Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

With saddest music all day long
   She soothed her secret sorrow:
At night she sighed “I fear ’twas wrong
   Such cheerful words to borrow.
Dearest, a sweeter, sadder song
   I’ll sing to thee to-morrow.”

I thanked her, but I could not say
   That I was glad to hear it:
I left the house at break of day,
   And did not venture near it
Till time, I hoped, had worn away
   Her grief, for nought could cheer it!

I took my sister t’other day
   (Excuse the slang expression)
To Sadler’s Wells to see the play
   In hopes the new impression
Might in her thoughts, from grave to gay
   Effect some slight digression.

I asked three gay young dogs from town
   To join us in our folly,
Whose mirth, I thought, might serve to drown
   My sister’s melancholy:
The lively Jones, the sportive Brown,
   And Robinson the jolly.

Vainly he strove, with ready wit,
   To joke about the weather—
To ventilate the last ‘on dit’—
   To quote the price of leather—
She groaned “Here I and Sorrow sit:
   Let us lament together!”

I urged “You’re wasting time, you know:
   Delay will spoil the venison.”
“My heart is wasted with my woe!
   There is no rest—in Venice, on
The Bridge of Sighs!” she quoted low
   From Byron and from Tennyson.

I need not tell of soup and fish
   In solemn silence swallowed,
The sobs that ushered in each dish,
   And its departure followed,
Nor yet my suicidal wish
   To be the cheese I hollowed.

Her lips curved downwards instantly,
   As if of india-rubber.
“Hounds in full cry I like,” said she:
   (Oh how I longed to snub her!)
“Of fish, a whale’s the one for me,
   It is so full of blubber!”

The night’s performance was “King John.”
   “It’s dull,” she wept, “and so-so!”
Awhile I let her tears flow on,
   She said they soothed her woe so!
At length the curtain rose upon
   ‘Bombastes Furioso.’

[Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see him when he came, but didn’t seem to miss him if he stayed away.]

And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
      With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
      And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship’s call,
Calmly resign the little all
(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)
      I have of gladness,
And lend my being to the thrall
      Of gloom and sadness?

Must he then only live to weep,
Who’d prove his friendship true and deep
By day a lonely shadow creep,
      At night-time languish,
Oft raising in his broken sleep
      The moan of anguish?

The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,
      But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time in writing lays,
      And posts them to her.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
      Perhaps to-morrow.
I trust to find your heart the seat
      Of wasting sorrow.

The First Voice

He trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him.

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude:

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,
And he was going out to dine.

The tear-drop trickled to his chin:
There was a meaning in her grin
That made him feel on fire within.

“Term it not ‘radiance,’” said he:
“’Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea.”

And she “Yea so?  Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say ‘Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.’”

He moaned: he knew not what to say.
The thought “That I could get away!”
Strove with the thought “But I must stay.

“To dine!” she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
“To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth!

“Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff.”

“Yet well-bred men,” he faintly said,
“Are not willing to be fed:
Nor are they well without the bread.”

Her visage scorched him ere she spoke:
“There are,” she said, “a kind of folk
Who have no horror of a joke.

“Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there:

“We grant them—there is no escape—
A sort of semi-human shape
Suggestive of the man-like Ape.”

Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,
With random shaft had pierced the mark.

She felt that her defeat was plain,
Yet madly strove with might and main
To get the upper hand again.

Fixing her eyes upon the beach,
As though unconscious of his speech,
She said “Each gives to more than each.”

He could not answer yea or nay:
He faltered “Gifts may pass away.”
Yet knew not what he meant to say.

“If that be so,” she straight replied,
“Each heart with each doth coincide.
What boots it?  For the world is wide.”

And darkly fell her answer dread
Upon his unresisting head,
Like half a hundredweight of lead.

“The Good and Great must ever shun
That reckless and abandoned one
Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.

“The man that smokes—that reads the Times—
That goes to Christmas Pantomimes—
Is capable of any crimes!”

