SONGS OF MEMORY AND HOPE HENRY NEWBOLT /. SONGS OF MEMORY AND HOPE BY HENRY NEWBOLT LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1909 PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LU. , LONDON AND AYLESBURY. Go LAURENCE BINYON 1 CONTENTS PAGE SACRAMENTUM SUPREMUM ... 7 ODE FOR TRAFALGAR DAY, 1905 . . 9 THE HUNDREDTH YEAR . 13 THE FINAL MYSTERY . . . -15 1L SANTO l8 DEVON 21 TO EDWARD FITZGERALD ... 23 THE MOSSROSE ..... 26 AVE, SOROR 29 TO A RIVER IN THE SOUTH ... 30 ON THE DEATH OF A NOBLE LADY. . 32 MIDWAY 33 AD MATREM DOLOROSAM ... 34 VRAIS AMANTS ..... 36 THE SANGREAL . . . . -37 SIR HUGH THE PALMER .... 38 5 6 CONTENTS PAGE THE PRESENTATION .... 43 AMORE ALTIERO 45 LOVE AND GRIEF ..... 48 AGAINST OBLIVION .... 50 THE INHERITANCE . . . . -51 EGERIA'S SILENCE . . 54 THE PEDLAR'S SONG . . . .56 BENEDICK'S SONG ..... 58 FOND COUNSEL ..... 60 YOUTH . . . . . . .6l THE WANDERER 63 THE ADVENTURERS 64 TO CLARE .66 THE RETURN OF SUMMER : AN ECLOGUE 68 DREAM-MARKET 75 THE CICALAS : AN IDYLL ... 88 EPISTLE 98 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM . . 106 LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS . . . 1 17 SACRAMENTUM SUPREMUM MUDKEN, MARCH 6, 1905 YE that with me have fought and failed and fought To the last desperate trench of battle's crest, Not yet to sleep, not yet ; our work is nought ; On that last trench the fate of all may rest. Draw near, my friends ; and let your thoughts be high ; Great hearts are glad when it is time to give ; Life is no life to him that dares not die, And death no death to him that dares to live. 7 8 SACRAMENTUM SUPREMUM Draw near together ; none be last or first; We are no longer names, but one de- sire ; With the same burning of the soul we thirst, And the same wine to-night shall quench our fire. Drink ! to our fathers who begot us men, To the dead voices that arc never dumb ; Then to the land of all our loves, and then To the long parting, and the age to come. ODE FOR TRAFALGAR DAY, 1905 " Partial firing continued until 4.30, when a victory having been reported to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, K.B., and Commander-in-Chief, he then died of his wound." Log of the Victory, October 21, 1805. ENGLAND ! to-day let fire be in thine eyes And in thy heart the throb of leaping guns ; Crown in thy streets the deed that never dies, And tell their fathers' fame to all thy sons ! Behold ! behold ! on that unchanging sea Where day behind Trafalgar rises pale, How dread the storm to be 9 2 io ODE FOR TRAFALGAR DAY Drifts up with ominous breath Cloud after towering cloud of billowy sail Full charged with thunder and the bolts of death. Yet when "the noon is past, and thy delight, More delicate for these good hundred years, Has drunk the splendour and the sound of fight And the sweet sting of long-since vanished fears, Then, England, come thou down with sterner lips From the bright world of thy substantial power, Forget thy seas, thy ships, And that wide echoing dome To watch the soul of man in his dark hour Redeeming yet his dear lost land of home. ODE FOR TRAFALGAR DAY 11 What place is this ? What under-world of pain All shadow-barred with glare of swing- ing fires? What writhing phantoms of the newly slain ? What cries ? What thirst consuming all desires ? This is the field of battle : not for life, Not for the deeper life that dwells in love, Not for the savour of strife Or the far call of fame, Not for all these the fight : all these above The soul of this man cherished Duty's name. His steadfast hope from self has turned away, For the Cause only must he still contend : 12 ODE FOR TRAFALGAR DAY " How goes the day with us ? How goes the day?" He craves not victory, but to make an end. Therefore not yet thine hour, O Death : but when The weapons forged against his country's peace Lie broken round him then Give him the kiss supreme ; Then let the tumult of his warfare cease And the last dawn dispel his anguished dream. THE HUNDREDTH YEAR " Drake, and Blake, and Nelson's mighty name." THE stars were faint in heaven That saw the Old Year die ; The dream-white mist of Devon Shut in the seaward sky : Before the dawn's unveiling I heard three voices hailing, I saw three ships come sailing With lanterns gleaming high. The first he cried defiance A full-mouthed voice and bold " On God be our reliance, Our hope the Spaniard's gold ! With a still, stern ambuscado, With a roaring escalade, We'll sack their Eldorado And storm their dungeon hold ! " 13 14 THE HUNDREDTH YEAR Then slowly spake the second A great sad voice and deep " When all your gold is reckoned, There is but this to keep : To stay the foe from fooling, To learn the heathen schooling, To live and die sea-ruling, And home at last to sleep." But the third matched in beauty The dawn that flushed afar ; " O sons of England, Duty Is England's morning star: Then Fame's eternal splendour Be theirs who well defend her, And theirs who fain would bend her The night of Trafalgar ! " THE FINAL MYSTERY This myth, of Egyptian origin, formed part of the instruc- tion given to those initiated in the Orphic mysteries, and written versions of it were buried with the dead. HEAR now, O Soul, the last command of ail- When thou hast left thine every mortal mark, And by the road that lies beyond recall Won through the desert of the Burning Dark, Thou shalt behold within a garden bright A well, beside a cypress ivory-white. Still is that well, and in its waters cool White, white and windless, sleeps that cypress tree : Who drinks but once from out her shadowy pool Shall thirst no more to all eternity. 15 16 THE FINAL MYSTERY Forgetting all, by all forgotten clean, His soul shall be with that which hath not been. But thou, though thou be trembling with thy dread, And parched with thy desire more fierce than flame, Think on the stream wherefrom thy life was fed, And that diviner fountain whence it came. Turn thee and cry behold, it is not far Unto the hills where living waters are. " Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth, Yet was I fathered by the starry sky : Thou knowest I came not of the shadows' birth, THE FINAL MYSTERY 17 Let me not die the death that shadows die. Give me to drink of the sweet spring that leaps From Memory's fount, wherein no cypress sleeps." Then shalt thou drink, O Soul, and there- with slake The immortal longing of thy mortal thirst ; So of thy Father's life shalt thou par- take, And be for ever that thou wert at first. Lost in remembered loves, yet thou more thou With them shalt reign in never-ending Now. IL SANTO ALAS ! alas ! what impious hands are these ? They have cut down my dark mysterious trees, Defied the brooding spell That sealed my sacred well, Broken my fathers' fixed and ancient bars, And on the mouldering shade Wherein my dead were laid Let in the cold clear aspect of the stars. Slumber hath held the grove for years untold : Is there no reverence for a peace so old ? Is there no seemly awe For bronze-engraven law, 18 IL SANTO 19 For dust beatified and saintly name ? When they shall see the shrine Princes have held divine, Will they not bow before the eternal flame ? Vain ! vain ! the wind of heaven for ages long Hath whispered manhood, " Let thine arm be strong ! Hew down and fling away The growth that veils decay, Shatter the shrine that chokes the living spring. Scorn hatred, scorn regret, Dig deep and deeper yet, Leave not the quest for word of saint or king. " Dig deeper yet ! though the world brand thee now, The faithful labour of an impious brow 20 IL SANTO May for thy race redeem The source of that lost stream Once given the thirst of all the earth to slake. Nay, thou too ere the end Thy weary knee mayst bend And in thy trembling hands that water take." DEVON DEEP-WOODED combes, clear-mounded hills of morn, Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall, High lonely barrows where the curlews call, Far moors that echo to the ringing horn, Devon ! thou spirit of all these beauties born, All these are thine, but thou art more than all : Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn. 21 22 DEVON Yet, yet, O noble land, forbid us not Even now to join our faint memorial chime To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime ; Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps for- got With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time. TO EDWARD FITZGERALD MARCH 31, 1909 'TIS a sad fate To watch the world fighting All that is most fair Ruthlessly blighting, Blighting, ah ! blighting. When such a thought cometh Let us not pine, But gather old friends Round the red wine Oh ! pour the red wine ! And there we'll talk And warm our wits With Eastern fallacies Out of old Fitz ! British old Fitz ! 23 24 TO EDWARD FITZGERALD See him, half statesman Philosopher too Half ancient manner In baggy blue Such baggy blue ! Whimsical, wistful, Haughty, forsooth : Indolent always, yet Ardent in truth, But indolent, indolent ! There at the table With us sits he, Charming us subtly To reverie, Magic reverie. " How sweet is summer's breath, How sure and swift is death ; Nought wise on earth, save What the wine whispereth, Dreamily whispereth. TO EDWARD FITZGERALD 25 " At Nafshapur beneath the sun, Or here in misty Babylon, Drink ! for the rose leaves while you linger Are falling, ever falling, one by one." Ah ! poet's soul, once more with us conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Once more with us to-night, old Fitz, once more Remould it nearer to the heart's desire ! THE MOSSROSE WALKING to-day in your garden, O gra- cious lady, Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady, And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement, Laughing at first and