Our village policeman is tall and well-grown,
He stands six feet two and he weighs sixteen stone;
His gait is majestic, his visage serene,
And his boots are the biggest that ever I’ve seen.
Fame sealed his renown with a definite stamp
When two German waiters escaped from a camp.
Unaided he captured those runaway Huns
Who had lived for a week on three halfpenny buns.
When a derelict porpoise was cast on the shore
Our village policeman was much to the fore;
He measured the beast from its tip to its tail,
And blandly pronounced it “an undersized whale.”
When a small boy was flying his kite on the links
It was promptly impounded by Constable Jinks,
Who astutely remarked that it might have been seen
By the vigilant crew of a Hun submarine.
It is sometimes alleged that great valour he showed
When he chased a mad cow for three miles on the road;
But there’s also another account of the hunt
With a four-legged pursuer, a biped in front.
If your house has been robbed and his counsel you seek
He’s sure to look in—in the course of the week,
When his massive appearance will comfort your cook,
Though he fails in the bringing of culprits to book.
His obiter dicta on life and the law
Set our ribald young folk in a frequent guffaw;
But the elders repose an implicit belief
In so splendid a product of beer and of beef.
He’s the strongest and solidest man in the place,
Nothing—short of mad cattle—can quicken his pace;
His moustache would do credit to any dragoon,
And his voice is as deep as a double bassoon.
His complexion is perfect, his uniform neat,
He rivets all eyes as he stalks down the street;
And I doubt if his critics will ever complain
Of his being a little deficient in brain.
For he’s more than a man; he’s a part of the map;
His going would cause a deplorable gap;
And the village would suffer as heavy a slump
As it would from the loss of the old parish pump.
’TWAS FIFTY YEARS AGO
(Lines suggested by an old Magazine.)
Published the year I went to school—
The second of life’s seven ages—
How fragrant of Victorian rule
Are these forgotten pages!
When meat and fruit were still uncanned;
When good Charles Dickens still was writing;
And Swinburne’s poetry was banned
As rather too exciting.
No murmurs of impending strife
Were heard, no dark suggestions hinted;
Our novelists still looked on life
Through spectacles rose-tinted;
And Paris, in those giddy years,
Still laughed at Offenbach and Schneider,
Blind to the doom of blood and tears,
With none to warn or guide her.
The index and the authors’ names,
Their stories and their lucubrations,
Recall old literary aims
And faded reputations;
We wonder at the influence
That Sala’s florid periods had on
His fellows, and the vogue immense
Of versatile Miss Braddon.
And yet I read Aurora Floyd
In youth with rapture quite unholy—
Not in the way that I enjoyed
Mince-pies or roly-poly;
While “G. A. S.” appeared to me
Like a Leonid fresh from starland,
Not the young lion that we see
Portrayed in Friendship’s Garland.
And there are tinklings of the lute
In orthodox decorous fashion,
But altogether destitute
Of “elemental” passion;
And illustrations which refrain
From all that verges on the shady,
But glorify the whiskered swain,
The lachrymose young lady.
The sirens of the “sixties” showed
No inkling of our modern Circes,
And swells had not evolved the code
That guides our precious Percys;
Woman, in short, was grave or gay,
But not a problem or a riddle,
And maidens still were taught to play
The harp and not the fiddle.
And writers in the main eschewed
All topics tending to disquiet,
All efforts to reorganize
Our dogmas or our diet;
You could not carp at Mendelssohn
Without creating quite a scandal,
And rag-time on the gramophone
Had not supplanted Handel.
Blameless and wholesome in their way,
At times agreeably subacid,
I love these records of a day
Long dead, but calm and placid;
And with a sigh I now replace
This ancient volume of Belgravia
And turn the “latest news” to face
Mutans amaris suavia.
NEW MEN AND OLD STUDIES
[A volume has recently appeared under the title of The Value of the Classics, in which “three hundred competent observers, representing the leading interests of modern life” in America, and including three living Presidents of the United States—Wilson, Taft, and Roosevelt—testify their conviction that classical studies are of essential value in the best type of liberal education.]
