XXXII Ballades in Blue China [1885]

AFTER FROISSART.

Not Jason nor Medea wise,
I crave to see, nor win much lore,
Nor list to Orpheus’ minstrelsies;
Nor Her’cles would I see, that o’er
The wide world roamed from shore to shore;
Nor, by St. James, Penelope,—
Nor pure Lucrece, such wrong that bore:
To see my Love suffices me!

Virgil and Cato, no man vies
With them in wealth of clerkly store;
I would not see them with mine eyes;
Nor him that sailed, sans sail nor oar,
Across the barren sea and hoar,
And all for love of his ladye;
Nor pearl nor sapphire takes me more:
To see my Love suffices me!

The modish Airs,
The Tansey Brew,
The Swains and Fairs
In curtained Pew;
Nymphs Kneller drew,
Books Bentley read,—
Who knows them, who?
Queen Anne is dead!

We buy her Chairs,
Her China blue,
Her red-brick Squares
We build anew;
But ah! we rue,
When all is said,
The tale o’er-true,
Queen Anne is dead!

ENVOY.

Friend, praise the new;
The old is fled:
Vivat Frou-Frou!
Queen Anne is dead!

(AFTER LYONNET DE COISMES.)

Who have loved and ceased to love, forget
That ever they loved in their lives, they say;
Only remember the fever and fret,
And the pain of Love, that was all his pay;
All the delight of him passes away
From hearts that hoped, and from lips that met—
Too late did I love you, my love, and yet
I shall never forget till my dying day.

We must live our lives, though the sun be set,
Must meet in the masque where parts we play,
Must cross in the maze of Life’s minuet;
Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay:
But while snows of winter or flowers of May
Are the sad year’s shroud or coronet,
In the season of rose or of violet,
I shall never forget till my dying day!

ENVOY.

Queen, when the clay is my coverlet,
When I am dead, and when you are grey,
Vow, where the grass of the grave is wet,
“I shall never forget till my dying day!”

Here I’d come when weariest!
   Here the breast
Of the Windburg’s tufted over
Deep with bracken; here his crest
   Takes the west,
Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

Silent here are lark and plover;
   In the cover
Deep below the cushat best
Loves his mate, and croons above her
   O’er their nest,
Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

ENVOY.

Friend, or stranger kind, or lover,
Ah, fulfil a last behest,
   Let me rest
Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!

As, to the pipe, with rhythmic feet
In windings of some old-world dance,
The smiling couples cross and meet,
Join hands, and then in line advance,
So, to these fair old tunes of France,
Through all their maze of to-and-fro,
The light-heeled numbers laughing go,
Retreat, return, and ere they flee,
One moment pause in panting row,
And seem to say—Vos plaudite!

A. D.

(FROM THE PROSE OF C. BAUDELAIRE.)

Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear,
   The wand’ring waters, green and grey;
Thine eyes are wonderful and clear,
   And deep, and deadly, even as they;
The spirit of the changeful sea
   Informs thine eyes at night and noon,
She sways the tides, and the heart of thee,
   The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!

The Moon came down the shining stair
   Of clouds that fleck the summer sky,
She kissed thee, saying, “Child, be fair,
   And madden men’s hearts, even as I;
Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet,
   That know me and are known of me;
The lover thou shalt never meet,
   The land where thou shalt never be!”

“And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.”—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso.  Luciani Vera Historia.

’Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o’er
With all the waves and wars, a weary while,
Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,
And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,
Go down the ways of gold, and evermore
His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,
Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,
Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet
To look across the sad and stormy space,
Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,
Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,
Because, within a fair forsaken place
The life that might have been is lost to thee.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea
   With all the notes of music in its tone,
   With tides that wash the dim dominion
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me
   Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown
   That glasses Egypt’s temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore
   To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;
Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,
   As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast
His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore
   Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)

Dead—he is dead!  The rouge has left a trace
   On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,
   Even while the people laughed that held him dear
But yesterday.  He died,—and not in grace,
And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace
   To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear,
   And gold must win a passage for his bier,
And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.

Ah, Molière, for that last time of all,
   Man’s hatred broke upon thee, and went by,
And did but make more fair thy funeral.
   Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily,
Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall,
   For torch, the stars along the windy sky!

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying
   The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;
They heard the hollows of the hills replying,
   They heard the weeping water’s overflow;
They winged the sacred strain—the song undying,
   The song that all about the world must go,—
When poets for a poet dead are sighing,
   The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping
   For Adonais by the summer sea,
The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping
   Far from ‘the forest ground called Thessaly’),
These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,
   And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

(AFTER MELEAGER.)

