THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 TINDER THE PIPIL 
 
 BY F. T. D. 
 
 ^,r->Tra7oT<oT>-?,S^ 
 
 
 LONDON : 
 R W O R T H & CO. LIMITED, 
 
 NEWTON STREET, HiaH HOLBOEN, W.C. 
 1883.
 
 PBEFACE. T)/y^/a_^ 
 
 " Died, on Sept. 9th, 1880, of typhoid fever, at Hyder- 
 abad, Deccan, F. T. DOWDING. Aged 29." 
 
 ly/TORE than a year ago tliese Poems were 
 
 forwarded from India, along with other 
 
 rehcs of my brother, Frederick Townley 
 
 DowDiNG. Some of them were in a printed 
 
 form, having appeared in Calcutta magazines, 
 
 the cuttings from Avhich he had pasted in his 
 
 Scrap Book; the rest were in manuscript. He 
 
 had written a Dedication, in which is the expla> 
 
 nation of his title " Under the Pipal," which 
 
 stands on the first page of his manuscripts. A 
 
 a2 
 
 1921 'VJ3
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 kind friend, wlio nursed him during his illness, 
 tells us that he had frequently expressed to 
 her his intention of publishing them ; and other 
 friends, to whom the manuscripts have been 
 shown, have intimated their wish that this in- 
 tention should be carried out. In deference to 
 his expressed intention and their wishes, no less 
 than to my behef that impartial readers will 
 find intrinsic merit m many of the compositions, 
 this volume has at length been published. It 
 will, at all events, place within reach of his 
 friends a memorial Avhich will be prized as 
 such. 
 
 Not that he was known among them as a 
 writer of Poetry, or that these Poems should be 
 regarded as a measiire of his capacities: they 
 are rather an indication of his versatility. Pre- 
 viously to his leaving England he had written 
 next to nothing. "Love's Garden" appeared 
 in The Graphic in May, 1877, and by the cour- 
 teous permission of the Editor I am alloAved to
 
 Preface. v 
 
 include it in this volume ; but with this, and 
 possibly two or three other exceptions, the 
 Poems were the occupation of his leisure hours 
 in India. The majority of them are upon 
 Indian themes ; some few refer to the cmTcnt . 
 events, the Rus so- Turkish War, the occupation 
 of Cyprus, the Jingo period, the Zulu War, 
 and the imsuccessful attempt upon the life of 
 the Czar; some are light trifles, and some tell 
 their own tale. His friend, Mr. Norman Pear- 
 son, has joined me in the labour of love attend- 
 ing the deciphering and arrangement of the 
 manuscripts. 
 
 They have been printed almost exactly as 
 they came to us : there are obscurities which I 
 have left in the hope that others more familiar 
 Avith poetry, or more conversant with the htera- 
 ture and history of India, may find the meaning 
 of an expression or an allusion where I have 
 failed ; there are faults and inequalities which
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 will, I trust, meet with kindly criticism from 
 those who remember that the hand which penned 
 them was not suffered to prune or rewrite. 
 
 A short account of my brother's life may give 
 additional interest to all readers. He was born 
 at Devizes in 1850. Before he was ten years 
 old he gained a place on the Roll for Eton 
 College, and in the following year he gained 
 a similar distinction at Winchester. On the 
 merits of the former examination he was ad- 
 mitted as a King's Scholar at Eton in January, 
 1862. For "seven sweet rounds of snow and 
 hay-time " he moved up the school without exer- 
 tion, enjoying life and learning to row. He 
 belonged to the crew of what wiU long be re- 
 membered as a famous "Tug Eight" (Huddle- 
 ston, Dowding, Armitstead, Tyndall, Goldie, 
 Somers Smith, Freeth, Radcliffe). 
 
 He did not compete for a King's Scholarship 
 at Cambridge, but, winning the Mayo Exhibition,
 
 , Preface. vii 
 
 open to the sons of Wiltshire clergy and ten- 
 able at Oxford, he matriculated at St. John's 
 College in May, 1869. He won a valuable open 
 scholarship at the same College in the following 
 October. In the winter of the same year he 
 rowed in the Trial Eights. 
 
 The great disappointment of his life occurred 
 in the summer of 1871, when he failed in the 
 Honours School for Moderations. It was an 
 open secret that liis papers had won him a First 
 Class, but in those days a Pass in Divinity was 
 necessary to secure it to him. This was gene- 
 rally regarded as a formality, and, like many an 
 other Honom-s' man, he neglected the prepara- 
 tion for it, though unlike them he paid the 
 forfeit. From that date the two examinations 
 have been made independent of one another. 
 His name appeared in the Fourth Class in 
 "Greats" in 1873, but he had the excuse of 
 having been rowing in the University Boat at 
 Putney during the spring of that year.
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 The crew behind him were inferior in physique 
 to that of Cambridge, but they rowed together 
 like one man, and were only beaten in the 
 fastest time on record and after a gallant fight. 
 He was a really fine oar, with straight back, 
 graceful strength, faultless swing, and the quali- 
 ties of pluck and cheeriness which made him 
 invaluable as a stroke. None would grudge him 
 the praise bestowed upon him by the President, 
 Mr. Leslie, at the Lord Mayor's Banquet on the 
 evening of the race. 
 
 Few men are physically the worse for having 
 rowed in the Great Race ; many suffer from 
 the effects of Putney idolatry and the sub- 
 sequent reaction. My brother did not settle 
 down to the tutorial work which was his 
 occupation during the subsequent four years, 
 and in January, 1877, he embraced the oppor- 
 timity of making a tour of the world with a 
 pupil. They visited Egypt and Palestine, but 
 the death of the pupil's father terminated their
 
 Preface. 
 
 IX 
 
 journey when they were at Simla, and my brother 
 looked out for occupation in India. He obtained 
 the Government post of Professor of English 
 Literature in the Native College at Chinsurah, 
 from which he was promoted to a position in 
 the Indian Civil Service as Principal of a simi- 
 lar College at Rampore Bauleah. A few months 
 before his death he obtained unsohcited a post 
 of considerable responsibility, and offering a 
 grand opening to him. The most powerfid of 
 the native princes, the Nizam of Hyderabad, 
 is a minor, and the government is conducted by 
 Sir Sala Jung, whose relations with the English 
 Government have always been most cordial, and 
 through whose influence the education of the 
 yoimg sovereign has been partly intrusted to 
 Englishmen. My brother became then the com- 
 panion and instructor of the young Nizam, acting 
 in this capacity under Captain Clerk. 
 
 It was a post of great difficulty, requiring 
 much tact and judgment, owing to the conflicting
 
 X Preface. 
 
 interests of Europeans and Asiatics : how lie 
 Avould idtimately have succeeded we cannot tell, 
 but within two short months he had won the 
 approval of Sir Sala Jung, the affection of 
 his pupil, and the friendship of Captaui Clerk. 
 The fatal fever attacked him early in August, 
 but he was slow to beheve in its serious nature, 
 disregarding it in its early stages ; his friend Dr. 
 Lawder, finding his temperature to be over 103° 
 Fah., insisted upon his going to bed. He obeyed 
 most reluctantly, and Dr. Law, the Hesidency 
 Physician, took him to his own house and atten- 
 ded him with every care. One crisis passed, and 
 it seemed that the pluck with which he fought 
 this his last struggle would carry him through 
 it: never till the last day of a three weeks' 
 illness did he lose heart: in the morning of 
 September 9th he was particularly bright and 
 cheery, reading the ncAvspaper in his bed, and 
 in the evening the end came. His grave is in 
 the EngHsh cemetery, surmounted with a white 
 marble cross inscribed " Jesu, Mercy."
 
 Preface. 
 
 XI 
 
 To those wlio knew and loved Imn and mourn 
 a life thus suddenly cut off at the moment when 
 its prospect was brightest, it will be a comfort 
 to know that in the strange land he was not 
 without friends : to Captain and Mrs. Clerk we 
 owe what no words can tell. 
 
 Such, then, is a brief sketch of his life. It is 
 probable that the Poems will meet with but 
 little armed criticism. If this httle book serves 
 its purpose, it will be to his friends a memento 
 of one whose little faults were uo small part 
 of his charms. Few criticised the man : it was 
 enou2:h that there was in him a fascination 
 which drew the veriest stranger. Once known, 
 who can forget the open face, the heavy tread, 
 the broad shoulders, the genial smile, the easy 
 talk, the pleasant humorous laugh, the warm 
 heart, and the grasp of the hand as honest as 
 once was the grip of his now idle oar. 
 
 A. J. C. D. 
 
 February, 1883.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dedication . . . . - 1 
 
 The Oaksmex's Song . . . . 4 
 
 Ode to Ckicket . . . .6 
 
 Baby Bligh , . . . . 9 
 
 Turkish War Song . . . .13 
 
 Requiescat (Napoleon IV) . . . 15 
 
 In Memoriam (Isandula) . . .19 
 
 Cave, C/esar! . . . . . 22 
 
 To Arms! . . . . . 2G 
 
 Jericho . . . . . 28
 
 xiv Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Juggernath's Car . . . .35 
 
 The Nerbtjddha . . . . . 42 
 
 The Indian Night . . . .45 
 
 The Old Thug . . . . . 47 
 
 The Coming of Indra . . .51 
 
 The Old Anglo-Indian . . . . 55 
 
 A Village Fire . . . .63 
 
 "Are/cJ-os . , ... 65 
 
 Anassa . • . . -69 
 
 Love's Seasons . . . . . 70 
 
 The Old and New Year . . .76 
 
 Sonnet . . . • . . 77 
 
 Sark . . . . -78 
 
 'A/cdpStos . . - - . . <J
 
 Contents. xv 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Poet's Lover . . . .80 
 
 "E/)ws xP'"''''M<"Pos . . . . . 82 
 
 "Epwy K7]Tr€VT7]s . . . . .83 
 
 Eros Toxeutes . . . . . 85 
 
 A Reigning Beauty . . . .86 
 
 Love and Wine . . . . . 88 
 
 Ethel . . . • .90 
 
 On a Casket . . . . . 92 
 
 On sending Tennyson's 'Loves of the Wrens' 
 
 TO A Lady . . . .93 
 
 Ilderin . . . . . . 94 
 
 To Fanny . . . . .95 
 
 Edith . . . . . . 97 
 
 A Valentine . . . .98
 
 xvi Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Airy Creature . . . . 100 
 
 A Wiltshire Idyll .... 101 
 Address to Mr. Truefitt's Representative, &c. 104 
 Ye Historie of ye Fortunes, &c. . . 106 
 
 To the Moorghi . . . .112 
 
 Fratri Aryensi Anglo-Indus iratus . .113 
 Ye Biography, &c. . . . .115 
 
 In Memoriam . . . . . 138 
 
 In Memoriam (H. F. & C. J. O.) . . 140 
 
 e-***-*
 
 p 
 
 EDICATION. 
 
 '■Matri Etona?." 
 
 GREEN shadows, cloisters cool, and russet towers. 
 Beneath whose eaves the solemn jackdaws meet 
 In council ; lawns and pools, and fragrant bowers 
 Of elm and chestnut, Avhere the footprints fleet 
 Of boyhood glimmer ; lo ! before your feet 
 I lay in gentle honour and in tears 
 Mine Eastern wreath, and suppliautwise entreat 
 The echoes of my song may reach thy ears. 
 Amidst the change and din of all-forgetful years. 
 
 Oh ! take it, mother, though the melodies 
 
 Of mighty minstrels sound about thy l}Te : 
 
 A child, I wandered where the music-sighs 
 
 Of thy great river mingled in the choir 
 
 Of joy, and boyish sorrow, teen and ire ; 
 
 The foul, the fair, the many and the few, 
 
 Wrought silently in tliee a patched attire 
 
 For me to wear for ever. Thereunto 
 
 Regarding, take these buds how dim soc'er their line.
 
 Dedication. 
 
 Forgive me, thou, whose loom of peerless worth 
 
 Wrought richest broiderwork, its every skein 
 
 Eare, silken, fanciful, of Nature's birth 
 
 Yet spun by Art, and dyed in Iris grain ; 
 
 So thou might'st weave a fabric without stain 
 
 Sweet with the old world's perfume — not so sweet 
 
 That it should sickly seem when breathed again. 
 
 Oh Bard of Eton ! Poet Gray ! 'tis meet 
 
 That I should bend and kiss the traces of thy feet. 
 
 And he who built in immaterial air 
 
 A lonely paradise. Methinks I see 
 
 The high-broAved boy with bright entangled hair 
 
 And eyes that glance and darken fitfully, 
 
 Stormy and passionate as angry sea, 
 
 Now dark Avith clouds uprising, now in rain 
 
 Shining of fruitless yearnings mournfully, 
 
 Self -exiled wanderer in a land of pain. 
 
 Oh Ariel ! Spirit bea,utiful ! cease thy high diedain. 
 
 Mayhap, fair father Thames, thy tuneful billow 
 First won his love : he read thy changeful wave. 
 That roams by laughing reeds and weeping willow 
 To Ocean, e'en as all that 's bright and brave 
 Flows to the unfathomed all-receiving grave. 
 He loved thee — and such love one evil hour 
 Slew him where sudden tempests rise and rave 
 On bare Livorna. Self -named " Falling Shower,'' 
 To thee — oh ! water it — I vow my fairest flower.
 
 Dedication. 
 
 These were thy Titaus, Eton ; yet there be 
 Others whose numbers were too sweet to die : 
 Praed's laugh still rings in cadence clear and free 
 About thy golden chords — as rippliugly 
 As, after largess full of April sky, 
 The sound of waters surging in the dingle. 
 Albeit their cloud-sire sleeps unseen on high : 
 Harsh sounds among thy notes my tambonr's jingle, 
 As after breaker-music grates the falling shingle. 
 
 The holy pipal branches o'er my head 
 And Ganga, daughter of the mountain, flows 
 Before my feet — a Power clothed with dread, 
 Brown, wind-lashed, terrible, o'erbrimmed with 
 
 snows ; 
 From palm and banyan forth my spirit goes 
 Back to the chestnut pleasaunces again, 
 And the old river where the king-cup blows : 
 Once more I tread in Henry's holy fane 
 To lay my wreath, a damask Avreath, of love and pain. 
 
 B 2
 
 The Oarsmen s Song. 
 
 T 
 
 HE Oarsmen's Song. 
 
 LO ! we the lusty sons of the oar ! 
 We are the lords of the watery way — 
 Our vassal reeds marshal our palace floor, 
 We lash the waves, and the waves obey. 
 Who is the bookful dull-eyed fool, 
 Frowsy with fusty conceits of school ? 
 Come where the water-fowl ruffles the pool. 
 Glance Avith us over our pathway cool, 
 Join in our roundelay ! 
 
 Others may sing of the kingly oak, 
 
 How nobly he furrows the cloven brine : 
 How bravely he buffets the ocean stroke, 
 Or breaks the pride of the foeman's line. 
 Linden ! I love thy pavilioned shade. 
 Of thy heart, good elm, shall my coffin be made ; 
 But Avhere is the tree on hill or glade 
 Like the God-sown tree, that grew the blade, 
 The tapering, sjiiry pine ? 
 
 Gentle Thelxinoe, daughter of Jove ! 
 
 Britons may bow to the Teuton lyre. 
 Melt at the harmonies Handel wove. 
 
 Burn with the lightning of Wagner's fire.
 
 The Oars7nens So7tg. 
 
 My pipe is but carven of river reed, 
 
 Yet its warble is sweet to the ears that 
 
 heed, 
 It trills of the blossomy water-weed, 
 And sallowy fringes of weir and mead. 
 
 And the oars' well-ordered choir ! 
 
 Naiads who, couched upon cresses, sleep 
 
 Domed with crystal and lily-hung. 
 Out from their marigold avenues peep, 
 
 And dance to our minstrelsy, oar-l:)lade flung ! 
 
 Eyes on the boat, boys ! Ready, all ? Row ! 
 Forward with feathered blades even and low, 
 Catch I with a strong and a brotherly blow. 
 Rattling the row-locks together we go, — 
 Oh ! gallantly timed and swung ! 
 
 Strain at the stretchers, lads ! grip with a will ! 
 
 See how the circled eddies fly ! 
 Swift as the halcyon skimming the rill, 
 Blithcsomely, stoutly, the water-flail ply ! 
 
 Stretch, gallant cedar, thy broad pine wings 
 Woodland shouts unto us, deeji valley rings, 
 Rushes bend under the car of their kings, 
 Grey withies whisper, and cm-ling wave sings, 
 " Room ! for our masters go by ! "
 
 Ode to Cricket. 
 
 Winter may blow : and his breath it is shrewd, 
 
 Lading the river with broken floe : 
 Reck we not whether his welcome be rude, 
 
 When he blinds our eyes with his kerchief of snow. 
 Others may shiver and snuffle and whine, 
 Crouch o'er the coals with their pills and quinine, 
 For ours is the sport that is only divine — 
 Sons of the cedar, sons of the pine. 
 
 Forward all ! Ready ! Row ! 
 
 Ode to Cricket. 
 
 " Diva potens pil».' 
 
 THE willow loves the silent nook. 
 She babbles to the water-brook, 
 And whispers peace to maids forlorn, 
 Who nurse the wounds of lovers' scorn : 
 They twine them of her satin leaves 
 Soft crowns, to soothe the heart that grieves ; 
 And, garlanding their loosened hair. 
 Sing, " Willow, willow. Love is fair, 
 But, willow, gentle-mourning tree, 
 My love is flown, so weep with me ! "
 
 Ode to Cricket. 
 
 Yet for siglis of loves forsworn 
 
 And maidens' tears thou wast not born ; 
 
 Rather for the shaven green, 
 
 Where, 'mong the giant ehias that watch around, 
 
 Rosy Lads obey their Queen, 
 
 Wounding in eager haste the tender ground. 
 
 Catching, striking, hurhng, chasing, 
 
 Thy leather-prisoned serf ; 
 
 Now from space to space outracing, 
 
 Flecks on the green-robed turf. 
 
 There, brave willow ! bravely wielded. 
 
 All the foeman's wiles repel. 
 
 Till the triple rank has yielded, 
 
 And the lines thou kept'st so well : 
 
 Then with a stormy roar, hand smiting hand, 
 
 And, rapture thousand-voiced and caps up-tost, 
 
 Thou shalt be borne as e'en a proven brand 
 
 By some gray war-worn Captain of the host, 
 
 When the long thunder of the flame-tongued square 
 
 Rattles in liu-id light, and blinds the deafened air. 
 
 Thee, brave willow ! tliee we greet, 
 We the quick-eyed, we the fleet, 
 To thy nuptials now we call 
 Pleasure's sons to Pleasure's fane, 
 Hymen ! sound the festival, 
 Sing the willow-wedded cane.
 
 8 Ode to Cricket. 
 
 Now the suix hath clomb the sky, 
 
 All the world with life is glowing, 
 
 Danceth here the summer fly, 
 
 'Mong the chestnuts incense blov/ing. 
 
 Lissom-limbed and pleasiu-e flushed. 
 
 Over the velvet mead 
 
 Now shouting, now to eager silence hushed, 
 
 Thy glad adorers speed. 
 
 And as, when Chivalry in halberk bright 
 
 Charged down the clanging lists with low-couched 
 
 spear. 
 Soft maidens watched, and warmed with love's delight, 
 Each for her champion woke a trembling tear : 
 So, as yon Ivanhoe the Avillow sways, 
 Rowena, dewy-eyed, her brimming love betrays ! 
 
 Brothers of the springy meadow, 
 
 Brawny-shouldered, lithe of limb. 
 
 Ere the chestnuts cast their shadow. 
 
 And the eye of day grows dim, 
 
 Let us woo the Nymph we hymn ! 
 
 All in the summer light. 
 
 Now hath our Queen her ordered ranks arrayed ; 
 
 And in flannel armoiu" dight 
 
 Her mail-shod champions dot the battled glade. 
 
 Comrades ! we will Avin the fight — 
 
 Well hit ! Oh missed ! another ! six ! well played !
 
 Baby Bligh, 
 
 She is watching, wliom I love, 
 
 By my deed my love I'll prove : 
 
 Trusty willow ! she is near — 
 
 She waits beneath the old elm tree. 
 
 Fly ! thou recreant leathern sphere ! 
 
 I will score a century ! 
 
 So may I earn a stoup of frothy ale, 
 
 And, sweeter far, a draught from love-sweet eyes ; 
 
 And in the mellow twilight of the dale, 
 
 Goddess, mayhap through thee I'll win a dearer prize 1 
 
 L 
 
 AN OLD BLUE JACKET'S YARN. 
 