He felt it was his turn to speak,
And, with a shamed and crimson cheek,
Moaned “This is harder than Bezique!”

But when she asked him “Wherefore so?”
He felt his very whiskers glow,
And frankly owned “I do not know.”

Pitying his obvious distress,
Yet with a tinge of bitterness,
She said “The More exceeds the Less.”

“A truth of such undoubted weight,”
He urged, “and so extreme in date,
It were superfluous to state.”

Roused into sudden passion, she
In tone of cold malignity:
“To others, yea: but not to thee.”

But when she saw him quail and quake,
And when he urged “For pity’s sake!”
Once more in gentle tones she spake.

“Thought in the mind doth still abide
That is by Intellect supplied,
And within that Idea doth hide:

“And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought.”

So passed they on with even pace:
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face.

Her voice was very full and rich,
And, when at length she asked him “Which?”
It mounted to its highest pitch.

He a bewildered answer gave,
Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,
Lost in the echoes of the cave.

He answered her he knew not what:
Like shaft from bow at random shot,
He spoke, but she regarded not.

She waited not for his reply,
But with a downward leaden eye
Went on as if he were not by

Sound argument and grave defence,
Strange questions raised on “Why?” and “Whence?”
And wildly tangled evidence.

Wrenched with an agony intense,
He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,
And careless of all consequence:

“Mind—I believe—is Essence—Ent—
Abstract—that is—an Accident—
Which we—that is to say—I meant—”

When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed.

It needed not her calm reply:
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And he could neither fight nor fly.

While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
As might a cat a little bird.

“Shall Man be Man?  And shall he miss
Of other thoughts no thought but this,
Harmonious dews of sober bliss?

“What boots it?  Shall his fevered eye
Through towering nothingness descry
The grisly phantom hurry by?

“And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;
See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
And redden in the dusky glare?

“The meadows breathing amber light,
The darkness toppling from the height,
The feathery train of granite Night?

“Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
Through the thick curtain of his tears
Catch glimpses of his earlier years,

“Yet still before him as he flies
One pallid form shall ever rise,
And, bodying forth in glassy eyes

“The vision of a vanished good,
Low peering through the tangled wood,
Shall freeze the current of his blood.”

Still from each fact, with skill uncouth
And savage rapture, like a tooth
She wrenched some slow reluctant truth.

Till, like a silent water-mill,
When summer suns have dried the rill,
She reached a full stop, and was still.

Dead calm succeeded to the fuss,
As when the loaded omnibus
Has reached the railway terminus:

With glance that ever sought the ground,
She moved her lips without a sound,
And every now and then she frowned.

He gazed upon the sleeping sea,
And joyed in its tranquillity,
And in that silence dead, but she

To muse a little space did seem,
Then, like the echo of a dream,
Harked back upon her threadbare theme.

Still an attentive ear he lent
But could not fathom what she meant:
She was not deep, nor eloquent.

He marked the ripple on the sand:
The even swaying of her hand
Was all that he could understand.

He saw them drooping here and there,
Each feebly huddled on a chair,
In attitudes of blank despair:

Oysters were not more mute than they,
For all their brains were pumped away,
And they had nothing more to say—

Save one, who groaned “Three hours are gone!”
Who shrieked “We’ll wait no longer, John!
Tell them to set the dinner on!”

The vision passed: the ghosts were fled:
He saw once more that woman dread:
He heard once more the words she said.

He left her, and he turned aside:
He sat and watched the coming tide
Across the shores so newly dried.

And why he had so long preferred
To hang upon her every word:
“In truth,” he said, “it was absurd.”

“Her speech,” he said, “hath caused this pain.
Easier I count it to explain
The jargon of the howling main,

“Or, stretched beside some babbling brook,
To con, with inexpressive look,
An unintelligible book.”

Low spake the voice within his head,
In words imagined more than said,
Soundless as ghost’s intended tread:

“If thou art duller than before,
Why quittedst thou the voice of lore?
Why not endure, expecting more?”

