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RHYMES OF 
 A ROUNDER 
 
 B, 
 
 TOM M c I N N E S 
 
 Author of 
 IN AMBER LANDS 
 
 With cover detitfn by 
 
 "PAL" 
 
 BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 835 "Broadway, New Yori City 
 
 \\ 
 
« I . «,>h 
 
 f'..pyrip:ht, VJl'6 
 BY 
 
 TOM McINNICS 
 
 J 
 
Slfymrfi of a fiouniiFr 
 
 Somewhat Concerning Ballades 
 
 ONE morning in September I was strolling 
 downhill toward the gray waterfront of 
 Montreal. It was a morning to make one 
 polite, and I was on business of no particular 
 importance. Passing a fruit-stall. I saw a little boy 
 looking wistfully at a heap of August apples. They 
 were streaked with red and pale green, and to a know- 
 ing eye well advertised the delicious tart juicinesi 
 between the core and the peel. In my mood I asked 
 the boy to have some. He filled his pockets, and I 
 took a couple for myself. They smelt good, and we 
 ate them as two comrades, and with much smacking 
 of our lips, on our way down a quiet side street. 
 
 Already the remote air of autumn was over the city. 
 Domes and steeples, churches, hotels, tenements, 
 gaunt factories and commercial palaces, all alike were 
 steeped in a fine polden haze. The trees were color- 
 ing red and yellow in the surpassing way of Eastern 
 Canada. About our autumn there is a lethal glamour; 
 it is forever hinting at perennial loveliness beyond the 
 mould and compass of this world; in high faith de- 
 claring it, even while sinking before the desolate, des- 
 perate, white face ot winter. And in the fey light of 
 that morning, and the apparent pass.ng of things, I 
 
 1 
 
 ■f. 
 
went figuring another mode of time, wherein the world 
 and all is more happily perceived. To my immediate 
 environment, however, I was recalled by a delighted 
 exclamation from the boy. He had his eye on a gory 
 picture, displayed in a shop window, by which he 
 halted. There was a battle scene from some belated 
 Christmas annual; furious masses of men; trampling 
 horses; the glint of sword and bayonet; the reek of 
 cannon; uproar, blood, and fire. He wanted the pic- 
 ture very much, and that morning found that so far 
 as I was concerned to ask was to receive. 
 
 The shop from the outside was dingy and altogether 
 unpromising. But within there seemed to me a per- 
 fect treasure-trove of books. They were stacked in 
 rather disorderly fashion on counter and shelves; 
 many books greatly valued by a few, others to meet a 
 more general taste, but little of the whole store really 
 popular except the magazines. Because of dusty 
 panes, and patches of brown and yellow paper pasted 
 on them where the sun shone through, there was an 
 atmosphere in the shop that made me think of amber 
 and meerschaum. There were bluish rays through it 
 from two small windows at the rear. The bibliopole 
 in charge looked like a wood-cut from an early edition 
 of Dickens or Balzac. He was rather tall and spare of 
 frame, with a thin gray whisker, and he peered at me 
 with eyes guileless as those of a baby or an old sea 
 captain. His manner was courteous, but all the while 
 he seemed intent on somethmj quite apart from his 
 
 2 
 
Hi 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 SljgmrB of a fiounhpr 
 
 shop and his customer. I felt that he was more or less 
 indifferent about the sale of books, and that he would 
 much rather talk of them to any one whom he could 
 deem an equal in bibliography. My esteem for him 
 was deepened by repeated visits, and I found that he 
 had a notable class of patrons. Eventually he got the 
 notiori that I had a taste for verse of the exotic or 
 decadent order. This I might have denied, but on my 
 second visit to his shop I happened to ask if he knew 
 of any good metrical translation of Baudelaire, and 
 from that question I suppose he came to a conclusion. 
 It sei ved to give me a somewhat hazy interest in his 
 eyes, so I played up to the role assigned me, and as a 
 result he brought various books to my attention which 
 had b n before that unknown to me. Among other 
 things needed for my education, he suggested an an- 
 thology of English verse done in antique Romanesque 
 and Gallic forms. 
 
 I alv/ays approach an anthology in the same dull, 
 half-hearted way that I do a picture gallery or a table- 
 d'hote dinner. The things presented mix in spite of 
 me; they acquire a composite, inferior flavor from 
 each other; I get stuffed without any distinct satis- 
 faction. In an anthology there is nothing to match; 
 one poem jars with another ; there is not that harmo- 
 nizing undertone imparted to a volume by a single 
 author, whose manner and personality prevails through 
 every line from the first to the last page. So I was 
 not at first rightly made acquainted with these intri- 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
l&tf^mB of a IBiamhn 
 
 cate medieval forms. For all practical purposes I had 
 been Ignorant of them until I bought the anthology. 
 Of their value in old French, or as to how well they 
 satisfied an ancient demand. I cannot judge, for I am 
 not learned in these matters. But from what I read 
 of them they seemed for the most part parlor trifJes 
 curios m rhyme, verbal bric-a-brac to the vigor of 
 English unsuited. I found a few turned out in slang 
 by Halverson of Toronto-ballade, villanelle. triolet 
 rondeau and roundel-more to my liking than the la- 
 bored conceits of the anthology. And. doubtless, in 
 Old Provence, when some troubadour-knight would 
 set forth in springtime, with merry jongleurs by his 
 side, to visit a neighboring castle, his plaints and love- 
 songs uttered in these involved forms made good lis- 
 
 th^;;;^T °,'' ^" Jl' ^"^''""- ^^^ *" ^^^^ attempting 
 them I felt as if I were fingering obsolete instruments 
 m the dead atmosphere of a museum; rotes, rebecks, 
 ghitterns, theorbos, gigues. cloncordes. galoots, and 
 what not troubadourish fiddles; goblin-bellied things 
 fantastically stringed; well enough one time maybe 
 for a low serenade to some lady barely out of reach, 
 but now fit for little more than a toy symphony 
 However. I am quite ready to admit that these form 
 may have merit beyond my appreciation. Certainly I 
 have never been so crass as to undervalue precise form 
 n verse. Quite the contrary. To me some verse- 
 ^rms are destinate vehicles of poetic emotion; so 
 much so as to appear in the order of nature. For 
 
just as various minerals strive to crystal according to 
 the pattern chosen by their informing spirit, so cer- 
 tain moods will seek formal verbal expression, will 
 seek to crystallize, and in so doing achieve an eflFect 
 beyond the mere meaning of the words. Some of these 
 forms will appear and persist through many lan- 
 guages. These are essential forms, determined not so 
 much by the style or measure of a line as by the com- 
 bination of lines in a stanza and the rhyme sequence. 
 They have a quality akin to polarity. Consider, for 
 instance, the Italian sonnet; its octave and sestet, its 
 measures and rhyme-sequence, are no more arbitrary 
 or artificial than the cube or hexagon or octagon in 
 which some minerals express their highest vital ac- 
 tivity. The English sonnet, the one original poetic 
 form used by Shakespeare, altho inferior in form- 
 value to the Italian, is nevertheless an essential 
 form if written as four alternately-rhyming quatrains 
 clinched by a couplet. When it does not show these 
 lines of cleavage it is merely a fourteen-line poem, 
 which can be as well done with twelve or sixteen lines 
 so far as nicety of form goes. I had a fair acquaint- 
 ance with all verse forms made native to English in 
 the past, and after some examination of the Roman- 
 esque forms in the aforesaid anthology I felt entitled 
 to express an opinion concerning them. Of these re- 
 stricted forms it seemed to me that with the exception 
 of the Italian sonnet there was nothing to equal in 
 fcrm-value the French ballade. Yet in English we 
 
 5 
 
«l?am^a of a Snun&^r 
 
 find a hundred good sonnets for one good ballade 
 An., some wrxters ask why. for the forms are equally 
 anient and the one is no more difficult of acWeve 
 ment than the other. Yet the true reason should be 
 
 the fate of the Italian sonnet in English if Petrarch 
 
 firmed 1''T """^^^^ ^"' °**^^^ ^^^^-^ ^^oTn- 
 rhTr^l : '^'^' ''' '^^" "^'^^^^ -to -aking the 
 
 master wou,H H "' "'^ '*^ ^"^^ *'^^ '^'^t" School- 
 master would have ms.sted upon keeping such a bie 
 
 d um blunder unaltered, and would have been super 
 -hous toward any other form and called i i, eg7t . 
 tTmes\orsrr he impertinently applies some- 
 neUn Enlr ,^^"'^"P"^'"" ^°""^t- The Italian son- 
 net m Enghsh would then have been as blighted with 
 
 banar^'xrth^ "°"' 'r ''' '"^^^ P-^' '^^ F- H 
 in " w- h Pallid': s^tu^re"" '''^ ^^^^ ^'^ '-^■ 
 
 To lift 1 r^ r " language the forms pass on 
 
 a bit lf\^'"?" '^°" °"^ ^^"^"^g« to another "s 
 a bit of magic seldom accomplished. But it is don. 
 at times without ln« • ;♦ «, !. "°ne 
 
 The fine Cuh of c "J T^r"" =°'"' ^''"• 
 scholars , rnh!,hf • ^"""'" "^ ""her Elizabethan 
 
 F..zge.al. ,avc O.ar .o us, sl^^lrZyZ-'^ 
 
 6 
 

 r'^d 
 
 given Shakespeare to the Germans. But such trans- 
 lations are indeed rare. Poetic forms, however, are 
 easily adapted from one language to another; in fact, 
 the forms will outlast the language in which they first 
 appear. In some languages we find an excess of 
 rhyme, rich or insipid, according to the twist of our 
 ear. This seems to have been especially true of the 
 Lang d'Oc. About the cord of that language the poets 
 of Provence gave first shape to the alba, serena, sir- 
 vente, canza, rondel, triolet, virelai, villandle, and 
 other verse-forms. Truly crystalline they appear, but 
 blurred with unvaried rhyme. For excuse it may be 
 said that in the Lang d'Oc it was probably more dif- 
 ficult to keep the rhymes out of a stanza than put them 
 in, and so, in order to maintain the metrical restric- 
 tions and exclusiveness which some poets think a nec- 
 essary part of theii art, most of these poems were 
 made to keep to one set of rhymes, those asso- 
 ciated in the first stanza. This custom added to the 
 difficulties of achievement, but largely at the expense 
 of virility, color and euphony, the qualities most worth 
 while in any poem. These troubadours of Provence 
 trained themselves to many vaudeville tricks as a part 
 of their calling, such as catching apples on the point 
 of a dagger, leaping through rings, playing a great va- 
 riety of instruments in difficult positions. It was all 
 taken as part of their profession. And so quite natur- 
 ally the spirit of vaudeville, the love of aptly doing 
 difficult things in the most difficult way, made its in- 
 
 7 
 
 , ifr 
 
 i4!: 
 
 'A 
 
fluence felt in their verse-making. The poets of 
 Northern France, whose tongue was destined to sur- 
 vive the Lang d'Oc, took over these Provence forms 
 TJIVI ^^^'^,7"otone rhyme system, and still fur- 
 lade iT^'i '''"• ^'^" ^PP"^*^^ ^^^ French bal- 
 ade and the chant royal, the latter a monster of intri- 
 cate monotony wh,ch in English is fairly humpbacked 
 w th the rhyme U carries. It staggers to a weary close 
 after supportmg sixty-one lines on a shift of only five 
 i^me-tones. Those who achieve these things may be 
 
 Arsons'? "'•*'°'' "'° ^'' '^^'^^^ °^ ^'^^^ -ay be 
 persons of prec.se culture; but musicians they are not 
 
 vaudewile' t""'' I' ' ^"^' '°^ ^^^ '^^^ °^^ ^^ 
 otherTf tf '"TP^^"^ '-^ -«"«• And so with some 
 
 sest na Th" Tl ''"' '"'^^ '' ^^''^' ^^^^^y the 
 sestina. They all. however, have been seriously and 
 
 exhaustively discoursed upon by old writers If onf 
 
 tne year 1390, when appeared "The Art of Makinir 
 Chansons. Ballades, Virelais and Rondels," by S 
 tache Deschamps: about a century later H,nr„ / 
 Croi published "The Art and Science e of Rhe.orfc t 
 "se";V "'T'' "" «="="«••= then iZl", 
 ed ?n "The."" r""'" ■^""P" ™ "" '°™= collect- 
 Maurus; and so on down the centuries, until in EnT. 
 