 ADS ! d'ye remember the Diadem ? 
 
 She was a grand old seventy-three — 
 True-born lady from starn to stem, 
 
 None o' your darned coal-scuttles she ! 
 Admiral, skipper, and joeys and crew, 
 We were proud of her, darng it ! in sixty-two. 
 
 We was a crew that could play with a gale, 
 Officers, middies, and pore A.B.'s — 
 
 Was there any so smart getting under sail — 
 Moossoo, or what ? on the China seas — 
 
 And next to ourselves, mates, why Baby Bligh 
 
 Was the pet of the whole ship's company.
 
 10 Baby Bligh. 
 
 He was the son of our Admiral, 
 
 Rated as midf>hipman, four feet six — 
 
 Fresh from his uiirsery, curls and all, 
 
 With a jDluck like the old 'un's ! — and as for tricks, 
 
 Skylarking, and capers — Why, blow my eye, 
 
 If now I can keep these old binnacles dry ! 
 
 Yes — 'twas a Friday, the last in June — 
 We all of us mind it, — or stop my grog ! 
 
 Left Yokohama, six bells, forenoon. 
 Close-reefed tops'ls, and lifting fog : 
 
 It was freshening fast, with a falling glass, 
 
 When what I'm a-making for come to pass. 
 
 Admiral Bligh walks up from below — 
 (One of your quiet ones — seldom spoke : 
 
 Where was a better sailor though ? 
 'Twasn't all fancy, his leaves of oak ;) 
 
 Says he to the skipper, " Them sticks won't stand," 
 
 And " down with the taups'ls " the word of command. 
 
 Whistle and tramp, and the rattlins fill, 
 Over the cross-trees, and Bill leads fair : 
 
 Smart we were all, but our Ginger Bill, 
 Was a beggar to tackle a-treading air — 
 
 Out on the yard, like a chimpanzee, 
 
 Larkin', playactin', and chaffin' me.
 
 Baby Bligh. n 
 
 The cloiids rose asteru of us, black and hard, 
 And the ship, like a racehoss, just plunged and 
 tore — 
 "When Bill does the ballet-kick, out on the yard, 
 
 Jest out of devilry, nothin' more — 
 Boom ! — 'twas a green one, — a throb and a lurch — 
 And Ginger, Lord save him ! had di'opped from his 
 perch. 
 
 Whistle and tramp — 'tis the pinnace's crew, — 
 " Stand by the davits ! — he's out on the lee ! " 
 
 But fast, as a gull on a gale, we flew, 
 
 Till Bill and his cap were like specks on the sea. 
 
 Hush ! — then a cheer that rings sudden and high ! 
 
 As over the gunwale sprang Baby Bligh ! 
 
 Calm as a picter the Admiral stands 
 Gazing away on the starboard bow — 
 
 We were rounding up fast, and the pinnace's hands 
 Were awaiting the word to cast off, down below ; 
 
 But good sea-boat though she was, they knew 
 
 That to keep her afloat Avould be plenty to do. 
 
 " Bail, men, like devils ! " but bail as they might, 
 The water kept gaining on, span by span — 
 
 But Ginger and Baby were still in sight, 
 
 And the child was a-trying to succour the man : 
 
 And " Captain," says Admiral Bligh, says he, 
 
 " Is the pinnace yet laid that can live on this sea ? "
 
 12 Baby Bligh. 
 
 The skipper looks up at the darkening sky, 
 
 And the clouds were rolled thick in a solid rack — 
 
 He looks at the green seas, giuiAvale high, 
 And never a word could he answer back. 
 
 Though skipper and officers, blue jackets — all — 
 
 Would have dived to Old Nick for the Admiral ! 
 
 Lads ! I can see him a-standing now, 
 
 Steadj, aye, steady — but deathly white — 
 
 Pirate and slaver in junk and dhow, 
 
 Know well old Jem Bligh's look, when grappling 
 to fight. 
 
 But never had odds — no, nor wild lee-shore. 
 
 Seen a twitch on the Admiral's lip before ! 
 
 Jest a moment he paused like and bent his head — 
 Joe Blake, who was near, said he heerd un sigh — 
 
 We heard no change in the tone which said, 
 " Haul in the pinnace, lads ! smart — stand by ! 
 
 Whistle, and haul with a yeo, heave oh ! 
 
 He was my only one ! let him go ! " 
 
 'Bout ! Ave are scudding before a gale. 
 
 Twelve knots easy, without being pressed — 
 
 But farther astern, every knot we sail. 
 
 Drifts all in the world Jemmy Bligh loved best ! 
 
 Mates ! I feel queer — for I liked un, too — 
 
 So three of my mixture, miss ! what say you ?
 
 Turkish War Song. 13 
 
 Turkish War Song. 
 
 JULT, 1877. 
 
 Sound the alarm! 
 Brothers of Islam, scatter the infidel swarm ! 
 
 The Giaoiir hath gathered his hungry brood I 
 The cursed Giaour cometh with thirst of blood ! 
 His carrion sickeneth Danube's flood ! 
 Mussulmans ! Allah 
 Is with us ! Inshallah ! 
 Ai-m ! 
 
 Hark from afar ! 
 The bay of the van-dogs, loosed from the leash of the 
 Tzar, 
 Yelp on oiu- traces ; harry our track : 
 Whimper, ye base Bulgarian pack ! 
 Servian jackals, back ! stand back ! 
 Dastards ! ye wonder : 
 Our answer is thunder — 
 War ! 
 
 Redden, oh skies, 
 With war-flames ; oh earth, be red, where the Musco- 
 vite dies !
 
 14 Turkish War Song. 
 
 War-beacons leap from continents three, 
 From Aral they flare to the Afric' Sea, 
 And Caucasus summoneth Rhodope. 
 
 Are we forsaken ? 
 
 Turkomans, waken ! 
 Rise! 
 
 Hear ye the cry ? 
 "Allah il Allah !" Drina and Zab reply : 
 Kiu-ds, who the steppes of the wilderness roam, 
 Wild as the braves who remember a home 
 Where tamarisks whiten with Caspian foam. 
 
 Would ye surrender ? 
 
 Strike and defend ! or 
 Die! 
 
 Fear we the foe ? 
 Answer, O crescent, Mahomet's silvery bow ! 
 Answer, queen of the Orient tide ! 
 Answer, ye navies, that haughtily ride 
 Treacherous seas, where the Death-fish glide ! 
 Answer — with flashing 
 Of lightning fires crashing — 
 No! 
 
 Muscovites, reel ! 
 Savoureth sweet the taste of Cii'cassian steel ?
 
 Requiescat. 15 
 
 Cossacks, who fly ere the fight be won ; 
 Fleet is the flight of your steeds of the Don ! 
 But the Avrath it is fleeter of Schamyl's son ! 
 
 Crave ye for mercy ? 
 
 Nay, dogs, we curse ye ! 
 Kneel ! 
 
 Thunder, drum ! 
 Loud as the fuU-tongued nation's gathering hum : 
 Moon-faced hoiu-is with wine-dark eyes, 
 Strown as the Ulies, in Paradise, 
 These he the Mussulman warrior's prize : 
 Shall death appal us ? 
 Moslems, they call us I 
 Come ! 
 
 '^•^- 
 
 llctjtti^s^nt. 
 
 NAPOLEON IV. 
 
 "I come to pluck your ben-ies liarsli aud crnde." — Lycidas. 
 
 OH ! lay him in lilies, June buds of the morning. 
 Buds of the morning, that barely have bloomed! 
 Freshest and fairest are meetest adorning, 
 
 And by blossoms of spring be his spring-life en- 
 tombed !
 
 16 Requiescat. 
 
 Roses for blood — in their riiddj flush broken — 
 Lilies for chastity — white as his face — 
 
 But next to his bosom lie, pitiful token, 
 Violet ! pledge of his sorrow-doomed race. 
 
 Nor with pageant of war, nor such thunder as 
 shattered 
 The cohorts of Prussia, the war men of Spain — 
 When the nations as sheep without shepherds were 
 scattered, 
 And a despot was throned upon mountains of slain. 
 
 Nay, nay, nor in fight for the France who forsook him. 
 In the claim of his birthright, the race for a 
 throne — 
 
 But the doom of his forbears, poor lad ! overtook liim. 
 By comrades forgotten I — deserted — alone ! 
 
 Where the maize-crops are fattest, by wild Ilyotosi, 
 And bleak Itelezi's peaks darken and shine. 
 
 To the ambush and lance of his barbarous foes, he 
 Surrendered the hojies of his Emperor line ! 
 
 Oh cold home and comfortless ! Royal heart riven ! 
 
 Oh comely limbs marred by the red assegai ! 
 'Twas no fault — it may be — 'twas the coimsel of 
 Heaven, 
 
 But the stain of it, England, will never grow dry !
 
 Reqidescat. 17 
 
 Grave it in ciphers that never may perisli, 
 Biu-n on thy bosom the brand of thy shame ! 
 
 For the pride which thy children most cUngingly 
 cherish, 
 Is blmred in the blot that has sullied thy name. 
 
 They slew him alone, in his sins, nnanointed, 
 
 The sreedv barbarian rifled the slain : 
 But the savage fears God — in his greed disappointed, 
 
 He trembled one emblem of love to profane. 
 
 Oh ! thou, Avith Avhose blood the war-fiend's was 
 imited, 
 
 Corsican ! Conqueror ! Captive, or King ! 
 From the mystic Aloof-land, did'st hear unaffrighted, 
 
 The knell of thy line and its destinies ring ? 
 
 And, Spirit, who flittest on lost Sedan's rampires, 
 Where the eagles of Germany flaunt on the wall, 
 
 Did'st remember hoAv once from yon loud-throated 
 vampires 
 'Vive r Empereur' echoed through Tuileries' Hall? 
 
 From the ti-eacherous maize, where' his comrades had 
 found him, 
 They bore him in weeping, and muttering low : 
 With the banner of Buonaparte gathered around him, 
 And scarlet-clad Englishmen marching below ! 
 
 c
 
 18 Requiescat. 
 
 He Bhall sleep iu the land "which his exile befriended ; 
 
 Oh ! by warriors pillow the warrior head ! 
 In that historied shrine, where all Avars are amended, 
 
 It is meet he should sleep with our glorious Dead. 
 
 It is meet he should lie with his forefathers' foemen — 
 For their cause he went forth — for their standard 
 he fell : 
 And the many -aged Abbey of Peace should entomb 
 him, 
 Its wide-wailing organ-peal thunder his knell. 
 
 Peace, peace ! 'Tis the heart of the widow, the mother,. 
 
 The sceptreless queen, whose support was this 
 one — 
 She pleads he may sleep by the side of another. 
 
 In the dim quiet chapel — the Father and Son. 
 
 Thou shalt wake — wheresobe — with the brave, iu 
 Valhalla, 
 Or roaming with Hector down asphodel glades — 
 But wherever the God of the good may install ye. 
 Thou shalt walk with thy warrior forefathers' 
 shades.
 
 f 
 
 L In Memoriam, 19 
 
 tt iii^muijtjtm 
 
 THK SOLDIERS OF THE 24:TH REGIMENT WHO DIED 
 AT ISANDULA. 
 
 I. 
 
 It came like the breath 
 Of an unripe death 
 On the fair or the overproud ; 
 As a shudder of earth 
 When the guests make mirth 
 And the laughter and song is loud. 
 Like the sudden hurrah ! 
 Of the foeman's war 
 When the city and watchmen sleep ; 
 Like the sandy doom 
 Of the hot simoom, 
 Or a squall on the summer deep ! 
 
 IL 
 
 Under the ocean's canopy dark 
 Sped the quivering message spark ! 
 Only a moment of gleamy light 
 
 Brake the Atlantic's nether night. 
 
 c 'Z
 
 20 In Memoriam. 
 
 Yet, as it giimmered, the great whales shook, 
 
 And the Tritons their green-tressed loves forsook, 
 
 And the porpoises opened their dull white eyes. 
 
 And tumbled no longer Ixion-wise : 
 
 And dolphins, and starfish, and skates made moan 
 
 Round about Amphitrite's throne. 
 
 Helter-skelter the green folk came, 
 
 Fleeing the gleam of the baleful flame 
 
 That was big with the queen of the ocean's shame ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Shame ? be it shame 
 That England coimts all else divinely lost. 
 So she may force the savage to be just, 
 
 And reverence her name ? 
 
 No shame ! the stars, the sky, 
 Bear witness — In the spheres their praise is simg, 
 And sea proclaims to sea, and tongue to tongue 
 
 How Britons die ! 
 
 The Ages know, who saw 
 Our English Harry, like a bright Doom, glance 
 Upon the lilies and the pride of France 
 
 At Agincour ; 
 
 And on Corunna's plain 
 How bloom the daisies o'er the hero head 
 Of him who, still unvanquished, nobly bled 
 
 For freedom and for Sj)ain !
 
 ht Meino7'iani. 21 
 
 Lo ! from St. Helen's strand 
 
 One frowns — I see him — o'er his warder sea 
 
 Gazing upon a blood-won emperj 
 
 That melts as sand, 
 
 Before a hero few 
 Who, albeit life seemed fair, yet chose to die, 
 Seeing by their death a world-won liberty 
 
 At "Waterloo ! 
 
 Can reed of mine 
 Pipe to the p^an of the six troops' thunder 
 That broke the battled Muscovite asunder, 
 
 And died — for discipline ? 
 
 Nay, nay ! their unscrolled graves 
 On Balaclava's windy downs forth tell, 
 Better than minstrel's lute, how fought, how 
 
 fell 
 
 Those brother braves ! 
 
 Fickle and fair of face 
 Thy ways, Lucknow, are decked with dome and 
 
 bower. 
 Yet love I best one cannon-battered tower, 
 
 The scutcheon of our race ! 
 
 And waters pale 
 Of Jumma, tell ye how the Briton falls ! 
 Recks he of countless odds, when Honour calls, 
 
 " Die or prevail ? "
 
 22 Cave, CcBsar ! 
 
 And even so, 
 Five hundred lads who grandly scorned to fly, 
 Signed fresh the warrant of our history 
 
 By lonely Buffalo ! 
 
 Thus — in the sullen North, 
 As Southward, if yon cloud that cloaks the sky 
 Burst into lightnings — Britons, learn to die, 
 As learnt the Twenty -foiu-th ! 
 
 Caye, C^SAR ! 
 
 1879. 
 
 HEAR' ST not the moan 
 That soundest about thy streets ? 
 As the kisses blown 
 Of the fierce cyclone, 
 When his sea love he entreats, 
 
 With funeral scarfs of cloud, and surges for bridal 
 sheets. 
 
 Hast thou a statesman whose voice is strong ? 
 Stronger than musket or gyve of steel — 
 Let him bespeak yon dark-browed throng. 
 Prove, if he can. 
 That thy puppet-mau
 
 Cave, CcBsar ! 23 
 
 Hath no voice in his nation's weal, 
 Hath no pulses that quicken, no heart with fibres 
 that feel. 
 
 Where is the politic leech 
 Thy medicine men among. 
 Whose high-coloured shams of speech 
 May purge the scurf from the nation's tongue ? 
 Or cool its feverous pulse, or amend its bursting 
 lung ? 
 
 Potent may be his drug and balm — 
 Sharp may be, Tzar ! his knife of state — 
 Let him lop off the people's arm ; 
 Sooth, it is overgrown of late ; 
 Drug them with drugs till their sense is dull, 
 Bleed them, O leech, till the gutter is full 
 And the strength of their hands is as little as now 
 their strength is great. 
 
 And the voice of the despot is heard, — 
 
 " By my soul, by my crown, I swear 
 
 I will smite ye with scom-ge and with sword, 
 
 I will bind ye with chains," saith the Tzar. 
 
 " Lo ! your homes shall be opened wide 
 
 To the gaze of the passer-by. 
 
 And the veil of your thoughts shall divide 
 
 To the shafts of my secret eye—
 
 24 Cave, CcBsar ! 
 
 And jour young, and your brave, and your strong. 
 
 They shall shudder like babes ; they shall moan 
 
 As they labour, ungladdened of song. 
 
 In the dim Siberian zone. 
 
 On the eve of his bridal sleep. 
 
 Shall the bridegroom be rent away ; 
 
 In my prison-land he shall weep, 
 
 Unsunned of the joy of day — 
 
 Ere the love-light hath waxen wan, 
 
 Ere the orange-bloom's scent is gone, 
 
 Ere the moon on their dreams that shone 
 
 Hath paled — I sAvear 
 
 I will dash from his lips 
 
 The goblet he sips 
 
 As I live, he shall die," saith the Tzar ! 
 
 What 'vail, what 'vail, 
 
 Simples of quack, or grandam's tale. 
 
 When Plague redhanded rangeth far and wide ? 
 
 May tower of sand 
 
 Built by an infant's engineering hand 
 
 Beat back the bayonets of the wedged tide ? 
 
 Or when the fierce Love-bubbles boil. 
 
 Will butts of sacerdotal oil 
 
 Subdiie a flame that slayeth all beside ? 
 
 So, if they may, magician, bind 
 
 The love of freedom and the pinioned mind
 
 Cave, Ccesar ! 25 
 
 With bonds of hard control — 
 Bring the axe, and bring the cord ! 
 Tzar of the Russias, mighty lord, 
 With fetters about the body go forth to tame the 
 soul ! 
 
 sou of tyrants ! Yet no tyrant thou, — 
 
 K but thy heart 
 Would of its gentler nature disavow 
 
 The baser part ! 
 If but the baleful heir-loom of thy race 
 
 Thou "would'st disown, 
 Its title blasphemous, its barren grace, 
 
 Its lonely throne — 
 Aye, if the well-stream of thy royal love 
 
 Would burst its bar, 
 And spreading large by city, hamlet, grove. 
 
 Drive pest afar — 
 So every rill and every turbid river 
 
 Of human woes 
 Might to thee flow, and in thee, Great Health- 
 giver, 
 
 Win clear repose. 
 Think not that dungeon bar, or Arctic sky, 
 
 Or silent miu:derous hand, 
 Can gag that world-Avide shriek for liberty. 
 
 Or hush its just demand.
 
 26 To Arms I 
 
 Know that although imperial hands be strong, 
 
 Yet Love's are stronger ; 
 Awake, prond Romanoff, thou tarriest long, 
 
 Tarry no longer ! 
 Now on the East horizon doth arise 
 
 Fair Freedom's star ! 
 Gaze not for ever Westward ! Lift thine eyes, 
 
 O Tzar ! 
 
 Jo / 
 
 RMS 
 1877. 
 
 BRITONS ! from the Eastern waters 
 Hear the Muscov's faithless boast ! 
 Hark ! how stricken Islam's daughters 
 Wail their brave down-trodden host ! 
 Soldiers ! all your scrolled banners 
 Tell how erst your forbears bled ! 
 Shall the sloth of softer manners 
 Cast to shame our mighty dead ? 
 
 Britons ! whet yoiu* rusting lances ; 
 
 Meet us, greet us, sister isle. 
 
 Scots ! where'er the claymore glances, 
 
 Little speeds the foemen's guile.
 
 To Arms ! 2"^ 
 
 Now the lioly call of Duty 
 Wakes to strength oirr sleeping land, 
 As when erst the slumbrous Beauty 
 Felt the fairy prince's hand. 
 Once again, spite factions rotten, 
 Right unsheathes her righteous sword : 
 Thou art king no more. King Cotton, 
 England keeps her plighted word. 
 
 Ch. Britons, whet, &c. 
 
 In the van with stately motion 
 Ride the war-ships, firm and cool. 
 Where the waves of either ocean 
 Mirror thousand-domed Stamboul. 
 Hornby ! as the war-cloud gathers, 
 Son of sailor-warriors thou ! 
 All thy warrior sailor fathers 
 Cool and firm, are watching now I 
 
 Ch. Britons, whet, &c. 
 
 Holy Jumna hears and answers 
 Winding slow through rice and palm ; 
 Wild-eyed Sikhs and turbaned lancers, 
 Muster to the trump's alarm ! 
 And the West wave wafts another 
 Echo from Ontario's shore, 
 " Lead thy children, mighty mother, 
 Lead thy loyal sons to war ! " 
 
 Ch. Britons, whet, &c.
 
 28 Jericho. 
 
 Clang the anvil ! through the lurid 
 
 Night the smitten iron glows ! 
 