“Rather than that,” he groaned aghast,
“I’d writhe in depths of cavern vast,
Some loathly vampire’s rich repast.”

“Not so,” he urged, “nor once alone:
But there was something in her tone
That chilled me to the very bone.

“Her style was anything but clear,
And most unpleasantly severe;
Her epithets were very queer.

“And yet, so grand were her replies,
I could not choose but deem her wise;
I did not dare to criticise;

“Nor did I leave her, till she went
So deep in tangled argument
That all my powers of thought were spent.”

A little whisper inly slid,
“Yet truth is truth: you know you did.”
A little wink beneath the lid.

The whisper left him—like a breeze
Lost in the depths of leafy trees—
Left him by no means at his ease.

Once more he weltered in despair,
With hands, through denser-matted hair,
More tightly clenched than then they were.

When, bathed in Dawn of living red,
Majestic frowned the mountain head,
“Tell me my fault,” was all he said.

When, at high Noon, the blazing sky
Scorched in his head each haggard eye,
Then keenest rose his weary cry.

And when at Eve the unpitying sun
Smiled grimly on the solemn fun,
“Alack,” he sighed, “what have I done?”

Tortured, unaided, and alone,
Thunders were silence to his groan,
Bagpipes sweet music to its tone:

“What?  Ever thus, in dismal round,
Shall Pain and Mystery profound
Pursue me like a sleepless hound,

“With crimson-dashed and eager jaws,
Me, still in ignorance of the cause,
Unknowing what I broke of laws?”

The whisper to his ear did seem
Like echoed flow of silent stream,
Or shadow of forgotten dream,

The whisper trembling in the wind:
“Her fate with thine was intertwined,”
So spake it in his inner mind:

“Yea, each to each was worse than foe:
Thou, a scared dullard, gibbering low,
And she, an avalanche of woe!”

[Why is it that Poetry has never yet been subjected to that process of Dilution which has proved so advantageous to her sister-art Music?  The Diluter gives us first a few notes of some well-known Air, then a dozen bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately: thus saving the listener, if not from all risk of recognising the melody at all, at least from the too-exciting transports which it might produce in a more concentrated form.  The process is termed “setting” by Composers, and any one, that has ever experienced the emotion of being unexpectedly set down in a heap of mortar, will recognise the truthfulness of this happy phrase.

For truly, just as the genuine Epicure lingers lovingly over a morsel of supreme Venison—whose every fibre seems to murmur “Excelsior!”—yet swallows, ere returning to the toothsome dainty, great mouthfuls of oatmeal-porridge and winkles: and just as the perfect Connoisseur in Claret permits himself but one delicate sip, and then tosses off a pint or more of boarding-school beer: so also—

To glad me with his soft black eye
   My son comes trotting home from school;
He’s had a fight but can’t tell why—
   He always was a little fool!

But, when he came to know me well,
   He kicked me out, her testy Sire:
And when I stained my hair, that Belle
   Might note the change, and thus admire

And love me, it was sure to dye
   A muddy green or staring blue:
Whilst one might trace, with half an eye,
   The still triumphant carrot through.

Five dashing girls, the youngest Twenty-one:
But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?

Five showy girls—but Thirty is an age
When girls may be engaging, but they somehow don’t engage.

Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!

* * * *

Five passé girls—Their age?  Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam “careless bachelor” begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem “how the money goes”!

The old man smiled to see him,
   To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
   Enthusiastically;
And thought “There’s no hum-drum in him,
   Nor any shilly-shally.”

“And would you be a poet
   Before you’ve been to school?
Ah, well!  I hardly thought you
   So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic—
   A very simple rule.

“Then, if you’d be impressive,
   Remember what I say,
That abstract qualities begin
   With capitals alway:
The True, the Good, the Beautiful—
   Those are the things that pay!

“Next, when you are describing
   A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
   But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things
   With a sort of mental squint.”