O ye Humanists half-hearted, now reluctantly resigned
To concede the claim of Science to control the youthful mind,
Once again cry Sursum corda—reinforcement comes at last
From an unexpected quarter in a wondrous counter-blast.
If there is a modern country which effete tradition hates,
Surely ’tis the Great Republic known as the United States,
Home of hustlers and of boosters, home of energy and “vim,”
Filled with innovating notions bubbling over at the brim.
Nowhere else can we discover, though we closely scan the map,
Such a readiness in scrapping anything there is to scrap;
Yet the pick of her progressives boldly swarm into the lists
As the most unflinching champions of the harried Humanists.
Wilson, Taft and Teddy Roosevelt figure in the foremost flight,
Followed by three hundred chosen men of leading and of light—
Men of great and proved achievement in diversified careers,
Statesmen, lawyers, doctors, bankers, railwaymen and engineers.
Dons of course may be discounted, also College Presidents,
But the most impressive statements come from scientific gents,
Who admit that education on a humanistic base
Gives their students vast advantage in the specializing race.
Botany relies on Latin ever since Linnæus’ days;
Biologic nomenclature draws on Greek in countless ways;
While in medicine it is obvious you can never take your oath
What an ailment means exactly if you haven’t studied both.
Heads of business corporations, magnates in the world of trade,
’Neath the banner of the Classics formidably stand arrayed,
Holding with a firm conviction that their faithful study brings
Knowledge of the art of handling men and regulating things.
Courage, ye depressed upholders of the old curriculum,
Quit your mood apologetic, bang the loud scholastic drum,
For the verdict of the Yankees queers the scientific pitch
When the Humanists were struggling in their last defensive ditch.
Honour, then, the brave Three Hundred who, like those renowned of yore,
Strive to guard from rude barbarians Hellas and her precious lore;
And let all of us determine firmly never to forget
Βλώσκω, ἔμολον, μέμβλωκα, piget, pudet, pœnitet.
REMUNERATIVE RHYMES
[In the new History of American Literature it is stated that Robert Treat Paine, the Boston poet (1773-1811), enjoyed such a reputation “that he could command five dollars a line for his verse, a price never before approached in America, and perhaps never since equalled.”]
Say, is it true, O priceless Ella Wheeler,
That you, the blameless Sappho of the West,
Stricken humanity’s most potent healer,
Consoler of the doubting and distressed,
Passion’s intense, impeccable revealer,
Of all best-sellers quite the very best,
Than Tupper’s self far sweeter and sublimer,
Were equalled by an early Boston rhymer?
It cannot be that such ecstatic yearning,
Such pure domestic raptures uncontrolled,
Such lavish use of old proverbial learning
Of ancient saws cast in a modern mould,
When measured by the crucial test of earning,
By market value, reckoned up in gold,
Never secured you, prophetess benign,
More than a bare five dollars to the line.
Tried by this test, I own, scant was the gleaning
Of Milton—just five “jingling tingling quid”
Paid for his Paradise; but then his meaning
Was wilfully from artless readers hid.
Besides, he wrote blank verse and from a leaning
To heresy was never wholly rid;
Your creed is crystal clear and orthodox,
Your rhymes salute us like a postman’s knocks.
Five dollars for a line! Oh, no, great Ella,
That clearly cannot mark your maximum;
The market-price of your celestia mella
Must far surpass that negligible sum.
Let some obscure American Apella
Believe it, I am sure it cannot come
To half the rate a high-browed journal pays
For one of your incomparable lays.
WAR WORKERS AND OTHERS
TO MR. BALFOUR ON HIS RETURN
Our hearts go out with all our ships that plough the deadly sea,
But the ship that brought us safely back the only Arthur B.
Was freighted with good wishes in a very high degree.
There are heaps of politicians who can hustle and can shriek,
And some, though very strong in lung, in brains are very weak,
But A. J. B.’s equipment is admittedly unique.