 Parlian:."™!! "> ^"f °°''""- '" '"e Library ff 
 t-arliament are several such books. But there is snnT. 
 danger .n the study of then,; you wiU ri^k the'obr 
 
 8 
 
%l|gmFB of a Somtbrr 
 
 sion of rules ; you may become a mere metrical virtu- 
 oso, and lose what poetic vision you have ; either that, 
 or you will begin to scunner at all verse. The fine 
 points of poetic form should be apparent at sight; 
 should be appreciated without study; should, above 
 all, not be rendered distasteful by pedantic anatomy. 
 One admires a beautiful body, but the sense of beauty 
 vanishes with dissection. Beauty can never be the 
 subject of precise analysis; it can never be evoked by 
 formulas. Beauty is a spirit of which we are for a 
 moment aware through some inexact synthesis of odor, 
 color, sound, shape, motion, or verbal allusion. It 
 arouses in varying degree a characteristic emotion, 
 somehow reminiscent, somehow premonitory, under 
 stress of which we vaguely feel the need of other 
 senses with which to embrace something supremely 
 desirable and presently unattainable. Beauty for our 
 perception must have a body of some kind, but being 
 too finical as to its body is the surest way to lose it- 
 And so while poetic technique is well enough in its 
 way. yet verse whose excellence is estimated by good 
 conduct marks for obedience to rules and established 
 usage has but the lowest form of beauty; it sinks to 
 the level of being merely skilful, mathematic, or true 
 to type. And this is well shown of ballads and bal- 
 lades, concerning which I have learned a little for 
 those who may be willing to take my say-so without 
 troubling further. 
 There is a Latin verb, "ballare," to dance. Ball, 
 
 Q 
 
 
 I 
 
fiI?amM of a finmifter 
 
 ballet, billiards, ballad and ballade all come out of this 
 verb. But now a ballad has little to do with dancing, 
 and a ballade nothing. Yet always a thing is older 
 than us name, and like enough the ballad as a com- 
 bmation of song and dance was universal long before 
 Latin was contrived ; probably it was familiar to folk 
 of the Stone Age. Touching on this point, Puttenham 
 said some time ago: 
 
 "Poesic is more ancient than the artificiall of the 
 Greeks and Latines. and used of the savage and un- 
 civill, who were before all science and civilitie. This 
 is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers 
 who by late navigations have surveyed the whole 
 world, and discovered wild people, strange and savage, 
 afSrmmg that the American, the Perusine. and the 
 very Caniball do sing and also say their highest and 
 holiest matters in certain riming versicles."— Art of 
 English Poesie, 1589. 
 
 The ballad as a popular song, the ballad as a popu- 
 lar epic, and the ballade as a highly evolved poetic 
 form beyond popular appreciation have this one feat- 
 ure ,n common-the repetition of idea and phrase 
 This repetition is irregular in most songs and epics 
 regulated in such forms as the English roundelay and 
 the Scotch ring-sang, and precise in the ballade, as 
 hereafter shown. It is worth noting that the Eng- 
 lish term "roundelay" is applied equally to songs and 
 dances in which certain parts are repeated at set in- 
 tervals. This tendency to rhythmic repetition continues 
 
 10 
 
Slfgm^a of a Snimd^r 
 
 through all songs sung by men in the open, and gen- 
 erally appears in the song and dance ballads rendered 
 by the cantabanks of modern vaudeville. Here is a 
 specimen stanza, picked up at random on the wharves 
 of Montreal: 
 
 As I went strolling down the street, 
 All in the town of Rio, 
 
 A damsel neat I chanct to meet 
 Who closed at me one eye-o, 
 Who winkt at me her eye-o 1 (jig ad lib.) 
 
 Note, please, the last two lines. They exemplify a 
 certain poetic device used as naturally and instinc- 
 tively now by common song-smiths as it was used 
 ages ago in primitive Hebrew prosody. I mean the 
 repetition of the same idea with some variation of 
 words. Why this trick should be pleasing or effec- 
 tive I do not know; but at times it is so very much. 
 Perhaps it has some hypnotic influence. David con- 
 tinually resorted to it in his psalms: and it has been 
 used by many writers of English verse. I quote the 
 following examples as I find them ready to hand; 
 there may be others better: 
 
 !li 
 
 Praise him upon the loud cymbals: 
 
 Praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals. 
 
 —David. 
 
 Our soul is bowed down to the dust: 
 Our belly deaveth unto the earth. 
 
 n 
 
 —David. 
 
 w 
 
«l?HmPB of a JRnuniipr 
 
 He raiseth the poor out of the dust- 
 He hiteth the needy out of the dunghUl. 
 
 —David. 
 
 As the scoriae rivers that roll 
 
 As the lavas that restlessly roU 
 
 In flf"" =;"'P^"fO"s torrents down Yaanek 
 In the ultimate climes of the pole: 
 
 In tht* *'^?*" as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
 In the realms of the boreal pole. »aanek 
 
 —Edgar Allan Poe. 
 And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers 
 
 No Sn""^ ""k '*'"'y withered years- 
 No flower, but twenty shrivellid years. 
 
 —Francis Thompson. 
 
 My theory is that certain emotions, ranging from 
 nbald to sacred, if awakened in men of certain brain 
 and temperament, will manifest fixt verbal forms, irre- 
 spectiye of age or language, as fitly and inevitably as 
 crystals about a cord, or frost-flowers upon a window- 
 pane. 
 
 These forms vary greatly in construction and in- 
 
 tar'v'L J '^' "^'^'"'^^ ^'^'y ^PP"^ -"di'"^"- 
 
 ary . among the Persians they appear more complex 
 
 1 Frale" ' *'' ""' extravagant rhymers of 
 iJ^.t ^^^^1'"/°^"* ^" ^"Sland and Scotland dur- 
 simp e and loose construction, and was concerned 
 mamly with chivalric combat, beleaguered love or 
 
 d at wm"tT:h" '"''• " '"' ^"^^- '' -- ^^-t^ 
 
 ed at will to the vampmg of a harp; contained aa 
 
 12 
 
filjgmrB of a finunirr 
 
 indefinite number of stanzr.s of four, six or eight lines, 
 alternating usually on four and three accents, the hnes 
 of three accents rhyming, the others unrhymed, or 
 rhyming on themselves. Free use was made of asso- 
 nance and alliteration. The following sUnzas are 
 quoted to show the average form and structure of 
 these old ballads: 
 
 Hearken to me, gentlemen; 
 
 Come and you shall hear, 
 I'll tell of two of the boldest brethren 
 
 That ever born y-were. 
 
 (Ballad of King Estmere, 15th Century.) 
 
 And I would never tire Janet 
 
 In fairyland to dwell. 
 But aye at ilka seven years 
 
 They pay the teind to hell: 
 And I'm so fair and fat o' flesh 
 
 I fear 'twill be mysel. 
 
 (Ballad of Tamlane. 16th Century.) 
 
 Gowden glist the yellow links 
 
 That round her neck she'd twine; 
 Her eyen were o* the skyie blue. 
 
 Her lips did mock the wine; 
 Tne smile upon her bonnie cheek 
 
 Was sweeter than the bee; 
 Her voice excellt the birdie's song 
 
 Upon the birchen-tree. 
 
 (Ballad of the Mermaid, 18th Century.) 
 
 Sometimes these ballads had a refrain or chorus at 
 the end of each stanza; sometimes a hcy-derry-dozvn 
 between the lines, like the ^ai-falurm^-falurette of the 
 ancient French songs which one may hear in Quebec. 
 Here is a refrain intended to be imitative : 
 
 13 
 
 I: 
 
 ff 
 
Sljamra nf a finunif r 
 
 As I cam in by Garioch land 
 
 Mnd doun by Netherha", 
 There were hity thousand Hielandmen 
 A' marching to Harlaw, 
 
 Wi' a drie drie drie didronilie drie. 
 
 (The Raid of Kedswire, 16th Century.) 
 
 A notable instance of a form passing to another 
 language is found in one of the old ballads, the "Bat- 
 tle of Harlaw." In that ballad is used the exact stanza 
 of the French ballade; the stanza used by Villon in 
 carrying on the tale of his Testaments. I quote two 
 stanzas : 
 
 The armies met, the trumpet soundi, 
 
 The dandring drums aloud did tuck: 
 Baith armies biding on the bounds 
 
 Till ane o' them the field should brook: 
 
 Nae help was there, for nane would douk, 
 Fierce was the fight on ilka side. 
 
 And on the ground lay many a buck 
 Of them that there did battle bide. 
 
 Sir James Scri.ngeor of Duddop, knicht. 
 
 Great Constable of fair Dundee, 
 Unto the duleful death was dicht, — 
 
 The King's chief bannerman was he: 
 
 A valiant man of chevalrie. 
 Whose predecessors won that place 
 
 At Spey, with gude King William frie, 
 'Gainst Murray and Macduncan's race. 
 
 (Battle of Harlaw, l«th Century.) 
 
 Such a form, however, is too involved for a straight- 
 and-away story such as the old minstrels wished to 
 tell. For what they wanted was a form to carry or 
 make memorable a story, not a form to dominate a 
 
 14 
 
fitfgmra of a Saimbrr 
 
 sentiment or scrap of philosophy as supplied by the 
 Irench ballade. The English ballad was brought to 
 perfection by the Scotch. It was in that lost time 
 when the Lowlanders of the Border were the knight- 
 lier,t people of Europe. And that was before the time 
 of Burns; before the sway of the Shorter Catechism 
 and the smut of its reaction: a time when the true 
 religion of the Border was high in the afterglow of 
 legendary days— Gothic, Celtic, Arthurian, if you 
 please — but far above Geneva and unafraid of Rome. 
 As a last echo of that time will you find in any other 
 literature lines so simply loyal and lorn as these: 
 
 When day is gone, and night is come. 
 
 And a' are boun to sleep, 
 I think on them that's far awa' 
 The lee lang night and weep, my dear — 
 
 The lee lang night, and weep! 
 
 (Early Jacobite.) 
 
 M or of quainter omen than these : 
 
 Yestreen I saw the new Moon 
 
 Wi' the auld Moon in her arms, 
 And I fear. I fear, my Master dear, 
 
 We shall have a dreadful storm! 
 
 (Sir Patric Spens, 16th Century.) 
 
 The French ballade is in nearly all respects dis- 
 tinct from the ordinary ballad. Its form is pre- 
 cise; it has no story to tell; its manner is lyric; 
 its motive didactic. It is a vehicle for the reiteration 
 of some sentiment or aphorism. Those who essay it 
 
 IS 
 
 ; i 
 
 1 - 
 
 -■ 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
in English have been content with the final "t" of 
 French spelling, and consequent accentation of the 
 second syllable, to distinguish it in name from the 
 English ballad. Some other name might better have 
 been chosen for sake of distinction. But however it 
 be called a French ballade may be made in English in 
 this manner: Take a single sentiment; beat up a 
 tune answering to a line of three, four or five accents, 
 but preferably four; strain the sentiment over eight 
 such lines with a rhyme-sequence of a. b. a, b, b, c, b, c; 
 put the kernel of your idea, or the emphatic color of 
 your sentiment, into the last line as the burden or re- 
 frain of the poem. Then make two more such stan- 
 zas, using the same rhyme-tones in the same order, 
 and keeping the last line in each stanza the same as 
 the last line of the first stanza. Having done this, 
 smoothly finish the thing off with a quatrain, call it 
 the envoy, address it by way of compliment to your 
 prince, mistress, creditor, or other person in author- 
 ity; keep the same rhyme-tones for this quatrain with 
 the sequ.-nce b, c, b. c, and the refrain unaltered as in 
 the preceding stanzas. This will be a ballade of the 
 first form. 
 