 Hammers, swing ! though thews be wearied, 
 
 See ! the giant cannon grows ! 
 
 Turn the grindstone ! gallant yeomen, 
 
 Wipe your tarnished scabbards clean ! 
 
 Falter ! well ye may, false foemen, 
 
 Ere we strike for God and Queen ! 
 
 Ch. Britons, whet, &c. 
 
 ■'idiSk'oo 
 
 / 
 
 E RI C H O 
 
 THE vulture wheeling, as a moving mote 
 Upon a tearless sun, has marked its quarry ; 
 A jackal, hounding down a mountain goat, 
 Steals like a doom along the limestone corrie ; 
 For the great himtsman Death is on the foray : 
 Then with his comrade, the blue-banded fly, 
 The carrion thief shall mouse his banquet gory 
 On yonder mountain-top that spears the sky, 
 Where Good achieved o'er 111 his thrice-wrought 
 victory.
 
 Jericho. 29 
 
 The jackal lurks on holy Quarentine : 
 
 Aloft the bald-scalped bird of havoc towers, 
 
 And in the crannies, where a love divine 
 
 Still hngers in the light of wild-blown flowers. 
 
 The scorpion nourishes his sullen powers. 
 
 Below, with desert hut and dreary tree. 
 
 Where once rose Herod's palaces and bowers. 
 
 The flats of Jericho stretch mournfully 
 
 E'en to the sacred stream that seeks the soundless sea. 
 
 The lean herd tends his flocks, the sad-eyed serf 
 
 Hoes without hope or heart the imcared loam, 
 
 Striking mayhap beneath the Aveedy turf 
 
 Some marble remnant of Imperial Rome ; 
 
 Or mends the wall-rents of his squalid home 
 
 With ciphered slabs that great Agrippa trod ; 
 
 Or sooth a pediment that based the dome 
 
 Of Ashtaroth, when splashed with infants' blood 
 
 It fell before the priests that blew the trumps of God. 
 
 The rams' horns blew : the solemn priests went on. 
 
 And with a shout that rang the city's knell 
 
 Each towered parapet and bastion 
 
 BoAved to the God they knew not — bowed and fell. 
 
 Spears led the pageant; next Avith trumpet-swell 
 
 The sons of Aaron bore the mystic Ark ; 
 
 Next marched the rearward : then commissioned Hell
 
 30 Jericho. 
 
 Wrought the behests of Heaven : Vengeance stark 
 Stalked through the blood-flushed streets, and made 
 the bright ways dark. 
 
 And Rahab, traitress to her slaughtered kind, 
 Harlot of Jericho, whose name was hissed 
 As Helen's, curse-fraught, Avhen the ^gean wind 
 Fanned flaming Ilium — the lips late kissed 
 Spat blood upon her ; aye, the hands oft pressed 
 In Love's wai-m dalliance were clenched and shaken 
 In hate of her whom Israel's leader blessed. 
 From thy long-centiu-ied trance arise, awaken, 
 City ! and say how thou, not she, wast so forsaken. 
 
 Hang out the scarlet thread ! Thou land of woe, 
 God's irony still saves the harlot's head — 
 For London mocks at ruined Jericho ; 
 Her gilded strumpets need no saving thread ; 
 They sleep, they tire themselves, they mince and wed 
 Her lordlings, and, as traitress serpents, lie 
 Bright-hued and bane-tongued on the nuptial bed : 
 Haply, as Rahab, when the foe draws nigh 
 They shall go forth Avith laughter, bidding their soft 
 mates die. 
 
 The mighty city's streets with commerce roar, 
 But thou, lost Jericho, art still and lone ; 
 Only the olive yields its scanty store,
 
 Jericho. 31 
 
 Emblem no more of peace, but sloth wildgrown. 
 
 The stubborn fig-tree splits the carven stone, 
 
 The whilom coping of some monster work 
 
 Wrought by Hephaestus' sons gone now, long gone : 
 
 The Bedouins in their hairy houses lurk 
 
 And batten on the scourings left by the panther Turk. 
 
 Thou heavy, foul-fleshed, satin-slippered curse. 
 Bloat despot of the land where Jesus died ! 
 High on thy cushioned throne thou dost converse 
 On Equity, which thine own acts deride. 
 And Islam knows not. Shall the fat wolf Pride 
 Batten for ever with insatiate maw 
 On these poor Syrian sheep, so lowly-eyed ? 
 Must Justice yield to Greed the unequal war 
 And gold, guilt-gotten, stand the sovereign salve of 
 Law ? 
 
 God's curse and Islam's do this land unbless, 
 Islam the hangman, God the Judge of doom : 
 The bleak crags stare in sheer unloveliness 
 Through tattered rags of Cultivation's loom, 
 Like beggars' bones in patches : dark-winged gloom 
 Broods o'er the ruins of the all-ruined race, 
 And claims abroad an universal tomb. 
 Where, Gibeah, are thy wine-vats and the grace 
 That made this land of old God's chosen dwelling- 
 place ?
 
 32 Jericho. 
 
 O ye blue liills of Moab ! and thou hill 
 Of Pisgah ! holiest, where the Priest-king lies 
 Unmarked — except of God his Master — still 
 In pride of mystic loneliness, ye rise 
 To mock the land whence once the faithful spies 
 Brought pledge of fatness and the fruity vine ! 
 Methinks yon fleecy mist, that sleeps and dies 
 Upon your wounded breast, has tears as mine 
 Bitter, to shed o'er Canaan, drawn from the bitter 
 brine. 
 
 Flow, Jordan, flow unto the Silent Sea ! 
 And flowing weep for that which is no more — 
 The milk and honey. I remember me 
 How learning sweet child-tales of holy lore 
 From one who is not, with child's eyes I saw 
 The silver river setting the golden grain, 
 And stood with Syria's cajDtain on the shore, 
 What time thou healed'st his sickness. Ne'er again 
 Shall thy mysterious flood wash clean the leper's 
 stain. 
 
 Thy torrent sloughs with slime its naked banks, 
 And mocks the tawdry pomp of pilgrimage 
 That year by year belies the Christ with pranks 
 Of Romish pageantry and tricks of stage : 
 They come, these Christians of the latter age
 
 Jericho. 33 
 
 Gawded Armenian, Copt, and rich-stoled Greek, 
 To wash — and afterwards their wars to wage. 
 
 mockery ! though human voice be weak, 
 
 Thine were not, holy Jordan, were it thine to speak. 
 
 Southward the sand-tracts stretch towards the lake ; 
 
 Yet peeps the wild-flower by the pathless way 
 
 That leads to Jericho : in yonder brake. 
 
 Where totters dotardwise a tower grey, 
 
 The Nubian hireling waits the Bedouin's fray. 
 
 Beneath the scrannel crops that sadly flaunt 
 
 Their idiot fripperies — their plumage gay 
 
 Veiling a vacant heart — with hunger gaunt, 
 
 Thou liest entombed for aye, City of Herod's vaunt ! 
 
 The wild-eyed children of the hamlet scream, 
 And flee in noisy rout with tangled hair 
 To their poor lazar-huts ; as in a dream 
 
 1 pass through savage reigns of briar and tare, 
 And mark the avenging Godhead everywhere — 
 Let me be gone. Too full is life of sorrow 
 That I should pack mine with another's care ; 
 And, as a Care which has no fairer morrow, 
 
 So, Life in Death, from Death thou hast not much to 
 borrow ! 
 
 And this foul runnel at Elisha's 'best 
 
 Ran sweet ? Oh ! never was there sterner need 
 
 Of scavenging from earth a mortal pest
 
 34 Je^'icho. 
 
 Than that of Islam's sloth and brutish greed — 
 That blotch on Nature's face — which plants a weed. 
 Its twin-born kinsman, where the royal corn 
 Might all unlaboured yield its golden meed : 
 But the great nations will not. Sorrow and scorn 
 Are thine for aye, O Palestine ! O race forlorn ! 
 
 Hard by the Prophet's fount, 'mong plumy spears 
 Of river rush and tender-leafed fern, 
 A crumbling mill in shame of ruin peers. 
 Like some poor staggering sot, once strong to earn 
 Toil's honest wages till the brandy-burn 
 Wasted his heart and home ; yet ruin's breath 
 Brands on unreasoning stones a mark less stern : 
 The spot is fair — approach. Nay, back ! Beneath 
 That wild-flower shroud, see, see the clammy 
 death ! 
 
 Phaugh ! Dost thou mark it not "i the rotten pall, 
 
 An Arab blanket — 'twas the living's cloak, 
 
 'Tis now his cerement — on yonder wall 
 
 Still sweat the gangrened murder-dews ; they soak 
 
 The guilty soil, which drinking straightway broke 
 
 Into pavilioned bowers of maiden-hair 
 
 To mate the withered locks: the bull-frogs croak 
 
 In hoarse approval — 'Twere a picture rare. 
 
 Horror arrayed in loveliness — the foul in fair.
 
 yuggej'uaths Car. 35 
 
 pale moon ! in thine empyrean ocean 
 Floating among thy starry argosies, 
 Draw on thy cloud-veil ! Blot the foul pollution, 
 Blot out, nor taint thereAvith thy maiden eyes, 
 Lest in thy gentle light the Dead arise 
 To wail anew their country's sore distress. 
 Come drowsy-wanded Night, with phantasies 
 Fairer than Day, fairer than painters dress ! 
 Croak me, ye frogs, to sleep and soft forge tfulness ! 
 
 -o-Js-4©74^-?s— 
 
 xluGGER^ATHS CaI\. 
 
 I. 
 
 Priests — Strophe. 
 
 DRAW forth the car ! 
 With a holy jubilation : 
 Lift, throats, a loud huzza ! 
 In the full-voiced frenzy of your adoration. 
 Scatter ye, maidens, wreathen flowers. 
 Rain on the God their perfumed showers. 
 Tremble, ye holy pictiured towers, 
 Lo, how he cometh with might — he shall succour our 
 deep tribulation. 
 
 i> 2
 
 36 JuggernatJis Car. 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 
 Thousand dark-skinned sons of toil, 
 
 Haul ! the car with awe is qnaking : 
 
 Bhula ! strain the cumbrous coil : 
 
 Wah ! the Lord of Earth is waking. 
 
 Slaves, no more in bondage labour, 
 
 Cowering 'neath the British sabre, 
 
 Praise the God with pipe and tabor : 
 Scourge of the despot ! now, even now, are oiu" 
 manacles breaking. 
 
 e. A III- 
 
 See ! he moves — Avith straining strands 
 Now the hundred wheels are tiu-ning : 
 Praise the God with clap of hands, 
 Blood and soul with passion biu-ning. 
 Pave his path with spKntering bone. 
 Spouts of death for crime atone. 
 And the piu"ple-fountained moan 
 Rising and gushing with ponderous plash of the great 
 wheel's churning. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Shall he bind our souls with shackles, and our limbs 
 
 with gyves of steel ? 
 Shall Christian despot stamp us beneath his armed 
 
 heel?
 
 yuggernatJi s Car. 37 
 
 Shall the white hounds of Britain e'er guard om- 
 
 bleating folds, 
 Harry our fruitful rice-lands, and bay from their 
 flaming holds ? 
 
 Shall they challenge with impious pride 
 The wrath of the many-wheeled God ? 
 Our passion and fury deride, 
 And doom our souls with a nod ? 
 
 Lead then, lead the passioned nach ! 
 
 Eyelids drooping dreamily. 
 
 Lust shall crown our lord's debauch, 
 
 Twine ye, whirl ye, gieamily. 
 Full lips pouting, hoarse throats shouting, 
 Praise the God with twinkling feet : 
 Wah ! the scarlet wine is spouting, 
 Besh ! the sacrifice is meet. 
 
 Juggernath bids ye adore — 
 Will ye worship your God or your hound ? 
 Crimson his pathway with gore, 
 Cushion with corpses the ground ! 
 What ? would ye tremble and fail, 
 When the struggle for death is keen ? 
 Shall the worship of thousands quail 
 At the beck of the Nazarene r
 
 38 Juggernatlis Car. 
 
 Honour the God with death 
 And flowery garlands tost ! 
 For the vapour of parting breath 
 Is Juggernath's holocaust ! 
 
 V. 
 
 There is a voice of music steals through the troubled air, 
 Hushes the timbrel's jangle, softens the wild-horn's 
 
 blare, 
 Breathing of Peace and Order, and love for a nation's 
 
 weal; 
 Far in the background glimmers the serried strength 
 
 of steel. 
 One with a fair grave forehead rai sed to the cloudless sky- 
 Passes amid the throng with a miu-mur of minstrelsy; 
 He comes, and a charm of quiet pours from his won- 
 drous Ivre, 
 On his uncloaked breast shines " Justice," lettered 
 
 with light and fire. 
 Brooched to his side a brand — on its hilt a cross is 
 
 wrought — 
 A golden -graven emblem, freedom of Life and 
 
 Thought. 
 And the linked lightning flashes, a coiu-ier chained 
 
 above, 
 Swifter than Jove's own eagle, strong as the bolts 
 
 of Jove.
 
 JuggernatJis Car. 39 
 
 He gazed on the wondering throng, and pity bedimmed 
 
 his eyes, 
 And they that beheld shrank back in the shame of a 
 
 swift surprise : 
 He looked on the merciless priests, and pity was 
 
 changed to scorn, 
 As he lifted his clenched hand quickly to threaten 
 
 and to warn. 
 But lo ! as the painted idol, the brainless thing of 
 
 wood, 
 Rolled on its towered chariot Avith crust of brains 
 
 and blood, 
 A hundred wheels ceased turning, a thousand lips 
 
 were wnmg, 
 And a hundred thousand warriors spake from a single 
 
 tongue. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Spirit of the British Empire. 
 
 I can scatter your hosts with thunder. 
 And ruin your cities with flame : 
 I can trample your high priests under 
 The heels of my stainless name. 
 I can desolate croft and tillage. 
 And smite ye with laws like rods, 
 Dispeople the smiling village. 
 And grind to powder your Gods.
 
 40 yuggernatJis Car. 
 
 Fools ! would ye gaze on Heaven 
 
 Through a cracked glass, red with blood ? 
 
 Is life to man but given 
 
 To varnish a wheel of wood ? 
 
 Can je scavenge the mortal metal, 
 
 The ore of the baser clay, 
 
 By fusing them both in a kettle 
 
 And casting them formless away ? 
 
 There is a furnace purer 
 
 Can human hearts refine : 
 
 Its purging flames are clearer, 
 
 On every hearth they shine. 
 
 And though ye know not — knowing, 
 
 I say that the God is wise : 
 
 E'en now his sparks are glowing 
 
 Through the film of scaly eyes. 
 
 Aye — let the fool priest jingle 
 For a while his cap and his bells ! 
 Let maiden worship mingle 
 Their pipe with the grosser yells : 
 Rattle the tabor ! laughter 
 Shall crown the tragic farce ! 
 Follow ye minstrels after — 
 Let the false pageant pass !
 
 ytiggernatJi s Cm'. 41 
 
 Only — for God lias wrought us 
 
 In his immortal frame — 
 
 Man's life is God's — He taught us 
 
 It floweth whence it came. 
 
 Who casteth it back to the Giver 
 
 Unbidden, is cm-sed as Cain : 
 
 With mine arm of right I will shiver 
 
 The bloody Log-God's chain. 
 
 VII. 
 Chorus of Worshippers. 
 Shout with a shout that the whirlwind shall captm-e^ 
 Ride forth, souls, on a hurricane cheer ! 
 Juggernath shakes at the blast of our rapture. 
 At the breath of our freedom he totters with fear ! 
 Cast we the dumb thing down. 
 Dust soil liis tinsel crown, 
 For a light as of dawn our long vigil is breaking I 
 Hew we the towered car, 
 Guide us, O glorious star. 
 Liberty, child of our earliest awaking ! 
 
 Hail ! then, of Justice thou favourite daughter, 
 What though our faults thou wert stern to chastise ? 
 What though thy lessons were written iu slaughter ? 
 Even in vengeance thou ever wert wise. 
 
 Foster mother, firm and fair, 
 
 England ! guard with loving care
 
 42 The Nerhiddha. 
 
 Her, thj dark child ia the Orieut gloaming. 
 See ! with music and with light 
 Through the shadowy arch of night, 
 
 One with a cross and a thorny croAvn coming ! 
 
 -:-j»-K:g«»-*-o — 
 
 T 
 
 HE 
 
 N 
 
 ER^UDDHA. 
 
 CAlvEFULLY, oarsman, dip your blade, 
 Oh ! helmsman, watch the rudder ; 
 For calm are the waves, but many the graves 
 In the deeps of the dark Nerbuddha. 
 
 She wanders adown, with a laugh and a frown 
 
 As she tosses her rushy tresses : 
 But the swallows that skim on her treacherous brim 
 
 Shrink back from her cold caresses. 
 
 Sweetly she flows where the citron blows, 
 
 And the terebinth weeps above her : 
 And clear is the lute 'mid the mango fruit 
 
 Of the oriole greeting his lover.
 
 The NerbzLddha, 43 
 
 The wood-doves coo in the slim bamboo, 
 
 Where the cresset iirefly flashes : 
 With its sliding light it awakens the night 
 
 As the mahasir snllenly plashes. 
 
 The tall palms dream on her glassy stream 
 
 Their plumy coronals waving : 
 And halcyons gay flash in search of their prey 
 
 In her shallows their brown breasts laving. 
 
 The black birds drink on her reedy brink, 
 
 In her bosom the buffalo wallows : 
 And the jungle-king lies ready to spring 
 
 From her feathery bights and hollows. 
 
 They come — the wives, with their tinkling gyves 
 
 And their ankles silvery laden ; 
 And many a lass with her ewer of brass, 
 
 And many an urn-crowned maiden. 
 
 With never a swing of their robes they bring 
 
 Their jars to the holy river. 
 But muttering low and with prayerful bow 
 
 To the himdred-handed Shieva. 
 
 Oh ! know ye not where her narrowed stream 
 
 Its girdle of marble sunders ? 
 And the sacred place of Hoiuiyman's race, 
 
 And the briilge of the tail-linked buudas ?
 
 44 The Nerbuddha. 
 
 Unf athomed she sleeps by her rampired steeps, 
 And the crannied council-chambers, 
 
 Where senator owls with political jowls 
 Debate with the grave crane members. 
 
 But, infidel, look at the rain-stained nook 
 
 And the brown pouch hung from the ceiling ! 
 
 Yon minister bees still work the decrees 
 Of their goddess below them stealing. 
 
 They still shall obey, as they did that day 
 On the wave when a white corpse weltered ; 
 
 He dared to invade with impious blade 
 Their home which the goddess sheltered. 
 
 She chased him fast with her booming host. 
 With their daggers his life she harried ; 
 
 He sought with a scream her pitiless stream 
 And the mugger her 'hosts out carried. 
 
 Warily, oarsman, dip your blade, 
 Oh ! helmsman, Avatch the rudder : 
 
 Her ministers hide in the fathomless tide 
 Of marble-towered Nerbuddha. 
 
 •m>y^^^^o
 
 The Indian Night. 45 
 
 7„. J 
 
 NDIAN ^IGHT. 
 
 THREE SONNETS. 
 
 THE sun's last arrows quiver on the plain, 
 And as old Nile, when all his wells ran blood, 
 Himavat's daughter rolls her sanguine flood 
 Into descending night. Unyoked his wain, 
 The drowsy ryot sinks to sleep again ; 
 
 Below the palms, beyond earth's fiery marge. 
 The warrior God has couched his flaming targe, 
 And all the antic shadows blend and wave 
 In gloom, except upon the pipal bough, 
 Where swinging cressets flicker on the air. 
 The free-will offerings of the heathen's vow, 
 
 Or golden-bearded fireflies float and flare. 
 The land is full of murmurs ; weird and high 
 Above the night-jar's rattle echoes the red dog's cry. 
 
 II. 
 
 Enrobed in night, you slumber, Ganga, too ! 
 
 O stream most pure ! to whom the Brahmans pray, 
 Since that with virtual wave you purged away 
 
 The ashes of the sons of Sagaru. 
 
 Sleep, Goddess of the tranquil-souled Hindu !
 
 46 The Indian N'izht. 
 
 The horned owl hoots upon a branch hard by, 
 
 And from each pool a lusty -throated fry, 
 Croak Choax ! Brechechex ! through mist and deWy 
 There is a never-ceasing buzz of wings, 
 
 A sightless, indistinguishable hum 
 
 Of soimds and voices that with dawn are dumb. 
 Yet, no sweet bird unto the moonlight sings, 
 As in our North-land where kind Nature's tune 
 Is musical, of love, in the soft shades of June. 
 