His manners are delightful, and the workings of his mind
Have never shown the slightest trace of self-esteem behind;
Nor has he had at any time a private axe to grind.
For forty years and upwards he has graced the public scene
Without becoming sterilized or stiffened by routine;
He still retains his freshness and his brain is just as keen.
His credit was not shipwrecked on the fatal Irish reef;
He has always been a loyal and a sympathetic chief;
And he has also written The Foundations of Belief.
As leader of the Mission to our cousins and Allies,
We learn with satisfaction, but without the least surprise,
That he proved the very cynosure of Transatlantic eyes.
For the special brand of statesman plus aristocratic sage,
Like the model king-philosopher described in Plato’s page,
Is uncommonly attractive in a democratic age.
“Balfour Must Go!” was once the cry of those who deemed him slack,
But now there’s not a single scribe of that unruly pack
Who is not glad in every sense that Balfour has come back.
June 20, 1917.
THE SUBMERGED LEADER
(February, 1917)
What is Master Winston doing?
What new paths is he pursuing?
What strange broth can he be brewing?
Is he painting, by commission,
Portraits of the Coalition
For the R.A. exhibition?
Is he Jacky-obin or anti?
Is he likely to “go Fanti,”
Or becoming shrewd and canty?
Is he in disguise at Kovel,
Living in a moujik’s hovel,
Penning a tremendous novel?
Does he run a photo-play show?
Or in sæva indignatio
Is he writing for Horatio?
Fired by the divine afflatus
Does he weekly lacerate us,
Like a Juvenal renatus?
As the great financial purist,
Will he smite the sinecurist
Or emerge as a Futurist?
Is he ploughing, is he hoeing?
Is he planting beet, or going
In for early ’tato-growing?
Is he writing verse or prosing,
Or intent upon disclosing
Gifts for musical composing?
Is he lecturing to flappers?
Is he tunnelling with sappers?
Has he joined the U-boat trappers?
Or, to petrify recorders
Of events within our borders,
Has he taken Holy Orders?
Is he well or ill or middling?
Is he fighting, is he fiddling?—
He can’t only be thumb-twiddling.
These are merely dim surmises,
But experience advises
Us to look for weird surprises.
* * * * *
Thus we summed the situation
When Sir Hedworth Meux’ oration
Brought about a transformation.
Lo! the Blenheim Boanerges
On a sudden re-emerges
And, to calm the naval gurges,
Fisher’s restoration urges.
A MINISTERIAL WAIL
[“The most trenchant critics of the Government since its formation have been Mr. Pringle and Mr. Hogge.”—British Weekly.]
The gipsy camping in a dingle
I reckon as a lucky dog;
He doesn’t hear the voice of Pringle,
He doesn’t hear the snorts of Hogge.
The moujik crouching in his ingle
Somewhere near Tomsk or Taganrog
I envy; he is far from Pringle
And equally remote from Hogge.
I find them deadly when they’re single,
But deadlier in the duologue,
When the insufferable Pringle
Backs the intolerable Hogge.
I’d rather walk for miles on shingle
Or flounder knee-deep in a bog
Than listen to a speech from Pringle
Or hearken to the howls of Hogge.
Their tyrannous exactions mingle
The vices of Kings Stork and Log;
One day I give the palm to Pringle,
The next I offer it to Hogge.
The style of Mr. Alfred Jingle
Was jumpy, but he did not clog
His sense with woolly words, like Pringle,
With priggish petulance, like Hogge.
I’d love to see the Bing Boys bingle,
To go to music-halls incog.,
Instead of being posed by Pringle
And heckled by the hateful Hogge.
My appetite is gone; I “pingle”
(As Norfolk puts it) with my prog;
My meals are marred by thoughts of Pringle,
My sleep is massacred by Hogge.
O patriots, with your nerves a-tingle,
With all your righteous souls agog,
Will none of you demolish Pringle
And utterly extinguish Hogge?
