The Book of Ballads / Eleventh Edition, 1870

'Who threw that calthrop? Seize the knave!' Alas!
        the deed is done;
Down went the steed, and o'er his head flew bright
        Apollo's son.
'Undo his helmet! cut the lace! pour water on his
        head!'
'It ain't no use at all, my lord; 'cos vy? the covey's
         dead!'

Above him stood the Rydal bard—his face was full of
        woe,
'Now there thou liest, stiff and stark, who never feared a
         foe:
A braver knight, or more renowned in tourney and in
        hall,
Ne'er brought the upper gallery down than terrible Fitz-
         ball!'

They led our Wordsworth to the Queen—she crowned
        him with the bays,
And wished him many happy years, and many quarter-
        days;
And if you'd have the story told by abler lips than
        mine,
You've but to call at Rydal Mount, and taste the
        Laureate's wine!"

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THE ROYAL BANQUET

By the Hon. G- S- S—

The Queen she kept high festival in Winclsor's lordly
         hall,
And round her sat the gartered knights, and ermined
        nobles all;
There drank the valiant Wellington, there fed the wary
        Peel,
And at the bottom of the board Prince Albert carved the
         veal.

"What, pantler, ho! remove the cloth! Ho! cellarer,
         the wine,
And bid the royal nurse bring in the hope of Brunswick's
         line!"
Then rose with one tumultuous shout the band of British
         peers,
"God bless her sacred Majesty! Let's see the little
        dears!"

Now by Saint George, our patron saint, 'twas a touching
         sight to see
That iron warrior gently place the Princess on his
        knee;
To hear him hush her infant fears, and teach her how to
         gape
With rosy mouth expectant for the raisin and the
        grape!

They passed the wine, the sparkling wine—they filled the
         goblets up;
Even Brougham, the cynic anchorite, smiled blandly on
         the cup;
And Lyndhurst, with a noble thirst, that nothing could
        appease,
Proposed the immortal memory of King William on his
        knees.

"What want we here, my gracious liege," cried gay Lord
          Aberdeen,
"Save gladsome song and minstrelsy to flow our cups
         between?
I ask not now for Goulburn's voice or Knatchbull's
         warbling lay,
But where's the Poet Laureate to grace our board to-
         day?"

Loud laughed the Knight of Netherby, and scornfully he
         cried,
"Or art thou mad with wine, Lord Earl, or art thyself
         beside?
Eight hundred Bedlam bards have claimed the Laureate's
         vacant crown,
And now like frantic Bacchanals run wild through London
         town!"

"Now glory to our gracious Queen!" a voice was heard
         to cry,
And dark Macaulay stood before them all with frenzied
         eye;
"Now glory to our gracious Queen, and all her glorious
         race,
A boon, a boon, my sovran liege! Give me the Laureate's
         place!

"'Twas I that sang the might of Rome, the glories of
         Navarre;
And who could swell the fame so well of Britain's Isles
         afar?
The hero of a hundred fights———" Then Wellington up
         sprung,
"Ho, silence in the ranks, I say! Sit down and hold
        your tongue!

"By heaven, thou shalt not twist my name into a jingling
          lay,
Or mimic in thy puny song the thunders of Assaye!
'Tis hard that for thy lust of place in peace we cannot
         dine.
Nurse, take her Royal Highness, here! Sir Robert, pass
         the wine!"

"No Laureate need we at our board!" then spoke the
        Lord of Vaux;
"Here's many a voice to charm the ear with minstrel
         song, I know.
Even I myself———" Then rose the cry—"A song, a
         song from Brougham!"
He sang,—and straightway found himself alone within
        the room.

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THE BARD OF ERIN'S LAMENT

By T- M-EE, Esq.

Oh, weep for the hours, when the little blind boy
      Wove round me the spells of his Paphian bower;
When I dipped my light wings in the nectar of joy,
     And soared in the sunshine, the moth of the hour!
From beauty to beauty I passed, like the wind;
     Now fondled the lily, now toyed with the rose;
And the fair, that at morn had enchanted my mind,
     Was forsook for another ere evening's close.