then amazed at THE MOSSROSE 27 That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished, And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished. But I I saw that garden, with its one treasure The tiny mossrose, tiny even by child- hood's measure, And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel, And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel. She wept for her one little bud : but he, outreaching The hand of brotherly right, would take it for all her beseeching : And she flung her arms about him, and gave like a sister, And laughed at her own tears, and wept again when he kissed her. 28 THE MOSSROSE So the rose is mine long since, and whenever I find it And drink again the sharp sweet scent of the moss behind it, I remember the tears of a child, and her love and her laughter, And the morning shadows of youth and the night that fell thereafter. AVE, SOROR I LEFT behind the ways of care, The crowded hurrying hours, I breathed again the woodland air, I plucked the woodland flowers: Bluebells as yet but half awake, Primroses pale and cool, Anemones like stars that shake In a green twilight pool On these still lay the enchanted shade, The magic April sun ; With my own child a child I strayed And thought the years were one. As through the copse she went and came My senses lost their truth ; I called her by the dear dead name That sweetened all my youth. 29 TO A RIVER IN THE SOUTH CALL me no more, O gentle stream, To wander through thy sunny dream, No more to lean at twilight cool Above thy weir and glimmering pool. Surely I know thy hoary dawns, The silver crisp on all thy lawns, The softly swirling undersong That rocks thy reeds the winter long. Surely I know the joys that ring Through the green deeps of leafy spring ; I know the elfin cups and domes That are their small and secret homes. Yet is the light for ever lost That daily once thy meadows crossed, 3 TO A RIVER IN THE SOUTH 31 The voice no more by thee is heard That matched the song of stream and bird. Call me no more ! thy waters roll Here, in the world that is my soul, And here, though Earth be drowned in night, Old love shall dwell with old delight. ON THE DEATH OF A NOBLE LADY TIME, when thou shalt bring again Pallas from the Trojan plain, Portia from the Roman's hall, Brynhild from the fiery wall, Eleanor, whose fearless breath Drew the venom'd fangs of Death, And Philippa doubly brave Or to conquer or to save When thou shalt on one bestow All their grace and all their glow, All their strength and all their state, All their passion pure and great, Some far age may honour then Such another queen of men. MIDWAY TURN back, my Soul, no longer set Thy peace upon the years to come : Turn back, the land of thy regret Holds nothing doubtful, nothing dumb. There are the voices, there the scenes That make thy life in living truth A tale of heroes and of queens, Fairer than all the hopes of youth. 33 AD MATREM DOLOROSAM THINK not thy little fountain's rain That in the sunlight rose and flashed, From the bright sky has fallen again, To cold and shadowy silence dashed. The Joy that in her radiance leapt From everlasting hath not slept. The hand that to thy hand was dear, The untroubled eyes that mirrored thine, The voice that gave thy soul to hear A whisper of the Love Divine What though the gold was mixed with dust? The gold is thine and cannot rust. 34 AD MATREM DOLOROSAM 35 Nor fear, because thy darling's heart No longer beats with mortal life, That she has missed the ennobling part Of human growth and human strife. Only she has the eternal peace Wherein to reap the soul's increase. VRAIS AMANTS (FOURTEENTH CENTURY) " TIME mocks thy opening music with a close ; What now he gives long since he gave away. Thou deemst thy sun hath risen, but ere it rose It was eclipsed, and dusk shall be thy day." Yet has the Dawn gone up : in loveliest light She walks high heaven beyond the shadow there : Whom I too veiled from all men's envious sight With inward eyes adore and silent prayer. THE SANGREAL ONCE, when beside me in that sacred place I saw my lady lift her lovely head, And saw the Chalice gleam above her face And her dear lips with life immortal red, Then, born again beyond the mist of years, I knelt in Heaven, and drank the wine of tears. 37 SIR HUGH THE PALMER He kneeled among a waste of sands Before the Mother-Maid, But on the far green forest-lands His steadfast eyes were stayed, And like a knight of stone his hands He straightened while he prayed. " Lady, beyond all women fair, Beyond all saints benign, Whose living heart through life I bear In mystery divine, Hear thou and grant me this my prayer, Or grant no prayer of mine. 38 SIR HUGH THE PALMER 39 " The fever of my spirit's pain Heal thou with heavenly scorn ; The dust that but of dust is fain Leave thou in dust forlorn ; Yea ! bury love to rise again Meet for eternal morn. "So by thy grace my inward eyes Thy beauty still shall see, And while our life in shadow lies High dawn shall image thee, Till with thy soul in Paradise Thy servant's soul shall be." Before the immortal Mother-Maid Low on the sands he kneeled ; But even while the words he prayed His lips to patience sealed, Joy in his eyes a radiance made Like stars in dusk revealed. 