“For instance, if I wished, Sir,
   Of mutton-pies to tell,
Should I say ‘dreams of fleecy flocks
   Pent in a wheaten cell’?”
“Why, yes,” the old man said: “that phrase
   Would answer very well.

“And will it do, O will it do
   To take them in a lump—
As ‘the wild man went his weary way
   To a strange and lonely pump’?”
“Nay, nay!  You must not hastily
   To such conclusions jump.

“Therefore, to test his patience—
   How much he can endure—
Mention no places, names, or dates,
   And evermore be sure
Throughout the poem to be found
   Consistently obscure.

“First fix upon the limit
   To which it shall extend:
Then fill it up with ‘Padding’
   (Beg some of any friend):
Your great Sensation-stanza
   You place towards the end.”

And the old man, looking sadly
   Across the garden-lawn,
Where here and there a dew-drop
   Yet glittered in the dawn,
Said “Go to the Adelphi,
   And see the ‘Colleen Bawn.’

“The word is due to Boucicault—
   The theory is his,
Where Life becomes a Spasm,
   And History a Whiz:
If that is not Sensation,
   I don’t know what it is.

“Now try your hand, ere Fancy
   Have lost its present glow—”
“And then,” his grandson added,
   “We’ll publish it, you know:
Green cloth—gold-lettered at the back—
   In duodecimo!”

I answer “If that ruffian Jones
   Should recognise me here,
He’d bellow out my name in tones
   Offensive to the ear:
He chaffs me so on being stout
(A thing that always puts me out).”

Ah me!  I see him on the cliff!
   Farewell, farewell to hope,
If he should look this way, and if
   He’s got his telescope!
To whatsoever place I flee,
My odious rival follows me!

For every night, and everywhere,
   I meet him out at dinner;
And when I’ve found some charming fair,
   And vowed to die or win her,
The wretch (he’s thin and I am stout)
Is sure to come and cut me out!

They vanish in tobacco smoke,
   Those visionary maids—
I feel a sharp and sudden poke
   Between the shoulder-blades—
“Why, Brown, my boy!  Your growing stout!”
(I told you he would find me out!)

“My growth is not your business, Sir!”
   “No more it is, my boy!
But if it’s yours, as I infer,
   Why, Brown, I give you joy!
A man, whose business prospers so,
Is just the sort of man to know!

         Ay, ’twas here, on this spot,
            In that summer of yore,
         Atalanta did not
            Vote my presence a bore,
Nor reply to my tenderest talk “She had
      heard all that nonsense before.”

         She’d the brooch I had bought
            And the necklace and sash on,
         And her heart, as I thought,
            Was alive to my passion;
And she’d done up her hair in the style that
      the Empress had brought into fashion.

         O that languishing yawn!
            O those eloquent eyes!
         I was drunk with the dawn
            Of a splendid surmise—
I was stung by a look, I was slain by a tear,
      by a tempest of sighs.

         Then I whispered “I see
            The sweet secret thou keepest.
         And the yearning for ME
            That thou wistfully weepest!
And the question is ‘License or Banns?’,
      though undoubtedly Banns are the cheapest.”

The ladye she stood at her lattice high,
   Wi’ her doggie at her feet;
Thorough the lattice she can spy
   The passers in the street,

“There’s one that standeth at the door,
   And tirleth at the pin:
Now speak and say, my popinjay,
   If I sall let him in.”

Then up and spake the popinjay
   That flew abune her head:
“Gae let him in that tirls the pin:
   He cometh thee to wed.”

“They cam’ to me,” said that fair ladye.
   “Wow, they were flimsie things!”
Said—“that chain o’ gowd, my doggie to howd,
   It is made o’ thae self-same rings.”

“They cam’ to me,” said that fair ladye;
   “And I prithee send nae mair!”
Said—“that cushion sae red, for my doggie’s head,
   It is stuffed wi’ thae locks o’ hair.”

“And didna ye get the letter, Ladye,
   Tied wi’ a silken string,
Whilk I sent to thee frae the far countrie,
   A message of love to bring?”

