The Project Gutenberg eBook of Collected Poems, Vol. 2, by Austin Dobson.

Flaccus, you write us charming songs:
No bard we know possesses
In such perfection what belongs
To brief and bright addresses;

No man can say that Life is short
With mien so little fretful;
No man to Virtue's paths exhort
In phrases less regretful;

Or touch, with more serene distress,
On Fortune's ways erratic;
And then delightfully digress
From Alp to Adriatic:

All this is well, no doubt, and tends
Barbarian minds to soften;
But, Horace—we, we are your friends—
Why tell us this so often?

Why feign to spread a cheerful feast,
And then thrust in our faces
These barren scraps (to say the least)
Of Stoic common-places?

Recount, and welcome, your pursuits:
Sing Lydë's lyre and hair;
Sing drums and Berecynthian flutes;
Sing parsley-wreaths; but spare,—

O, spare to sing, what none deny,
That things we love decay;—
That Time and Gold have wings to fly;—
That all must Fate obey!

Or bid us dine—on this day week—
And pour us, if you can,
As soft and sleek as girlish cheek,
Your inmost Cæcuban;—

Of that we fear not overplus;
But your didactic 'tap'—
Forgive us!—grows monotonous;
Nunc vale! Verbum sap.

VERSES TO ORDER.

How weary 'twas to wait! The year
Went dragging slowly on;
The red leaf to the running brook
Dropped sadly, and was gone;
December came, and locked in ice
The plashing of the mill;
The white snow filled the orchard up;
But she was waiting still.

Spring stirred and broke. The rooks once more
'Gan cawing in the loft;
The young lambs' new awakened cries
Came trembling from the croft;
The clumps of primrose filled again
The hollows by the way;
The pale wind-flowers blew; but she
Grew paler still than they.

How weary 'twas to wait! With June,
Through all the drowsy street,
Came distant murmurs of the war,
And rumours of the fleet;
The gossips, from the market-stalls,
Cried news of Joe and Tim;
But June shed all her leaves, and still
There came no news of him.

And then, at last, at last, at last,
One blessèd August morn,
Beneath the yellowing autumn elms,
Pang-panging came the horn;
The swift coach paused a creaking-space,
Then flashed away, and passed;
But she stood trembling yet, and dazed:
The news had come—at last!

And thus the artist saw her stand,
While all around her seems
As vague and shadowy as the shapes
That flit from us in dreams;
And naught in all the world is true,
Save those few words which tell
That he she lost is found again—
Is found again—and well!

A LEGACY.

Ah, Postumus, we all must go:
This keen North-Easter nips my shoulder;
My strength begins to fail; I know
You find me older;

I've made my Will. Dear, faithful friend—
My Muse's friend and not my purse's!
Who still would hear and still commend
My tedious verses,

How will you live—of these deprived?
I've learned your candid soul. The venal,—
The sordid friend had scarce survived
A test so penal;

But you—Nay, nay, 'tis so. The rest
Are not as you: you hide your merit;
You, more than all, deserve the best
True friends inherit;—

Not gold,—that hearts like yours despise;
Not "spacious dirt" (your own expression),
No; but the rarer, dearer prize—
The Life's Confession!

You catch my thought? What! Can't you guess?
You, you alone, admired my Cantos;—
I've left you, P., my whole MS.,
In three portmanteaus!

"LITTLE BLUE-RIBBONS."

"Little Blue-Ribbons!" We call her that
From the ribbons she wears in her favourite hat;
For may not a person be only five,
And yet have the neatest of taste alive?—
As a matter of fact, this one has views
Of the strictest sort as to frocks and shoes;
And we never object to a sash or bow,
When "little Blue-Ribbons" prefers it so.

"Little Blue-Ribbons" has eyes of blue,
And an arch little mouth, when the teeth peep through;
And her primitive look is wise and grave,
With a sense of the weight of the word "behave;"
Though now and again she may condescend
To a radiant smile for a private friend;
But to smile for ever is weak, you know,
And "little Blue-Ribbons" regards it so.

She's a staid little woman! And so as well
Is her ladyship's doll, "Miss Bonnibelle;"
But I think what at present the most takes up
The thoughts of her heart is her last new cup;
For the object thereon,—be it understood,—
Is the "Robin that buried the 'Babes in the Wood'"—
It is not in the least like a robin, though,
But "little Blue-Ribbons" declares it so.

