fred Locker sings them passing well―― I know you bear away the bell For faces.

Along your Strand converging flow The social tides to Rotten Row, Beloved and shady; Old Gouty trundles with his pair, De Bootle saunters, cane in air―― I’m wondering, who’s that golden hair- ’d young lady?

What fools we are!――Le Follets’ page Makes yellow ringlets all the rage, And willy nilly, Poor ebon poles must cut their stick And silver change its ‘plaiting’ quick, Now only ‘gold’ is picked in Pic- ――cadilly!

But whether black or gold or grey Fashion declares her slaves shall say The dernier goût is You bear your motley freightage well, And East and West your convoys swell―― A sort of Cockneyfied canal Of Suez!

A neutral ‘cut’ where every man’s A vessel bound to pay the trans- ――it dues and duty,―― Dues stricter than e’er Lesseps took―― Love’s tribute levied on a look, And duly noted in the Book Of Beauty.

* * * * *

And now whilst ice enwraps you still, And snow’s on Constitution Hill―― Like some old Pharaoh, Sun shaded ’mid the fervent rays I bask away the balmy days, And write these verses to your praise In Cairo.

Across the desert ridges high Long lines of camels track the sky, The pink lights flicker,―― The day has run its golden race―― The Mussulman kneels in his place―― The pilgrim turns his patient face To Mecca.…

All here’s aglow with summer sun; There hugs black frost his mantle dun In winter chilly: Yet could I stand on “Simla’s” deck And Westward――ere this watch’s tick Old England ho! for me, and Pic- ――cadilly!

H. CHOLMONDELEY PENNELL.

Temple Bar, January, 1876.

――――:o:――――

SONGSTERS OF THE DAY. The Bard of Society.

There, pay it, James! ’tis cheaply earned; My conscience! how one’s cabman charges! But never mind, so I’m returned Safe to my native street of Clarges. I’ve just an hour for one cigar What style these Reinas have, and what ash!), One hour to watch the evening star, With just one Curaçao-and-potash.

Ah me! that face beneath the leaves And blossoms of its piquant bonnet! Who would have thought that forty thieves Of years had laid their fingers on it! Could you have managed to enchant At Lord’s to-day old lovers simple, Had Robber Time not played gallant, And spared you every youthful dimple!

That robber bold, like courtier Claude, Who danced the gay coranto jesting, By your bright beauty charmed and awed, Has bowed and passed you unmolesting. No feet of many-wintered crows Have traced about your eyes a wrinkle; Your sunny hair has thawed the snows That other heads with silver sprinkle.

I wonder if that pair of gloves I won of you you’ll ever pay me! I wonder if our early loves Were wise or foolish, cousin Amy! I wonder if our childish tiff Now seems to you, like me, a blunder! I wonder if you wonder if I ever wonder if you wonder!

I wonder if you’d think it bliss Once more to be the fashion’s leader! I wonder if the trick of this Escapes the unsuspecting reader! And as for him who does or can Delight in it, I wonder whether He knows that almost any man Could reel it off by yards together!

I wonder if――What’s that? A knock? Is that you, James? Eh? What? God bless me! How time has flown! Its eight o’clock, And here’s my fellow come to dress me. Be quick, or I shall be the guest Whom Lady Mary never pardons; I trust you, James, to do your best To save the soup at Grosvenor-gardens.

FRITTERIC LACQUER.

Time, June, 1880.

――――:o:――――

ON FREDERICK LOCKER.

Of Locker what? Apollo in the fashion. Humour and pathos suits, no touch of passion. From Suckling, Lovelace, Prior, Luttrell, Praed, Locker inherits his inspiring Maid: Not nude and passionate, not fast and flighty, Like Swinburne’s rosy-bosomed Aphrodite; Not icy-cold, as Parian sculpture is, Like Tennyson’s blue-stockingéd Artemis: Not erudite and sapient, grimly frowning, Like the Athena that’s adored by Browning: But just the Period’s girl, a pretty creature, Of dainty style, though inexpressive feature, Who carefully reserves her choice opinions For length of petticoats and bulk of chignons, In whom no tragic impulse ever rankles, Who always says her prayers, and shows her ankles.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

The proverb that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is somewhat the worse for wear, and perhaps Mr. Austin Dobson was not altogether inclined to agree with it when he heard that the Puzzle Editor of Truth had published the following notification:

“TRUTH” PUZZLE, NO. 472.

Thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, and others, Triolets, Ballades, Rondeaux, Vilanelles, and other metrical devices used by Villon and other French poets of the past, have been freely adapted to English verse-writing, and I am assured that I shall be setting numerous competitors an agreeable task in asking them to write a rhyming composition on one of the revived French models now so fashionable.

The Prize of Two Guineas will accordingly be given for the Best Ballade, written on any Social Subject, in accordance with the following rules:――The Ballade in its normal type, consists of three stanzas of eight lines each, followed by a verse of four lines, which is called the “envoy”――or of three verses of ten lines, with an “envoy” of five lines, each of the stanzas and the “envoy” closing with the same line, known as the “refrain.” In this instance, a Ballade of the former length is asked for――viz.; one with three eight-lined stanzas and a four-lined “envoy.” But it will be, perhaps, a better guide for competitors if I print here a Ballade as a model on which they are to form the ones they compose. Here, then, is a well-known Ballade by Mr. Austin Dobson, which must be followed so far as the arrangement of rhymes goes. The metre, though, of the Ballade often varies, and competitors are not bound to use the same metre as that employed in the subjoined specimen.

ON A FAN THAT BELONGED TO THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR.

Chicken-skin, delicate, white, Painted by Carlo Vanloo, Loves in a riot of light, Roses and vaporous blue; Hark to the dainty frou-frou! Picture above, if you can, Eyes that could melt as the dew, This was the Pompadour’s fan.

See how they rise at the sight, Thronging the Œil de Bœuf through. Courtiers as butterflies bright. Beauties that Fragonard drew, Talon-rouge, falbala, queue, Cardinal, Duke――to a man, Eager to sigh or to sue―― This was the Pompadour’s fan.

Ah! but things more than polite Hung on this toy, voyez vous! Matters of state and of might, Things that great Ministers do; Things that, may be, overthrew Those in whose brain they began, Here was the sign and the cue, This was the Pompadour’s fan!

Envoy.

Where are the secrets it knew Weavings of plot and of plan? But where is the Pompadour too?―― This was the Pompadour’s fan?

AUSTIN DOBSON.

A very large number of replies were sent in, and examples were printed in Truth, February 23, and March 8, 1888. Although they cannot be called true parodies, yet two of the Ballades are so interesting as imitations that they are inserted. The first being that to which the prize was awarded, written by Mr. J. C. Woods, of Swansea, and the second written by Mr. F. B. Doveton, of Eastbourne.

A BALLADE OF THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.

Art, fled from earth, Sir Coutts and Co. Lured back to hold her state benign, With all the newest masters know Of magic colour, nude design, Set in soft shade or mellow shine Of dexterous curtain, clouded pane, And tricked men so to deem, in fine, Restored her grand Saturnian reign.

Thus passed ten grey-green years, when, lo! What gurgling as from flasks of wine; What whirl of revellers to and fro; What lust of eight per cent., or nine, Or ninety, broke her dream divine, Her reverie of æsthetic pain. Musing――can any care of mine Restore the grand Saturnian reign?

Then said she; “Shall they flout me so? Shall mortals in my presence dine, Nor heed, for molluscs and clicquot, The masterpieces on the line? Forth from the temple, Philistine! Fling out the banner――Art, not gain! Carr, Hallé, and Burne-Jones combine; Restore my grand Saturnian reign!”

Envoy.

Priest of the desecrated shrine, Which drum and rout and dance profane, Drive hence the Bacchant bands malign; Restore the grand Saturnian reign!

ALLTIAGO (J. C. Woods.)

――――

A BALLADE OF FIVE O’CLOCK TEA.

Served in most delicate ware, Dresden or Sévres――where you spy Dainty devices and rare, Hues that enrapture the eye: Hands that are shapely and white, Pour out the fragrant Bohea, Beauty presides at this rite―― This is your Five O’clock Tea.

Perched in the midst of the fair, Masher resplendent, yet shy, Awkwardly shifts in his chair, He will gain courage by and bye. Beaux so antique, most polite, Prattle in garrulous glee, Here in their element quite―― This is your Five O’clock Tea.

Characters melt into air; Good reputations must die; Think you “My Lady” will spare For all that you murmur, “Oh Fy?” Colloquies vapid and trite, Slanderous tongues running free, Small emanations of spite―― This is your Five O’clock Tea.

Envoy.

Sugar and cream can excite Envy and malice, we see; Satirists cry with delight―― “This is your Five O’clock Tea!”