THE FLAPPER
[Dr. Arthur Shadwell, in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1917, in his article on “Ordeal by Fire,” after denouncing idlers and loafers and shirkers, falls foul “above all” of the young girls called flappers, “with high heels, skirts up to their knees and blouses open to the diaphragm, painted, powdered, self-conscious, ogling: ‘Allus adallacked and dizened oot and a ’unting arter the men.’”]
Good Dr. Arthur Shadwell, who lends lustre to a name
Which Dryden in his satires oft endeavoured to defame,
Has lately been discussing in a high-class magazine
The trials that confront us in the year Nineteen Seventeen.
He is not a smooth-tongued prophet; no, he takes a serious view;
We must make tremendous efforts if we’re going to win through;
And though he’s not unhopeful of the issue of the fray
He finds abundant causes for misgiving and dismay.
Our optimistic journals his exasperation fire,
And the idlers and the loafers stimulate his righteous ire;
But it is the flapper chiefly that in his gizzard sticks,
And he’s down upon her failings like a waggon-load of bricks.
She’s ubiquitous in theatres, in rail and ’bus and tram,
She wears her “blouses open down to the diaphragm,”
And, instead of realizing what our men are fighting for,
She’s an orgiastic nuisance who in fact enjoys the War.
It’s a strenuous indictment of our petticoated youth
And contains a large substratum of unpalatable truth;
Our women have been splendid, but the Sun himself has specks,
And the flapper can’t be reckoned as a credit to her sex.
Still it needs to be remembered, to extenuate her crimes,
That these flappers have not always had the very best of times;
And the life that now she’s leading, with no Mentors to restrain,
Is decidedly unhinging to an undeveloped brain.
Then again we only see her when she’s out for play or meals,
And distresses the fastidious by her gestures and her squeals,
But she is not always idle or a decorative drone,
And if she wastes her wages, well, she wastes what is her own.
Still to say that she’s heroic, as some scribes of late have said,
Is unkind as well as foolish, for it only swells her head;
She oughtn’t to be flattered, she requires to be repressed,
Or she’ll grow into a portent and a peril and a pest.
Dr. Shadwell to the Premier makes an eloquent appeal
In firm and drastic fashion with this element to deal;
And ’twould be a real feather in our gifted Cambrian’s cap
If he taught the peccant flapper less flamboyantly to flap.
But, in our way of thinking, ’tis for women, kind and wise,
These neglected scattered units to enrol and mobilize,
Their vagabond activities to curb and concentrate,
And turn the skittish hoyden to a servant of the State.
She’s young; her eyes are dazzled by the glamour of the streets;
She has to learn that life is not all cinemas and sweets;
But given wholesome guidance she may rise to self-control
And earn the right of entry on the Nation’s golden Roll.
THE FEMININE FACTOTUM
[The Daily Chronicle, writing on women farmers, quotes the tribute of Hutton, the historian, to a Derbyshire lady who died at Matlock in 1854: “She undertakes any kind of manual labour, as holding the plough, driving the team, thatching the barn, using the flail; but her chief avocation is breaking horses at a guinea per week. She is fond of Pope and Shakespeare, is a self-taught and capable instrumentalist, and supports the bass viol in Matlock Church.”]
Though in the good old-fashioned days
The feminine factotum rarely
Was honoured with a crown of bays
When she had won it fairly;
She did emerge at times, like one
For manual work a perfect glutton,
Blue-stocking half, half Amazon,
As chronicled by Hutton.
But now you’ll find her counterpart
In almost every English village—
A mistress of the arduous art
Of scientific tillage,
Who cheerfully resigns the quest
Of all that makes a woman charming,
And shows an even greater zest
For gardening and farming.
She used to petrify her dons;
She was a most efficient bowler;
But now she’s baking barley scones
To help the Food Controller;
Good Mrs. Beeton she devours,
And not the dialogues of Plato,
And sets above the Cult of Flowers
The cult of the Potato.