 The second form has three stanzas of ten lines with 
 a rhyme sequence of a. b, a, b, b. c. c. d, c, d, and an 
 envoy of five lines rhyming c. c. d, c, d. Ballades of 
 the first form are allowed three rhymes; those of the 
 second form, four rhymes. And if your pedantry ex- 
 
 16 
 
St^gmra of a Kound^r 
 
 ceeds your esthetic sense, and you would show your 
 skill, then you will permit the length of your refrain 
 to not only dominate the length of each line, but if 
 youi refrain contains eight syllables you will adopt 
 the eight-line stanza, and if ten syllables then the ten- 
 line stanza ; and if neither eight nor ten syllables, then 
 you will throw it aside and try another. The double 
 ballade, the ballade of double refrain, and the chant 
 royal are ballades built rococo. The double ballade 
 has six stanzas of eight or ten lines with or without 
 an envoy. The ballade of double refrain has a sub- 
 ordinate refrain which occurs in the fourth line of 
 each of the first three stanzas, and the second of the 
 envoy, with a rhyme sequence of a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c, 
 and the envoy rhyming b, b, c, c. To the chant royal 
 I have already referred in a cursory way. The ba- 
 roque ballade discards the refrain and envoy alto- 
 gether, and is of indefinite length. It is the eight-line 
 stanza of the first form continued till the theme is 
 exhausted; each stanza independent as to its own 
 rhymes, but keeping to the order of the first form: 
 that is, a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c This is a fine virile form, 
 suited for descriptive, reflective, or even narrative 
 verse, as shown by the Scotch ballad above quoted, 
 the "Battle of Harlaw." No doubt the finest baroque 
 in English is Swinburne's translation of Villon's 
 "Complaint of the Fair Armouress." Unfortunately, 
 Swinburne for once grew prudish, and gave us Vil- 
 lon's greatest poem disfigured with printer's fig leaves. 
 
 17 
 
 \f 
 
 
Sl?gmpfl nf a Camber 
 
 This was a shameful thing ,o do. In the most off.n- 
 S.V. way possible i, tells the reader that Vi lorha, 
 wrmen verse unfit to print. Even if true it i" ^o 
 necessary to blur, it ou, in th.s fashion; and or so 
 
 h s sad bad, glad, mad brother's name" will „" 
 
 berused""^: " ""u "r'"""^' ■"«•" "-'y have 
 r,,H 1 i ' "" ''" °' 'he bashful English 
 
 reader. A hand so deft a^i th,. „r o ■ i. "^"B"'" 
 ■iit-.i 1. *^* °f Swinburne couIH 
 
 surely have touched liscreetw nn ,11 ■ ',?"'"' 
 
 ^::n"r''rhe"'o'i/:w:e"t'di;7: ^=" ""'" "« ■■-<-' 
 
 "Squatting above the straw-fire's blaze 
 The bosom crush'd against the knee.-" 
 
 likfoL^n'l ''''' ^'^^ "f '^ '^'^"^'^ "^^'^'^ Swinburne l.ft 
 
 trrt:-xnf^„'^.L-ii^-rdtr 
 
 cannot be surpassed. ^ decay- 
 
 ladder' Sol'V" ''•' "'''' °' ^^^'" ^ "^^^^ --- bal- 
 iades Some time in sprmg I broke them up and he 
 
 l'we°tr;otm ^^^-r^'^— his: 'l ^J fl 
 verv diffl u- ^""^^^^'y *^"°"gh. and found it no 
 
 very difficult thing to do after a few trials. But re- 
 
 18 
 
Slfgm^a of n Vimmhtr 
 
 the exquisite rendering of that ballade by Rossetti. 
 And studying Payne's translations, and also the bal- 
 lades and other forms in the aforementioned an- 
 thology, I dissented from their mode of construc- 
 tion to the extent of thinking that in English linked 
 stanzas of the Romanesque order should not be made 
 entirely dependent upon preceding stanzas for rhyme - 
 tones. The rule is irrational; the result satiety. The 
 first stanza of a ballade in E: glish will appear shapely 
 and sound well if at all w. ( done. But contmuance 
 of the same rhyme-tones through the second stanza 
 will induce a faded effect, and the ideas, if any there 
 happen to be, are apt to seem trite. As we enter the 
 third stanza, we feel a sense of stuffiness from the 
 same rhyme breathed too often; and generally by the 
 time we find ourselves in the envoy we are longing to 
 open a window in the thing and let in some fresh air. 
 In prosody it is, of course, well to insist upon rules, 
 if they be good rules. But one must not let rules 
 become impertinent; above all if they sin against 
 euphony. This is true for all matters of language, and 
 need hardly be argued ; none but a grammarian would 
 hold otherwise. Touching on grammar, by the way, 
 brings to mind that rule concerning the verb to be. 
 Suppose the French, in forming their language, had 
 been dominated by schoolmen with abnormal respect 
 for what they would call logic, but with ears dull to 
 the cadence of vowels. Then the French of to-day, 
 instead of rising above the rule of the verb to be when 
 
 19 
 
 I 
 
euphony requires, as, vastly to their credit th,„ a 
 would now be trying to say^'Vest jl" i^ea^ S^'^' .^ 
 
 1^ th . , ''• ''""'"^ '^y^"^ °^«^ ^aces, recog 
 mze that clar.ty and euphony must be mainta ned as 
 
 wr'iLr'T;" ^^^^ ^" ^^"^"^^^- ^- -y-" 
 
 TraLn, . "^^^ *° ^^°^" ^«^<^«" a rule o 
 
 answer me to the query "who's there"- and I 
 prefer to say -that's her" instead of "that's sh; '' 
 Acceptmg euphony, then, as a principle above all 
 
 French"C°?'HV".''"^^ ^'" ^" ^"^"^^ '•^"-i- 
 to b. h/ T, ^"'^' ^'' *°° "^"^^'^ d^°ne about it 
 to be desirable. It may sound otherwise, of course in 
 
 go:s we,;^"/rH^^- . ^^^^ *^^ ^--^^ a' .v-rr^h " 
 
 scrioZl; "' '' '' '" '"^^P'^ P""' unendurable in 
 
 senous or even comic verse. So to the French the 
 
 i^ ELL me now in what hidden way is 
 KJ Where's Hrn'^'H-^°^^^^^°'"^"? 
 
 i^they'^'or:h^e^T^ter^w'o:?a'n%^^ '^ T^-. 
 
 Only heard on river and mere.- ' 
 
 But w"erc"are"th*/ "" "''''.' ^^'^^ »^""^^n? 
 wnere are the snows of yester-year' 
 
 20 
 
i^^^^'^^-^mT-'^Wv^-. 
 
 Stigmra of a Sauni^^r 
 
 Where's Heloise, the learned nun. 
 
 For whose sake Abcillard, I wscn, 
 Lost manhood and put priesthood on? 
 
 From love he won such dule and teen I 
 
 And where, I pray you, is the Queen 
 Who willed that Buridan should steer 
 
 Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? 
 But where are the snows of yester-year? 
 
 White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, 
 
 With a voice like any mermaiden, — 
 Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice 
 
 And Ermengarde, the lady of Maine, — 
 
 And that good Joan whom Englishmen 
 At Rouen doom'd and burn'd her there,— 
 
 Mother of God, where are they then? — 
 But whe» ■ the snows of yester-year? 
 
 Nay, nev.i ask this week, fair lord. 
 Where they are gone, nor yet this year. 
 
 Except with this for an overword, — 
 
 But where are the snows of yester-year? 
 
 (The Ballad of Dead Ladies.) 
 
 
 Now compare the above Rossetti form with two 
 other versions of this ballade in the strict French form, 
 the first by John Payne, the second by Andrew Lang. 
 
 I. 
 
 ^^J ELL me where, in what land of shade, 
 § 'j Bides fair Flora of Rome, and where 
 ^^^ Are Thais and Archipiade, 
 
 Cousins-german of beauty rare. 
 
 And Echo, more than mortal fair, 
 That, when one calls by river flow 
 
 Or marish, answers out of the air? 
 But what is become of last year's snow? 
 
 II. 
 Where d'.d the learned Heloisa vade. 
 For whose sake Abelard might not spare 
 
 21 
 
 'l\ 
 
 i^' 
 
Floating down s. n, J^"''' l*"""'" '" 
 
 Broad-toot Bertha- ur,A i ^^re, 
 The eood r ^r ^ ^ J°^" '*^« maid 
 
 BuT^wha't'hL''h^' Virgin; debonair? 
 
 What has become of last year', snow? 
 
 p . Envoi. 
 
 Thi!' y°\"'^y question how they fare 
 ihis week, or li^f^r ♦^.;„ ^' ^^^ 
 
 (Ballade of Old Time Ladies.) 
 
 Q AY tell me now in what strange air 
 wlere aTv" ^^°^* ^^^"^ "o day • 
 BeautiS^l'' Thafs haT^'af i"'^"' ^"^ ''h"* 
 Whence answ?rs'Shra"i/7s^;a, 
 
 Npv K,.l ! ^!^^" ^ woman of clav 
 Nay. but where is the last year's snow? 
 
 Where is wise Heloise. that care 
 LT'"^^ poor monk in ord' rs gr.,- 
 
 22 
 
Where's that White Queen, a lily rare. 
 
 With her sweet song, the Siren's lay? 
 Where's Bertha Broadtoot, Beatrice fair? 
 
 Alys and Ermcngarde, where are they? 
 
 Good Joan, whom English did oetray 
 In Rouen town and burned hr-P No, 
 
 Maiden and Queen, no man may say; 
 Nay, but where is the last year's snow? 
 
 Envoi. 
 Prince, all this week thou need'st not pray. 
 
 Nor yet this year the thing to know: 
 One burden answers, ever and aye, 
 "Nay, but where is the last year's' snow?" 
 
 (Ballade of Dead Ladies.) 
 
 These three translations preserve the same form, 
 the same ideas, the same names, the same refrain, 
 Rossetti, however, varies the rhyme-tones with each 
 stanza, while Payne and Lang keep strictly to the 
 French mode of three rhyme-tones for the entire poem. 
 Rossetti's version from first to last is echoing a plain- 
 tive antique melody in keeping with the burden of the 
 poem; the withered whisper of sedge-grass by some 
 clear pool in a barren land ; and in the distance the lute 
 of a troubadour. The tone-value of the other two 
 versions in comparison is — well, some people like the 
 not unmusical buzz of a blue-bottle fly against a win- 
 dow. In a wide world let each one have his choice. 
 But to be quite fair to Payne, who, according to those 
 who should know, was a most exact and scholarly 
 translator, it must be admitted that his rendering of 
 Villon's "Second Ballade of Lords of Old Time" in 
 the strict French manner is a true poem from every 
 
 23 
 
 
 U. 
 