Now the bright crocus flames, and now
   The slim narcissus takes the rain,
And, straying o’er the mountain’s brow,
   The daffodilies bud again.
   The thousand blossoms wax and wane
On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough,
But fairer than the flowers art thou,
   Than any growth of hill or plain.

Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown,
That my Love’s feet may tread it down,
   Like lilies on the lilies set;
My Love, whose lips are softer far
Than drowsy poppy petals are,
   And sweeter than the violet!

(AFTER ALBERT GLATIGNY.)

The winter is upon us, not the snow,
   The hills are etched on the horizon bare,
   The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,
The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.
One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,
   Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.
   Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where
The black trees seem to shiver as you go.

Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old
   And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,
A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,
   Yet up that path, in summer of the year,
And past that melancholy pile we strolled
   To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.

TO LUCIA.

Apollo left the golden Muse
   And shepherded a mortal’s sheep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

To mock the giant swain that woo’s
   The sea-nymph in the sunny deep,
Apollo left the golden Muse.

Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,
   Where Milon and where Battus reap,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise
   Below the dim Sicilian steep
Apollo left the golden Muse.

Ye twain did loiter in the dews,
   Ye slept the swain’s unfever’d sleep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

St. Paul and the Devil disputing about the Immortality of Man’s Soul, and St. Paul maintaining the same, (from the similitude of the corn-seed sown, which again sprouteth,) the Devil refutes him by his atheistic subtlety, but is put to shame by the evidence of three witnesses, namely, Persephone, Hela, and St. Lucy.

The Scene is Mount Gerizim.

Intrabunt Sanctus Paulus, et Diabolus, inter
se de immortalitate Animae disputantes.

SANCTUS PAULUS.

DIABOLUS.

There is an end of grief and mirth,
   There is an end of all things born,
And if ye sow into the earth
   A seed, ye shall have corn;
   But if ye sow its withered root
   It shall not bear you any fruit,
   It will not sprout and spring again;
   And if ye look to gather grain,
   Of men mote ye have scorn.
Man’s body buried is the sown
Dead root, whose flower is over-blown.

SANCTUS PAULUS.

Hic intrabunt et cantabunt tres Reginæ.

PERSEPHONE.

I am the Queen Persephone.
The lips of Grecians prayed to me,
   Saying, I give men sleep;
But I would have ye well to know
That with me none do slumber so;
   But there be some that weep,
And juster souls content to dwell
Among the fields of asphodel,
   By the Nine Waters deep.

HELA.

SANCTA LUCIA.

I am a Queen of Paradise,
And who shall look on me, I wis,
   His spirit shall find grace.
Whoso dwells with me walks along
In gardens glad with small birds’ song,
   A flowered and grassy place,
Therein the souls of blessèd men
Wait each, till comes his love again,
   To look upon her face!

SANCTUS PAULUS.

Fugiat Diabolus ad locum suum.

A BALLAD OF THE SCHOOL-BOARD FLEET.

   Which my name is Stoker Bill,
   And a pleasant berth I fill,
And the care the ladies take of me is clipping;
   They have made me pretty snug,
   With a blooming Persian rug,
In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.

   There’s my Whistler pastels, there,
   As are quite beyond compare,
And a portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist skipping;
   From such art we all expect
   Quite a softening effect,
In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.

   There’s our first Liftenant, too,
   Is a rare old (China) Blue,
And you do not very often catch him tripping
   At a monogram or mark,
   But no more than Noah’s ark,
Does he know the way to manage this here shipping.

   But the Boys? the Boys, they stands
   With white lilies in their hands,
And they do not know the meaning of a whipping:
   For the whole delightful ship is
   Like a dream of Lippo Lippi’s,
More than what you mostly see in modern shipping.

      ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισιν
ἔυχεσθαι·  Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.

Od. iii. 47.

“Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good,
   But He was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
   And breaks the Thunder-bird’s tremendous wings;
But still we cry to Him,—We are thy brood—
   O Cagn, be merciful! and us He brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
   And in the desert opens water-springs.”

As one that for a weary space has lain
   Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
   In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
   And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
   As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,—
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
   Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
      Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
      And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
   The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

Suggested by a female head in wax, of unknown date, but supposed to be either of the best Greek age, or a work of Raphael or Leonardo.  It is now in the Lille Museum.

Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,
   Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,
A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,
   Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!
   Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,
While magical his fingers o’er thee strayed,
   Or that great pupil of Verrocchio
Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade

THE END.

CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

Footnotes