"Little Blue-Ribbons" believes, I think,
That the rain comes down for the birds to drink;
Moreover, she holds, in a cab you'd get
To the spot where the suns of yesterday set;
And I know that she fully expects to meet
With a lion or wolf in Regent Street!
We may smile, and deny as we like—But, no;
For "little Blue-Ribbons" still dreams it so.

Dear "little Blue-Ribbons!" She tells us all
That she never intends to be "great" and "tall";
(For how could she ever contrive to sit
In her "own, own chair," if she grew one bit!)
And, further, she says, she intends to stay
In her "darling home" till she gets "quite gray;"
Alas! we are gray; and we doubt, you know,
But "little Blue-Ribbons" will have it so!

LINES TO A STUPID PICTURE.

"—the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale."
Aylmer's Field.

Five geese,—a landscape damp and wild,—
A stunted, not too pretty, child,
Beneath a battered gingham;
Such things, to say the least, require
A Muse of more-than-average Fire
Effectively to sing 'em.

And yet—Why should they? Souls of mark
Have sprung from such;—e'en Joan of Arc
Had scarce a grander duty;
Not always ('tis a maxim trite)
From righteous sources comes the right,—
From beautiful, the beauty.

Who shall decide where seed is sown?
Maybe some priceless germ was blown
To this unwholesome marish;
(And what must grow will still increase,
Though cackled round by half the geese
And ganders in the parish.)

Maybe this homely face may hide
A Staël before whose mannish pride
Our frailer sex shall tremble;
Perchance this audience anserine
May hiss (O fluttering Muse of mine!)—
May hiss—a future Kemble!

Or say the gingham shadows o'er
An undeveloped Hannah More!—
A latent Mrs. Trimmer!!
Who shall affirm it?—who deny?—
Since of the truth nor you nor I
Discern the faintest glimmer?

So then—Caps off, my Masters all;
Reserve your final word,—recall
Your all-too-hasty strictures;
Caps off, I say, for Wisdom sees
Undreamed potentialities
In most unhopeful pictures.

A FAIRY TALE.

"On court, hélas! après la vérité;
Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son mérite."
Voltaire.

Curled in a maze of dolls and bricks,
I find Miss Mary, ætat six,
Blonde, blue-eyed, frank, capricious,
Absorbed in her first fairy book,
From which she scarce can pause to look,
Because it's "so delicious!"

"Such marvels, too. A wondrous Boat,
In which they cross a magic Moat,
That's smooth as glass to row on—
A Cat that brings all kinds of things;
And see, the Queen has angel wings—
Then Ogre comes"—and so on.

What trash it is! How sad to find
(Dear Moralist!) the childish mind,
So active and so pliant.
Rejecting themes in which you mix
Fond truths and pleasing facts, to fix
On tales of Dwarf and Giant!

In merest prudence men should teach
That cats mellifluous in speech
Are painful contradictions;
That science ranks as monstrous things
Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings—
E'en angels' wings!—are fictions:

That there's no giant now but Steam;
That life, although "an empty dream,"
Is scarce a "land of Fairy."
"Of course I said all this?" Why, no;
I did a thing far wiser, though,—
I read the tale with Mary.

TO A CHILD.

How shall I sing you, Child, for whom
So many lyres are strung;
Or how the only tone assume
That fits a Maid so young?

What rocks there are on either hand!
Suppose—'tis on the cards—
You should grow up with quite a grand
Platonic hate for bards!

How shall I then be shamed, undone,
For ah! with what a scorn
Your eyes must greet that luckless One
Who rhymed you, newly born,—

Who o'er your "helpless cradle" bent
His idle verse to turn;
And twanged his tiresome instrument
Above your unconcern!

Nay,—let my words be so discreet,
That, keeping Chance in view,
Whatever after fate you meet
A part may still be true.

Let others wish you mere good looks,—
Your sex is always fair;
Or to be writ in Fortune's books,—
She's rich who has to spare:

I wish you but a heart that's kind,
A head that's sound and clear;
(Yet let the heart be not too blind,
The head not too severe!)

A joy of life, a frank delight;
A not-too-large desire;
And—if you fail to find a Knight—
At least ... a trusty Squire.

HOUSEHOLD ART.

"Mine be a cot," for the hours of play,
Of the kind that is built by Miss Greenaway;
Where the walls are low, and the roofs are red,
And the birds are gay in the blue o'erhead;
And the dear little figures, in frocks and frills,
Go roaming about at their own sweet wills,
And "play with the pups," and "reprove the calves,"
And do nought in the world (but Work) by halves,
From "Hunt the Slipper" and "Riddle-me-ree"
To watching the cat in the apple-tree.