 ■ r 
 
Sl?gti»a nf a Snunbpr 
 
 sider it pre enable h °'""' "^ ""^ ^^°"^d ^°"- 
 
 idea, figu e or ' niiL" ? K "''" "^^ "'^'^^"^ ^°- °f 
 and JecZ7ZZT ' ',"' "°' "^*'°"* '°^^ ^' tone 
 sacrificed f J "rr^ ^'^ "'" ^^--^ always be 
 
 stead of thl ? '"""^ "'"^^^ be followed in- 
 
 stead of the tone variation of Rossetti 
 
 th Jfac°u7tythich VuiLs""' f ^'^"^^' ^°"^'°^-<^ ^-^ 
 linked staL:s at n"; tr; d^^B^t^r "/ ''''' 
 and control of them is a nice affaif ' I !, m' ' ''*'°" 
 difficulty of con^frur. n'ce attair. I would stop at no 
 
 uiiy oi construction which would be iii«:tJfi«^ k 
 results; but mer^'ly to retain nr ^^ J"stifi-d by 
 
 tions for the sake of .!, ^ "''*'''^' '■«^"^- 
 
 receiving suVgestioL th'^r*'"^ ''''^' °^ °^ ^^^^^^ 
 
 one wr^er.ls^rdl :teT'a:: T"^"^^"^^^ '^ 
 which is not essential tn fT u ^^ ^"triction 
 
 N..;. co.p,r.!r„r. ^i^*:::- ■: :;™;- 
 
 'ng. have any intrinsic poetic value Mn T 
 
 eve. .H,nks an cbjec. „ .n..a„::' :o„^°,rsrbr.!! 
 
 24 
 
ful because of its rarity or intricacy. Such a notion is 
 excusable only in collectors of stamps or insects or 
 blue china. A ruby now is as beautiful as in the days 
 of Solomon, notwithstanding that science has now 
 made it far more common. Gold will always be beauti- 
 ful and platinum ugly in spite of the false taste which 
 would countenance the use of platinum for jewelry in- 
 stead of gold on account of its rarity. The Sun would 
 gain nothing in beauty by appearing but once a year. 
 And I assert that altho I have heard a man play tunes 
 very acceptably on a fiddle, balancing himself the while 
 on a slack wire, yet his music had no added value by 
 reason of the difficult position maintained. Rather I 
 appreciated the music the more when I closed my 
 eyes to the acrobat. Yet Gleeson White, an accepted 
 authority in these matters, actually speaks of restric- 
 tions as if they had value in themselves, and, referring 
 to French ballades in English, hr says: "They must 
 exhibit the art which conceals art, whether by intense 
 care in every minute detail, or a happy faculty for 
 naturally wearing these fetters. The dance in chains 
 must be skilful, the chains worn as decorative ad- 
 juncts, and the whole with as much apparent ease as 
 the unfettered dancer could produce." 
 
 I am impatient of any such conception of things 
 poetic. A girl's foot compressed to an ugly knob was 
 once a conventional Chinese notion of beauty in the 
 extreme ; the 30-called "golden lily foot," an unsightly 
 bulb fit to be buried, but surely no lily. Why be such 
 
 25 
 
 1 li 
 
 Si 
 
 ,il 
 
 'I 
 
KhgmrH 0f a finunft 
 
 n 
 
 a vaudeviJIian as to ask T*r« • u 
 
 ■n Chains, „r Salom. " da^'cT!:: hoVb" 'T ' '"""'P 
 «vcr, Gletson White has .„! '' "■""' "ow- 
 
 Views. Th.ophi„ Ga„ „7„';„'™"^ "«""« '"' >■■•» 
 ExccJlence of Poetry "ays ""^ """"' "Tl" 
 
 v.:«:whir'Zyt:H:rv''™"^ - ^-^ « «'- 
 
 "<>. .o count for JyZ^ Tr'."^ f '" "'^-Itics 
 that there are nlentv J' , ^ am well aware 
 
 ficulties should ^ot"^, ,:Xl -^o claim that dif- 
 art if it be not the meanV f '°""*'' ^^ what is 
 
 "ature puts in the way of cr°7'n°'"'"^ '^' ^^^^^^^le. 
 And Andrew LanT ,n "^^^^^'^^tion of thought." 
 
 -^th app.oval ano h;r S °' ^'^ '^"^^^' ^"-" 
 as follows: '^"'^ ^"ter. M. Lemaitre. 
 
 "The poet who begins a bal!.^. -i 
 exactly what he wii nu. "^"^ "°* '^"ow very 
 
 "othing but the rhrme win T ''^ "^^^ '^^y^^' and 
 and charming. thineTh. ./^^ ''^'"S^ ""expected 
 .^•^t for her. aH unte'djn .hTci;- ' "/"^'^^^ ^^°"^^* ^^ 
 '"g. indeed, is richer il, "" °^ ^ ^'■^^"'- Noth- 
 of these difficul p e, thefr^" ^" *'^ ^^^^ ^«- 
 afield, hunting high and f ^'"'^ *° "^"^^^ 
 
 th-ugh all th'e world that Z; T "''^^ ^'^^ -^^^ 
 ---PPe.shemaJ^.;;X^-:-^ 
 
 ^e';t^^:::ii;rw' r- ^^^- - a caterpinar as 
 
 -assof verbiage'seelcTn^rprsV^r I'l^ ^^ng a 
 
 & a passable route by which he 
 26 
 
may arrive at some place not in view and unguessed of 
 at the beginning of his tour. Hear, rather, what Bau- 
 delaire says: 
 
 "A good author is already thinking of his last line 
 as he is penning his first." 
 
 From a height one may overlook the whole of a 
 forest which he is to traverse on his way to an in- 
 tended goal, and he may see the goal also, without 
 seeing the flowers that will lie in his path, or even 
 all the trees. Thus I agree that seldom can any poem 
 worth while be commenced the end of which is not 
 already determined in the writer's mind. But of course 
 "things unexpected and charming," as Lemaitre says, 
 may be met with on the tangled way from the first to 
 the last verse. Nevertheless, a true poem is conceived 
 in a moment; at the moulding and lining of it a man 
 may take his time. And this must be as true of a 
 ballade as of any other form of poem. Maintaining 
 this for the content of such a ballade, I have felt that 
 as to tone the modification made by Rossetti of dif- 
 ferent rhymes for different stanzas will be found more 
 harmonious in our language than the restricted French 
 method of construction, and with some natural dif- 
 fidence I have attempted to show cause. 
 
 The Rossetti form of ballade consists of three stan- 
 2as of eight lines and a closing quatrain, each line 
 turning on four accents without regard to syllables. 
 Accent, or stress, as declared by Coleridge, and always 
 tacitly recognized by Scottish and English poets, is 
 
 27 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
•sj^^n 
 
 ShympH nf a Snutiipr 
 
 s^mc tone in „ch thirH 1 ^""°"'"K only for the 
 Rossci form of ba, ad ,'r '1°" "" "'"'"■ "« 
 hereinbefore described In I ' "l """'" '°™ «", 
 •-^*«" ™any of the rhytf rir "^'"'' "' ""^ 
 ««n, of being mere aCnances ^.T ! 'T '° "■« 
 «hey have a rich sweetne.» ."^ . '" ""» P""" 
 'n .he Cosing qua.ra^To . " t.T" ""'^ '-"- 
 "•ord in lieu of a rhyme Z "''"'' "" ^>n» 
 
 "« has grace by itHerv^reM "'"'''' """^ "■ «hi' 
 P''". Speaking'genera,^ ^oThe c I "'"' '' "™- 
 o-- "voy. I think it should „V, . ""« l^^rain. 
 to any particular person 1 T '^"°'" *" addressed 
 
 - .h. Climax or P^rTtirrf I^/^p^ "n' :""'" 
 h= heard as the closing chord ■ ,h « ?' "*"' '" '« 
 about all I would sav con™ ' I "'' "'"'■ ^hat i, 
 
 Most guitar pt^ers a" famT "'"'"''" 
 ish mode of tuninr hel ■ ^ """" '*" °M Span- 
 for some fandango's anj soecT"'- " '= '"" "«« 
 "a. a better .ff«t is had^ Lrm^d ^^ '" ^"■ 
 longer intervals between th. „ "■" "">^' of 
 
 instrument is still a gu"ar I /P'" .^'""S^- And the 
 
 "« one has venturfd o varvThl",!""''" '" '^"'■ 
 
 tcred interval and added rhvme "'"'"' ""* al- 
 
 -e «h. Italian /. J r„ ,/"!:/"n '""^ ""P""- 
 
 ^nbmi, four such in th booT ",'"'"' '°'"'- ' 
 
 "^ing a local form, five s an.a o f "p""' ""™»-' 
 
 28 '''^' hnes linked. 
 
E^r^^^r^^^' 
 
 SJ?gmf H of a Sounbrr 
 
 The few who care about these punctilious forms 
 may say that it is an impertinence to alter them: 
 doubtless the many who are indifferent to them will 
 th.nk we make much ado about nothing. For the gen- 
 eral pubhc. rightly enough, is as little concerned for 
 he tcchn.caht.es of verse as for the classifications of 
 he concholog.st. Major, minor, minimus, the chief 
 trouble w.th poets apart from being hard put to it for 
 a l.v.ng. ,s that they take themselves too seriously a 
 fa.hng they share with other artists and a few lone 
 pncsts. reformers, knights-errant, and such like fcU 
 lows who follow the gleam. And yet perhaps it is 
 only out of loyalty to their ideal that they trouble to 
 lay emphasis on themselves in a world so overcrowded 
 
 Ha istr?H''''v,'";^'""'"*'- Addressing said mate- 
 r ahsts Theoph.Ie Gautier. in his essay. "The Utility 
 
 this way :' '"'' '" ' ''" '" '''"''^' '"' ''^ *^'"^ 
 
 v.rse. Plant potatoes, but do not pull up tulips. Fat- 
 ten ^geese. but do not wring the necks of nightingales. 
 .riv ,, / u ?'^ *^^* happiness consists in prop- 
 th nW H M r?'"''^ '"^ ^°""^ '^^^'oral laws. I 
 
 enough. Every select organization must have art 
 must have beauty, must have form." 
 
 And in his other essay, "The Excellence of Poetry " 
 from wh.ch I have already quoted, he says : 
 
 Poets are fit to do other things beside rhyming in 
 
 29 
 
 ■J 
 
 u 
 
 Ilk 
 if* 
 
verse, although I fail to sec what better a man can do 
 than write good verse." 
 
 That to me sounds right and reasonable enough. 
 But on the other hand a scientific old triend of mine 
 fcehng called upon to speak encouragingly of some 
 verse I had written, said to me recently : "By George 
 sir. It's fine; I understood every bit of it; it's just as 
 good- nroser He honestly intended that for a com- 
 plime nd I suppose it was— of a sort. But I know 
 tha' :e would not value a cathedral or mosque solely 
 lor.,, ,a. »g capacity or acoustic properties; he has 
 the h.giier sense of architecture. I know that he would 
 not th,nk to pra-.e a painter by telling him that his 
 work was as good as a photograph ; and I am sure that 
 observmg a rock crystal and an ordinary lump of 
 quartz he would appreciate the intrinsic beauty of 
 form apart from substance. But to any effect in poetic 
 form apart from literal meaning he would appear im- 
 perceptivc as a clam ; built that way, perhaps, or like 
 enough a result of being pestered in youth with met- 
 rical versions of the Psalms, or of being made to mem- 
 orize verse by the yard when he should have been at 
 P lay. And all the while there is so much verse and so 
 little poetry. This because the form is symbolic, and 
 the content is seldom worthy of the form. Here is a 
 test: If what has been expressed in verse would lose 
 virtue m prose_if it cannot be given such effective 
 utterance m prose-then such verse is poetry Othe- 
 wise. It IS only something which may be as good as 
 
 30 
 
i ; 
 
 prose, but which usually is not. Yet I will have no 
 quarrel with those who cannot perceive the symbolic 
 value of form in verse; nor for that matter will I 
 quarrel with any of my few good friends to whom 
 these roundabout rhymes which I have written are 
 mere eccentricities to be quietly ignored on account 
 of more understandable doings with which they credit 
 me. After all, we had as well be frank about it, and 
 not pretend to enjoy any phase of art through which 
 the light does not come to us. In art, as in the other 
 practices designed to relieve human hunger or pain— 
 cookery, religion, medicine— we had best be guided 
 simply by the effect upon our own selves. Holding 
 fast to principles I would move loosely arriong rules 
 whenever any question of beauty is involved. For 
 beauty is something too divine for definition ; it will 
 tolerate no limitation or criterion ; it is the one thing 
 supreme above all that we conceive as truth, utility or 
 morality; and wherever and however perceived, it is 
 not the mode of perceiving that should engross us but 
 the fat; the fact that we are privileged above other 
 animals, some of us, to become aware of beauty in any 
 degree at all is to me the most heartening and hopeful 
 thing in life. 
 
 r,o o , "^OM McINNES. 
 
 uttaz^a, September, 1912. 
 