 III. 
 
 O weary night ! O endless monotone 
 Of crawling things that fear the front of day ! 
 On wings of yearning bear me, soul, away 
 Unto my own cool isle that sits alone 
 Upon a surf -laced ocean, Zephp'-blown ; 
 There the wet breezes teem with lusty life. 
 And romping billows Avage hilarious strife 
 On great brave bluffs of battlemented stone ; 
 The foam-rose blooms on every good-wife's cheek. 
 And Hate is masculine, and Love is strong, 
 And Worth is rugged as its rugged strand. 
 Ah me ! here all is languid, nerveless, weak. 
 Except the hound that snarls at shadowy wrong, 
 Spite, brood of Night, that fawns and Avounds his 
 master's hand !
 
 The Old Thztg. 47 
 
 ©JI0 i 
 
 MEMOIRS OF JUBULPORE. 
 
 [NOTE from F. T. D.'s Diai-i/:— 
 
 "Forty years Lave passed since James Sleemau vras deputed by the 
 Indian Government to uproot and after Ids own fasldon annihilate a 
 hideous, far-spreading system of murder. The penal settlement which lie 
 instituted was as successful as it was unique : every form of industry is 
 practised, and every ordinance of social weU-being is observed ; every house, 
 albeit a prison, contains a contented family, in which the ordiuarj- rules of 
 domestic life are reversed. Inasmuch as the women and children alone go 
 forth from its doors, and the men work at home. The old men work in 
 shackles, though it be of their own free will : for, in the days that are 
 blotted out, they were granted a boon by a benevolent genie — the choice of 
 two I alternatives — either to die for their evU deeds, or to live thus with their 
 wives and families, captives among free, until the Equal-handed One should 
 take them for his own. And so they chose, mayhap, the better part."'] 
 
 SHRINK from me, strauger, though I'm ohl, 
 01(1 and broken with weight of years : 
 Question not, lest thy blood rim cold, 
 
 And hori'or-frost freeze thy fomit of tears. 
 Old and manacled, maimed and blind. 
 Wearily weaving the endless woof, 
 I am the enemy of thy kind — 
 
 Stranger, I Avarn thee — Hold aloof ! 
 
 Tarriest still, thou soft-voiced fool ? 
 
 Learn of a tree this parable : 
 In the forest of human life 
 
 Once on a time a tree there grew, 
 Every leaf with venom rife
 
 48 The Old Thug. 
 
 Deadly in this, that no one knew 
 
 What was its outwardly form or hue. 
 Aye, it flourished that goodly tree, 
 Spreading its branches far and free. 
 Sending its messengers imdergroimd, 
 Silent, terrible, and profound. 
 Roots that knitted their knuckles strong 
 
 Out of sight and of human ken, 
 Crawling the delicate herbs among, 
 
 As fiftgers that squeeze the throats of men. 
 Doing the 'bests of their parent trunk. 
 
 Whose leaves distilled the dews of death ; 
 Travellers under, in slumber sunk. 
 
 Never awoke for another breath. 
 Ha ! in the dark I see them now, 
 
 Bursting eyeball and swollen vein — 
 I will mete them my murder vow. 
 
 Give me but liberty back again ! 
 All the trees in the forest shrank. 
 
 Fearing the toiich of the venom tree ; 
 None of them knew his leafage dank, 
 
 None of them knew if his neighbour were he. 
 The curse, the cm-se of my bitter vow 
 Blight the leafage and blast the bough, 
 That treacherous bough which the woodman 
 
 hewed. 
 Poison-engrained and blood-imbrued. 
 That betrayed the silent tree in the wood !
 
 The Old Thttg. 49 
 
 The woodman came with axe and spade, 
 
 He lopped the branches, he bared the roots : 
 " I will not hew thee down," he said, 
 
 " For mischievous stocks bear baleful fruits." 
 Of that tree he left no trace — 
 
 Root and branch he bore it away, 
 Planted it here in a desert place — 
 
 " So may thou surely, O tree, decay ! " 
 
 I am a branch of that goodly tree, 
 
 (Start not, Stranger, for see I'm bound) 
 I with my miu-derer company. 
 
 Destined to die on this prison-ground. 
 Now the fingers that strangled men, 
 
 As a poulterer wrings a thrush, 
 Trundle the shuttle, the soft wool spin, 
 
 To cushion the heads that they fain would 
 crush. 
 Here with our kinsfolk, slaves with free. 
 
 Work we in sorrow our hatefid doom ; 
 Weaving the many-hued tapestry, 
 
 Wearily plying the fruitful loom. 
 
 Holy Kali ! lift thine head, 
 
 Dark and manifold, slaughter-full ; 
 
 Tell the beads of thy necklace dread ; 
 Every bead is a dead man's skull. 
 
 E
 
 50 TJie Old Thug. 
 
 Eight-armed Goddess, arise to smite ! 
 
 Smite the tyrant, the captive free ! 
 Strain the hempen ring-noose tight — 
 
 Goddess, release thy votary ! 
 Shuttle, whirl on the quivering weft, 
 
 Cheerily chanting the Thug's refrain ; 
 '' Thug, thy fingers are nimble and deft, 
 
 Deft and nimble to draw the skein. 
 Yet of their task they are bereft — 
 
 Get thee thy liberty back again ! " 
 
 Sons and grandsons come and go, 
 
 Through my prison walls to and fro ; 
 The caged hawk pines, and his brood are free, 
 
 But a scare has silenced the falconry. 
 The falcon's brood has the falcon's blood, 
 
 But terror is filling their veins with milk : 
 The tame things cringe at their grandsire's mood 
 
 As fiercely he ravels the bossy silk. 
 Children they of a craven age 
 
 Shrink from their glorious heritage. 
 
 I hear the outer world of sound 
 
 Beyond the walls of my prison-ground ; 
 
 They say that things are changed ; that I 
 Belong to a world that has long rolled by. 
 
 The old Thug lives, but his world is dead, 
 
 The law of cowardice rules instead.
 
 The Coming of Indra. 51 
 
 I know not, stranger — but this I know, 
 
 I would throttle thee there as thou turn'st 
 
 to go, 
 If Kali the Terrible bade me so ! 
 
 Hist ! I hear the warder's tramp — 
 
 (Ha ! dost thou shudder ? I see thee 
 quail !) 
 " Notice the texture — observe the stamp, 
 
 Made by a Thug in Jubulpore jail, 
 Woven close with nervous thumb, 
 
 Soft as slumber, that nought can break. 
 When the sleeper's heart grows numb 
 
 Sahib ! a Jubulpore carpet take." 
 
 -o-*--<JJ>3#>=.-*— o — 
 
 The Coming of Tndr^. 
 
 UNDERNEATH, overhead 
 Upon wide deodar, 
 His gonfalon 's spread. 
 It is waving afar ! 
 Ragged is Indra's mantle, and rent is his aegis 
 war. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 The Coming of Indra. 
 
 On the scarp they are coursing, 
 
 The scouts of the spheres, 
 With fleecy phimes tossing. 
 Their vanward appears : 
 Soft is the footfall, and stealthy the march of the 
 White Cuirassiers ! 
 
 Lo ! his army advances 
 From east and from west : 
 , A grey cohort glances 
 On swart Everest. 
 At the tuck of his Avar-drum the eyases flutter, they 
 scream in the nest. 
 
 He steps on the cedar, 
 His stair is the pine, 
 The mighty-mouthed leader 
 Has marshalled his line. 
 Wave upon wave, like the many-lipped swell of 
 Atlantic brine. 
 
 At the soimd of his sally 
 
 And rattled alarm. 
 From mountain to valley, 
 From pinewood to palm, 
 Earth, broad-breasted, shudders for dread of the 
 Thunder-god's arm. 
 
 There is a barb 
 
 Of heavenly breed ;
 
 The Coming of Indra. 53 
 
 Nor tether nor curb 
 Encumbers his speed ; 
 Sightless as night, and more sudden than light, is 
 the Thunder-god's steed. 
 
 In trappings of sable 
 
 All broidered with lace. 
 He leaps from his stable — 
 He rushes apace. 
 Snorting for rapture, he beareth the soimd of his 
 master's menace. 
 
 Nor halt thej, nor linger. 
 The children of snow : 
 From dusk Kinchinjinga 
 They swarm on the foe, 
 Storming its many-edged battlements on to the 
 valleys below ! 
 
 From the scabbard of heaven 
 
 He bareth his blade : 
 They split ! they are riven ! 
 The kings of the glade ! 
 And the ear of the Avelkin cracks with the clang of a 
 cannonade. 
 
 With his falchion flashing 
 
 The hills are aflare, 
 And cataracts, clashing, 
 Make ocean of air. 
 Stronger than Ganga, stemmed in the tangles of 
 Siva's hair.
 
 54 The Coming of Indra. 
 
 The neigh of his charger 
 Is hoarse on the khud, 
 And louder and larger, 
 In passionate mood, 
 Roars through the pines, like a myriad battle-fiends, 
 lustful of blood. 
 
 Through -vyhite sheety fountains, 
 
 And forest leaves blown, 
 The Monarch of Mountains 
 Looks scornfully down ; 
 Deadly with glimmering facets of fire is Himalaya's 
 crown. 
 
 With wreck of the village, 
 And death from the pen, 
 Over seed-laden tillage 
 And deep bosky glen. 
 Swollen and turbid, a deluge is wasting the labours 
 of men. 
 
 He is gone, and the grasses 
 Are garnished and bright, 
 In silvern cuirasses, 
 All diamond-dight, 
 Glassy rocks glinting and summer sun bathing the 
 world in delight.
 
 The Old Anglo-Indian. 55 
 
 But the city of Indra 
 
 No mortal may view ; 
 The stalls of the wind are 
 Aloof in the blue, 
 Star-fretted palaces, wrought by the gods upon holy 
 Meru! 
 
 UNDERNEATH the great-armed banyan, by 
 broad Hooghly's troubled waves, 
 Where its fluted pillars fashion shadowy aisles and 
 
 architraves, 
 He is musing, he a rugged grandsire of the youngling 
 
 race. 
 Heirs of Indra's loamy rice-fields, strange of manner, 
 
 white of face ; 
 And the water-breeze is wafting breaths that slake 
 
 the flames of noon, 
 In the south, the dark cloud-armies herald forth the 
 
 cool monsoon. 
 From his furrowed brows are floating windy mists of 
 
 silver hair 
 Falling as a foamy fountain round about his wattled 
 
 chair.
 
 56 The Old Anglo-Indian. 
 
 And methiuks he reads of hidden memories iu the 
 
 spiry fume, 
 Wreathing from his okl brown pipe, and fading in 
 
 the leafy gloom. 
 
 Aye, he sees the ages open, and the portals of the Past 
 Yawning with triumphal music, cannon's roar, and 
 
 clarion's blast. 
 Hark ! they come, the sun-browned warriors, they 
 
 the few, who carved a Avay 
 Through the savage thousands marshalled on the 
 
 champaigns of Assaye : 
 Men of toil, and peerless courage, wealth of wounds, 
 
 and thrift of thanks. 
 In those grand days Avhen the nations shrank from 
 
 Britain's battled ranks, 
 When the wild Mahratta spearsmen paved the plain 
 
 with grisly swathe, 
 And thou swept'st a heavy harvest, Juah, on thy 
 
 wine-red froth : 
 There his father fell, and falling shouted, while his 
 
 death-wound bled, 
 "God for Wellesley and Old England!" So he 
 
 joined the hero dead. 
 
 And the child of camjj and bugle, he a Serjeant's 
 
 orphan son, 
 Beardless swung the circling sabre, stormed the 
 
 breach and spiked the gun ;
 
 The Old Anglo-Indian. 57 
 
 Watched by Irrawaddy's torrent, foiled the treacher- 
 ous ambuscade, 
 Drove the tyrant lord of Ava's hosts from jungle and 
 
 stockade ; 
 Saw the warrior-maids advancing o'er the battle- 
 
 mented dead, 
 Vain were all their spells and sprinklings to enchant 
 
 the death-winged lead ! 
 Golden Dagon heard the voice of mourning rise o'er 
 
 fair Pegu, 
 Heard, and tottering in his pagod, called for aid on 
 
 dark Palloo. 
 Soft ! — there falls a cloudy curtain on those scenes of 
 
 earlier years, 
 And the old man's eyes shine dimly through a misty 
 
 veil of tears ; 
 Far away the bark of Memory glides Avith sails of 
 
 sorrow full, 
 Through grim Khyber's fastness, even to the gates of 
 
 proud Kabul. 
 Worn and wounded, sick with labour, nights of 
 
 murder, days of death. 
 See a huddled herd advancing, hopeless, chiefless,. 
 
 faint of breath, 
 Children wailing on the breasts of dames who weep 
 
 and falter slow, 
 Youths that turn in fierce disdain, and bearded war- 
 riors muttering low,
 
 58 The Old Anglo-Indian. 
 
 Pale maids with their eyes uplifted and their souls 
 
 above the stars, 
 Ragged troops of human vermin cursing Him, the 
 
 God of wars. 
 High among the black rock facets frowning on the 
 
 doomed below, 
 Armed with spear and jagged boulder, swarm the 
 
 ruthless Afghan foe — 
 Close, O Mists, the dark horizon. Wind it, Fog, in 
 
 shroud and pall, 
 Wave your hearse-plumes, tall reed-mourners, o'er 
 
 their maimed funeral ! 
 
 Mark ye hoAV a flame of triumph now his fount of 
 
 sorrow dries ? 
 Heed ye what an eager rapture lights the old man's 
 
 sea-grey eyes ? 
 Lo ! he lifts his head and clutches knotted stick with 
 
 knotty hand, 
 And with restless foot he marches once again the 
 
 dreary land. 
 O'er the wilds the Afghan horsemen scour with 
 
 startled looks and pale, 
 From their scarlet Doom advancing up the slaughter- 
 glutted vale. 
 Akbar ! son of Dost Mahommed, late thou learn'st, 
 
 though all too well
 
 The Old Anglo- Indian. 59 
 
 How thej fight, who forced the Khyber, how they 
 
 fought where Dennie fell. 
 There is that which calls them onward — onward like 
 
 a mighty flood, 
 On to purge the stain of murder and Macnaghten's 
 
 crying blood. 
 Every youth and every maiden — every child most 
 
 foully slain, 
 Are as pleading Abels calling vengeance on the sons 
 
 of Cain. 
 
 Darker phantoms haunt the banyan, as he bridges 
 
 Time's swift stream. 
 And a train of spectres gibber in the mazes of his 
 
 dream : 
 Wildering yells of hate and onslaught, demon myriads' 
 
 fiery eyes. 
 Rivers choked with death, and steamy growths of 
 
 blood, and shrilling cries, 
 Babes fresh-torn from milky bosoms, spiked on fields 
 
 of uptm-ned spears, 
 Angels stained by devils, mocking at the tempest of 
 
 their tears ; 
 Here a gorge, where treacherous thousands slay like 
 
 sheep a trusting band. 
 There a well — a ghastly charnel, reeking fresh from 
 
 murder's hand.
 
 60 The Old Anglo-Indian. 
 
 Well for thee, and for thy children, England, thou 
 
 hast always found 
 One brave pilot waiting calmly till the storm has 
 
 darkest frowned ; 
 One strong arm to guide the tiller, and the tempest- 
 shock defy, 
 When the cloud-rack threatens loudest, and the blue 
 
 sword jags the sky ; 
 When thy soft dreams wake to blasts of rawer fact 
 
 and rude alarm. 
 And thy million pulses quicken and thy sluggish 
 
 blood flows warm ; 
 But when hearts are soft with pity, vengeance-steeled, 
 
 with wrath aflame, 
 E'en thy simplest do deeds worthy of the golden 
 
 scroll of Fame ! 
 Some there were who changed to demons — others, 
 
 stars of purest light, 
 Shine as beacons through that Im-id haze of blood 
 
 and guilty night : 
 Nicholson ! beloved and loving, brave to greet the 
 
 strides of death ! 
 They could never tame the spirit living in thy weary 
 
 breath ! 
 Lawrence ! great in war and council, greatest of a 
 
 storied line. 
 Ne'er hath random bolt robbed England of a grander 
 
 life than thine ;
 
 The Old Anglo-Indian, 61 
 
 Outram ! glass of virgin Honour, stainless was thy 
 
 dinted shield, 
 Noble friend and knightly foeman, first to spare and 
 
 last to yield ! 
 And thou, Christian warrior, Havelock ! dying like 
 
 the sailor chief. 
 With the drum-tuck sounding triumph 'mongst the 
 
 sobs of holy grief. 
 
 He was then a grizzled veteran, slow of tongue but 
 
 swift of steel. 
 And a grey old sergeant followed on the deathless 
 
 path of Neill : 
 He was of the gallant Second, and the red scar on 
 
 his brow 
 Tells how well he fought beside him at the death- 
 gate of Lucknow : 
 Now, he stands a lonely rear-guard of the Army's 
 
 last pontoon. 
 Xhey — the host — have crossed already, haply he 
 
 shall follow soon. 
 But the poor folk of the hamlet still revere his 
 
 rugged face, 
 Hearken to his bluff rebuking, and his words of 
 
 " surly grace," 
 Come to ask his honest counsel, or to mend some 
 
 petty brawl, 
 And the old man's quaint tribunal is their solemn 
 
 judgment-hall.
 
 62 The Old Anglo-Indian. 
 
 For his old heart simply deeming open truths of 
 
 highest rate, 
 Speaks with manly strength out-throbhing all the 
 
 clockwork wheels of State. 
 Fare thou well, thou old-world Briton ! — well content 
 
 to live and die 
 In that land, thy foster-mother, where thy soldier 
 
 comrades lie. 
 
 * * * # 
 
 Faster, deeper, fall the shadows, as he gazes o'er the 
 
 tide, 
 Hears the dead with louder chorus calling from the 
 
 further side 
 " Friend ! " The old man's voice sounds strangely, 
 
 challenging the voiceless night. 
 And methinks his head is heavy, and his eyes have 
 
 lost their light. 
 Pass the watchword. Dark Commander ! Hark ! 
 
 midst miiffled drum and bell. 
 Angel sentinels waft answer to his countersign — 
 
 " All's well." 
 
 ^'*-^iG«>'
 
 A Village Fire. 6a 
 
 A Village Fii^. 
 
 IN the west, yonder ! 
 See how the pall of uight 
 
 Glows with a sudden light 
 
 Nay — dost thou wonder ? 
 
 Look, look ! the sombre sky, 
 
 Night's olden canopy, 
 
 Parteth asunder — 
 
 Doming with cope of rose 
 
 All the dark tale of woes. 
 
 Meted to that sad race which dwelleth under \ 
 
 Sparks the grim message bear, 
 
 "Nought is availing :" 
 
 Flamy eyes in the air, 
 
 Fiery tufts that glare. 
 
 On the night sailing, 
 
 Winged with the cries of many women wailing. 
 
 Now a great sword of fire 
 Leaps through the gloom, 
 Eager with red desire 
 Panteth that serpent spire
 
 ^4 A Village Fire. 
 
 Saith the great tongue of fire, 
 " Lo ! I foredoom 
 All here to be my pyre, 
 All this my tomb ! " 
 
 Fresh from his idle sleep 
 Springs the North-west ; 
 Leads from his castle keep 
 Massy, and dark and deep 
 Horsemen and footmen with banner and crest! 
 Well may ye moan and weep, 
 Matrons and maidens, with beating of breast. 
 Rending your hearts, as doves that croon by a 
 desolate nest ! 
 
 Booms the loud hurricane. 
 
 Cracks the artillery, 
 
 Jets of flame gleamily starting and glancing ; 
 
 Now through the trellis pane. 
 
 Climbing the roof amain ; 
 
 Now to the door again maniacs dancing ! 
 
 Licking a little bed. 
 Kissing a tiny head, 
 All its tears staunching ! 
 Hark ! 'tis a mother's cry 
 
 Lifted despairingly 
 
 Fool ! to return and die. 
 
 Fool ! when the Fire-storm's host is advancing !
 
 'ATEKNOS. 65- 
 
 What doth the morning say, 
 
 Robed in her glory ? 
 