O Art of the Household! Men may prate
Of their ways "intense" and Italianate,—
They may soar on their wings of sense, and float
To the au delà and the dim remote,—
Till the last sun sink in the last-lit West,
'Tis the Art at the Door that will please the best;
To the end of Time 'twill be still the same,
For the Earth first laughed when the children came!

THE DISTRESSED POET.

One knows the scene so well,—a touch,
A word, brings back again
That room, not garnished overmuch,
In gusty Drury Lane;

The empty safe, the child that cries,
The kittens on the coat,
The good-wife with her patient eyes,
The milkmaid's tuneless throat;

And last, in that mute woe sublime,
The luckless verseman's air:
The "Bysshe," the foolscap and the rhyme,—
The Rhyme ... that is not there!

Poor Bard! to dream the verse inspired—
With dews Castalian wet—
Is built from cold abstractions squired
By "Bysshe," his epithet!

Ah! when she comes, the glad-eyed Muse,
No step upon the stair
Betrays the guest that none refuse,—
She takes us unaware;

And tips with fire our lyric lips,
And sets our hearts a-flame,
And then, like Ariel, off she trips,
And none know how she came.

Only, henceforth, for right or wrong,
By some dull sense grown keen,
Some blank hour blossomed into song,
We feel that she has been.

JOCOSA LYRA.

In our hearts is the Great One of Avon
Engraven,
And we climb the cold summits once built on
By Milton.

But at times not the air that is rarest
Is fairest,
And we long in the valley to follow
Apollo.

Then we drop from the heights atmospheric
To Herrick,
Or we pour the Greek honey, grown blander,
Of Landor;

Or our cosiest nook in the shade is
Where Praed is,
Or we toss the light bells of the mocker
With Locker.

Oh, the song where not one of the Graces
Tight-laces,—
Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly,
But archly,—

Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying,
Comes playing,—
And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer
In answer,—

It will last till men weary of pleasure
In measure!
It will last till men weary of laughter ...
And after!

MY BOOKS.

They dwell in the odour of camphor,
They stand in a Sheraton shrine,
They are "warranted early editions,"
These worshipful tomes of mine;—

In their creamiest "Oxford vellum,"
In their redolent "crushed Levant,"
With their delicate watered linings,
They are jewels of price, I grant;—

Blind-tooled and morocco-jointed,
They have Zaehnsdorf's daintiest dress,
They are graceful, attenuate, polished,
But they gather the dust, no less;—

For the row that I prize is yonder,
Away on the unglazed shelves,
The bulged and the bruised octavos,
The dear and the dumpy twelves,—

Montaigne with his sheepskin blistered,
And Howell the worse for wear,
And the worm-drilled Jesuits' Horace,
And the little old cropped Molière,

And the Burton I bought for a florin,
And the Rabelais foxed and flea'd,—
For the others I never have opened,
But those are the books I read.

THE BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION.

While cynic Charles still trimm'd the vane
'Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,
In days that shocked John Evelyn,
My First Possessor fixed me in.
In days of Dutchmen, and of frost,
The narrow sea with James I cross'd,
Returning when once more began
The Age of Saturn and of Anne.
I am a part of all the past;
I knew the Georges, first and last;
I have been oft where else was none
Save the great wig of Addison;
And seen on shelves beneath me grope
The little eager form of Pope.
I lost the Third that owned me when
French Noailles fled at Dettingen;
The year James Wolfe surpris'd Quebec,
The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;
The day that William Hogarth dy'd,
The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.
This was a Scholar, one of those
Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;
He lov'd old Books and nappy ale,
So liv'd at Streatham, next to Thrale.
'Twas there this stain of grease I boast
Was made by Dr. Johnson's toast.
(He did it, as I think, for Spite;
My Master call'd him Jacobite!)
And now that I so long to-day
Have rested post discrimina,
Safe in the brass-wir'd book-case where
I watch'd the Vicar's whit'ning hair,
Must I these travell'd bones inter
In some Collector's sepulchre!
Must I be torn herefrom and thrown
With frontispiece and colophon!
With vagrant E's, and I's, and O's,
The spoil of plunder'd Folios!
With scraps and snippets that to Me
Are naught but kitchen company!
Nay, rather, Friend, this favour grant me:
Tear me at once; but don't transplant me.