 !•; 
 
 31 
 
af?gmra nf a ^amxbn 
 Ballade of Youth Remaininfi- 
 
 ARDON if I ravel rhyme ^ 
 
 Out of my head disorderly! 
 Forgetting how the rats of time 
 Are nib'oling at the bones of me! 
 ±Jut while upon my legs I'm free 
 Out m the sunlight I intend 
 
 To dine with God prodigiously 
 Youth is a splendid thing to spend! 
 Here's to the man who travels still 
 In the light of young discoveries! 
 Here's to the fellow of lusty will. 
 Who drives along and hardly sees 
 For glamour of great realities 
 The doom of age ! This line I send 
 
 To all who sing hot litanies: 
 Youth is a splendid thing to spend! 
 But 'tis not all a matter of years: 
 
 'Tis a way of living handily 
 In a game with Life, while yet appears 
 A glory near of victory ; 
 With ventures high, and gallantry 
 Twmkhrg round the nearest bend 
 
 Where damsels and fine dangers be: 
 Youth IS a splendid thing to spend! 
 Fellows, come and ride with me 
 
 Swiftly now to the edge of the end. 
 Holdmg the Stars of Joy in fee !— 
 Youth is a splendid thing to spend' 
 32 
 
fit^gm^B of a fiotutbrr 
 Ballade of the Free Lance 
 
 ET me face some bright hazard 
 
 Against the rowdy World for you! 
 A foe to strike, a friend to guard. 
 Or the looting of some rascal crew. 
 
 Oh, the like of this I'm taking to 
 As on my way I make advance, 
 
 And queer vicissitudes come through. 
 Full of adventure and multiple chance ! 
 So far, you see, I've not been slain, 
 
 Tho' now and then I've sought to raid 
 Some richly opportune domain. 
 
 Only to find the plan I made 
 
 BafHed by engine or ambuscade; 
 But I salute the circumstance. 
 
 And slip aside ; oh, the World is laid 
 Full of adventure and multiple chance ! 
 And while I'm free to ride ahead. 
 
 With here or there some prize in view, 
 Few dangers of the way I dread, 
 
 Tho' oft my hungriness I rue : 
 
 Still, betimes a crust will do 
 Cracking fine to nonchalance, 
 
 And every day the World is new, 
 Full of adventure and multiple chancel 
 For me the road of many directions — 
 
 For me the rhyme of long romance! 
 For me the World of imperfections — 
 
 Full of adventure and multiple chance ! 
 33 
 
 i 
 i 
 
 i: 
 K 
 
 
Klfgm^B of a iSnmtiFr 
 Ballade of Action 
 
 O fat security hath charms 
 
 To keep me always satisfied: 
 What ho! Excursions and alarms! 
 A scheme, a plot, a ripping tide 
 Of rude events to prick my pride, 
 Or crack the shell of my conceit 
 
 Upon the edge of things untried! 
 This is the fate that I would meet 
 Now let some bully thing intrude. 
 And bugle to the soul of me! ' 
 I grow stale with quietude, 
 And this too safe monotony: 
 O good my friend or enemy 
 Call me back to the battling street! 
 
 For high low variety 
 
 This is the fate that ! would meet. 
 To more than keep oneself alive 
 
 Is the way to live when all is said: 
 To sight a prize, and chase and strive 
 With strong will and cunning head 
 For something surely more than bread. 
 Or from the bitter steal the sweet. 
 
 And steal it while the risk is redl- 
 This IS the fate that I would meet 
 To conquer finely, or to sink 
 
 Debonair against defeat, 
 This is the rarest grace I think— 
 This is the fate that I would meet 
 34 
 
Ballade of Detachment 
 
 HE Lords of Karma deal the cards, 
 
 But the game we play in our own way: 
 Now as for me, and as regards 
 The gain or loss from day to day, 
 I go detach'd ; I mean to say 
 That I live largely as I please. 
 
 Whether it does or does not pay 
 Among the inequalities. 
 
 With duties not too much engross'd. 
 With profits not too much concern'd, 
 
 Not to glean to the uttermost, 
 Nor grieve for what I might have earn'd. 
 This for my soul's sake I have learn'd, 
 
 Reaching for sweeter things than these: 
 Pennies and fractions I have spurn'd 
 
 Among the inequalities. 
 
 Oh damnable palavering 
 
 Of pedagogues too regular! 
 I'd rather be a tramp, or sing 
 
 For my living at a bar. 
 
 Or peddle peanuts, far by far, 
 Than lose my reasonable ease 
 
 In tow of rule and calendar 
 Among the inequalities. 
 
 Content if I may go a bit 
 
 In my own way before I cease ; 
 Living trimly by my wit 
 
 Among the inequalities. 
 
 35 
 
 I,; 
 
n 
 
 Ballade on the Way 
 
 ET saints abstract on subtle planes 
 
 Revolving occult theories. 
 Unravel all till naught remains. 
 And vanish then howe'er they please! 
 But as for me, in place of these. 
 The savor of flesh and blood! The zest 
 
 And blaze of vast idolatries! 
 This is the object of my quest. 
 Let saints who stoop to lift the woe 
 From off the living and the dead, 
 On with their heavy labors go 
 T:'- all be heal'd and comforted! 
 But as for me. I seek instead 
 Assurance to the sparkling crest 
 
 Of ecstasies unmerited ! 
 This is the object of my quest. 
 Beauty to me hath been a name 
 Holier than all God's avatars : 
 The unconcern'd eternal Flame 
 Whose fitful gleams between the bars 
 Of space and time unto the stars 
 And outer vacancies attest 
 
 Elysium that nothing mars! 
 This is the object of my quest. 
 Oh let me for a moment merge 
 
 Within the glory vaguely guess'd! 
 Yea. tho' I perish on the verge ! 
 This is the object of my quest. 
 36 
 
0) 
 
 ?Rljgm^jE: of a finmtb^r 
 Ballade of Good Women 
 
 OMEN I value as they serve 
 
 Us men with all their qualities : 
 The kindly eye, the winsome jurve, 
 And voice atune for melodies, 
 
 Oh, high we hold the worth of these! 
 But this is the best a man can say 
 
 Of factory girls or fine ladies : 
 Good women give themselves away. 
 So have our comforts much increas'd. 
 
 Despite the neuter maids who cling 
 To fad or fancy, book or priest, 
 
 Perversely 'gainst their fashioning: 
 
 Lord, in the end 'tis a sickly thing, 
 Still order it for us I pray 
 
 That mainly without reckoning 
 Good women give themselves away. 
 Let sing who will in praise of her 
 
 By some unique ambition led, 
 Queen at college or theatre, 
 
 Or class'd in a convent with the dead! 
 
 I honor the girls who choose instead 
 The ancient duties, day by day. 
 
 As wives and mothers and makers of bread : 
 Good women give themselves away. 
 
 Little I care what they be doing, 
 What creed they follow or disobey, 
 
 If evermore for our renewing 
 Good women give themselves away. 
 
 ^i 
 
 . i 
 
 -^7 
 
® 
 
 «l?gm^B 0f a IBiambn 
 Ballade of Virtues 
 
 E make too much of right and wrong: 
 
 Three virtues sum it all, nor less 
 Nor more, and we who crawl along 
 
 Py light of them our way may guess 
 Out of the world's ungodly mess. 
 Whether we look to the cross, or whether 
 
 To idols of genial heathenness: 
 We who are all in the mud together. 
 Courage, cleanliness, charity: 
 
 There are no virtues fixt but these : 
 On these, the sole essemal three. 
 We base our rising tendencies, ' 
 And various moralities 
 To suit our age, or maybe the weather 
 
 Or stress of chance necessities • 
 We who are all in the mud together. 
 Many to ancient names, and some 
 
 To newer creeds and altars cling: 
 But shming down the ages come 
 Three virtues, never altering. 
 By which alone our souls we' bring 
 Out of the primal ooze and nether 
 
 Gulfs whence we are clambering: 
 We who are all in the mud together. 
 Courage, cleanliness, charity: 
 
 Hold by these to the end of the tether 
 I'or only these may lead us free • 
 We who are all in the mud together 
 38 
 
SljgmpB nf a Sounbrr 
 Ballade of Meddlers 
 
 PLAGUE on those who would regulate 
 
 Every detail of our troubled lives! 
 Let's eat and drink and fight a id mate 
 And leave to God what then survives! 
 
 Thus every man for himself contrives 
 His inexact best quality: 
 
 Ministers, medicals, meddlesome wives, 
 Go your way and let folks be! 
 O anxious saviours of men and such 
 
 Thanks for your help in our evil plight! 
 But please don't save us all too much! 
 
 When God woke up and call'd for light 
 
 He set things turning from left to right, 
 A good enough sign it seems to me 
 
 That we shall turn thus without you— quite : 
 Go your way and let folks be ! 
 For man and beast and imp and elf 
 
 One rule is writ in language terse: 
 Each must answer to himself 
 
 In the sequence of the universe: 
 
 And we may crawl from the primal curse 
 Fast if we choose, or leisurely. 
 
 But meddlers aye make matters worse : 
 Go your way and let folks be! 
 Maybe a helping hand is the best 
 
 Signal from God that ever we see : 
 But that's one thing, and for the rest, 
 
 Go your way and lei folks be ! 
 
 35 
 
 I j 
 
 ^ 
 
 4 
 
 
 in 
 
 ! -: > 
 
 i - .; 
 
 1 
 
X 
 
 Ballade of Friends 
 
 CHANGE myself, and so no more 
 
 Will cry against inconstancy 
 The chiefest pals I had of yore 
 
 Without offence may tire of me: 
 And they are free, and I am free. 
 To seek new faces down the line- 
 But yet I say wherever I be • 
 . All good fellows are friends of mine! 
 
 No talk of race or caste or creed- 
 No fault of hair, no shade of skin. 
 
 Shall bar me of my choice, indeed 
 The sweetest nut may lie within 
 The toughtest shell; 'twould be a sin 
 
 i o lose a comrade, or resign 
 
 My company for cause so thin: 
 
 All good fellows are friends of mine! 
 
 They faal us now and then, of course; 
 And some are rascals more or less: 
 
 i>ome cajole us to endorse. 
 And leave us in the lurch: oh, yes- 
 But to relieve our loneliness 
 
 " O'lJy for a day is fine : 
 
 All good fellows are friends of mine' 
 Whether at sea or whether on shore, 
 
 Ur at the job or over the wine ; 
 Whether on two legs, whether on four- 
 All good fellows arc friends of min-. 
 40 
 
H 
 
 Lady of Ventures 
 
 Mirelie. 
 ? ADY of Ventures weaving gold 
 
 From next to nothing tell me, pray. 
 Some novel thing to do! Unfold 
 Some fine employ or project bold 
 Or sly detour along my way! 
 