 " Only some mortal clay 
 
 Under the ashes grey, 
 
 Mother and child — both shapeless and lioary- 
 
 Many there be to-day, 
 
 Many beside the way — 
 
 'Tis an old story ! " 
 
 What do the weepers say ? 
 
 " Vishnu ! to thee we pray. 
 
 Homeless in India, 
 
 Stricken before ye ! " 
 
 'AreKvos. 
 
 SEVEN days harried 
 The nights tilljhey fled : 
 Seven nights buried 
 
 The days that were dead 
 And the shaft of her life had unwoven the woof of 
 the perishing thread. 
 
 F
 
 66 'ATEKNOS. 
 
 The pale Priest came 
 
 As a shadow of death ; 
 " Oh ! pray in the Name 
 " That from Nazareth 
 '* Gave life for Eternity — He his children remem- 
 bereth. 
 
 " Great Christ, defend her ! 
 " Dark, dark, the grave, 
 " Sweet Grace and tender 
 " Answer and save, 
 "As erst with feet unwetted thou answer'dst on 
 Galilee's wave. 
 
 " Sleep, child ! what aileth thee ? 
 
 " God is at hand — 
 " He never faileth the 
 " Lone in his land : 
 "Sick men and weariful sing and are glad at his 
 mighty command. 
 
 " For Jairus his 'hest 
 
 " Shut the gateways of Hell : 
 " And lone Hagar blessed 
 " Her God by the well 
 " When the ways of the wilderness bubbled with 
 succour for Ishmael.
 
 'ATEKNOS. 67 
 
 " Turn, turn the glass 
 
 " Ere the sand runneth down ; 
 " Soon, soon, my lass, 
 
 " Shall the darkness be flown 
 " Though the night-bird hovereth near, and the 
 shadowy lindens moan." 
 
 " Father, thy voice is 
 
 " A sound in mine ears ! 
 " In my dim brain a noise is 
 " Of wailing and fears ; 
 " My veins stream with fire, and my eyelids are laden 
 with icicle tears. 
 
 " The bloody sun bade 
 
 " The lorn night flee : 
 " But long grows the shade 
 " Of the grave-yard tree : 
 "' And oh ! to the watcher as darkness the light shall 
 eternally be. 
 
 '' Let my ripe grain rot ! 
 
 " Blacken its gold ! 
 " Blast, and refrain not ! 
 " 'Minish the fold ! 
 " Strike, Lord, in thine anger ! but spare this lamb 
 
 that thou gavest of old. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 'ATEKNOS. 
 
 " Heard ye the thud 
 
 " Of wings on the pane ? 
 " Poured is the blood 
 
 " Of the thing that again 
 " Shall never beg dole of my darling, and thank with 
 a lute-voiced refrain. 
 
 " Silvery laughter ! 
 
 " Shimmering gleams ! 
 " Oh ! for a draught of the 
 " Fair-flowing streams. 
 " Bear me, Spirit ! forth through the ivory portals 
 of dreams. 
 
 " The sparrow that built 
 " His nest in the roof, 
 " His narrow life spilt 
 " For his larger behoof ! 
 " And passed with the soul of my little one out to the 
 places aloof." 
 
 The pale Priest wept by 
 The Dead in the Hall ! 
 The wan Priest stepped by 
 A bruised bird's pail ! 
 The sparrow that falleth, the child-life He taketh, 
 He numbereth all !
 
 Anassa. 69 
 
 > 
 
 NASSA. 
 
 W 
 
 HEN I see my ladye pass ; 
 
 " Way there, for my haughty lass ! " 
 
 Subjects we before her tread, 
 Bend the knee and bare the head. 
 
 Courtier, varlet, minion, page, 
 All accord her vassalage. 
 
 But with eyes that scorn the herd, 
 She nor deigneth look nor word ; 
 
 Eyes, that wander o'er the sea, 
 Dreamily, so dreamily ! 
 
 Where the sands all golden girt 
 
 Kiss their sea-queen's lace-fringed skirt. 
 
 O'er the many-dimpled waves, 
 
 " See'st thou nought but lovers' graves ? ' 
 
 Out beyond the purple main — 
 
 " As thy soul, love — free from stain !" 
 
 Stainless! — some say "Aye and chill. 
 As the ice that numbs the rill ! " 
 
 Fools ! I've seen the queenly snow 
 Melt, and greet the summer glow,
 
 70 Love s Seasons. 
 
 When, with stroke of fiery string, 
 Music spreads her heavenward wing 
 
 Hark ! the ruder chords among, 
 Hark — I hear her skylark's song 
 
 Quivering lip and kindling eye 
 Wake the slumbrous minstrelsy ; 
 
 Fade the wants of grosser ways, 
 Meaner cares and darker days. 
 
 Till my harp I fain would bring, 
 Sit me down beside and sing ! 
 
 Love's Seasons, 
 I. 
 
 IN the fresh life of the ages, lay a child-god newly 
 born, 
 Lily-cradled, at the rosy gateways of the virgin dawn ; 
 Swathed in dewy bands of morning, as the red rays 
 
 flushed the wold. 
 Swung the orange hangings o'er him of a kingly 
 marigold.
 
 Loves Seasons. 71 
 
 As the first shafts, light bestowing, shot from Phoebus' 
 
 quivering string, 
 Down his golden pathways hurried youths and 
 
 maidens following ; 
 Came the elfins from the oak-glooms, came the fays 
 
 from field and grove ; 
 Came they to the fair babe's christening ; so the babe 
 
 was christened Love. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now the babe has grown a stripling, shapely are his 
 limbs and fair ; 
 
 And his eyes are sunbeams glinting through a golden 
 cloud of hair. 
 
 On his ripe lips laughter ripples, like a river's sum- 
 mer song. 
 
 And there rests a glamour on them, strong for good, 
 for evil strong. 
 
 Down the vale by stream and forest, as he walks, all 
 creatures sing ; 
 
 All the things of air and water cast them down be- 
 fore their king ; 
 
 In the city and the hamlet high and low adore the 
 boy. 
 
 And he saith, " I live for ever, and I bring eternal 
 
 joy-
 
 72 Loves Seasons. 
 
 III. 
 
 Mellow lips and bright eyes kindling, throbbing 
 
 hearts and cheeks aflame, 
 Love is laughing with his comrades — Hate, that 
 
 broods, and Scorn, and Shame. 
 Hate has donned the mask of seeming ; Scorn is fair 
 
 with crown and gem ; 
 But the laugh of Shame is loudest 'neath her flowery 
 
 anadem. 
 
 Flushed and wild-eyed, with the roses clambering 
 
 down her loosened hair. 
 Shame is lying all unkirtled, in the lilac-scented air, 
 Tossing up a broken pansy's petals to the languid 
 
 skies, 
 Toying, laughing, as the tear-drops gUmmer in her 
 
 stormy eyes. 
 
 All the land is full with music falUng from Love's 
 silver lyre, 
 
 Tinkling fountain, tuneful forest, join the many- 
 voiced choir. 
 
 Scorn is gazing far, far onward, and her hps are 
 closely wrung, 
 
 Hate sits silent, lest a discord slip from off his tuneless 
 tongue.
 
 Loves Seaso7ts. 73 
 
 In the ■wreathen chalice crisps the gladness of the 
 Cyprian vine, 
 
 Overhead a gay pavilion droops with rose and eglan- 
 tine. 
 
 Came a shape that men call Virtue, trembling at 
 Love's siren lay, 
 
 Drew her bosom-raiment closer, paused, and sighed, 
 and passed away. 
 
 Shame beheld : her jeering laughter broke the music 
 
 of the glade ; 
 Hate beheld, and on his painted brows there hung a 
 
 darker shade ; 
 Scorn with white lips smiled, and smiling whispered 
 
 " She is nought to me ;" 
 Love pursued, and caught the phantom, weary, 'neath 
 
 a upas tree. 
 
 IV. 
 
 He is lying sated, lonely, on a blossom-spoiled sward. 
 And his harp is cast besides him, voiceless, with a 
 
 sundered chord. 
 All his golden locks are tangled in a twining wreath 
 
 of yew. 
 And a red rose lies a-dying spiu-ned beneath his 
 
 safEron shoe.
 
 74 Loves Seasons. 
 
 From the East dark night is rising, ushered by a 
 
 chilly gale, 
 Stirs the robes of Love who shivers as he hearkens to 
 
 its wail, 
 Tracing shadows, only shadows, in the fading Autumn 
 
 light. 
 Dreaming, dreaming, iu the purple borderland of Day 
 
 and Night. 
 
 Who is this ? fair form and queenly, with the steely 
 eyes of grey, 
 
 Starry-crowned with frost and crystal, passing down 
 her lonely way. 
 
 " Scorn ! What seest thou in the gloaming ? Buildest 
 there an icy throne ? " 
 
 Nought, she answered, as she left her whilom play- 
 mate there alone. 
 
 Sable-stoled, a gloomier spirit, all unmasked by false- 
 hood now, 
 
 Came and pointed with a blood-grained finger at his 
 branded brow : 
 
 Hiding in his left a dagger, dripping dews of new- 
 wrought death. 
 
 Hate scowled on his old-time comrade, scowled, and 
 ciirsed with parting breath.
 
 Loves Seasons. 75 
 
 V. 
 
 All their grace has left the woodlands, and the birds 
 
 have hushed their song, 
 And the fountain rings no miisic now, the silent 
 
 glades along : 
 But in dirge-like diapason, on each weird blast 
 
 fitfully 
 Surges up the distant, weary sobbing of the winter 
 
 sea. 
 
 On the ground, her unkempt tresses gemmed with 
 
 many a living tear, 
 Shame is crouching, wan with weeping, there beside 
 
 a dead-leaf bier. 
 In her eyes the vanished glory leaves a wild despairing 
 
 glow, 
 Beautiful, as simset banners streaming on far peaks of 
 
 snow. 
 
 She has laid the Love she wot of, on a withered wild- 
 leaf bed. 
 
 She, a faithful watcher, tarries in the silence of the 
 dead ; 
 
 And the faded leaves are memories where her erring 
 joys have rest, 
 
 Haply He, who storeth all things — He may deem 
 such mourning blest.
 
 76 The Old and New Year. 
 
 Jhe pi 
 
 'he Old and NIew Year. 
 
 1878—1879. 
 
 If you can look into the seeds of time 
 
 And say which grain otU grow, and which will not. — Banquo. 
 
 T 
 
 OLL, solemn bells ! ye snows, bestrew the pall ! 
 The babe year opes his sorrow-aged eyes, 
 Wherein a grief outlives a funeral. 
 Herald the new year's birth with baleful cries 
 Of a great people shaming to repent. 
 Room for the sponsors, but erewhile the mutes — 
 Famine, and lean-jowled Want and Discontent, 
 Wearing for gala-garb their mourning-suits ! 
 A gloomy figure in the gloomy East, 
 War crowned with bloody bay — and lo ! a shape 
 Foreboding, yet unknown : it is the Priest, 
 Time with his glass and scythe, enrobed in crape. 
 Father of Men and Earth, hast no remorse .'' 
 Print then, O cynic, on the infant's brow — a Cross !
 
 Sonnet. 77 
 
 ^0itttiji» 
 
 " The haven where they would be." 
 
 THERE is a haven far across the main, 
 Deepest and shrouded by the envious skies, 
 Where ride for aye the travelled argosies 
 Whose sails may woo no treacherous wind again : 
 Yet thither bears a never-ceasing train 
 Of hap-blown navies, compassless, but steered 
 Each by a pilot Fate, each crew a weird 
 And clamorous host of passions fraught with pain ; 
 Each bears one mariner : some vainly sweep 
 The far horizon, trembling at the gale ; 
 Some laugh in concert with the laughing brine ; 
 But few that peer can pierce the cloudy keep. 
 Except a flash from heaven illume the veil, 
 And for a moment bare the darkening harboiir line.
 
 78 Sark. 
 
 A SONNET. 
 
 FAIR islet ! wooed and kissed by wandering waves 
 Whose music changes like the lute of love, 
 Now softly sighing, as the bright gales naove 
 Their grey locks curling round thy templed caves, 
 Now moaning angrily in high-arched naves, 
 Whose jewelled ceilings shrine the holy sea. 
 Whereon the ruby-hued anemone 
 And blooms of sapphire fashion architraves ; 
 I love thee for thy wealth of fern and flower, 
 Thy dizzy causeway and the broken stair, 
 And the quaint Norman folk of simple ways : 
 But most for this — that from one visioned bower 
 A blue-eyed siren maid with lawless hair 
 Still sings across the sea of unforgotten days.
 
 'AKA'PAIOS. 79 
 
 I 
 
 'AKdpSios. 
 
 SAID, I said 
 In the years long sped 
 To my heart when my heart was young, 
 Oh where is the maid 
 Like my sweet, I said, 
 The daughters of Earth among ? 
 And the bells of the spheres were in answer rung 
 When I was young, when I was young. 
 
 I thought, I thought 
 That the heart I sought 
 Was given to me alone : 
 
 And her words seemed fair 
 When she whispered " Swear 
 To be mine, O mine own, mine own ! " 
 And oh ! on my heart the spring suns shone, 
 E'er it turned to stone, e'er it turned to stone ! 
 
 It fled, it fled : 
 My spring was dead, 
 And my idol was beaten down : 
 Saith Pride to Love, 
 " Thy manhood prove 
 In the eyes of the mocking town." 
 God knows and I — none other — none. 
 How brake my heart for her shattered crown !
 
 80 The Poefs Lover. 
 
 My heart is old, 
 So old, so cold, 
 Since my idol, my goddess, fell ! 
 She hardly would smile, 
 For she knew the while 
 What no words of mine may tell — 
 O live heart's chimes ! O dead heart's knell ! 
 But I loved thee well, oh, I loved thee well ! 
 
 " Weep not so, 
 
 Gentle maiden," saith the rose, 
 " Though thy lover lieth low. 
 Grasses wave and blossoms blow. 
 Singing, ' Sweet be thy repose.' " 
 But the maid 
 Only said, 
 
 " Woe's mo, Ah woe ! " 
 
 " Do not sigh. 
 Weeping maiden," quoth the river : 
 " Lo, by day I carol nigh. 
 Nightly sing his lullaby.
 
 The Poefs Lover. 81 
 
 Roaming, laughing, to the sea 
 Of my still eternity. 
 Poets' words endure for ever." 
 " Nay," she saith, 
 " Hearts and breath 
 Die, aye, die ! " 
 
 " Dry thine eyes," 
 Sang the skylark, " maiden lover : 
 From star to star thy poet flies, 
 And I hear his harmonies 
 In my palace in the skies : 
 Harp of pearl and golden string 
 Through the spheres are echoing. 
 Beatings to his beating wing ! " 
 So the lark sang to reprove her : 
 Softly wept she, 
 " He hath left me 
 
 Sighs, oh sighs ! " 
 
 "Child, refrain!" 
 Spake the old and solemn yew — 
 
 " When the merry leaves are slain. 
 And the birds to heaven complain, 
 God shall give his pleasant rain : 
 Ask of God — He shall bestow 
 Nectar draughts to ease thy woe ; 
 'J'rue love meeteth true love so."
 
 82 'EPflS XPTSAMOIBO'S. 
 
 Brushed she from her eyes the dew- 
 " Hours, be fleet, 
 Love shall meet 
 
 Again, soon again !" 
 
 THE war ship down in the cove belo-n^ 
 Is spreading her wings for the tide to flow, 
 And Alan is sighing the old refrain 
 To Isolind 'neath the golden rain. 
 
 And, whisper the boughs to the mocking breeze, 
 
 " The sailor is leaving his love behind," 
 And "Alan, away to the summer seas 
 Thou bearest the heart of Isolind." 
 
 The cold waves smite where they used to woo, 
 But heart keeps heart 'neath the Southern bine ; 
 Twain hearts are wed — No heart is sold ! 
 Oh ! wet l)oughs weep for yom- rain of gold. 
 
 " White locks for brown ?" the fierce winds howl 
 
 The grey Earl curses the howling wind, 
 For Spring kisses freeze on his Avinter joAvl. 
 " Place, there, for the Countess Isolind ! "
 
 "EPOS KEHET'TES. 83 
 
 LOVE kept a garden : 
 lu it there grew 
 One little blossom 
 Lowly and true : 
 And Love, the gardener, 
 Set it apart, 
 Cherished it, tended it. 
 Christened it Heart. 
 
 Love wrought a canopy 
 Over his flower, 
 Fashioned a dark 
 Inaccessible bower. 
 Love twined the leaves of it 
 Calling them Fears, 
 Springing from Hope and 
 Watered by Tears. 
 
 Each day a sunbeam 
 
 Danced o'er its bed, 
 
 But never a glance for 
 
 The leaf -hidden head. 
 
 And oh ! Heart was weary when 
 
 Simbeam went by, 
 
 Till from his cradle he 
 
 Lifted his cry — 
 
 G 2
 
 Si ' "EPfiS KEHET'TES. 
 
 " Sweet little sunray ! 
 
 " Would it were mine, 
 
 " To grow where thy golden gleams 
 
 " Ever might shine ! 
 
 " So, iu tlie lonely night, 
 
 " Comforting me, 
 
 " Moonbeam thy photograph, 
 
 " Darling, should be." 
 
 Then Love the gardener 
 
 Pruned in his art 
 
 All that hid Sunbeam 
 
 From poor little Heart : 
 
 " Win they, my blossom, who 
 
 " Truthfully woo, 
 
 " And fair be the bridal 
 
 " Of Sunbeam and you." 
 
 With pansies for groomsmen 
 All velvety bright. 
 And maidenly snow-drops 
 In vesture of white. 
 And clear -ringing harebells 
 That nodded above, 
 Heart took him a bride 
 In the garden of Love.
 
 Eros Toxeutes. 85 
 
 Eros T 
 
 ROS OXEUTES. 
 
 (Lovp:, the Archer.) 
 
 "/^H I archer ! with the yellow, yellow hair, 
 yJ "Wherefore, archer, comest down the meadow? 
 " Is it to slay the leveret in his lair, 
 
 " Or my ring-doves in the May-thorn shadoAv ? " 
 
 •' Nay, child, nay — with silly, silly fears — 
 
 " My bow slays not ; gentle are my arrows : 
 
 " Yet at my step the rabbit pricks her ears, 
 
 " And the leaves make coverts for the span'ows." 
 
 " Oh ! archer, with the silver, silver voice, 
 
 " Tell me wherefore roamest in the dingle ? 
 
 " Comest the crested adder to entice, 
 
 "Or to hush the runnel on the shingle ?" 
 
 " Nay, maiden, uay — with witless, witless heart, 
 
 " Not for the waves that sigh among the rushes 
 
 " Nor for the dumb snake do I pour mine art, 
 
 " Though his hood swells even now and flushes."
 
 86 A Reigning Beauty. 
 
 " Youth, cruel youth ! with the glamoiu* in thiue eye, 
 " Whence these shackles ? Wherefore am I holden ? 
 
 " Hence, oh, hence ! I faint with fear — I die ! 
 
 " Yet e'en these fetters, oh! my heart, are golden I " 
 
 Hark ! a chord — and all the meadow air 
 
 Bursts on her ears in fairy, fairy numbers : 
 
 Twangs a bowstring — and lo ! her heart is 'ware 
 Of a waking sweeter than its slumbers. 
 
 ^t) 
 
 Richer the wild rose perf luiie swims above — 
 
 Dreamy the sunbeams — ^fair the land to live in. 
 
 "Youth, youth, I know thee, for thy name is Love — 
 " Earth fades away from me, and I dwell in 
 Heaven ! " 
 
 ^»3S 
 
 |NCE I bought a precious gem, 
 Fleckless as a star, and fair. 
 Saying : " Earthly diadem 
 Boasted never gem so rare ;" 
 Bought with price of self-denying. 
 Said — " 'Twere cheaji, though avou by dying," 
 Never heard a voice low-crying : 
 " Fool, beAvare ! " 
 

 
 A Reigning Beatity. 87 
 
 Built my gem a royal casket, 
 
 Placed it ou a stately throne. 
 " Be there aught thou would'st, love, ask it ; 
 Sweet, my pearl, le 't all I own ! " 
 And she whispered, so she tried me, 
 " Wert thou kind, thou Avould'st not hide me : 
 There is one thou lov'st beside me." 
 " Nay, love, none ! " 
 
 So they came, the soulless gazers — 
 
 Traders they — to price her Avorth : 
 All the trumpet-mouthed appraisers. 
 And the mites of mighty birth ! 
 Spake their Paris : " Lo, salute we ! 
 Vassals all we render duty ! 
 Crown her peerless Queen of Beauty, 
 Queen of mirth ! " 
 
 All obeyed : the two-tongued wooer, 
 
 And the lacquered grooms of shame. 
 Honey-drugs they brought unto her, 
 Scoffed at me, my love, my name. 
 Old I was, a clown, a miser ; 
 Nay, they would not so advise her : 
 True, 'twere liappier thus and wiser — 
 I was to blame !
 