ORCHIS (F. B. Doveton).

――――

BALLADE OF PÔT-POURRI.

Oriental, and fragile, and old Is the pôt-pourri bowl you see there; Dreamy odours――romances untold It confides to this latter-day air.

Ghosts of laughter, of love, and despair, Dim strains of a quaint minuet And a gallant’s low words to his fair―― “Our Lady of Roses――Coquette!”

* * * * *

Truth. March 8, 1888. PREMIER PAS.

Of the other examples that were printed it must suffice to mention the titles:――

Ballade of Five o’clock Tea――(Five thus). Ballade of the Amateur Reciter. Ballade of Leap year――(Two thus). Fashion’s Fig-leaf. Our Whistling Drawing-room Man. Ballade of an Axe――(The G. O. M.’s Axe). On the modern method of shaking hands. Our grand Fancy Fair. Pat the Patriot. Ballade of a Primal cigar. Ballade of a Programme. A “Blue” Ballade――(“These are the ’Varsity Crews”). Ballade of Pôt-Pourri. Ballade for Diogenes. A Ballade of Girls and Wedding. Girls’ Gossip.

――――:o:――――

TU QUOQUE.

An Idyll in the Conservatory. (Inserted with the Author’s permission.)

Nellie. If I were you, when ladies at the play, Sir, Beckon and nod, a melodrama through, I would not turn abstractedly away, Sir, If I were you!

Frank. If I were you, when persons I affected, Wait for three hours to take me down to Kew, I would at least pretend I recollected, If I were you!

Nellie. If I were you, when ladies are so lavish, Sir, as to keep me every waltz but two, I would not dance with odious Miss McTavish, If I were you!

Frank. If I were you, who vow you cannot suffer Whiff of the best,――the mildest “honey dew,” I would not dance with smoke-consuming Puffer, If I were you!

Nellie. If I were you, I would not, Sir, be bitter, Even to write the “Cynical Review;”――

Frank. No, I should doubtless find flirtation fitter. If I were you!

Nellie. Really! You would? Why, Frank, you’re quite delightful,―― Hot as Othello, and as black of hue; Borrow my fan. I would not look so frightful, If I were you!

Frank. “It is the cause.” I mean your chaperon is Bringing some well-curled juvenile. Adieu! I shall retire. I’d spare that poor Adonis, If I were you!

Nellie. Go, if you will. At once! And by express, Sir; Where shall it be? To China――or Peru? Go. I should leave inquirers my address, Sir, If I were you!

Frank. No――I remain. To stay and fight a duel Seems, on the whole, the proper thing to do―― Ah, you are strong,――I would not then be cruel, If I were you!

Nellie. One does not like one’s feelings to be doubted,――

Frank. One does not like one’s friends to misconstrue,――

Nellie. If I confess that I a wee-bit pouted?

Frank. I should admit that I was piqué, too.

Nellie. Ask me to dance. I’d say no more about it, If I were you!

(Waltz. Exeunt.)

AUSTIN DOBSON.

――――

AN IDYLL OF THE LOBBY.

Liberal Seceder.

If I were you, when friends electioneering Wish to preserve consistency of view, I would forewarn when Hawarden gales are veering―― If I were you.

Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.

If I were you, when issuing addresses, I would observe the simple rule of two Meanings in a sentence――tip for safe successes―― If I were you.

L. S. If I were you, when older friends reveal a Freedom in spending time and money too, I would not rush to dance a jig with Healy―― If I were you.

W. E. G. If I were you, who swear you cannot suffer Plutocrat and peer, landlord and Jew, I would not tilt against the people like a duffer―― If I were you.

L. S. I would not go at such an awful rate, or Friends may forsake you――thing they’re apt to do――

W. E. G. I would remember the fate of such a traitor―― If I were you.

L. S. Surely you never――call a party meeting; Try to arrange that each may get his due; Keep the dear Irish; I’d avoid a beating, If I were you.

W. E. G. No, I depart, I must consult the people, Chamberlain’s coming――Randolph with him too―― I wouldn’t pray ’neath Chamberlainic steeple, If I were you.

L. S. Go, if you will; my faith is not so flabby; Cowards in midlands happily are few. Stay! I would take that little trick from Labby―― If I were you.

W. E. G. Done! I remain――Brummagem to pound well. Leave it till autumn――now, of course, you’re true? Wouldn’t smash the party (surely doesn’t sound well) If I were you.