I sighed not for honour, I cared not for fame,
     While Pleasure sat by me, and Love was my guest;
They twined a fresh wreath for each day as it came,
     And the bosom of Beauty still pillowed my rest:
And the harp of my country—neglected it slept—
     In hall or by greenwood unheard were its songs;
From Love's Sybarite dreams I aroused me, and swept
     Its chords to the tale of her glories and wrongs,
     but weep for the hour!—Life's summer is past,
And the snow of its winter lies cold on my brow;
     And my soul, as it shrinks from each stroke of the blast,
Cannot turn to a fire that glows inwardly now.

No, its ashes are dead—and, alas! Love or Song
No charm to Life's lengthening shadows can lend,
Like a cup of old wine, rich, mellow, and strong,
And a seat by the fire tête-à-tête with a friend.

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THE LAUREATE

By A- T-.

Who would not be
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket his gold?
'Tis I would be the Laureate bold!

When the days are hot, and the sun is strong,
I'd lounge in the gateway all the day long,
With her Majesty's footmen in crimson and gold.
I'd care not a pin for the waiting-lord;
But I'd lie on my back on the smooth greensward
With a straw in my mouth, and an open vest,
And the cool wind blowing upon my breast,
And I'd vacantly stare at the clear blue sky,
And watch the clouds as listless as I,
Lazily, lazily!

And I'd pick the moss and daisies white,
And chew their stalks with a nibbling bite;
And I'd let my fancies roam abroad
In search of a hint for a birthday ode,
Crazily, crazily!

Oh, that would be the life for me,
With plenty to get and nothing to do,
But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue,
And whistle all day to the Queen's cockatoo,
Trance-somely, trance-somely!

Then the chambermaids, that clean the rooms,
Would come to the windows and rest on their brooms,
With their saucy caps and their crisped hair,
And they'd toss their heads in the fragrant air,
And say to each other—"Just look down there,
At the nice young man, so tidy and small,
Who is paid for writing on nothing at all,
Handsomely, handsomely!"

They would pelt me with matches and sweet pastilles,
And crumpled-up halls of the royal hills,
Giggling and laughing, and screaming with fun,
As they'd see me start, with a leap and a run,
From the broad of my back to the points of my toes,
When a pellet of paper hit my nose,
Teasingly, sneezingly.

Then I'd fling them bunches of garden flowers,
And hyacinths plucked from the Castle bowers;
And I'd challenge them all to come down to me,
And I'd kiss them all till they kissèd me,
Laughingly, laughingly.

Oh, would not that be a merry life,
Apart from care and apart from strife,
With the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay,
And no deductions at quarter-day?
Oh, that would be the post for me!
With plenty to get and nothing to do,
But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue,
And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo,
And scribble of verses remarkably few,
And at evening empty a bottle or two,
Quaffingly, quaffingly!

               'Tis I would be
The Laureate bold,
             With my butt of sherry
             To keep me merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket my gold!

A MIDNIGHT MEDITAION

By Sir E- B- L-.

Fill me once more the foaming pewter up!
Another hoard of oysters, ladye mine!
To-night Lucullus with himself shall sup.

These Mute inglorious Miltons are divine!
And as I here in slippered ease recline,
Quaffing of Perkins's Entire my fill,
I sigh not for the lymph of Aganippe's rill.

A nobler inspiration fires my brain,
      Caught from Old England's fine time-hallowed drink;
I snatch the pot again and yet again,
      And as the foaming fluids shrink and shrink,
      Fill me once more, I say, up to the brink!

This makes strong hearts—strong heads attest its charm—
This nerves the might that sleeps in Britain's brawny arm!

But these remarks are neither here nor there.
      Where was I? Oh, I see—old Southey's dead!
They'll want some bard to fill the vacant chair,
      And drain the annual butt—and oh, what head
      More fit with laurel to be garlanded
Than this, which, curled in many a fragrant coil,
Breathes of Castalia's streams, and best Macassar oil?