 88 Love and Wine. 
 
 Gods I I found a precious jewel 
 
 Once ; — but where 's the prize I Avon ? 
 Dead its histre. Cruel ! Cruel ! 
 All its virgin glory gone ! 
 They girt my gem with tinsel gross : 
 False hounds ! they set my pearl in dross, 
 Then mocking at fair Honour's loss. 
 Yelped " Jade, begone ! " 
 
 Love and Wine. 
 
 WAITER ! a stoup of thy frothy ale, 
 And a health to my maiden that's simple and 
 true. 
 Fill it up frothily — l)rown or pale — 
 
 So long as she loves me, what matter the 
 brew ? 
 Eh ? John, say you that red lips lie ? 
 That money-lust lurks in a love-lit eye ? 
 Sour, man ! sour as thy hops, and dry ; 
 A curse on old croakers like vou I
 
 Love and Wine. 89 
 
 Scarce twelve months since I sailed away, 
 
 With a heart that was heavy and light by turns : 
 
 Heavy with thought of the dreary day, 
 
 And light with the love that within me burns. 
 
 But I laughed as I thought of my dainty lord, 
 
 With his mild moustache and his winsome word '; 
 
 Whom one from my shoulder laid flat on the sward 
 For meddling with others' concerns ! 
 
 Waiter ! a quart of thy bright chamiiagne ! 
 
 The locks of my maid are a bubbling stream — 
 Like my Lola's eyes when they laugh amain — 
 
 Let the rosily -crisping amber gleam ! 
 Love is as pm-e as the southern vine ; 
 vSo a glass ! a glass of unmingled wine ! 
 Phaugh ! this adulterate, mawkish brine 
 
 Hath a rank petroleum steam I 
 
 John ! thou art gaunter, old man, I ween, 
 
 Than when I sailed last from Bideford Bay, 
 
 So warm thy old bones, and toast " my Queen I " 
 My sweet little Valentine, Lola Day. 
 
 Nay, John, I am not a knight nor peer 
 
 To give her a coronet, like Lord Vere, 
 
 " I drink to the Lady Lola, Sir," 
 
 Growls John, as he hobbles awav.
 
 1)0 Ethel, 
 
 Brandy ! a flagon that fires the blood, 
 
 And numbs the nerves of the throbbing brain- 
 Brandy ! that maddens the sullen mood 
 
 And whets the steel of the sons of Cain ! 
 Drink I thou art false and bright enow ! 
 But she is as fair and as false as thou ! 
 In treacherous drink thy treacherous vow 
 
 I pledge thee, my love, again. 
 
 Ethel. 
 
 SHE gave me a bud of her garden rose 
 Where it clambered the crumbling wall : 
 And " Love is as fresh as the bud that blows, 
 And sweet as the petals that fall." 
 
 Oh ! laughing and soft were her wet blue eyes, 
 
 As the sun on an evening sea : 
 With flower-lips quivering petalwise 
 
 As they gave of their sweets to me. 
 
 And, " Ethel," I said, as I tiu-ned away, 
 " There be roses that blow and die ; 
 
 If love be a bud that may soon decay, 
 No scents in its sere leaves lie."
 
 Ethel. 91 
 
 .She laughed ; but a leaf on the garden walk 
 
 Fell fluttering mournf ullj down ; 
 A canker hail eaten its mellow stalk 
 
 And mouldered its bloomy crown. 
 
 •' Naj, Arthur, 'tis spring, and our hearts are glad, 
 
 And summer shall last for lonsr ; 
 And oh ! for the fields in their green dress clad, 
 
 And oh ! for the wild lark's song.'' 
 
 I saw twelve cold moons wax and Avane, 
 
 Since that eve bj the rose-hung wall, 
 Ere I opened the garden gate again, 
 
 And turned to the ivied hall. 
 
 The birds still sang on the May-thorn bough, 
 And the daisy eyes peeped from the lawn ; 
 
 But no rose clung to the grey stone now, 
 And thistle mutes stayed to mourn. 
 
 Sadly I passed by the linden glade 
 
 To my Ethel's wild-wood bower ; 
 And there Avas a voice in the jasmine shade 
 
 That sang to a withered flower: 
 
 " O Flower, thy heart is the heart that grieves ; 
 
 When it withers, thou needs must die. 
 But the fragrance sweet of thy treasured leaves 
 
 Shall live and endure for ave.
 
 ''2 On a Casket, 
 
 " And though all mj love must be stilled for death 
 
 In the heart that hath vainly pined, 
 Oh ! never shall pass from my life the breath 
 That its memory leaves behind." 
 
 I parted the jessamine tapestry 
 
 That curtained the rude pine door ; 
 And silently bended a lowly knee 
 
 At her feet on the mossy floor. 
 
 " If hearts were as thine, all leal and true, 
 
 No petals would Love's rose shed : 
 And, Ethel, the buds that are fresh with dew 
 
 Are sweeter than rose leaves dead ! " 
 
 P 
 
 N A Casket. 
 
 IN this httle casket I 
 Lay my heart beseechingly. 
 
 If for it thou carest none 
 
 Would from me it ne'er had gone. 
 
 Hate it ! haply time may prove 
 Hate is crowned by sister Love. 
 
 Pitiest it, so sad and lone ? 
 Sweet ! beside it lav thine own.
 
 Sending 'Loves of the Wrens ' to a Lady. 93 
 
 
 FLY, birdie, fly. 
 With glee in thine eye. 
 To my love Avhere she sitteth at Salisbin-y : 
 
 Sing, birdie, sing. 
 
 Till the woodlands ring. 
 For the tale of thy loves nestles under thy wing, ! 
 
 Trill, birdie, trill 
 
 Thy soft carols, till 
 Thou lightest on Emily's window-sill, 
 
 Then, birdie, then, 
 
 I envy thee, when 
 She lifteth the lattice to thee, little wren ! 
 
 — C-Jr- 4£i2t;.-*— >
 
 94 Ilderin. 
 
 Two bright gems set in a, ground of snow 
 Of the turquoise tint and the sajiphire's glow, 
 Two ruby lips with pearls between, 
 And rosily -rippling coralline, 
 
 Fair Ilderin ! 
 
 The gems they laugh, and the gems they cry, 
 And the gems are as blue as the bluest sky ; 
 And the snow it is warm, though snow it be, 
 And the coralline 's truer than that in the sea, 
 
 Sweet Ilderin ! 
 
 Now I love those gems of heavenly blue. 
 And I love the pearls and the rubies too, 
 And the coralline. Fain would I ask of thee 
 The whole of thy dainty jewelry, 
 
 Mv Ilderin ! 
 
 — ■—>< '-^ '■(, -i- -: '
 
 To Fanny. 
 
 OH ! Fanny, 'mong your ferns and roses, 
 And dainty delf, and snug tea cosies, 
 And birds' sweet parley, 
 Do'st think it folly, sin, or fun, 
 That there should be a lonely one 
 Who envies Charlie ? 
 
 Deem it no folly, nay, nor sin, 
 (Though sooth the two were much akin. 
 
 Should lovers we be) 
 That e'er a man of middle age 
 Should envy Joseph in his cage, 
 
 Or Poll, or Hebe, 
 
 Folly, or sin, or pain, my fairy, 
 1 still would be thy pet canary. 
 
 Or mina jeering ; 
 To hear thee, and to make reply 
 In little sharps caressingly. 
 
 With no one hearing. 
 
 Ah ! wave the wand, dis^Derse the fumes, 
 Sweet fairy ! lo, to saffron plumes 
 
 My Melton 's turning ; 
 Chant, dear magician ! at thy spell 
 The pants that graced my legs so well 
 
 New hues are learning.
 
 96 To Fanny. 
 
 My words in tiny trebles sink, 
 And little water-drops I drink 
 
 In lieu of brandy : 
 In pride I tread a sanded floor 
 With hemp and rape to eat full store, 
 
 And sometimes candy. 
 
 And thou art near — I hear thee speak, 
 I kiss thy pressed lips Avith my beak. 
 
 Though Hebe 's snarling. 
 Nay, ope the door ; I will not fly ; 
 I need no cage, when thou art nigh, 
 
 My sweet ! my darling ! 
 
 Laugh, Fanny ! though you may, at this, 
 It is a metamorphosis 
 
 That would be pleasant ; 
 If birds could feel as men, and thus 
 Escape the world, as Itylus, 
 
 The human pheasant. 
 
 Aug. 8th, 1880. 
 
 c^?^4ZZi'
 
 Edith. 97 
 
 pDITH. 
 
 EBON hair in mazy tresses 
 Playing with the Avind's caresses ; 
 Floating eyes of hazel brown, 
 Witch's smile and fairy frown ; 
 Lips snow-girdled, ruby red, 
 Rose-cups on a lily-bed ; 
 Skin as clear as crusted brine. 
 Flushed like sun-bathed Apennine ; 
 Soft her voice as cushat cooing 
 In the pine-tops, love a-wooing ; 
 Light step weaving light heart's pleasure 
 Twinking to the viol's measure. 
 Saw her maidens fair among. 
 Deemed her fairest of the throng. 
 Sought her, took her to my side, , 
 
 " Deign, sweet maid, to be my bride." 
 
 ir
 
 98 A Valentine. 
 
 / y 
 
 ALENTINE. 
 
 For Dottie ! 
 
 I CHOSE a love-gift for my fair, 
 I said it must be dainty ware 
 For Mistress Dottie. 
 How fair so be the piece I choose, 
 I fear me she will it refuse, 
 
 And call it "potty!" 
 
 My ladye small is a maid of fame, 
 She is no ordinary dame 
 
 Like Flo or Lotty : 
 »She tosses back her ringlets fair, 
 And dons a cold imperious air, 
 
 Doth Mistress Dottie ! 
 
 She frowns me down with sea-blue eyes 
 I know I am not overwise, 
 
 Nor good nor pleasing : 
 But really to be held so low 
 By one so very young, you know, 
 
 Is more than teasing !
 
 A Valentine. 99 
 
 If she would deign her thoughts to frame 
 In human speech, mayhap she'd name 
 
 Me " Dumps " or " Squatty." 
 The gods are kind : for though revealed 
 In mien, the sword of tongue 's concealed 
 
 By Mistress Dottie ! 
 
 My ladye signifieth scorn — 
 
 O heavens, the sacrilege ! one morn 
 
 I think I kissed her ! 
 " Five years " regards my prayers as dust- 
 Mercy, ye gods ! if so, what must 
 
 Her elder sister ! 
 
 Bring me a sheet of cream-laid fair ! 
 I'll write with caligrajihie care, 
 
 For Lady Dottie ! 
 But though each stroke be copperplate. 
 Crooks, dashes, lines she'll underrate 
 
 And call them blotty ! 
 
 H 2
 
 100 Airy C^'eature. 
 
 A 
 
 j:trj| irsutujit. 
 
 IRY creature ! I beseech ye not to tilt that saucy- 
 feature ; 
 Listen ! for I'm going to preach a sermon on your 
 
 naughty ways. 
 If you never should endeavour to improve, why, still 
 
 forgive a 
 Caution from a friend whose everlasting duty 's to 
 dispraise. 
 
 Every eve with proffered posies, twined of roses for 
 
 fair hoses, 
 Falters roimd thee one who shows his manifest desire 
 
 to please : 
 And instead of turning red, as every girl should who 's 
 
 well-bred, you 
 Nonchalantly ask, " What led you to adorn your coat 
 
 with these ? " 
 
 No, dear Alice, this is naughty : surely some one 
 
 must have taught ye 
 It is wrong to sport a haughty manner, and fond 
 
 hearts to crush.
 
 A Wiltshire Idyll. 101 
 
 Early birds pick up well, nicies, or at least what 
 
 them entices ; 
 Darling, listen, my advice is, " Imitate the sapient 
 
 thrush." 
 
 On the dewy lawn doth Sarah roses steal from Dawn's 
 
 tiara, 
 Yet will Dawn by process fairer steal them back in 
 
 sleep from thee : 
 Lo ! the sun 's already shining, and the bobbery pack 
 
 are whining ; 
 Yawn not under quilt reclining ! Alice, rise to horse 
 
 with me ! 
 
 AY, 't were as voine a noight er were 
 As ever a Avun I zee. 
 And oi were a coomun from Tanhill Vaire, 
 When thick lass coom a coortim me. 
 
 "And bist thee a gwain, Jim Scott," she zays, 
 "And bist thee a gwain," zays she, 
 
 " Wi' naver a word for Ehza Hiu-d, 
 Who were alius koind to thee ? "
 
 102 A Wiltshire Idyll. 
 
 Zays oi, " It be foive mailes eet avoure 
 
 Oi gets to Vizim town, 
 And thuck gurt moon 'idl be zetting zoon 
 
 Ahoind o' Rouudway Down." 
 
 " 'Tis thee be the moon wi' thy gurt flat feace, 
 'T wull be light enow and moore ; 
 
 But thee eyes be dim, elseways, whoy Jim, 
 Thee 'd have axed vor a zmack avoure. 
 
 When thee was old Squire Penruddocke's lad, 
 It were alius a buss or a squeeze : 
 
 And 'twere Sloper's Ben thee growled at then. 
 And 'twere thee oi used to tease." 
 
 I will gie thee a zmack, moi wench," says oi, 
 
 Oi says, " if oi beant too vree ; 
 But oi tell thee playne 'tis with Mary Jane 
 
 Oi 'm a-keeping coompany." 
 
 " I zeed thee," she up, quite speaiteful-like, 
 "Laast Soonday doou Canning's laine, 
 
 With thick lawng black coiit, and thee stuck-up 
 tloi'oat. 
 And thuck giggling Mary Jane. 
 
 Ees, Jim, oi zeed old Boozer's gurl, 
 
 With thee arm roon her skinny waiste : 
 
 Er fayther's score 's at the Golden Boar, 
 And it may'nt quite zuit thee taste.
 
 A WiltsJdre Idyll. 103 
 
 There's zome as likes a 'ealthy gal, 
 And zome as loikes a tliiu, 
 But, Jim, there's mayne few, though p'rajDS thee do, 
 Who '11 pay for others' gin." 
 
 Er storpt, and er gie me a pint of aile. 
 And her cheeks were rad and roond. 
 
 And lor ! a main one she were for brain 
 As aver could be found. 
 
 And ''■ Liza," says oi, " they all be good. 
 
 And thee'st whoalesome-like, that 's sure, 
 
 And, there 's a good lass, bring another glass, 
 And we '11 get to summat clear." 
 
 The moon 'ad zet whun I reached the Bell, 
 And slep by old Rube in the straaw ; 
 
 And moi dreams they Avas full of old Ford's prize bull, 
 But of Mary Jane no more. 
 
 The parson he spouted the marriage banns 
 'Twixt Liza and me, that 's plain : 
 
 But darng thuck ere Ben of Sloper's, when 
 He married moi Mary Jane.
 
 104 Address, &c. 
 
 t^a:]^tn5 ii|pru$, J«5tt$t, 1878* 
 
 Chorus of Staff Officers, Secretaries, Sfc. 
 
 WELCOME, thrice welcome, thou venturous 
 barber, 
 Delicate-fingered, ambrosial-curled ! 
 Greet him with thunder of fortress and harbour, 
 Honour his scissors with pennons unfm-led : 
 Essences cool and sweet, 
 Fresh brought from Regent Street, 
 Come with the whirring gyratory trope ! 
 Warriors, shave again 
 Fearless of scar or pain ; 
 Truefitt has brought you his Alkaline Soap ! 
 
 Hail, then, hero of Extract of Roses ! 
 Well may thy England her enterprise boast ! 
 Come, like a breath of spring wind to our noses, 
 Wafting thy sweets to this savoury coast ! 
 
 What though bereaved we are, 
 
 Exiles from home afar ?
 
 Address, &c. 105 
 
 What though our sweetness be lost in the wild ? 
 
 Yet in this weary isle, 
 
 Waiting lorn beauty's smile, 
 Welcome we Fashion's insouciant child ! 
 
 Oh ! of Enamel thou blessed improver, 
 Floriline ! loved by our Cyprian Queen : 
 Allen ! of dandrifi: thou magic remover, 
 Hope of the bald, shed delight on the scene. 
 
 Reck we nought how ye reek 
 
 Cypriote, Turk, or Greek ; 
 Truefitt has come your dark deeds to undo : 
 
 Dry, sun, our glossy hair, 
 
 Sear, sands, complexions fair. 
 Soldiers of Britain ! enjoy a shampoo ! 
 
 So, in thy favourite glens, Aplirodite, 
 Though thou hast faithlessly left them, alas ! 
 Hyacinth-like, we may haply requite ye 
 By falling in love with ourselves in the glass. 
 
 Crop close the shaggy hair. 
 
 Shave with artistic care 
 Vagrant moustache and piratical beard : 
 
 Lo ! as thou from the surge. 
 
 Goddess, we now emerge. 
 Once more by mothers and foes to be feared.
 
 106 Ye Historie of ye Forhmes, &c. 
 
 OF THOSE PRIVATE GENTLEMEN WHOSE ADMIHATION FOB 
 YE DRAMA LED THEM TO PROCEED ON OCTOBER 1 TO 
 MADRAS IN ORDER TO ESCORT WITH BETTER HONOURS 
 YE THEATRICAL COMPANIE TO YE METROPOLIS OF 
 INDIA. 
 
 OH ! we are a great and benevolent nation, 
 We march in the van of refined education, 
 We sit on the apex of high cultivation. 
 
 My sceptical friends, do not doubt it — 
 We teach to our brother, the lissom Hindoo, 
 How great are the blessings of mind which accrue 
 Through study of form to the fortunate few, 
 
 Who cannot endure life without it. 
 So, lovers of Art, at its true value reckon 
 The zeal of those students who sailed by the 
 
 ' Deccan.' 
 (P. and O., Capt. Andrewes — a sailor as brave 
 In the conquest of hearts as of wind and of wave.) 
 Those youths, lofty minded, so staid and so sober, 
 Who ventured to sea on the first of October, 
 And risked all the perils of Autumn typhoons, 
 At the time of the Pujahs and perilous moons.
 
 Ye Historic of ye Forhmes, &c. 107 
 
 In order to prove to a marvelling age, 
 
 How deep was their ardonr for Art — and the stage. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now Jones is a clerk, with a soul above bills, 
 
 And cotton and ledgers, and high stools and quills, 
 
 And Jones is a lover of Art for its own sake, 
 
 (At Carson or Toole he will roar till his bones ache) ; 
 
 But no forms artistic his heart so engage 
 
 As the belles of the ballet, the sylphs of the stage ! 
 
 One day, as he gazed on the features seraphic 
 
 Of actresses, pictured by Art photographic. 
 
 And hung on the walls for the world's admiration, 
 
 He was straightway inspired Avith the determination 
 
 To let not an hour — not a moment to pass. 
 
 Ere he booked by the ' Deccan ' a berth for Madras. 
 
 So Jones brushed his hair, 
 And Jones winked his eye, 
 
 And practised a stare 
 That was awfully sly. 
 
 His gait was mysterious, 
 His manner the same — 
 
 So that friends became curious — 
 " What is his game .-* " 
 
 III. 
 
 But Timkins and Tweedle, and Thompson and Drew, 
 Were each and all patrons of comedy too :
 
 108 Ye Historie of ye Foriunes, &c. 
 
 Each worshipped the drama, as chastened to taste, 
 
 A petticoat dearth, and a tight little waist. 
 
 And each wore a knowing, inscrutable look. 
 
 As he hied to the office, his passage to book. 
 
 But why such admirers of art should refrain 
 
 From mutual sympathies, who can explain ? 
 
 Said Timkins, " My liver is all of a shiver, 
 
 I do not like pills, so I '11 go to the hills." 
 
 And hypocrite Jones talked of agueish bones, 
 
 "I've a strange sort of feeling : I may try Darjeeling." 
 
 And Tweedle and Thompson and conscienceless Drew 
 
 Told stories that were not, I grieve to say, true. 
 
 Be that as it may, I have reason to say. 
 