L. S. One does not like that Caucus-pressure leaning.

W. E. G. Yes, I was sorry――had to use the screw.

L. S. If I confess that I mistook your meaning――

W. E. G. I will allow ’twas fair to misconstrue.

Late L. S. Ask me to vote. You’ve got to put the green in, And cannon off the blue: I’d chalk my cue If I were you.

K.

The Pall Mall Budget. June 3, 1886.

――――:o:――――

THE PRODIGALS.

(After Mr. Austin Dobson’s famous ballade.)

[Dedicated to Mr. Chaplin, M.P., and Mr. Richard Power, M.P., and 223 who followed them.]

Ministers!――you, most serious, Critics and statesmen of all degrees, Hearken awhile to the motion of us,―― Senators keen for the Epsom breeze! Nothing we ask of posts or fees; Worry us not with objections pray! Lo,――for the Speaker’s wig we seize Give us――ah! give us――the Derby Day.

Scots most prudent, penurious! Irishmen busy as humblebees! Hearken awhile to the motion of us,―― Senators keen for the Epsom breeze! For Sir Joseph’s sake, and his owner’s, please! (Solomon raced like fun, they say) Lo for we beg on our bended knees,―― Give us――ah! give us――the Derby Day.

Campbell-Asheton be generous! (But they voted such things were not the cheese) Sullivan, hear us, magnanimous! (But Sullivan thought with their enemies.) And shortly they got both of help and ease For a mad majority crowded to say―― “Debate we’ve drunk to the dregs and lees; Give us――ah! give us――the Derby Day.”

Envoi.

Prince, most just was the motion of these And many were seen by the dusty way, Shouting glad to the Epsom breeze Give us――ah! give us――the Derby Day.

W. E. HENLEY.

Ballades, Rondeaus and Villanelles.

The revival of the taste for these curious old French forms of poetry has received a great impetus from the delightful examples produced by Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, Andrew Lang, R. Le Gallienne, J. Ashby-Sterry, A. C. Swinburne, C. H. Waring and Oscar Wilde.

The composition of all poetry in the English language is governed by clearly defined rules, and although a man ignorant of these rules, if gifted with a fine ear, and original conceptions, may produce a pretty song or ballad, it is very rare indeed that any truly great work is composed, which is not written in accordance with certain regulations as to metre and rhyme.

In ordinary poetry these restrictions allow of great variations in style and treatment, but it is far otherwise when any of the old French poetical fashions are selected; then the rules are exact and peremptory, and for each of the following varieties, the form is clearly defined, and perfectly distinct. They are the Ballade, Chant Royal, Kyrielle, Pantoum, Rondeau Redoublé, Rondel, Rondeau, Sicilian Octave, Triolet, and Villanelle, with a few minor forms.

It is quite beyond the scope of this collection to formulate the rules governing the composition of these poetic trifles, nor indeed is it necessary, for Mr. Gleeson White’s charming little book on the subject is readily accessible, and contains nearly all that can be said about it. It is entitled Ballades and Rondeaus, selected, with a chapter on the various forms, by Gleeson White. London, Walter Scott, 1887.

The editor’s name is sufficient to indicate that the selections are the best that could be chosen, and the introductory essay is, in itself, a distinct gain to our literature, treating as it does, of a somewhat exotic branch of poetry. Mr. Gleeson White is very much in earnest, and although he inserts a few burlesques it is evident that he regards them as desecrations of his favourite metres.

To the Parodist nothing is sacred, but whilst some of the following parodies are quoted from Mr. White’s collection, those who would wish to read the originals must refer to the work itself.

In Punch (October 22, 1887) there was a set of verses (in honour of Mr. White’s book) written in the various metres described, and one of each of these may fitly lead the several varieties here dealt with.

THE MUSE IN MANACLES.

(By an Envious and Irritable Bard, after reading “Ballades and Rondeaus,” just published, and wishing he could do anything like any of them.)

Bored by the Ballade, vexed by Villanelle, Of Rondeau tired, and Triolet as well!

THE BALLADE. (In Bad Weather).

Oh! I’m in a terrible plight―― For how can I rhyme in the rain? ’Tis pouring from morn until night: So bad is the weather again, My language is almost profane! Though shod with the useful galosh, I’m racked with rheumatical pain―― I think that a Ballade is bosh

I know I am looking a fright; That knowledge, I know, is in vain; My “brolly” is not water-tight, But hopelessly rended in twain And spoilt by the rude hurri_cane_! Though clad in a stout mackintosh, My temper I scarce can restrain―― I think that a Ballade is bosh!