Cheltenham,
Sept. 31, 1792.

PALOMYDES.

Him best in all the dim Arthuriad,
Of lovers of fair women, him I prize,—
The Pagan Palomydes. Never glad
Was he with sweetness of his lady's eyes,
Nor joy he had.

But, unloved ever, still must love the same,
And riding ever through a lonely world,
Whene'er on adverse shield or crest he came,
Against the danger desperately hurled,
Crying her name.

So I, who strove to You I may not earn,
Methinks, am come unto so high a place,
That though from hence I can but vainly yearn
For that averted favour of your face,
I shall not turn.

No, I am come too high. Whate'er betide,
To find the doubtful thing that fights with me,
Toward the mountain tops I still shall ride,
And cry your name in my extremity,
As Palomyde,

Until the issue come. Will it disclose
No gift of grace, no pity made complete,
After much labour done,—much war with woes?
Will you deny me still in Heaven, my sweet;—
Ah, Death—who knows?

ANDRÉ LE CHAPELAIN.

"Plus ne suis ce que j'ay esté
Et ne le sçaurois jamais estre;
Mon beau printemps et mon esté
Ont fait le saut par la fenestre."

Queen Venus, round whose feet,
To tend thy sacred fire,
With service bitter-sweet
Nor youths nor maidens tire;—
Goddess, whose bounties be
Large as the un-oared sea;—

Mother, whose eldest born
First stirred his stammering tongue,
In the world's youngest morn,
When the first daisies sprung:—
Whose last, when Time shall die,
In the same grave shall lie:—

Hear thou one suppliant more!
Must I, thy Bard, grow old,
Bent, with the temples frore,
Not jocund be nor bold,
To tune for folk in May
Ballad and virelay?

Shall the youths jeer and jape,
"Behold his verse doth dote,—
Leave thou Love's lute to scrape,
And tune thy wrinkled throat
To songs of 'Flesh is Grass,'"—
Shall they cry thus and pass?

And the sweet girls go by?
"Beshrew the grey-beard's tune!—
What ails his minstrelsy
To sing us snow in June!"
Shall they too laugh, and fleet
Far in the sun-warmed street?

But Thou, whose beauty bright,
Upon thy wooded hill,
With ineffectual light
The wan sun seeketh still;—
Woman, whose tears are dried,
Hardly, for Adon's side,—

Have pity, Erycine!
Withhold not all thy sweets;
Must I thy gifts resign
For Love's mere broken meats;
And suit for alms prefer
That was thine Almoner?

Must I, as bondsman, kneel
That, in full many a cause,
Have scrolled thy just appeal?
Have I not writ thy Laws?
That none from Love shall take
Save but for Love's sweet sake;—

That none shall aught refuse
To Love of Love's fair dues;—
That none dear Love shall scoff
Or deem foul shame thereof;—
That none shall traitor be
To Love's own secrecy;—

Avert,—avert it, Queen!
Debarred thy listed sports,
Let me at least be seen
An usher in thy courts,
Outworn, but still indued
With badge of servitude.

When I no more may go,
As one who treads on air,
To string-notes soft and slow,
By maids found sweet and fair—
When I no more may be
Of Love's blithe company;—

When I no more may sit
Within thine own pleasànce,
To weave, in sentence fit,
Thy golden dalliance;
When other hands than these
Record thy soft decrees;—

Leave me at least to sing
About thine outer wall,
To tell thy pleasuring,
Thy mirth, thy festival;
Yea, let my swan-song be
Thy grace, thy sanctity.

[Here ended André's words:
But One that writeth, saith—
Betwixt his stricken chords
He heard the Wheels of Death;
And knew the fruits Love bare
But Dead-Sea apples were.]

THE WATER OF GOLD.

"Buy,—who'll buy?" In the market-place,
Out of the market din and clatter,
The quack with his puckered persuasive face
Patters away in the ancient patter.

"Buy,—who'll buy? In this flask I hold—
In this little flask that I tap with my stick, Sir—
Is the famed, infallible Water of Gold,—
The One, Original, True Elixir!

"Buy—who'll buy? There's a maiden there,—
She with the ell-long flaxen tresses,—
Here is a draught that will make you fair,
Fit for an emperor's own caresses!

"Buy,—who'll buy? Are you old and gray?
Drink but of this, and in less than a minute,
Lo! you will dance like the flowers in May,
Chirp and chirk like a new-fledged linnet!