 That a strange consternation, a comic vexation, 
 
 Confounded those art-loving souls with regret. 
 
 When each found the other. 
 
 An art-loving brother. 
 And bound by the ' Deccan ' to meet the ' Thibet.' 
 
 IV. 
 
 *' What ? Tweedle ? You talked about camping and 
 
 snipe," 
 And " Drew ! Some one's eye you were going to 
 
 wipe ! " 
 " And you, Timkins, you, with your novel and pipe, 
 Has somebody cured your abdominal gripe ? " 
 ^* Where, Thompson, your big-game shikar ? "
 
 Ye Historic of ye Fortunes, &c. 10& 
 
 I have not the patience, the time, nor the ink, 
 
 To tell how Jones took to unlimited drink ; 
 
 And Timkins and Tweedle were forced to the brink 
 
 Of fathomless grief and despair. 
 Each gloomily sat on his own easy-chair. 
 And puffed, as he looked at the sea and the air, 
 And privately hoped that a Biblical whale 
 Might swallow the others without turning pale. 
 Or finding a bank-clerk too violent rations, 
 To stay on his stomach without protestations. 
 Such thoughts misanthropical even as Cain's 
 Assisted the simkin to muddle their brains. 
 
 When Drew 
 With gesture imperious dropped his cigar. 
 
 And blew 
 A sapient cloud on the wondering air. 
 The words that he uttered 
 
 Cast oil on the Avave, 
 And silently muttered 
 
 Those senators grave. 
 *' Hi, steward ! fresh glasses, 
 
 We've nothing but dregs '' — 
 And " luck and the lasses " 
 Were " wetted " in pegs. 
 The council was long, and the mixtures were strong. 
 And all were elate when they closed the debate. 
 And the triumph each countenance pictured was great.
 
 110 Ye Historie of ye Fortunes, &c. 
 
 V. 
 
 How deeply we Englislimen honour the stage, 
 Is told in that sesquipedalian page, 
 Which Timkins inscribed with a copperplate hand, 
 Purporting to welcome in periods grand, 
 Our ThesjDian guests to the Indian strand. 
 And thickly incrusted with mythical butter, 
 Thus — " Aldermen we of the town of Calcutta, 
 Beadle and Silverstick, Chaplain and Mayor, 
 Willing to pay you a compliment rare, 
 Chartered the ' Deccan ' — what matter rupees ? 
 To carry us over the nauseous seas. 
 And honour the Roscian train ? 
 Welcomes municipal hither we 've brought. 
 Hither Ave come your fair dames to escort — 
 Spare us your gratitude — back to the port 
 Of our Imperial main." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Readers, my song is already too long, 
 
 Nor can I relate all the deeds of the great ; 
 
 How Silverstick, Timkins, took too many simkins, 
 
 And graced with no laurels municipal morals ; 
 
 How Thomson, the Mayor, would do nothing but stare. 
 
 And ogle the ladies placed under his care. 
 
 But the curses and groans, 
 
 Of the Reverend Jones,
 
 Ye Historie of ye Fortunes, &c. ill 
 
 As his head with the vessel ia sympathy rocked, 
 So terribly shocked 
 
 Those dames that they cried 
 
 (And it can't be denied), 
 " Such a clergyman ought to be really unfrocked." 
 
 And as for young Tweedle, 
 
 The ' soi-disant beadle,' 
 His manner was forward, too forward by far, 
 
 And many did mutter 
 
 " A strange place, Calcutta ! 
 What odd sort of people its aldermen are ! " 
 
 VII. 
 
 And this is the tale of the grave deputation, 
 "Whose deep admiration for Art-cultivation 
 Induced them to brave all the risks of the wave, 
 And even to go to that refuge of woe — 
 Madras ! 
 
 In order to show 
 That the love of the drama all limits may pass. 
 
 If a moral you seek. 
 Learn first how to gain introductions by cheek ! 
 
 And haply one more, 
 
 " Stick close to the shore, 
 
 And think of the groans 
 
 Of the Reverend Jones, 
 If your feeUngs are strong and your stomach is weak."
 
 112 To the Moorghi. 
 
 Wti i\% flgutirg^^l 
 
 Sonnet. 
 
 ROOSTER of Ind ! thou waste of sapless bone ! 
 Meal after meal, in cycles regular. 
 That narrow-fronted thief, my Khidmutgar, 
 Mocks my cloyed palate, and enduring moan, 
 With thee, oh misogastric monotone ! 
 
 Eftsoones in hollow mask to reappear 
 Of ovine cutlet, or dissected steer, 
 Thou haunt'st me " like a presence " loathly-grown ! 
 I know thy Proteus shapes too well ! too well ! 
 Thy savour savourless, thy bon^owed charms 
 Of crumb, or Mayonnaise, or Sauce du Verde : 
 Drear Chanticleer ! it was thy note that fell 
 On peccant Peter's ear ! 'Tis thine alarms 
 
 The shadowy hosts of Styx, thyself a ghost, 
 O bird. 
 
 -o--*— <532?>-*-
 
 Fratri Aryensi Anglo-Indtis iratus. 113 
 
 YOUR garment is mean, you are bony and lean, 
 You 're a thief and a liar, and shorn like a fria 
 You try to disarm with a cringing salaam 
 The pmiishment meet for a rascal and cheat. 
 And you dare to think hatefid the food that I eat. 
 You batten on rice that you buy for a pice, 
 And loathe most religiously everything nice ! 
 You smoke hubble-bubbles to add to my troubles, 
 And flavour the air with the rags that you wear. 
 Which are always indecently out of repair ; 
 You oil all your body. 
 
 You smudge and you smear. 
 You never drink toddy 
 
 Or brandy or beer ; 
 You labour for annas, 
 
 You slave for rupees. 
 In short, all your manners 
 Are worse than Chinese ! 
 
 In a dirty mud-hovel you reek and you grovel, 
 Your bawas are nude as the babes in the wood 
 With no birds to dress them as proper birds should. 
 You fail to impart to the choice of your heart 
 
 7
 
 114 Fratri Aryensi Anglo-Ind2is iratus. 
 
 A husband's idea of the feminine sphere, 
 With poker or brick or intelligent kick, 
 Or apt execration, that men of our nation 
 Employ to accomplish their wives' education : 
 You hunger and fast for some trash about caste 
 Which I duly refrain from attempts to explain 
 ('Tis a field open yet to some rising Debrett, 
 Nor have I a mission to thwart his ambition, 
 And really it scarcely deserves competition) : 
 You may count l)y the score all the gods you adore. 
 But count as you may yet there always are more. 
 Such gods a believer 
 
 Must surely perplex, 
 With Vishnu and Shieva 
 
 Of dubious sex, 
 And Krishna, whose wives' stock 
 
 Was countless as leaves. 
 Eclipsed Brigham's live stock 
 And shamed the Khedive's. 
 
 You sanctify peepids as bishops do steeples. 
 And stones painted red are as life to the dead 
 And bless the unfertilised nuptial bed. 
 You pray with a bow to some ruminant cow 
 To punish a flea, or supply you with ghi, 
 Its horns gilded half like a Bethelite calf, 
 So much so, I almost — I think I might laugh.
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 115 
 
 Oh never, no never, 
 
 My gentle Hindoo, 
 Can I hope or endeavour 
 
 To cultivate you ; 
 You're heathen, you're wily, 
 
 You hate, though you crawl, 
 But I will not revile ye — 
 
 We don't suit at all ! 
 
 -o-«e— ^I3S &- J ) " O- 
 
 y. f 
 
 lOGRAPHY 
 
 R^P] 
 
 OF GOLA MOHENDEA CHANDRA NOY, C.S.I. 
 
 HIS VIRTUOUS CAREER, AND ITS UNMERITED CLOSE. 
 BY ONE 01<" HIS MANY ADMIRERS (B.A.). 
 
 " Lay on, Macduff ! and damned be he 
 Who first cries, ' Hold ! enough.' "—SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Jxily, 1890. 
 FYTTE YE FIRST. 
 
 GOLA Mohendra Chandra Noy Our hem? 
 
 remarkable 
 Was a most remarkable kind of a boy ; conform 
 
 '' tion. 
 
 His head was so big and his calves so thin, 
 (The bones peeped out through his copper skin). 
 That he seemed to appeal to the commonest eye, 
 " Come ! see what a wonderful child am I." 
 
 I 2
 
 116 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 From a physiological point of view, 
 He was one of those all- God-favoured few, 
 Who, as living examples on earth remain, 
 How Nature concedes her rule to brain ! 
 
 II. 
 
 His ardent It is true, I must sav, that the little Nov 
 
 loveof scien- ■' "^ 
 
 tific research (^jjis neighboiu-s' delight and his parents' joy), 
 of truth. jjj^jj strange little tricks, which though clever 
 and shrewd, 
 Would scarce be by every one understood ; 
 Though really this nobly precocious youth 
 Did all in the sacred search of truth. 
 When he goiiged out his sister's mina's eye 
 He wanted to see if the bird could cry, 
 He practises As a problem of Natural History : 
 
 vivisection. ■*■ 
 
 And the great bull -frog 
 
 With his eyes agog, 
 
 That croaked all night in the neighbouring bog, 
 
 Stirred problems vast in Mohendra's mind, 
 He evolves As to whether by doubling its stock of wind 
 ofhiItni-°'^ He might harmonize froggy's discordant tune, 
 music. And make him a drum or a big bassoon. 
 
 III. 
 
 He proceeds So little Mohendra stole the stem 
 inentaiise. Of his bap's hubblo-bubble, 
 
 When careless of trouble 
 That worthy reposed with his virtuous mem ;
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 117 
 
 Apostrophe 
 to the Frog. 
 
 And, nerving himself for the daring deed, 
 He stole upon froggy with silent speed — 
 
 Oh, heckless wight ! 
 That ever thou croakedst so loud that night ! 
 For just as thou utteredst thy hoarsest note, 
 
 Our Aryan boy 
 Plunged deep the stem in thy gaping throat, 
 
 With a naturalistic joy — 
 He pressed thy lips with his sinuous thumb 
 Till they closed around, and thy voice was dumb, 
 And he blew through the pipe-stem's upper end, 
 And he chuckled to see thy paunch distend — The amusing 
 
 ■n^i 111 1 • 1 nature of 
 
 vv hen thy eyes dropped out he crowed Avitn Mohendra's 
 
 experiment. 
 
 delight, 
 (Was there ever a more ridicu^lous sight ?) 
 But alas ! such true scientific sport 
 Must end like every mortal joke, 
 And when thy skin was strained quite taut, 
 Though this is a detail — of course it broke. His iufan- 
 
 And little Mohendra's ponderous head ^^ repose. 
 
 Was soon asleep on his dear bap's bed. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A soul with the search of truth imbued 
 
 Can attain a miraculous altitude, 
 
 It can soar above poor sentimental cant 
 
 Which is nought but a pastime for clerical rant. 
 
 The trlmnph 
 of mind over 
 emotion, of 
 reason over 
 seutimental- 
 ism.
 
 118 
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 Our hero's 
 bravery. 
 
 His pru- 
 dence. 
 
 Little of muscle, but great of mind 
 
 (Mind is the ruler, and matter the slave), 
 Gola Mohendra quite divined 
 
 When to be prudent, and where to be brave. 
 If a poor lean pariah, famine-sick, 
 
 Thirsting and spiritless crossed his way, 
 Who was so agile with stone and stick ? 
 
 Who Avas so eager to lead the fray ? 
 But, oh dear me ! how those calves could run, 
 If the pariah seemed to resent the fun ! 
 
 The wealth, 
 but humble 
 position, of 
 Mohendra's 
 father. 
 
 His method 
 of accumu- 
 lating a 
 fortune. 
 
 Mohendra is 
 addressed by 
 his papa. 
 
 V. 
 
 I forgot to remark that our lad's dada 
 Had amassed some hundred rupees or more ; 
 He was dhobi-in-chief to the great judge sahib 
 (Whose shirts he would mix with the mater's 
 
 garb) 
 So that what with the sale of abstracted hose, 
 Which had formerly basked on the mem sahib's 
 
 toes. 
 And those manifold sundries that year by year 
 Would surely but stealthily disappear, 
 Mohendra's dada had amassed the grist. 
 And became an important capitalist. 
 "My beloved," he said, "thou art bom for fame, 
 Thou shalt raise thy lowly ancestral name — 
 It is tyrannous true. 
 That the simple Hindoo
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 119 
 
 Does not get for his merits the guerdon that 's 
 
 due ; 
 And to pay any pice for his own education The om 
 
 gentleman's 
 
 Is a sham, and a shame that requires reforma- views on the 
 
 subject of 
 ^ion education. 
 
 And only endiu-ed by a down-trodden nation. 
 I am garib, I am garib, 
 
 I 'm a battered old drudge, 
 But I 've pinched and I have saved, 
 
 From my father the Judge ; 
 In a hole, by the bed, 
 
 I 've a fcAv odd rupees — 
 Oh, my son, I have said , His worthy 
 
 I Avill manage the fees, 
 But before you depart, oh, beloved of my 
 
 heart ! 
 I will point out a rule to be kept in the school, 
 Though I 've seen quite enough to perceive 
 you're no fool ; 
 
 You must cringe to your betters, His parting 
 
 A 1 n 11- advice. 
 
 And flatter and whine, 
 By anonymous letters 
 
 Their morals malign. 
 If your rivals are clever — 
 
 Too clever for you — 
 You must ever endeavour 
 
 To libel them too."
 
 120 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 Mohendra's Gola Mohendra sadly smiled, 
 
 reply. " Oh, bap, I am only a little child — 
 
 But believe me, bap, thou shalt soon, soon, see 
 I 'm a worthy branch of the parent tree ! " 
 
 YI. 
 
 Brandi Belatee Panipore 
 Is famed for a mile and a-half or more 
 For its zeal in the cause of scholastic good 
 The famous And gratuitous feasts of religious food, 
 
 Educational 
 
 Institution It IS there, as you know, that the great cal- 
 
 at Brandi 
 
 Belatee vinistico- 
 
 Panipore. 
 
 Anti-episcopo-free-methodistico- 
 Anabaptistical Association, 
 
 Nobly aspires to impart and infuse 
 Primary blessings of first education 
 
 Into the heads of benighted Hindoos. 
 Many thousand lost (black) sheep, 
 
 (So the Society's pamphlets say) 
 Had of Learning's fount drunk deep, 
 Its influence And drinking (perhaps) had learnt to pray. 
 
 on religious o vr r y tr J 
 
 thought. Raiah's sons of princely race 
 
 In the upper 
 
 strata of Here had completed their ABC, 
 
 Learnt to write and read with grace 
 
 (For further particulars Pamphlet see). 
 Hither our innocent daily went. 
 On nought but the search of truth intent :
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 121 
 
 In its quest you may say that he sometimes Mohendra 
 
 becomes a 
 sUpped, disciple. 
 
 Well — he rarely was caughr, and was never 
 
 whipped ; 
 Such barbarous penalties ain't the rage, 
 Thank God, in this present enlightened age ! 
 
 Little of legs, but great of mind, 
 
 Our hero adored his teacher kind, 
 
 He roared at his jokes (which in truth were 
 
 few) ; 
 
 He hung on his words, as all good boys do ; 
 
 He sucked mathematics like mangoes sweet ; 
 
 He bowed at his swarthy Gamaliel's feet ; 
 
 And soon, quite soon, he obtained a prize 
 
 For a wonderful English exercise. 
 
 It is true that a nasty malicious boy 
 
 Who was beaten by Gola Mohendra Noy 
 
 Declared he had seen our hero crib, 
 
 But that was of course a wicked fib. The 
 
 •^ calumny. 
 
 His admi- 
 rable be- 
 liaviour. 
 
 His success. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I could say so much of this pattern child, 
 
 Of his winning tricks, and his manners 
 
 mild. 
 That I'm siu^e if he had any naughty ways, 
 They could never compare with his virtue's 
 
 praise.
 
 122 
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 I 
 
 He would listen with eyes and ears intent, 
 To the tales from the elder testament. 
 
 His earnest 
 attention to 
 the exhorta- 
 tions of the 
 good 
 principaL 
 
 He would look for his cue, 
 In the principal's eye. 
 
 For he never quite knew 
 When to laugh or to cry. 
 
 When a tale was completed, 
 He 'd ask for another, 
 
 And when Esau was cheated. 
 He honoured his brother. 
 
 In the Reverend principal's home report. 
 
 He gratefully spoke of the lamb he had caught. 
 
 He is men- He trusted D.V. that the race it was won, 
 
 tioned with 
 
 commenda- By the blameless and talented Dhobi's son, 
 
 tion in the 
 
 home report, " Dear friends, so he wrote, though our funds 
 are low, 
 We are leading this lamb in the way he should 
 
 go." 
 
 And made And 'tis said that the Reverend Judah Gadd 
 
 the subject 
 
 of a sermon Preached a touchinsr discourse on " the Hindu 
 
 in England. 
 
 lad!^ 
 
 Hei'e endeth Fytte ye First. 
 
 i
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 123 
 
 FYTTE YE SECOND. 
 
 Gola Mohendra grew in grace, 
 
 Grace of manner and mien and mind : 
 Never was such a smooth fat face, 
 
 Never an intellect so refined. 
 Dates of battles, and deaths of kings, 
 
 Problems of Euclid, and poems by rote : 
 There was really no end to the wonderful things 
 
 That Gola could write about and misquote. 
 
 The develop- 
 ment of our 
 hero's 
 mental 
 powers ; his 
 remarkable 
 learning. 
 
 II. 
 
 Stiff propositions by geometricians. 
 
 Signs algebraical, roots and surds. 
 New definitions from quarto editions, 
 
 Synonyms strange for remarkable words. 
 Sullivan's accidence, Angus's grammar. 
 
 Each was to him as a page unrolled ; 
 But somehow he spoke with so strange an 
 istammer, 
 
 One hardly would know if one was not told. 
 
 Its com- 
 prehensive 
 range. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Entrance Examiners breathless gazed, 
 Dumb with wonder and dazed with awe ; 
 
 The astonish- 
 ment of the 
 incapable 
 examiners —
 
 124 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 Goia lias a Their feeble intelligence shrank amazed, 
 
 class to hiru- 
 
 seu. Such facts they never had heard before. 
 
 They printed his name in letters black, 
 
 Big and majestic in lonely state, 
 And straightway the Dhobi's son went back 
 
 As a "gentleman" under-graduate. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Goia's ad- So clever a lad of course could see 
 
 mirable con- 
 tempt for all The folly of every theology ; 
 
 religion— jjg sneered with a true philosophical scorn 
 
 (the natural '■ ^ 
 
 outgrowth ^^ ^Y^Q p.Q(jg of i\^Q land in which he'd been born ; 
 
 of tlie truly o 
 
 miiid)!^^^'^ And as for the poor old principal's hope, 
 It drifted and burst like a bubble of soap. 
 For what philosopher e'er could be 
 A disciple of Christianity ? 
 
 His cynical He formed the club of the sceptical Stoics 
 
 scepticism. 
 
 Where he spouted on Mill in such fervid heroics, 
 
 That, what with his winks, and sarcastic looks, 
 
 You really might think he had read his books. 
 
 And when he was sure 
 
 That the coast was clear. 
 
 His prudent It was splendid to hear him his wrongs recite, 
 patriotism. ^ _ 
 
 About tyrants, taxation. 
 And extermination. 
 Till friends' admiration grew boundless quite. 
 His self- But why he salaamed to the Judge so low, 
 
 abasement to 
 
 the powers J uevcr could Comprehend, you know.
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 125 
 
 comes a 
 
 perfect 
 
 gentleman. 
 
 When he passed for F.A. he assumed an Goiabe- 
 air 
 
 That was insolent, easy, and debonnair : 
 He swathed his limbs in a muslin shroud 
 
 (Though I wonder he always exposed his 
 legs). 
 At times he would puff a tobacco cloud, 
 
 And some of his scholarship went in pegs. 
 
 Rake — philosopher — atheist — all 
 
 He was quite a sample of young Bengal. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Such nonsense is talked about honour, 
 
 Such squeamish ridiculous drivel, 
 That I shall not attempt to put on a 
 
 Pretence of assuming the snivel, 
 When we know that it only applies 
 
 Among thieves and the dregs of society, 
 I 've no wish to descant or look wise 
 
 On the subject of cribbing's jjropriety. 
 If he cribbed from his innocent neighbour, 
 
 Well, — 'twas clever, and cautious, and sly. 
 And cribbing's economised labour. 
 