 From London town to far Cathay 
 The many live in drab durance : 
 But evermore your colors play, 
 Lady of Ventures, grave or gay, 
 Over the regions of Romance. 
 
 And some who find you sideways glance, 
 Nor scorn to reach thro' gates obscure 
 Forbidden vistas that entrance, 
 And glimmer with caprice and chance 
 To alter destinies grown dour. 
 
 Whether to some moonlit amour, 
 
 Or quest of hidden treasury. 
 Or valiant or outlandish lure, 
 They follow you, and think for sure 
 'Tis worth whatever the cost may be. 
 
 Thro' drear lanes of poverty. 
 
 Thro' little shops, and garrets old, 
 I've seen you wander truantly, 
 And pass tiptoe and beckon me, — 
 O Lady of Ventures weaving gold! 
 41 
 
 I 
 
 ; ) 
 
:r 
 
 Sljgmra nf a Ununarr 
 Ballade of Jacqueline 
 
 MET by chance a milliner, 
 
 A girl by name of Jacqueline: 
 June-sweet was the voice of her. 
 And wonderful eyes of aquamarine, 
 Pale blue and pale green. 
 AppealJ from her face of ivory. 
 
 Too wild to care how she were seen 
 Down town o' nights with me. 
 In a fussy shop thro" daylight hours 
 
 Trimly she fashion'd vanities: 
 Scraps of birds, and cra.y flowers. 
 Trifles of straw and fripperies. 
 To put on the heads of fine ladies: 
 But after six. when she was free, 
 Jacqueline went as you please' 
 Down town o' nights with me. 
 Jacqueline was a good chum 
 
 For gay streets and vaudeville; 
 And I spent my coin, when I had some, 
 For the nleasure it was to see her feel 
 The light dream of the moment real, 
 Or hearken awhile to her velvety 
 
 Low laughter over a meal 
 Down town o' nights with me. 
 Jacqueline has gone away 
 
 To marry a man of property; 
 Jacqueline no more will play 
 Down town o' nights with me. 
 42 
 
SljgmPB of a S0Uttbpr 
 Ballade of the Picaroon 
 
 KNEW him for a picaroon 
 
 Among the purhcus of the town: 
 At free lunch in a beer saloon 
 
 To wash the cheese and pickles down, 
 With pretzels hard and salt and brown. 
 We drank and talk'd of all our schemes 
 To banish Fortune's chronic frown : 
 He was a fine fellow of dreams. 
 He loved the light piquant details 
 Of life beyond mere livelihood ; 
 And while he cover'd many trails 
 
 More tricks he play'd and girls he woo'd 
 And bottles emptied than he should 
 For that success the World esteems : 
 But after a fashion he made good : 
 He was a fine fellow of dreams. 
 Because I heard his death to-night 
 
 Told in the hotel corridor 
 I left the crowd for the cool starlight 
 And the lone ways : my heart was sore 
 That I should see his face no more 
 Where the wheel turns, and the light gleams. 
 
 And the air reels to the World's uproar: 
 He was a fine fellow of dreams. 
 My friend he was and he died too soon : 
 
 'Tis always too soon for his like it seems : 
 But he lived while he lived, that picaroon — 
 He was a fine fellow of dreams. 
 
 43 
 
 I 
 
 :.i 
 
 1 
 
atigm^fi nf a ffinun&rr 
 Villanelle of Mutton 
 
 V 
 
 Old Style. 
 
 ERY sick and tired I am 
 
 Of stewed prunes, and apples dried, 
 And this our mutton that once was lamb! 
 
 I will make no grand salaam 
 
 For the stale cakes the gods provide! 
 Very sick and tired I am! 
 
 My indignant diaphragm 
 
 Would cover something fresh, untried, — 
 Not this mutton that once was lamb! 
 
 How every verse and epigram 
 
 Of hope the lagging years deride! 
 Very sick and tired I am! 
 
 Must I always then be calm, 
 
 And talk as one quite satisfied 
 With this our mutton that once was lamb? 
 
 Frankly, I don't give a dam 
 
 For taste of things too long denied! 
 Very sick and tired I am 
 Of this our mutton that once was lamb! 
 
 44 
 
Mirelle of Found Money 
 
 ., - GOT a thousand dollars to-day 
 J By chance and undeservedly: 
 
 jL But nary a one of my debts will I pay : 
 '"^ Sure it never was meant to be spent that 
 
 way: 
 'Tis a gift from my fairy godmother, you 
 
 see. 
 
 Except of course to my landlady, 
 And some on account to the tailor Malone : 
 
 And there'll be a new dress, and a hat maybe. 
 
 For the lame girl who is good to me : 
 But the rest of these dollars are all my own. 
 
 A thousand dollars and all for my own : 
 
 The thought of it runs like a tune through my head: 
 So long it is since I have known 
 One lavish hour, one fully blown 
 
 Rose of joy unheralded! 
 Tho' we of the world must grind for bread 
 
 'Tis a plan I hold in small esteem : 
 And while I can taste I let no dread 
 Of later want contract the spread 
 
 Of my desire for cakes and cream. 
 
 Wrapt in myself, obscure, supreme, 
 
 I slip thro' streets and quarters gay, 
 And the comic crowd I see in a dream. 
 But glory be — this is no dream : 
 
 I got a thousand dollars to-day ! 
 
 45 
 
 •* 
 
 in 
 
 I 
 
 ■■i 
 
 J 
 
n 
 
 Sbgm^B of a Snunier 
 Ballade of Fine Eating 
 
 IGH up I climb'd in a cherry tree 
 Heigho, how the years have fled ! 
 
 June and the World lay under me, 
 While the juicy fruit just overh? id 
 Hung clustering thick and ripe and red,— 
 For a boy of ten 'twas a glorious sight: 
 Say, do you wonder now that I said : 
 Bully for my big appetite ! 
 
 Far in the North I sought for gold : 
 
 Foolish I was and most unfit: 
 Starving, alone, and numb with cold, 
 
 When I found on the trail a dog-biscuit: 
 
 How I gnaw'd its edges bit by bit! 
 'Twas a savory thing to crunch and bite, 
 
 And I fed on every crumb of it: 
 Bully for my big appetite! 
 
 But give me a friend this night for a feast, 
 
 And one well-served exquisite dish ! 
 He may have what he will of bird or beast. 
 
 Or take his choice of fat sea-fish ; 
 
 And we'll drink of the best thing liquorish. 
 Bottled in years of old delight, 
 
 To wake on our palate the lost relish: 
 Bully for my big appetite! 
 Me for a nook in a fine kafay, 
 
 With any potvaliant rake to-night ! 
 And if to-morrow the Devil's to pay — 
 
 Bully for my big appetite! 
 
 46 
 
Mirelle of the Good Bed 
 
 V #>. 
 
 (J 
 
 HERE'S nothing so good as a good bed 
 When a body is over and done with day! 
 I'd like a place to lay my head 
 In a clean room unfrequented 
 And dark, unless for a moon-ray. 
 
 O Angel of Dreams, without delay 
 
 Then let me from this World be gone ! 
 Within a temple I would pray 
 Where golden odors float alway 
 Onward to oblivion. 
 
 Or haply may I be withdrawn 
 From pain and care and manners mean 
 
 Into some fairy tower whereon 
 
 The glim bejewell'd gonfalon 
 Of blue enchantery is seen? 
 
 But a lady I know might come between 
 
 Laughing, and lead me far astray 
 On the flowery edge of a wild ravine 
 Where wild cascades of waters green 
 Flash in the pleasant light of May. 
 
 Thus let me dream the night away. 
 Or slumber dreamless with the dead ! 
 
 Life may resume, but now I say. 
 
 Being too weary of the day, 
 There's nothing so good as a good bed! 
 
 47 
 
 I 
 
 M 
 
 
 i 
 
Ballade of the House of Ease 
 
 jQ 
 
 ' ELLO, MARIE! You sweet old girl, 
 You of the Province cool and true, 
 I'm fagg'd and done with the City whirl. 
 And I've come for quieting to you! 
 
 I'm out of the game, Marie ; I'm through. 
 And want but a chair in the sunlight placed. 
 
 With nothing to do, dear, nothing to do— 
 Give me now these hours to waste! 
 Something to eat? WeH, after while 
 
 I'd like a chicken fricassee 
 Cream'd in good Acadian style 
 
 With ketchup and things peppery. 
 
 And a twist of bread and pot o' tea: 
 A supper that to the Queen's taste 
 
 If you will cook it! But, Marie. 
 Give me now these hours to waste ! 
 My Lady in your House of Ease, 
 
 Clean of all pretence and mask. 
 Let me lounge just as I please. 
 
 Tossing from me every task! 
 
 Let me like some lizard bask 
 Fatly with my soul effaced 
 
 In the sun ! No more I ask— 
 Give me now these hours to waste! 
 For I've been troubled overlong. 
 
 And I'd be quit of stress and haste, 
 And quit of doing, right or wrong, — 
 
 Give me now these hours to waste ! 
 
 48 
 
Ballade of Golden Days 
 
 WEARY of living from hand to mouth. 
 
 Battling for mean necessities: 
 I'm in a desert, and a drouth 
 Comes over all the oases 
 Where I have sought myself to ease 
 In lawful and unlawful ways : 
 
 I had no care for things like these 
 Far away in the Golden Days. 
 Let me go where my fathe went — 
 My father who was good to me! 
 This World has grown so virulent 
 And sodden now with misery! 
 But once we fought it joyously. 
 Ever on some crusade ablaze 
 
 For spicy isles o' the wind-swept sea- 
 Far away in the Golden Days. 
 
 Oh with some glad intoxicant 
 These wasted nerves of mine relieve ! 
 
 Do me a magic, and enchant 
 These sordid chambers to conceive 
 In crimson colors, while I weave 
 
 My fancies to the airy phase 
 
 Of things he taught me to believe — 
 
 Far away in the Golden Days. 
 
 Nay, what now? What aura strange — 
 What glamour of new life allays 
 
 This old despair? Again I range 
 Far away in the Golden Days. 
 49 
 
 I ^i,. 
 
 -1? 
 
 r5; 
 
m 
 
 Sl?gmrB nf a IBiamhn 
 Defeat 
 
 Villanelle. 
 
 E may dream of what hath been, 
 But this will alter all our ways: 
 This is the thing that was not foreseen. 
 
 Tho* we avoid the rabble gaze 
 
 Yet must we keep some face to show: 
 We are untouch'd, the World says. 
 
 Haply the World may never know 
 
 The marish grief and bitterness 
 That covers us ; 'tis better so. 
 
 For we who gloried to excess 
 
 Now only ask that none may see 
 These hours averted, comfortless. 
 
 Of our defeat there yet may be 
 
 Some gray reward in after days : 
 Oh ache my heart— but quietly! 
 
 While the shadow with us stays 
 We may dream of what hath been; 
 
 But this will alter all our ways— 
 This is the thing that was not foreseen. 
 SO 
 
6 
 
 Ballade of Evil 
 
 I'VIL! What poor argument 
 
 We mortals hear to make us trust 
 That as for God he never meant 
 To bait this hook of pain with lust! 
 Then by what devil was it thrust 
 Thro' the filmy first upheaval 
 
 Of our planetary dust? 
 No man knoweth the end of evil. 
 By dint of wishing, sages say, 
 
 Things shape themselves much as we see; 
 And filth and pain are the price we pay 
 Largely for the will to be ; 
 That we evolve contingently 
 On such acceptance and receival : 
 
 Is this the measure of God's meicy? 
 No man knoweth the end of evil. 
 
 Say if you choose there is naught but good: 
 Harden your heart and soften your brain : 
 
 Say wrong is right misunderstood : 
 Close your eyes to filth and pain: 
 Swear all is right and all is sane, 
 
 And all correct from days primeval: 
 And then — well, then what will you gain? 
 No man knoweth the end of evil. 
 