Oh, I’m an unfortunate wight! The damp is affecting my brain; My woes I would gladly recite, In phrases emphatic and plain, Your sympathy could I obtain. I don’t think my verses will wash, They’re somewhat effete and inane―― I think that a Ballade is bosh!

Envoy.

I fancy I’m getting insane, I’m over my ankles in slosh; But let me repeat the refrain―― I think that a Ballade is bosh!

――――

A BALLADE OF OLD METRES.

When, in the merry realm of France, Bluff Francis ruled and loved and laughed, Now held the lists with knightly lance, Anon the knightly beaker quaffed; Where wit could wing his keenest shaft With Villon’s verse or Montaigne’s prose, Then poets exercised their craft In ballades, triolets, rondeaux.

O quaint old times! O fitting chants! With fluttering banners fore and aft, With mirth of minstrelsy and dance, Sped Poesy’s enchanted craft; The odorous gale was blowing abaft Her silken sails, as on she goes, Doth still to us faint echoes waft Of ballades, triolets, rondeaux.

But tell me with what countenance Ye seek on modern rhymes to graft Those tender shoots of old Romance―― Romance that now is only chaffed? O iron days! O idle raft Of rhymesters! they are ‘peu de chose,’ What Scott would call supremely “saft” Your ballades, triolets, rondeaux.

Envoy.

Bards, in whose vein the maddening draught Of Hippocrene so wildly glows, Forbear, and do not drive us daft With ballades, triolets, rondeaux.

The Century.

――――

A YOUNG POET’S ADVICE.

You should study the bards of to-day Who in England are now all the rage; You should try to be piquant and gay; Your lines are too solemn and sage. You should try to fill only a page, Or two at the most with your lay; And revive the quaint verse of an age That is fading forgotten away.

Study Lang, Gosse, and Dobson, I pray―― That their rhymes and their fancies engage Your thought to be witty as they. You must stand on the popular stage. In the bars of an old fashioned cage We must prison the birds of our May, To carol the notes of an age That is fading forgotten away.

Now this is a ‘Ballade’――I say, So one stanza more to our page, But the “Vers de Société,” If you can are the best for your ‘wage.’ Though the purists may fall in a rage That two rhymes go thrice in one lay, You may passably echo an age That is fading forgotten away.

Envoy.

Bard――heed not the seer and the sage, ‘Afflatus’ and Nature don’t pay; But stick to the forms of an age That is fading forgotten away.

C. P. CRANCH.

――――:o:――――

In an amusing little collection of poems quite recently published, there are several parodies and three ballades, all on legal topics, from which the following extracts are quoted by the kind permission of Messrs. Reeves and Turner. The title of the book is The Lays of a Limb of the Law, by the late John Popplestone, Town Clerk of Stourmouth, edited by Edmund B. V. Christian. London: Reeves and Turner, 1889. It contains Law Reports in the shape of parodies of Cowper’s “Alexander Selkirk;” of Pope’s translation of Homer, “The Splendid Shilling,” and of other poems in a manner somewhat similar to those contained in Professor Frederick Pollock’s well-known, but scarce little work, “Leading Cases Done into English.”

Of the three ballades perhaps the following is the best:――

BALLADE OF OLD LAW BOOKS.

_“I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield, said Uriah. ‘I am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield.’”_

The law books are standing in dingy array, They fill every shelf from ceiling to floor, Old guides to a silent and grass-covered way Which never a traveller now shall explore, Save delvers for antiquarian lore, Who painfully search where their treasures lie hid, In pages that else had been closed evermore, Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful TIDD!

Great Blackstone is put up aloft, far away (The Whig, first edition, in calf, volumes four); The Doctor and Student alike are at play; And Perkins is now but a profitless bore. Old Viner’s abridgment is over the door ’Mid dust-begrimed wines that fetch never a bid; Even Fearne on Remainders we vainly deplore Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful TIDD!

Oblivion has fallen on the frequent Ca. sa., And Cursitor Street is untrod as of yore; We turn not the leaves of Les Termes de la Ley, Or these ancient Reports, ah, many a score, Of a dulness as deadly as dread hellibore, Of their Latin and law we are joyfully rid. Let them stand, as we peacefully slumber and snore, Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful Tidd.

Envoy.