 And honour, of course, is my eye. 
 
 The ridicu- 
 lous nature 
 of lionour, 
 and the 
 advantages 
 of cunning 
 and brass.
 
 126 
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 It was hard on the fool of a candidate 
 
 Who was jihicked through Mohendra's de- 
 
 nouncing, 
 
 It was wrong — but the season demanded it, 
 And our lad was a beauty for bouncing. 
 
 A reference 
 to an epoch 
 in history 
 and the 
 trinmph of 
 Bengalee 
 rhetoric. 
 
 The tyrant 
 yields under 
 compulsion. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Every one knows 
 Of the gifted Ghose, 
 The patriot pleader of India's woes ; 
 How the cunning old Jew, 
 With his cabinet too 
 Were struck all of a heap by that simple 
 Hindoo. 
 And the sceptre of tyranny bowed and shook, 
 By Aryan eloquence brought to book. 
 It was seen at a glance that the conquering race 
 Should concede to the conquered the pride of 
 
 place. 
 And since the poor Indian fails to pass 
 The standard prescribed for the ruling class. 
 Why then we should really have seen before 
 That admit him we must — by a private door. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Goia be- go Grola Mohendra, large of pate, 
 
 comes a real 
 
 Uve magis- WTas made an assistant maojlstrate 
 
 trate. °
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 127 
 
 And many and great were the jubilations 
 
 Evinced by all native publications. 
 
 *' An era new is about to dawn,'' 
 
 They said, " on this country so long forlorn ; 
 
 And the tyrant greed of the Saxon bows The Saxon's 
 
 . stupid want 
 
 To the sway of superior native nous." of apprecia- 
 
 I must say that the Sahibs were but distantly 
 
 civil, 
 And their manner implied he might go to the 
 
 devil, 
 For in spite of his graces and manifold charms 
 And his easy address, and his airy salaams, 
 These beef-fed islanders all recoil 
 From the flavour of betel and rancid oil. 
 He joined their club, he poised the cue, 
 He tapped the airy shuttle-cock too. 
 
 With twining shanks he triumphant sat Goia adopts 
 
 On the bony ridge of an antique tat ; manners of 
 
 He smoked cheroots till his cheeks grew ashen 
 In fact, he did everything quite in fashion. 
 " He 's so devilish affable," quoth the Judge, The Judge's 
 
 ,, .„, , . „ , . , ^ ,. , cliurlishness. 
 
 " Ihat hints rroni his pachyderm glide away. 
 
 He comes to my house, and by G — d, wont budge 
 
 Though I tell him his pa may be ill that day." 
 
 "Yes, d — u the fellow," the doctor cried, ThecivU 
 
 And he thinks he will die every night beside ; indignation. 
 
 And you government servants don't pay fees.
 
 128 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 But I'll drench him with doses 
 Of senna, by Moses, 
 And see if his system with that agrees. 
 The pre- " Jt 'g bad enoiiffli," granted the engineer, 
 
 ]udices of o 7 o o ' 
 
 the P. w. D. " To have these niggers 
 
 In office, at figures, 
 But their pla}'ing at tennis I can't endure." 
 The amuse- Qnoth the Joint, "It 's a sight to see him drain 
 Jcf^t.° ^ His tumblers of brandy and bad champagne." 
 So, reader, yon see that Mohendra Noy 
 Is a gay young spark of a Hindoo boy ! 
 
 Here endeth Fytte ye Second. 
 
 FYTTE YE THIRD. 
 I. 
 
 The famine In the year 1894 
 
 When the skies refused any rains to pour, 
 And famine and death were raging far 
 aoia's dis- In the wastes of Bengal and of wide Behar, 
 activity, and There was no one so earnest, so void of joy, 
 
 •lisburse- 
 
 mentof As Gola Mohcndra Chandra Noy. 
 
 public funds 
 
 in the cause As to monev, what mattered 
 
 of misery. "^ 
 
 The lacs that he scattered 
 In feeding the starving and annaless poor ? 
 What time for accounts 
 Of the varied amounts
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 129 
 
 Which drove the wolf from the widow's door ? 
 And although the poor ryots would go on dpug 
 It was clear that our Gola was always tryiiig, 
 By giving and buying and self-denying, 
 
 To make them more happy than ever before. 
 His report was so long and so masterly, 
 So neatly arranged with its 1, 2, 3, 
 That it won the applause of the great L. G. 
 
 II. 
 
 " Midst scenes of woe heart-rending," 
 
 Wrote the Hindoo ' Star of Light,' 
 " Kind Heaven one ray is lending. 
 
 To burst the glooms of night — 
 That guileless yoimg Collector ! 
 
 That Lamp in the ryot's cot ! 
 The groaning serf's protector ! 
 
 Our brave compatriot ! " 
 And, reader, I'm sure you will learn with joy, 
 That this was Mohendra Chandra Nov. 
 
 DeUght of 
 the L. G. 
 
 The glowing 
 euconiums 
 of the " 
 
 native press. 
 
 III. 
 
 Of com-se the Governor-General reads 
 
 That journal of circulation wide ; 
 (For when suffering India writhes and bleeds 
 To pay for her arrogant despot's needs, 
 And he's nothing on earth to do beside — 
 
 The duty of 
 an exalted 
 personage 
 wlio holds 
 sinecure is 
 to derive 
 instruction 
 from in- 
 digenous 
 prints.
 
 130 
 
 Ye Biography y &c. 
 
 The pro- 
 clamation. 
 
 He cannot do less 
 
 Than peruse the press 
 And act on the counsel therein supplied.) 
 So an order went forth for a Grand Durbar, 
 To invest our hero with India's Star, 
 And make him a mighty great Maharajah, 
 For what in the world is more fair to see, 
 Than the gentle and virtuous Bengalee ? 
 
 The muster- 
 ing of the 
 chiefs. 
 
 The arrival 
 of Scindia. 
 
 IV. 
 
 They came — the chiefs of India, 
 
 From North, South, East, and West ! 
 From Gwalior came Scindia, 
 Clothed in his Sunday best. 
 With half a hundred horse he came. 
 Of which not more than half were lame. 
 And all were calm, and wondrous tame, 
 In sumptuous trappings drest ! 
 
 Of^the 
 (laekwar. 
 
 V. 
 
 With elephant and with howdah, 
 With banner and golden drum ! 
 
 The Gaekwar of Baroda 
 
 To Kalee's Ghat hath come. 
 
 'Tis he, whose ordnance holds in fear 
 The cowering British cannoneer. 
 
 His guns of solid silver scare
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 131 
 
 Our trumpery irou toys of war, 
 Which at his 'hest are duml\ 
 
 VI. 
 
 Room ! room ! for Viziauagram I 
 
 The Lord of the South goes by ! 
 And with cuffs and blows ou their backs 
 and toes, 
 The Bokkus-wallahs fly ! 
 Stubborn are peons with tailor's bills, 
 Stern to replenish their master's tills 
 But none of those pertinacious ills, 
 That my soul with indignation fills, 
 Equals the Ddlal's cry ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Rich-fruited groves of Paldee, 
 Your ripened globes decay. 
 They rot imstored of your dainty lord, 
 Who treads our streets to-day ! 
 The oranges bloom in Spain galore. 
 They star the green of the Seville shore, 
 But Thanajee Bhonsla of Nagpore, 
 lias better, I'm bound to say. 
 
 Vlll. 
 
 Ho ! Valets sound the tom-toms ! 
 Clash, cymbals ! flags, unfold ! 
 
 K 2 
 
 Of tlie Maha- 
 rajah of Vi- 
 zianagram. 
 
 Of thelliiha- 
 rdjah of 
 I^agpore. 
 
 Of BnnUvan.
 
 132 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 The Eajah of Burdwan rides forth, 
 
 In raiment stiff with gold ! 
 His are the lordly beasts that roar 
 Through iron bars and grated door 
 
 For the bidlock in the stall : 
 His mangoes fetch the highest price 
 
 In the markets of Bengal : 
 With chandeliers from Paris, 
 
 And mirrors from Soho, 
 The stucco walls of his palace halls 
 
 Are quite the thing, you know. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Hail to the chief advancing ! 
 1™*- Great Chingleput, all hail ! 
 
 Thy piebald courser's prancing, 
 
 Like a screw at an autumn sale ! 
 Grand are thy barbs of Arab line 
 Oh Wilson, friend of kings ! and thine, 
 Insenuous Cook ! but none so fine 
 
 As yon steed with the pink, pink, tail. 
 
 X. 
 
 The Durbar. And uow they're all upon the stage, 
 With silver chairs to sit down on ; 
 Envy of tiic Aud all are green with jealous rage. 
 
 At a golden youth with expression sage. 
 And a kind of benevolent frown on ; 
 
 Of Chingle-
 
 Ve Biography, &c. 133 
 
 Quoth Scindia, twirling his spiky moustaches, 
 
 " May Bowanee reduce me to cinders and Bad lan- 
 guage of 
 ashes " Scindla. 
 
 (The other expletives are best marked by 
 
 dashes), 
 " If I honour again such dash-dash-dash tama- 
 
 shahs ! 
 " No, by Krishna and Kalee ! 
 And a dash-dash Bengalee ! 
 What disgrace more abusing could ever befall Execrations 
 
 of the Gaek- 
 ye ? war. 
 
 And the Gaekwar reclined 
 
 With a look scarce resigned. 
 By expressing a wearied and vacuous mind. 
 And really the way in which Gola Avas smiling — The appear- 
 
 •' •' ° ance and de- 
 
 And cringing, and — well, though I don't like meanour of 
 
 reviling, 
 'Twas annoying a little, that's certain — and 
 
 riling. 
 But then we Saxons don't understand 
 The manners and ways of this tropical land. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Eight trumpeters sounded, the piebald barb Astouish- 
 
 ° ^ ' r meutoftlie 
 
 bounded, chieftains at 
 
 ' virtue being 
 
 And the chiefs, who surrounded the thi'one, ^''baSs'for* 
 
 were astounded digmty.
 
 134 
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 tion. 
 
 The inter- 
 niptioii. 
 The con- 
 fusion. 
 
 The instaiia- At the tale of benevolence, 
 Virtue, and zeal intense, 
 
 On which GoLi Mohendra's new title was 
 grounded. 
 " In the name of the great and Imperial \. 
 By the power its lustre has vested in me. 
 Sir knight ! I hereby pronounce and proclaim." 
 But before he had got to the gentleman's name, 
 A shout, 
 
 " Turn him out ! Timi him out !" 
 Excited a wish to see what 'twas about. 
 The Viceroy called " Silence ! " Commissioners 
 
 roared, 
 Inspectors were frantic, Baroda looked bored, 
 Fierce Scindia grinned, and grave Chiugleput 
 
 snored, 
 And aides-de-camp bustled, and constables 
 
 hustled, 
 But in spite of them all, a voice shrill and small, 
 Squeaked, shrieked, through the bear-fight and 
 noise in the hall. 
 
 Impeach- 
 ment of 
 Gola by an 
 old fellow- 
 student. 
 Awful reve- 
 lations. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Dharmabatah ! Moharaj ! listen to me 
 By your feet — by your god — I'm a poor duf tree, 
 Whose life has been blasted by yonder hound. 
 But whose hour of revenge has at last come 
 round.
 
 Ve Biog7'aphy, &c. 135 
 
 In the final exam, for my Arts degree, 
 
 That snake, whom may demons tear limb 
 
 from limb, 
 After cribbing my answers, spontaneously 
 Denounced me for cheating and copying him. 
 His lie was believed — I was turned away, 
 My father was old, and he died next day. 
 He left me no money and I got work, 
 In our magistrate's court, as subordinate clerk. 
 This villain came and he turned me out. 
 He said, I was not to be trusted, no doubt. 
 But sneeringly added that I might be 
 His scraper of pens, as a Court duftree. 
 I consented; he wondered. But then I knew 
 That the dog has his day, though the cat may 
 
 mew ; 
 And so, Gola, I took to observing you. 
 He kept his barouche, and he drank champagne. 
 And I counted the bribes he took day by day. 
 Till the days when the ^heavens would give no 
 
 rain. 
 And people were crying from hunger, and dying 
 By hundreds and thousands on every way. 
 And soon the hole underneath his bed 
 Was choked up with Mohurs, and the ghosts of 
 
 the dead. 
 Great sahib ! my witnesses stand outside.
 
 136 Ye Biography, &c. 
 
 The fatherless orphan, the widowed bride, 
 To attest before God if thy slave hath lied." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The cou- Slaty and e-reen was Mohendra's look 
 
 stemation 
 
 S,l*^^?Jf' J ^^d liis thin leffs rattled, his big head shook : 
 
 The blood- ° ' » 
 
 1^^*^^^°^"' ^"* never a word could his tied tongue stutter, 
 He only could shiver, and glower, and mutter, 
 For there somehow was that in the duftree's 
 
 eyes. 
 Which implied that evasions would not be wise. 
 The doors swung open, and lo and behold ! 
 The streets were crowded with young and old ; 
 Skeleton phantoms crawling in, 
 
 Lifting a quavering feeble cry, 
 *' He starved us, he murdered our kith and 
 kin! 
 Let the liar and traitor come out and die." 
 And this was a most unpleasant end 
 To the honours about to be poured on our friend. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The con- The chapter is finished : the tale is done 
 
 demnation 
 
 and romau- Of Gola Mohcudra, the Dhobi's son. 
 
 tic finale to 
 
 our hero's He stood at the bar of the Great High Court, 
 
 public life. ° ' 
 
 Where his whining and cringing availed him 
 naught,
 
 Ye Biography, &c. 137 
 
 For justice is not as yet sold ami bought. 
 (Though perhaps we may learn, if we're pro- 
 perly taught.) 
 And Gola ? the glory of India's Star, 
 The guileless Collector and Mt'iharajah ? 
 Oh ! he sailed away one sunshiny day, 
 With mighty hig bracelets, and rings on 
 his feet, 
 In a fine great ship, for a lengthened stay. 
 In an isle where unrecognised virtues 
 meet. 
 And all of his friends wear chains with 
 lockets. 
 And they \i\e in a palace for nothing- 
 together, 
 And the best of it is, they're all birds of 
 a feather,   
 Picking hemp, as they used to do locks and 
 jjockets ; 
 And if you should want to do anything more. 
 Break into our friends' Messrs. Hamilton's door. 
 And they'll get you a chit to the Governor. 
 
 Ye Finale. 
 
 -- (x^nic*-<« —
 
 138 In Memoriam. 
 
 [tt i|0m0rtitm. 
 
 ' Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tides 
 Sink"st to the bottom of the unkno^^^l ■world."— LYCIDAS. 
 
 Ocean hath palaces passing fair, 
 
 Dome and cathedral of pearl and spar — 
 Manifold, strange, are the treasures there, 
 
 Known of no mortal her secrets are ! 
 Nought, though, Atlantic, to me such boast ! 
 
 Let me but enter one far deep cave. 
 Where the boom of thy challenge to Vigo's coast. 
 
 Melts peacefidly over our brother's grave ! 
 
 Low in your sepulchres he doth lie, 
 
 Deep, waves, deep where the dim light wane? : 
 Whist ! sad streams, as ye wander by. 
 
 Deal dear pity on his remains ! 
 Be ye to him as I fain would be, 
 
 Tearful and tender, with tribute meet, 
 Coverlet white for his eyes, O sea ! 
 
 Surfy immortelles, O foam ! for his feet. 
 
 Billows thundering overhead, 
 
 Greenstoled choristers, hemmed with siu-ge.
 
 In Memoriam. 139 
 
 Chaut Misereres, and pray for the dead ! 
 
 Peal, sea-organ, the sea-priest's dirge ! 
 80 in your moist crypts ye shall ring 
 
 Far sea-music about his ear. 
 Wailing and whispering, faltering 
 
 Requiems over his oozy bier! 
 
 Strange things, sliding from gloom to gloom, 
 
 Hence ! be not near with your wide dull eyes I 
 Ne'er shall ye enter this hallowed tomb, 
 
 Holy the niche where our brother lies ! 
 Let but the little sea-folk trip 
 
 Here and around to defend his rest, 
 Changing to coral the stone-cold lip, 
 
 Turning my tears to pearls for his breast ! 
 
 Strike me a chord of Amphion's lyre ! 
 Hark ! on the sands a wild music swells — 
 Rear him, sweet sea-harp, a shrine of desire. 
 
 Spanned with agate and porphyry shells. 
 Salt-weed tapestries swinging above, 
 
 Salt waves lapping his wan white brow, 
 Deal with him gently in tender love, 
 
 Tell him how dearly we mourn him now I
 
 140 In Memortam. 
 
 [n mtmtmxnm. 
 
 H. F. and C. J. 0. 
 
 THEY have laid him by the river, 
 Underneath the old elm's shade, 
 He shall hear her voice for ever 
 Calling through the holy glade. 
 
 Gone ! my friend, my almost brother ! 
 
 He I loved, and loving lost. 
 Gone ! ah me ! to greet another, 
 
 Who hath scarce the River crossed ! 
 
 We were three at school and college. 
 
 Three we strove and laughed and fought 
 
 In the boyish race of Knowledge, 
 And the larger world of Thought. 
 
 Seven sweet rounds of snow and hay-time 
 Sowed for us their weeds and flowers, 
 
 Ere we left for aye our May -time 
 In the ivy-bannered towers. 
 
 Mimic Avorld of Truth and seeming, 
 
 Gentle, grand, heroic, vile ! 
 Eton ! e'en the old daws screaming, 
 
 Mock, yet love thy reverend pile.
 
 In Memoriam. 141 
 
 So we saw, our bonds uubrokeu, 
 Four wild summers Avax and wane. 
 
 Where with silver water-token 
 Isis bows at Mary's fane. 
 
 Where is he whom Nature's graces 
 Fashioned fair in mould and mind ? 
 
 He who in life's round of races 
 Left a toiling herd behind ? 
 
 o 
 
 Scholar, athlete, all outvying, 
 First in skill with bat and ball. 
 
 As in life, so, Cuthbert, dying, 
 Thou wert first to lead us all ! 
 
 And thou other, calmly sleeping. 
 With the wave-song in thine ears, 
 
 Still the River bard is keeping 
 Record of thy short bright years ! 
 
 Still to reed and rush he singeth 
 
 How thou loved'st his stream of yore : 
 
 And the tinkling echo ringeth 
 Paaans for thy victor oar. 
 
 Oh ! the Tumbler, loved of barbel. 
 Eddying, foaming Boveney weir! 
 
 Oh ! fresh nooks where reed-birds warble 
 In the green growth of the year !
 
 142 In Memoriam. 
 
 Oh ! thy dells we roamed together, 
 
 Diiigly Dittou, rich in loot ! 
 Kobbiug in the soft May weather 
 
 Freckled eggs of lark and coot. 
 
 Or again, with eight blades sonnding 
 Glad accord to thy strong swing, 
 
 See ! our cedar galley bounding, 
 
 Hark ! the row-lock's measured ring. 
 
 Nay, wild fancy! nought it heareth 
 But the -brown-skinned boatman's cry, 
 
 As his old-world craft he steereth 
 Down the Hooghly ebbingly. 
 
 They remember, they who wondered. 
 
 Shadows in the cloistered fane. 
 How the great Thought-Hammer sounded 
 
 On the anvil of his brain : 
 
 How the quick sparks nought could weaken. 
 Shivered through forbidden gloom. 
 
 And the far mysterious Beacon 
 Lit the scholar's barred room. 
 
 Darker sooth the outer gloaming 
 For that gleamy glow-worm light ; 
 
 Pierced thine eyes the darkness coming 
 Of the Border-guardsman Night ?
 
 In Memoriam. 143 
 
 Soul, thou -wert a stern taskmaster ! 
 
 Weak, too weak, thou frame that wrought ! 
 But the toiler, toiling faster, 
 
 Earlier found the prize it sought. 
 
 In the Homeland, with the roses 
 Sighing sleep-songs o'er his head, 
 
 With the dumb things he reposes, 
 With the Secret of the Dead ! 
 
 And the elm-leaves, rusthnsr, swavinsr. 
 
 As the night gale skyward soars 
 Are, as Buddhist pennons, praying 
 
 Mercy from the Primal Cause. 
 
 Darker grows the peepul, only 
 
 Lamplit by the meteor-fly. 
 ^Night is risen — it is lonely. 
 
 Hark ! the wailing jackal's cry ! 
 
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