 We strive in mud forever obscure. 
 Forever in hope of some reprieval. 
 
 But living or dead we are not sure: 
 
 No man knoweth the end of evil. 
 
 SX 
 
 i 
 
lUfgnwH of a Rounht r 
 Ballade of Woeful Certainties 
 
 E must kill if wc would live: 
 ... '^'^'s is the first of certainties : 
 VJL-^ ^o<^ leaves us no alternative 
 
 Despite the preachers' sophistries : 
 Let them argue as they please 
 The jungle law is over us! 
 
 For any man who cares or :,ees 
 This World of ours goes ruinous. 
 We must weak and ugly grow : 
 
 This is the worst of certainties : 
 'Tis a pretty thing to be young, I know, 
 And life is full of pleasantries : 
 But age and pain will bend the knees 
 Of the strongest, fairest, best of us : 
 
 No bodies reach beyond disease : 
 This World of ours goes ruinous. 
 We must all in the graveyard lie: 
 
 This is the last of certainties: 
 Strange horizons some descry. 
 That to the mass are fantasies: 
 But take your choice of theories 
 To meet an end so villainous, 
 
 In this at least each one agrees: 
 This V/orld of ours goes ruinous. 
 Brother, I see too much to think 
 
 That dust is the utter end of us: 
 But oft from what's involved I shrink: 
 This World of ours goes ruinous. 
 52 
 
Tiger of Desire 
 
 Villanelle. 
 
 TARVING, savage, I aspire 
 
 To the red meat of all the World : 
 I am the Tiger of Desire! 
 
 With teeth bared, and claws uncurl'd, 
 
 By leave o' God I creep to slay 
 The innocent of all the World. 
 
 Out of the yellow glaring day, 
 
 When I glut my appetite, 
 To my lair I slink away. 
 
 But in the black returning night 
 
 I leap resistless on my prey. 
 Mad with agony and fright. 
 
 The quick flesh I tear away. 
 
 Writhing till the blood is hurl'd 
 On leaf and flower and sodden clay. 
 
 My teeth are bared, my claws uncurl'd. 
 Of the red meat I never tire ; 
 
 In the black jungle of the World 
 I am the Tiger of Desire ! 
 53 
 
aiigmrH of a fiflunirr 
 Ballade of the Body Diseased 
 
 ^. O think the sky should be so blue, 
 
 And the air still yield its clean caress! 
 That I should see these flowers that strew 
 The altar of God's loveliness 
 And cease adoring now! Ah yes, 
 But something foul within me squirrr^. 
 
 A trail of bloody rottenness ! 
 I will not live upon these terms. 
 Must I who had of youth and bliss 
 
 In fullest measure be content 
 Merely to live in mire like this? 
 Shall my remaining days be spent 
 And my loved body now be lent 
 As stuff that alters or confirms 
 
 Some medical experiment? 
 I will not live upon these terms. 
 
 I shall end it when I choose 
 
 If it can end so easily! 
 Dripping Upas avenues 
 
 Before me loom unhappily: 
 
 Things magnified too monstrously 
 From infinite mephitic germs 
 
 Are loosed on me indecently: 
 I will not live upon these terms. 
 O stricken body, now for you 
 
 Decay, and the silent work of worms! 
 To think the sky should be so blue! 
 
 I will not live upon these terms. 
 54 
 
Elysium 
 
 Villanelle. 
 
 OTHER, for a moment come 
 To the bars that intervene : 
 Tell me of Elysium! 
 
 Tell me how you live serene 
 
 Upon that fair and lovely shore : 
 Free of grief and burdens mean! 
 
 For I so broken am and sore 
 
 To me God's mercy now 'twould seem 
 To die indeed and be no more. 
 
 ' 
 
 i 
 
 You are with the Seraphim, 
 While below I wander on. 
 Groping through a fearful dream. 
 
 My love of life at last is gone: 
 
 Of life what favor may I glean 
 Outvaluing oblivion? 
 
 Here for dim relief I lean : 
 O Mother, for a moment come 
 
 To the bars that intervene ! 
 Unveil, unveil Elysium! 
 
 55 
 
 • 'I 
 
 m 
 
 i 
 
 •■1 
 
 w 
 
 I 
 
 I"' 
 
 rv: 
 
Ballade of the Self Concealed 
 
 O' 
 
 HIS of you is not the best, 
 
 This little self so anxious here; 
 Partially you manifest, 
 But you are other than the mere 
 Mind and body you appear: 
 Behind the scenes it seems to me, 
 
 From day to day and year to year, 
 You remain essentially. 
 You wake and sleep: the small impress 
 
 Of thmgs around soon passes: still 
 This consciousness is more or less 
 Some phosphorescence of the Will: 
 A surface light too weak to fill 
 The underlying entity 
 
 Whose lust of living naught may kill: 
 You remain essentially. 
 And while your body wears away, 
 
 And all your thoughts disintegrate. 
 You weave new vestures every day, 
 And dreams with dreams obliterate; 
 For you the outer ways await 
 Because of your desire to be: 
 
 But high or low, thro' every state, 
 You remain essentially. 
 From life to life you dwell within 
 
 A candle gleam of memory; 
 And as it vanishes— what then? 
 You remain -essentially. 
 56 
 
Ballade of the Mystic and the 
 
 X 
 
 Mud 
 
 F I from universal mud 
 
 By chance malign came bubbling 
 Uncouthly into flesh and blood, 
 Ugly, futile, struggling, 
 All in mud again to bring,-— 
 Why then at the heart of me 
 
 What is this that needs must sing? 
 There is no end to mystery. 
 If I, with reverence, would read 
 
 Upon the mud God's autograph. 
 And find instead a wormy screed. 
 With never a sign on my behalf 
 To light my coming epitaph. — 
 Why then at the heart of me 
 
 What is this that needs must laugh? 
 There is no end to mystery. 
 If I, a mere automaton 
 
 In a brief and paltry play, 
 Am but a group of atoms drawn 
 Powerless upon my way 
 To mud again, as savants say, — 
 Why then at the heart of me 
 
 What is this that needs must pray? 
 There is no end to mystery. 
 Brother, kneel intuitive 
 
 To a stone if you will, or a carven tree ! 
 And sing and laugh and pray— and live! 
 There is no end to mystery. 
 57 
 
^ilSms af a JSnuniipr 
 God's Kaleidoscope 
 
 Into the charnel of the Past, 
 And Death is ever the final word. 
 
 O much too n,uch of this I have heard- 
 Of course we know tha, all things flow 
 
 ThI ^"■.=r°"" ""*" G^«k.expli„s • 
 
 Ind ne ;^ "•"'" """ erea, chains ' 
 And neither you nor I can dream 
 
 Why t":;,^". "" ^"P '"™ '"e Scheme: 
 
 Or - :htx'- : rh:'<^::;:r "- ■''- 
 
 Or Where into what the wi^d hW^r """' 
 
 j^rrhSiTfr--—- 
 Hj--"-rdTwr 
 
 What h."' °' '" """^"P ^°"°- 
 What he resents— oblivion' 
 
 O great Omar! I bow to you, 
 
 And nod familiar to Villon 
 
 But I have neither hope no'r fear 
 O bemg disperst in the atmosphere- 
 Obhv,on-I wish there were 
 iuch easy exit on the air 
 Beyond desire, beyond regret, 
 
 58 
 
And clearly out of anywhere: 
 To be, so far as we're concern'd. 
 An issue without sequence— nay 
 Too much of Nature's game we've learn'd 
 To credit that, I think, Omar! 
 Your rose has wither'd— well, that's clear; 
 But of itself 'twas a passing phase, 
 And may again on a day of the days 
 From the undistinguish'd mass appear. 
 As much itself as is itself 
 Now in the light of your partial eye: 
 And as for the snows of yester-year, 
 Why. every flake of them still is here 
 No one of all has 'scaped from charge 
 In sea or sky or whirling storm : 
 So looking at it by and large 
 It seems entirely a matter of form : 
 There is no pit of nothingness 
 Wherein what is can e'er be less. 
 And we may say of everything 
 It is itself continuing: 
 The very shadows that we see 
 Are fast involved ; 'tis a safe guess 
 No thing has been, no thing can be, 
 That is not now essentially ; 
 And evermore we yet may hope 
 Within our little nets to rope 
 Some of that endless element 
 Of mystery and beauty blent 
 With the turning of God's kaleidoscope. 
 
 59 
 
 I 
 
Ballade of Comfortable 
 Doctrine 
 
 fO we have come to life, it seems, 
 
 And would escape the consequence; 
 And many men, with many schemes, 
 Would tell us how and why and whence; 
 Good friends, I do you reverence, 
 But weary of your subtleties : 
 
 I only pray, when we go hence, 
 God will put us all at ease. 
 Maybe some Jack-o'-Lantern gleams 
 
 Across the swamp of my offence ; 
 Maybe too high my heart esteems 
 God's ultimate benevolence; 
 Of knowledge I make no pretence, 
 My one religion's been to please. 
 
 But this I hold in confidence : 
 God will put us all at ease. 
 By night more faith I have in dreams 
 Than ever by day in common-sense ; 
 And there's more of night than day mescems. 
 And weird deeps beyond science 
 To test our wee intelligence 
 And little glow-worm theories : 
 
 At night I think, for recompense, 
 God will put us all at ease. 
 Brother, I find some evidence. 
 Despite our many miseries. 
 That after life's last negligence 
 God will put us all at ease. 
 
 60 
 
SllHmf fi nf a Knunft^r 
 
 ]T 
 
 w 
 
 Polity 
 
 ITH good-will, and a touch of mirth, 
 To clear and clean and plant and plan 
 The common levels of the Earth: — 
 
 What more should God then ask of Man? 
 
 61 
 
lUfgm^B nf a Unmiirr 
 
 liconomy 
 
 HE fine contempt that Christ felt 
 For his coat, and cash, and wherewithal. 
 Is a virtue too occasional 
 Methinks for our continuance ! 
 
 62 
 
SIfgmra nf a Unimiirr 
 
 Justice 
 
 PARE him, you say : So be it. then ! 
 But I think it a mcjlin kindliness, 
 And fear some day for better men 
 'Twill breed a villainous excess! 
 
 'Tis easy enough to be merciful, 
 But to be just is an excellence 
 Beyond all flight of sentiment! 
 
 63 
 
SltgmB nf a Somtirr 
 
 o 
 
 Persistence 
 
 HE pains of Life are all too many. 
 
 And the Way is doubtful everywhere; 
 But I have gone as far as any 
 And seen~and I do not despair f 
 
 64 
 
Ballade of the Easy Way 
 
 OD I think is a balancer, 
 
 And runs the World by compromise : 
 From brief observing I infer 
 His line of least resistance lies 
 
 Curving smoothly thro' the skies, 
 Forever mixing night and day, 
 
 With all that such a thing implies: 
 Myself, I go the easy way. 
 'Tis a good thing at times to fight: 
 
 To give a blow, and take a blow. 
 And hand it back with gather'd might: 
 
 'Tis the bully plan of the World below: 
 
 And yet somehow as we older grow 
 We're not so keen for every fray : 
 
 We'd liefer miss than meet a foe: 
 Myself, I go the easy way. 
 Troubles a-plenty we may not pass: 
 
 Tangles too many we cannot untie : 
 And there's a pitiful end for us all, alast 
 
 But we can slip round so much, if we try, 
 
 Or stay things off till by and by 
 We find they mostly are off to stay, 
 
 Or matter no more at all : that's why 
 Myself, I go the easy way. 
 