I know a grace is seated on my brow,
Like young Apollo's with his golden beams—
There should Apollo's bays be budding now:—
And in my flashing eyes the radiance beams
That marks the poet in his waking dreams,
When, as his fancies cluster thick and thicker,
He feels the trance divine of poesy and liquor.

They throng around me now, those things of air,
That from my fancy took their being's stamp:
There Pelham sits and twirls his glossy hair,
There Clifford leads his pals upon the tramp;
There pale Zanoni, bending o'er his lamp,
Roams through the starry wilderness of thought,
Where all is everything, and everything is nought.

Yes, I am he who sang how Aram won
The gentle ear of pensive Madeline!
How love and murder hand in hand may run,
Cemented by philosophy serene,
And kisses bless the spot where gore has been!
Who breathed the melting sentiment of crime,
And for the assassin waked a sympathy sublime!

Yes, I am he, who on the novel shed
      Obscure philosophy's enchanting light!
Until the public, 'wildered as they read,
      Believed they saw that which was not in sight—
      Of course 'twas not for me to set them right;
For in my nether heart convinced I am,
Philosophy's as good as any other bam.

Novels three-volumed I shall write no more—
      Somehow or other now they will not sell;
And to invent new passions is a bore—
      I find the Magazines pay quite as well.
      Translating's simple, too, as I can tell,
Who've hawked at Schiller on his lyric throne,
And given the astonished bard a meaning all my own.

Moore, Campbell, Wordsworth, their best days are grassed:
      Battered and broken are their early lyres,
Rogers, a pleasant memory of the past,
      Warmed his young hands at Smithfield's martyr fires,
      And, worth a plum, nor bays nor butt desires.
But these are tilings would suit me to the letter,
For though the Stout is good, old Sherry's greatly better.
A fico for your small poetic ravers,
      Your Hunts, your Tennysons, your Milnes, and these!
Shall they compete with him who wrote 'Maltravers,'
Prologue to 'Alice or the Mysteries'?
No! Even now my glance prophetic sees
My own high brow girt with the bays about.

What ho! within there, ho! another pint of Stout!

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MONTGOMERY, A POEM.

Like one who, waking from a troublous dream,
Pursues with force his meditative theme;
Calm as the ocean in its halcyon still,
Calm as the sunlight sleeping on the hill;

Calm as at Ephesus great Paul was seen
To rend his robes in agonies serene;
Calm as the love that radiant Luther bore
To all that lived behind him and before;

Calm as meek Calvin, when, with holy smile,
He sang the mass around Servetus' pile,—
So once again I snatch this harp of mine,
To breathe rich incense from a mystic shrine.

Not now to whisper to the ambient air
The sounds of Satan's Universal Prayer;
Not now to sing, in sweet domestic strife
That woman reigns the Angel of our life;

But to proclaim the wish, with pious art,
Which thrills through Britain's universal heart,—
That on this brow, with native honours graced,
The Laureate's chaplet should at length be placed.

Fear not, ye maids, who love to hear me speak;
Let no desponding tears bedim your cheek!
No gust of envy, no malicious scorn,
Hath this poor heart of mine with frenzy torn.

There are who move so far above the great,
Their very look disarms the glance of hate;
Their thoughts, more rich than emerald or gold,
Enwrap them like the prophet's mantle's fold.

Fear not for me, nor think that this our age,
Blind though it be, hath yet no Archimage.
I, who have bathed in bright Castalia's tide,
By classic Isis and more classic Clyde;

I, who have handled, in my lofty strain,
All things divine, and many things profane;
I, who have trod where seraphs fear to tread;
I, who on mount-no, "honey-dew" have fed;

I, who undaunted broke the mystic seal,
And left no page for prophets to reveal;
I, who in shade portentous Dante threw;
I, who have done what Milton dared not do,—

I fear no rival for the vacant throne;
No mortal thunder shall eclipse my own!
Let dark Macaulay chant his Roman lays,
Let Monckton Milnes go maunder for the bays,

Let Simmons call on great Napoleon's shade,
Let Lytton Bulwer seek his Aram's aid,
Let Wordsworth, ask for help from Peter Bell,
Let Campbell carol Copenhagen's knell,

Let Delta warble through his Delphic groves,
Let Elliott shout for pork and penny loaves,—
I care not, I! resolved to stand or fall;
One down, another on, I'll smash them all!