The studious maid whose classic brow
Was high with conscious pride of learning
Now grooms the pony, milks the cow,
And takes a hand at churning;
And one I know, whose music had
Done credit to her educators,
Has sold her well-beloved “Strad”
To purchase incubators!
The object of this humble lay
Is not to minimize the glory
Of women of an earlier day
Whose deeds are shrined in story;
’Tis only to extol the grit
Of clever girls—and none work harder—
Who daily do their toilsome “bit”
To stock the nation’s larder.
TO A NEW KNIGHT
Momentous sage of Mona’s Isle,
Pride of your fellow-Manx,
Renowned alike upon the Nile
And by the Tiber’s banks—
What though sour critics, whom it irks
To watch your widening reign,
And elders of illiberal kirks
Affect a harsh disdain;
What though fastidious souls declare
Your style distinction lacks
Or sacrilegiously dare
To mimic it, like “Max”;
So long as countless myriads hold
Your lucubrations dear,
And, side by side, the copies sold
Would circumvent the sphere?
Let pert reviewers carp and jibe,
Let jealous pens deride,
The interviewers, noble tribe,
Are solid on your side.
Have you not shown in all its bloom
Rome’s grandeur to mankind,
And, culling “copy” at Khartoum,
Laid bare the Arab mind?
Did not your heroine, Glory Quayle
Our views of life transform;
Did not all modern heroes pale
Beside the great John Storm?
As long as char-à-banc or ’bus
Brings trippers to your shrine,
Shall the new star Cainiculus
High in the welkin shine.
Loud booms the wave in Bradda’s cave,
Yet with a muffled tone
Matched with the sound, immense, profound,
From your great trumpet blown.
THE TENTH MUSE
She tells us all we needn’t know;
She always draws the longest bow;
She dramatizes guilt and crime;
Exalts the mummer and the mime;
Worships success, however won;
Confounds vulgarity with fun;
Lends credence to each passing craze,
Fans party rancour to a blaze,
Till people of a sober mind
Grow envious of the deaf and blind.
O what are all the other Nine,
The Muses fondly deemed divine
Matched with the Tenth, the modern Muse,
That now manipulates our news.
LAYS OF THE LARDER
SUGAR
An Elegiac Ode
Queen of the palate! Universal Sweet!
Gastronomy’s delectable Gioconda!
Since with submission loyally I greet
And follow out the regimen of Rhondda,
I cannot be considered indiscreet
If I essay, but never go beyond, a
Brief elegiac tribute to a sway
By sterner needs now largely swept away.
Thy candy soothes the infant in its pram;
Thou addest mellowness to old brown sherry;
Thou glorifiest marmalade, on Cam
And Isis making breakfast-tables merry;
Thou lendest magic to the meanest jam
Compounded of the most insipid berry;
And canst convert the sourest crabs and quinces
To jellies fit for epicures and princes.
Thou charmest unalloyed, in loaf or lumps
Or crystals; brown and moist, or white and pounded;
I never was so deeply in the dumps
That, once thy fount of sweetness I had sounded,
Courage returned not; even with the mumps
I still could view with gratitude unbounded
The navigators of heroic Spain
Who found the New World—and the sugar-cane.
Sprinkled on buttered bread thou dost excite
In human boys insatiable cravings;
On Turkish (I regret to say) Delight
Thou lurest them to dissipate their savings,
Instead of banking them, or sitting tight,
Or buying useful books and good engravings;
And lastly, mixed with strawberries and cream,
Thou art more than a dish, thou art a dream.
Before necessity, that knows no ruth,
Ordained thy frugal use in tea and coffee,
Some Stoics banned thee—men who in their youth
Showed an unnatural dislike of toffee;
For sweetness charms the normal human tooth,
Sweetness inspires the singer’s tenderest strophe,
Since old Lucretius musically chid
The curse of life—amari aliquid.
Eau sucrée, I admit, is rather tame
Compared with beer or whisky blent with soda;
But gallant Frenchmen, experts at this game,
Commend it highly either as a coda
Or prelude to their meals, and much the same
Is sherbet, which the Gaekwar of Baroda
And other Oriental satraps quaff
In preference to ale or half-and-half.