"Buy,—who'll buy? Is a baby ill?
Drop but a drop of this in his throttle,
Straight he will gossip and gorge his fill,
Brisk as a burgher over a bottle!

"Here is wealth for your life,—if you will but ask;
Here is health for your limb, without lint or lotion;
Here is all that you lack, in this tiny flask;
And the price is a couple of silver groschen!

"Buy,—who'll buy?" So the tale runs on:
And still in the great world's market-places
The Quack, with his quack catholicon,
Finds ever his crowd of upturned faces;

For he plays on our hearts with his pipe and drum,
On our vague regret, on our weary yearning;
For he sells the thing that never can come,
Or the thing that has vanished, past returning.

A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE.

The Rose in the garden slipped her bud,
And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood,
As she thought of the Gardener standing by—
"He is old,—so old! And he soon must die!"

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare;
And she laughed once more as she heard his tread—
"He is older now! He will soon be dead!"

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found
That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,
For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener, Time.

DON QUIXOTE.

Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro,
Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack!
To make Wiseacredom, both high and low,
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go)
Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track:
Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest?
Yet would to-day when Courtesy grows chill,
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest—were it but a mill!

A BROKEN SWORD.

The shopman shambled from the doorway out
And twitched it down—
Snapped in the blade! 'Twas scarcely dear, I doubt,
At half-a-crown.

Useless enough! And yet can still be seen,
In letters clear,
Traced on the metal's rusty damaskeen—
"Povr Paruenyr."

Whose was it once?—Who manned it once in hope
His fate to gain?
Who was it dreamed his oyster-world should ope
To this—in vain?

Maybe with some stout Argonaut it sailed
The Western Seas;
Maybe but to some paltry Nym availed
For toasting cheese!

Or decked by Beauty on some morning lawn
With silken knot,
Perchance, ere night, for Church and King 'twas drawn—
Perchance 'twas not!

Who knows—or cares? To-day, 'mid foils and gloves
Its hilt depends,
Flanked by the favours of forgotten loves,—
Remembered friends;—

And oft its legend lends, in hours of stress,
A word to aid;
Or like a warning comes, in puffed success,
Its broken blade.

THE POET'S SEAT.

"Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes Angulus Ridet." —Hor. ii. 6.

It was an elm-tree root of yore,
With lordly trunk, before they lopped it,
And weighty, said those five who bore
Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it
Not once or twice, before it lay.
With two young pear-trees to protect it,
Safe where the Poet hoped some day
The curious pilgrim would inspect it.

He saw him with his Poet's eye,
The stately Maori, turned from etching
The ruin of St. Paul's, to try
Some object better worth the sketching:—
He saw him, and it nerved his strength
What time he hacked and hewed and scraped it,
Until the monster grew at length
The Master-piece to which he shaped it.

To wit—a goodly garden seat,
And fit alike for Shah or Sophy,
With shelf for cigarettes complete,
And one, but lower down, for coffee;
He planted pansies 'round its foot,—
"Pansies for thoughts!" and rose and arum;
The Motto (that he meant to put)
Was "Ille angulus terrarum."

But "Oh! the change" (as Milton sings)—
"The heavy change!" When May departed,
When June with its "delightful things"
Had come and gone, the rough bark started,—
Began to lose its sylvan brown,
Grew parched, and powdery, and spotted;
And, though the Poet nailed it down,
It still flapped up, and dropped, and rotted.

Nor was this all. 'Twas next the scene
Of vague (and viscous) vegetations;
Queer fissures gaped, with oozings green,
And moist, unsavoury exhalations,—
Faint wafts of wood decayed and sick,
Till, where he meant to carve his Motto,
Strange leathery fungi sprouted thick,
And made it like an oyster grotto.

Briefly, it grew a seat of scorn,
Bare,—shameless,—till, for fresh disaster,
From end to end, one April morn,
'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,—
Drilled like a vellum of old time;
And musing on this final mystery,
The Poet left off scribbling rhyme,
And took to studying Natural History.

This was the turning of the tide;
His five-act play is still unwritten;
The dreams that now his soul divide
Are more of Lubbock than of Lytton;
"Ballades" are "verses vain" to him
Whose first ambition is to lecture
(So much is man the sport of whim!)
On "Insects and their Architecture."

THE LOST ELIXIR.

"One drop of ruddy human blood puts more life into the veins of a poem than all the delusive 'aurum potabile' that can be distilled out of the choicest library."—Lowell.