Back, ye profane! this hand alone hath power
To pluck the laurel from its sacred bower;
This brow alone is privileged to wear
The ancient wreath o'er hyacinthine hair;

These lips alone may quaff the sparkling wine,
And make its mortal juice once more divine.
Back, ye profane! And thou, fair Queen, rejoice:
A nation's praise shall consecrate thy choice.

Thus, then, I kneel where Spenser knelt before,
On the same spot, perchance, of Windsor's floor;
And take, while awe-struck millions round me stand,
The hallowed wreath from great Victoria's hand.

THE DEATH OF SPACE

[Why has Satan's own Laureate never given to the world his marvellous threnody on the "Death of Space"? Who knows where the bays might have fallen, had he forwarded that mystic manuscript to the Home Office? If un-wonted modesty withholds it from the public eye, the public will pardon the boldness that tears from blushing obscurity the following fragments of this unique poem.]

Eternity shall raise her funeral-pile
In the vast dungeon of the extinguished sky,
And, clothed in dim barbaric splendour, smile,
And murmur shouts of elegiac joy.

While those that dwell beyond the realms of space,
And those that people all that dreary void,
When old Time's endless heir hath run his race,
Shall live for aye, enjoying and enjoyed.

And 'mid the agony of unsullied bliss,
Her Demogorgon's doom shall Sin bewail,
The undying serpent at the spheres shall hiss,
And lash the empyrean with his tail.

And Hell, inflated with supernal wrath,
Shall open wide her thunder-bolted jaws,
And shout into the dull cold ear of Death,
That he must pay his debt to Nature's laws.

And when the King of Terrors breathes his last,
Infinity shall creep into her shell,
Cause and effect shall from their thrones be cast,
And end their strife with suicidal yell:

While from their ashes, burnt with pomp of kings,
'Mid incense floating to the evanished skies,
Nonentity, on circumambient wings,
An everlasting Phoenix shall arise.

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LITTLE JOHN AND THE RED FRIAR, A LAY OF SHERWOOD.

FYTTE THE FIRST.

The deer may leap within the glade;
The fawns may follow free—
For Robin is dead, and his bones are laid
Beneath the greenwood tree.

And broken are his merry, merry men,
That goodly companie:
There's some have ta'en the northern road
With Jem of Netherbee.

The best and bravest of the band
With Derby Ned are gone;
But Earlie Gray and Charlie Wood,
They stayed with Little John.

Now Little John was an outlaw proud,
A prouder ye never saw;
Through Nottingham and Leicester shires
He thought his word, was law,

And he strutted through the greenwood wide,
Like a pestilent jackdaw.
He swore that none, but with leave of him,
Should set foot on the turf so free:

And he thought to spread his cutter's rule,
All over the south countrie.
"There's never a knave in the land," he said,
"But shall pay his toll to me!"

And Charlie Wood was a taxman good
As ever stepped the ground,
He levied mail, like a sturdy thief,
From all the yeomen round.

"Nay, stand!" quoth he, "thou shalt pay to me
Seven pence from every pound!"

Now word has come to Little John,
As he lay upon the grass,
That a Friar red was in merry Sherwood
Without his leave to pass.

"Come hither, come hither, my little foot-page!
Ben Hawes, come tell to me,
What manner of man is this burly frere
Who walks the woods so free?"

"My master good!" the little page said,
"His name I wot not well,
But he wears on his head a hat so red,
With a monstrous scallop-shell.

"He says he is Prior of Copmanshurst,
And Bishop of London town,
And he comes with a rope from our father the Pope,
To put the outlaws down.