“It cam’ to me frae the far countrie
   Wi’ its silken string and a’;
But it wasna prepaid,” said that high-born maid,
   “Sae I gar’d them tak’ it awa’.”

“O ever alack that ye sent it back,
   It was written sae clerkly and well!
Now the message it brought, and the boon that it sought,
   I must even say it mysel’.”

Then up and spake the popinjay,
   Sae wisely counselled he.
“Now say it in the proper way:
   Gae doon upon thy knee!”

The lover he turned baith red and pale,
   Went doon upon his knee:
“O Ladye, hear the waesome tale
   That must be told to thee!

“For ten lang years, O weary hours!
   I coorted thee by signs;
By sending game, by sending flowers,
   By sending Valentines.

“For five lang years, and five lang years,
   I have dwelt in the far countrie,
Till that thy mind should be inclined
   Mair tenderly to me.

“Now thirty years are gane and past,
   I am come frae a foreign land:
I am come to tell thee my love at last—
   O Ladye, gie me thy hand!”

The ladye she turned not pale nor red,
   But she smiled a pitiful smile:
“Sic’ a coortin’ as yours, my man,” she said
   “Takes a lang and a weary while!”

Wi’ that the doggie barked aloud,
   And up and doon he ran,
And tugged and strained his chain o’ gowd,
   All for to bite the man.

“O hush thee, gentle popinjay!
   O hush thee, doggie dear!
There is a word I fain wad say,
   It needeth he should hear!”

Aye louder screamed that ladye fair
   To drown her doggie’s bark:
Ever the lover shouted mair
   To make that ladye hark:

Shrill and more shrill the popinjay
   Upraised his angry squall:
I trow the doggie’s voice that day
   Was louder than them all!

Out spake the boy in buttons
   (I ween he wasna thin),
“Now wha will tae the parlour gae,
   And stay this deadlie din?”

And they have taen a kerchief,
   Casted their kevils in,
For wha will tae the parlour gae,
   And stay that deadlie din.

When on that boy the kevil fell
   To stay the fearsome noise,
“Gae in,” they cried, “whate’er betide,
   Thou prince of button-boys!”

Syne, he has taen a supple cane
   To swinge that dog sae fat:
The doggie yowled, the doggie howled
   The louder aye for that.

Then sadly spake that ladye fair,
   Wi’ a frown upon her brow:
“O dearer to me is my sma’ doggie
   Than a dozen sic’ as thou!

“Nae use, nae use for sighs and tears:
   Nae use at all to fret:
Sin’ ye’ve bided sae well for thirty years,
   Ye may bide a wee langer yet!”

Sadly, sadly he crossed the floor
   And tirlëd at the pin:
Sadly went he through the door
   Where sadly he cam’ in.

“O gin I had a popinjay
   To fly abune my head,
To tell me what I ought to say,
   I had by this been wed.

“For gin I find a ladye gay,
   Exactly to my taste,
I’ll pop the question, aye or nay,
   In twenty years at maist.”

[These consist of two Double Acrostics and two Charades.

No. I. was written at the request of some young friends, who had gone to a ball at an Oxford Commemoration—and also as a specimen of what might be done by making the Double Acrostic a connected poem instead of what it has hitherto been, a string of disjointed stanzas, on every conceivable subject, and about as interesting to read straight through as a page of a Cyclopædia.  The first two stanzas describe the two main words, and each subsequent stanza one of the cross “lights.”

No. II. was written after seeing Miss Ellen Terry perform in the play of “Hamlet.”  In this case the first stanza describes the two main words.

No. III. was written after seeing Miss Marion Terry perform in Mr. Gilbert’s play of “Pygmalion and Galatea.”  The three stanzas respectively describe “My First,” “My Second,” and “My Whole.”]

There was an ancient City, stricken down
   With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
         And danced the night away.

I asked the cause: the aged man grew sad:
   They pointed to a building gray and tall,
And hoarsely answered “Step inside, my lad,
         And then you’ll see it all.”