 And the value of laughter, the value of tears. 
 And the meanmg of Life may be as it may : 
 
 In the bitter-sweet wisdom of later years 
 Myself, I go the easy way. 
 
 65 
 
iUjgmi^a of a ffiouniFr 
 
 © 
 
 Aspiration 
 
 UT give me the air! Always the air! 
 The clean ways, and wings, wings. 
 To reach beyond accepted things, 
 
 And venture flights unendable! 
 
 66 
 
SltgmpB of a Snunirr 
 
 White Magic 
 
 GANDOR may be devilish, 
 And truth untimely open Hell: 
 Better pretend the thing you wish : 
 Anon you may, if you wish and wish, 
 Achieve a miracle. 
 
 Once an ugly truth 1 saw. 
 
 And I hid it with a lie ; 
 Cunning, for I knew the law, 
 I cover'd it, and smother'd it. 
 
 And kill'd it with a lie : 
 No man there was that knew of it. 
 
 And many days went by. 
 
 Lo, something fair hath risen like 
 
 A lily from the sod ! 
 And the lie is now the truth of it. 
 Become the splendid truth of it, — 
 
 Glory be to God! 
 
 I 
 
 67 
 
iSligm^a nf a Knmiirr 
 
 n 
 
 Departure 
 
 ET me from this World go free 
 Before the last of me is spent! 
 While yet some few fair girls lament. 
 And some good fellows cherish me ! 
 
 66 
 
fih^mpB nf a Soimlipr 
 Ballade of Faith 
 
 X THINK between my cradle-bars 
 Of a summer night there fell to me 
 Some pale religion of the stars, 
 While an old Moon lookt weirdly 
 At me thro' an apple-tree 
 And fixt my faith in a fair One 
 
 Fading out of memory: 
 But I would that I knew where my Lord is gouc! 
 Things there are by night I know 
 
 That in the day I ne'er detect: 
 Stars that shine from long ago 
 Until bewilder'd I suspect 
 The obvious World is not correct, 
 And fear too much to lean upon 
 
 The showings of mere intellect: 
 But I would that I knew where my Lord is gone! 
 In my own fashion I persist : 
 
 No counsel of despair I brook : 
 Neither for priest nor pessimist, 
 Nor the jealous God nor his black Book : 
 My early faith I've not forsook 
 For the low things that pass anon: 
 
 With eyes unspoil'd to the stars I look- 
 But I would that I knew where my Lord is gone! 
 And caring less how the World esteems 
 
 Me or my doing I go on 
 With incommunicable dreams — 
 But I would that I knew where my Lord is gone! 
 
 69 
 
 n 
 
 9 
 
 
fitrymra of a Souni^r r 
 Good-Bye 
 
 ViUanellc 
 
 LL things are reapt beneath the sky, 
 
 And I'll be gone before the year: 
 Girl, in October we say good-bye! 
 
 Remember how the May was mere 
 With white and green and violet! 
 Remember all that foUow'd, dear! 
 
 How June, with wreath and coronet 
 
 Of many roses amorous 
 Led us dreaming deeper yet! 
 
 Thro' red July victorious 
 
 To August, ample, passionate! 
 No lovers e'er had more than us. 
 
 Now bronze September soon will set: 
 
 I want no life extended drear 
 Till Youth and Summer we forget 
 
 O Autumn, haunted, sweet and sere! 
 
 All things are reapt beneath the sky! 
 And I'll be gone before the year: 
 
 Girl, in October we say good-bye! 
 
Viif^mtB of a Somtbrr 
 Ballade of Rags 
 
 NCE to my fancy I was drest, 
 
 Ready to challenge the ways of chance; 
 _• Body and bone were of the best, 
 
 And I rode away in the blue distance 
 
 And ravisht Life in high joyance 
 Of all her many beauties: H^y, 
 
 How now with alter'd countenance 
 I go in the rags of yesterday! 
 Once I went largely at my ease. 
 
 And humor *d myself with fine gusto; 
 Nor riches then, nor dignities 
 
 I sought, but the rare scenario 
 
 Where love is wrought to a rosy glow 
 With clinging to forbidden clay : 
 
 And I had it and had it and had it — so 
 I go in the rags of yesterday ! 
 I have no heart for the poverty 
 
 That comes to all — you understand: 
 Yet with these relics left to me, 
 
 This jtwell, this ribbon contraband. 
 
 From my illicit vanisht land, 
 I keep what fashion I may — but say 
 
 Is there no future in my hand? 
 I go in the rags of yesterday ! 
 Oh tell me 1*11 travel sometime in style 
 
 To a fair estate so far and away ! 
 For I sing me a weary tune the while 
 
 I go in the rags of yesterday ! 
 71 
 
Sllgm^a nf a iStnuni^r 
 
 G 
 
 To the Night 
 
 Cantel 
 
 OOD luck to all who throng 
 The ways of laughter and song ! 
 
 But if for some they seem too brief— 
 For some they seem too long. 
 
 Myself I have been a great thief 
 Of pleasure to lighten one grief, 
 
 But now— say now do you fancy it wrong 
 If I turn to the night for relief? 
 
 Good luck to all who throng 
 The ways r laughter and song! 
 
 But wea y I turn to the night for relief— 
 And I pray that the night be long. 
 
 72 
 
 J 
 
X 
 
 Ballade of Sleep 
 
 'VE lost my taste for things somehow 
 That on a time were very sweet: 
 Sin has no savor for me now, — 
 I find no apples good to rat: 
 
 You laugh, and say that I'm effete. 
 But you are on the way, my friend, 
 
 And after me you'll soon repeat: 
 Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
 Yet I come not with sour intent 
 
 Against my old desires to prate: 
 Truly I do not repent, 
 
 I only wish I knew some great 
 
 Exultant vice to stimulate 
 What spark of Life remains to spend: 
 
 But this I feel, as the hour grows late, 
 Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
 All things wear out, so much we see: 
 
 All things must fall without reprieve: 
 Yet spite of that invincibly 
 
 Upon the brink I still believe 
 
 That God has hidden up his sleeve 
 For us some golden dividend: 
 
 What think you then we shall receive? 
 Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
 Brother, down on a soundless bed 
 
 From the ways of pain may we descend? 
 The stars creep dimly overhead: — 
 
 Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
 73 
 
jRIf gm^fi of a iRnunb? r 
 Ballade of the Lost Castle 
 
 NCE upon a time there stood 
 A Castle by the Western sea: 
 Near by there was a gnomish wood 
 Ancient and wild with glamorie 
 
 Of ferly things wrought secretly: 
 There I was free as it were mine, 
 
 For those who ruled were kin to me: 
 But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syne! 
 Oft in that wood from my old beldame 
 
 I fled thro' husht elf-haunted ways: 
 But the clatter there was when the gay Lords came 
 
 Laughing back from their brave forays! 
 
 Great sport they had, and high feast days, 
 FoUow'd by long red nights of wine, 
 
 With ball and banquet rooms ablaze: 
 But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syne ! 
 A moment now to me it seem'd 
 
 As if low golden bells had rung 
 Out of the forest where I dream'd 
 
 Years ago when I was young : 
 
 And even now 'twas on my tongue 
 To tell a tale too fair and fine 
 
 For the like of these I dwell among : 
 But the I ords o' the Castle are dead lang syne ! 
 Slow accumulating hours! 
 
 And the last rays of the Sun shine 
 Redly over the ruin'd towers! 
 
 But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syntl 
 
 74 
 
Slfgmi^B of a fiflunif r 
 
 With the Seven Sleepers 
 
 Cantel 
 
 ue 
 
 O 
 
 FAIRY, take me far 
 To some encnanted star! 
 
 Let me go sleep for a thousand years 
 Where the Seven Sleepers are! 
 
 Beyond the striving spheres, 
 Beyond all hopes or fears. 
 
 Where never a black or golden bar 
 Of Hell or Heaven appears! 
 
 O Fairy, take rne far 
 Away from things that are! 
 
 Let me go sleep for a thousand years 
 In some enchanted star J 
 
 75 
 
c 
 
 Ballade of Waiting 
 
 HERE was a time that Death for me 
 
 Unbalanced every new deHght: 
 Its cold abhorrent mystery 
 
 Haunted me by day and night: 
 
 I felt its noisome clammy blight 
 Making of Life a mildew'd thing: 
 
 But now to its face I cry: Alright! 
 I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
 Because so many I loved have gone 
 
 I stare a-wondering at the skies: 
 The World below I look upon 
 
 With listless, old. exhausted eyes: 
 
 The while for every friend who dies 
 I feel a queerish loosening 
 
 Within of all familiar ties: 
 I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
 I weary under a weight of days, 
 
 Withering and too sensible 
 Of aged needs and alter'd ways: 
 
 But this one thing is t;ood to tell: 
 
 In the wintry desert where I dwell 
 Some rumor I have heard of Spring, 
 
 And I have dream'd of asphodel: 
 I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
 The sweet renewal of the air, 
 
 And ti:e call of Youth recovering,— 
 Do these await me yet somewhere? 
 
 I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
 76 
 
Sligm^B 0f a Rnmtbpr 
 
 The Isles of Gold 
 
 Cantel 
 
 WAY from days too cold. 
 Away from hearts too old, 
 
 Honey-Mouth, O Honey-Mouth, 
 I go to the Isles of Gold ! 
 
 Will it be to North or South 
 That I find them, Honey-Mouth? 
 
 The King no entry there I'm told 
 Except to the dead allowethl 
 
 So be it, from days too cold! 
 So be it, from hearts too old! 
 
 Honey-Mouth, O Honey-Mouth, 
 I go to the Isles of Gold ! 
 
 77 
 
Sljemra of a SauuftFr 
 Notes 
 
 BALLADE OF THE PICAROON: — "He has 
 
 much wrong resting on himself, and has crept through 
 the worm-holes of all sorts of errors, in order to be able 
 to reach many obscure souls on their secret paths. 
 Forever dwelling in some kind of love, and some kind 
 of selfishness and enjoyment. Powerful and at the 
 same time obscure and resigned. Constantly loafing 
 in the sunshine, and yet knowing the ladder which 
 leads to the sublime to be near at hand." — Friedrich 
 Nietzsche. 
 
 VILLANELLE OF MUTTON:— Dam— A coin I 
 am told of small value, used somewhere in the Orient, 
 perhaps India, and there giving rise to a familiar 
 phrase, as did the coin known as a "rap" in Ireland. 
 This in explanation, lest the writer be thought profane. 
 
 MIRELLE OF FOUND MONEY :— "Gerard de 
 Nerval lived the transfigured inner life of the dreamer. 
 'I am very tired of life!' he says. And like so many 
 dreamers, who have all the luminous darkness of the 
 universe in their brains, he found his most precious 
 and uninterrupted solitude in the crowded and more 
 sordid streets of great cities."— Arthur Symons. 
 
 BALLADE OF FINE EATING:— In the matter of 
 fine eating, and in maintaining it as something more 
 
 78 
 
®l|gmra nf a Soimft? r 
 
 thin the meat, the good Sir Thomas Browne thus 
 c;rnmended Epicurus: "He (Epicurus) was contented 
 v.ith bread and water, and when he would dine with 
 j-.c. and pretend unto epulation. he desired no other 
 a:d;tion than a piece of Cytheridian cheese." 
 
 GOD'S KALEIDOSCOPE:— The doggerelle was 
 anciently a form nearest to the impromptu chant: but 
 nowadays it is seldom used to serious purpose. The 
 doggerelle is not the pursuit of a tale, as some have 
 s.:pposed, but is an irregular versicle designed to catch 
 elusive ideas. 
 
 POLITY, ET AL.:— In a little workshop under my 
 hat are some broken ballades and unused lines, from 
 which I have hastily contrived these few quatrains. 
 having now neither time nor inclination to do more 
 with them. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 79 
 
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