"I saw him ride but yester-tide,
With his jolly chaplains three;
And he swears that he has an open pass
From Jem of Netherbee!"

Little John has ta'en an arrow so broad,
And broken it o'er his knee;
"Now may I never strike doe again,
But this wrong avenged shall be!

"And has he dared, this greasy frere,
To trespass in my bound,
Nor asked for leave from Little John
To range with hawk and hound?

"And has he dared to take a pass
From Jem of Netherbee,
Forgetting that the Sherwood shaws
Pertain of right to me?

"O were he but a simple man,
And not a slip-shod frere!
I'd hang him up by his own waist-rope
Above yon tangled brere.

"O did he come alone from Jem,
And not from our father the Pope,
I'd bring him in to Copmanshurst,
With the noose of a hempen rope!

"But since he has come from our father the Pope,
And sailed across the sea,
And since he has power to bind and loose,
His life is safe for me;
But a heavy penance he shall do
Beneath the greenwood tree!"

"O tarry yet!" quoth Charlie Wood.
"O tarry, master mine!
It's ill to shear a yearling hog,
Or twist the wool of swine!

"It's ill to make a bonny silk purse
From the ear of a bristly boar;
It's ill to provoke a shaveling's curse,
When the way lies him before.

"I've walked the forest for twenty years,
In wet weather and dry,
And never stopped a good fellowe,
"Who had no coin to buy.

"What boots it to search a beggarman's bags,
When no silver groat he has?
So, master mine, I rede you well,
E'en let the Friar pass!"

"Now cease thy prate," quoth Little John,
"Thou japest but in vain;
An he have not a groat within his pouch,
We may find a silver chain.

"But were he as bare as a new-flayed buck,
As truly he may be,
He shall not tread the Sherwood shaws
Without the leave of me!"

Little John has taken his arrows and bow,
His sword and buckler strong,
And lifted up his quarter-staff,
Was full three cloth yards long.

And he has left his merry men
At the trysting-tree behind,
And gone into the gay greenwood,
This burly frere to find.

O'er holt and hill, through brake and brere,
He took his way alone—
Now, Lordlings, list and you shall hear
This geste of Little John.

FYTTE THE SECOND-

'Tis merry, 'tis merry in gay greenwood,
When the little birds are singing,
When the buck is belling in the fern,
And the hare from the thicket springing!

'Tis merry to hear the waters clear,
As they splash in the pebbly fall;
And the ouzel whistling to his mate,
As he lights on the stones so small.

But small pleasaunce took Little John
In all he heard and saw;
Till he reached the cave of a hermit old
Who wonned within the shaw.

"Ora pro nobis!" quoth Little John—
His Latin was somewhat rude—
"Now, holy father, hast thou seen
A frere within the wood?

"By his scarlet hose, and his ruddy nose,
I guess you may know him well;
And he wears on his head a hat so red,
And a monstrous scallop-shell."

"I have served Saint Pancras," the hermit said,
"In this cell for thirty year,
Yet never saw I, in the forest bounds,
The face of such a frere!

"An' if ye find him, master mine,
E'en take an old man's advice,
An' raddle him well, till he roar again,
Lest ye fail to meet him twice!"

"Trust me for that!" quoth Little John—
      "Trust me for that!" quoth he, with a laugh;
"There never was man of woman born,
      That asked twice for the taste of my quarter-
           staff!"

Then Little John, he strutted on,
Till he came to an open bound,
And he was aware of a Red Friar,
Was sitting upon the ground.

His shoulders they were broad and strong,
And large was he of limb;
Few yeomen in the north countrie
Would care to mell with him.

He heard the rustling of the boughs,
      As Little John drew near;
But never a single word he spoke,
      Of welcome or of cheer:
Less stir he made than a pedlar would
      For a small gnat in his ear!

I like not his looks! thought Little John,
Nor his staff of the oaken tree.
Now may our Lady be my help,
Else beaten I well may be!

"What dost thou here, thou strong Friar,
In Sherwood's merry round,
Without the leave of Little John,
To range with hawk and hound?"