Nor must I fail, O potent saccharin!
Thou chemic offspring of by-products coaly,
Late corner on the culinary scene,
To hail thy aid, although it may be lowly
Even compared with beet; for thou hast been
Employed in sweetening my roly-poly—
Thou whom I once regarded as a dose
And now the active rival of glucose!
But still I hear some jaundiced critic say,
Some rigid self-appointed censor morum,
“Why harp upon the pleasures of a day
When freely sweetened was each cup and jorum,
Ere stern controllers had begun to stay
The genial outflow of the fons leporum?
Now sugar’s scarce, and we must do without it,
Why let regretful fancy play about it?”
True, yet it greatly goes against the grain,
Unless one has the patience of Ulysses,
Wholly and resolutely to refrain
From dwelling on the memory of past blisses;
Forbidden fruits allure the strong and sane;
Joys loved but lost are what one chiefly misses;
This is my best excuse if I deplore
“So sad, so sweet, the days that are no more.”
TEA SHORTAGE
[Mr. M. Grieve, writing from “The Whins,” Chalfont St. Peter, in the Daily Mail of the 12th October, 1917, suggests herb-teas to meet the shortage, as being far the most healthful substitutes. “They can also,” he says, “be blended and arranged to suit the gastric idiosyncrasies of the individual consumer. A few of them are agrimony, comfrey, dandelion, camomile, woodruff, marjoram, hyssop, sage, horehound, tansy, thyme, rosemary, stinging-nettle and raspberry.”]
Although, when luxuries must be resigned,
Such as cigars or even breakfast bacon,
My hitherto “unconquerable mind”
Its philosophic pose has not forsaken,
By one impending sacrifice I find
My stock of fortitude severely shaken—
I mean the dismal prospect of our losing
The genial cup that cheers without bemusing.
Blest liquor! dear to literary men,
Which Georgian writers used to drink like fishes,
When cocoa had not swum into their ken
And coffee failed to satisfy all wishes;
When tea was served to monarchs of the pen,
Like Johnson and his coterie, in “dishes,”
And came exclusively from far Cathay—
See “China’s fragrant herb” in Wordsworth’s lay.
Beer prompted Calverley’s immortal rhymes,
Extolling it as utterly eupeptic;
But on that point, in these exacting times,
The weight of evidence supports the sceptic;
Beer is not suitable for torrid climes
Or if your tendency is cataleptic;
But tea in moderation, freshly brewed,
Was never by Sir Andrew Clark tabooed.
We know for certain that the Grand Old Man
Drank tea at midnight with complete impunity,
At least he long outlived the Psalmist’s span
And from ill-health enjoyed a fine immunity;
Besides, robust Antipodeans can
And do drink tea at every opportunity;
While only Stoics nowadays contrive
To shun the cup that gilds the hour of five.
But war is war, and when we have to face
Shortage in tea, as well as bread and boots,
’Tis well to teach us how we may replace
The foreign brew by native substitutes,
Extracted from a vegetable base
In various wholesome plants and herbs and fruits,
“Arranged and blended,” very much like teas,
To suit our “gastric idiosyncrasies.”
It is a list for future use to file,
Including woodruff, marjoram and sage,
Thyme, agrimony, hyssop, camomile
(A name writ painfully on childhood’s page),
Tansy, the jaded palate to beguile,
Horehound, laryngeal troubles to assuage,
And, for a cup ere mounting to the stirrup,
The stinging-nettle’s stimulating syrup.
And yet I cannot, though I gladly would,
Forget the Babylonian monarch’s cry,
“It may be wholesome, but it is not good,”
When grass became his only food supply;
Such weakness ought, of course, to be withstood,
But oh, it wrings the teardrop from my eye
To think of Polly putting on the kettle
To brew my daily dose of stinging-nettle!
MARGARINE
A Housekeeper’s Palinode