40 SIR HUGH THE PALMER II It was an idle company Ladies and lordings fine Idly under the wild-wood tree Their laughter ran like wine. Yet as they laughed a voice they heard A voice where none was seen, Singing blithe as a hidden bird Among the forest green. " Mark ye, mark ye, a lonely knight Riding the green forest : Pardi ! for one so poorly dight He lifts a haughty crest ! Azure and white is all his wear, He hath no gold, I trow ! Wanderer, thou in the wild-wood there, Tell us why sing ye so ! " SIR HUGH THE PALMER 41 " Noble ladies and lordings gay, God have you all in guard : Since ye are pleased with me to play, My riddle it is not hard. I sing because, of all that ride, I am the least of worth : I sing because, to match my pride, Never was pride on earth. " But, an ye ask what that may mean, Thus do I answer then : I bear with me the heart of a Queen I that am least of men : I bear her heart till the end of all, Yea ! by her own command I bear the heart of a Queen royal Unto the Holy Land." Humbly there his crest he bent, Azure it waved and white, Haughtily there he turned and went Singing, out of their sight. 42 SIR HUGH THE PALMER Long, long but his voice they heard, A voice where none was seen, Singing blithe as a hidden bird, Among the forest green. THE PRESENTATION WHEN in the womb of Time our souls' own son Dear Love lay sleeping till his natal hour, Long months I knew not that sweet life begun, Too dimly treasuring thy touch of power ; And wandering all those days By far-off ways, Forgot immortal seed must have immortal flower. Only, beloved, since my beloved thou art I do remember, now that memory's vain, How twice or thrice beneath my beating heart Life quickened suddenly with proudest pain. 43 44 THE PRESENTATION Then dreamed I Love's increase, Yet held my peace Till I might render thee thy own great gift again. For as with bodies, so with souls it is, The greater gives, the lesser doth con- ceive : That thou hast fathered Love, I tell thee this, And by my pangs beseech thee to believe. Look on his hope divine Thy hope and mine Pity his outstretched hands, tenderly him receive ! AMORE ALTIERO SINCE thou and I have wandered from the highway And found with hearts reborn This swift and unimaginable byway Unto the hills of morn, Shall not our love disdain the unworthy uses Of the old time outworn? I'll not entreat thy half-unwilling graces With humbly folded palms, Nor seek to shake thy proud defended places With noise of vague alarms, Nor ask against my fortune's grim pur- suing The refuge of thy arms. 45 46 AMORE ALTIERO Thou'lt not withhold for pleasure vain and cruel That which has long been mine, Nor overheap with briefly burning fuel A fire of flame divine, Nor yield the key for life's profaner voices To brawl within the shrine. But thou shalt tell me of thy queenly pleasure All that I must fulfil, And I'll receive from out my royal treasure What golden gifts I will, So that two realms supreme and un- disputed Shall be one kingdom still. And our high hearts shall praise the beauty hidden In starry-minded scorn AMORE ALTIERO 47 By the same Lord who hath his servants bidden To seek with eyes new-born This swift and unimaginable byway Unto the hills of morn. LOVE AND GRIEF ONE day, when Love and Summer both were young, Love in a garden found my lady weep- ing ; Whereat, when he to kiss her would have sprung, I stayed his childish leaping. " Forbear," said I, " she is not thine to- day ; Subdue thyself in silence to await her ; If thou dare call her from Death's side away Thou art no Love, but traitor. 4 8 LOVE AND GRIEF 49 Yet did he run, and she his kiss received, " She is twice mine," he cried, " since she is troubled : I knew but half, and now I see her grieved My part in her is doubled." AGAINST OBLIVION CITIES drowned in olden time Keep, they say, a magic chime Rolling up from far below When the moon-led waters flow. So within me, ocean deep, Lies a sunken world asleep. Lest its bells forget to ring, Memory ! set the tide a-swing THE INHERITANCE While I within her secret garden walked, The flowers, that in her presence must be dumb, With me, their fellow-servant, softly talked, Attending till the Flower of flowers should come. Then, since at Court I had arrived but late, I was by love made bold To ask that of my lady's high estate I might be told, And glories of her blood, perpetuate In histories old. 5' 52 THE INHERITANCE Then they, who know the chronicle of Earth, Spoke of her loveliness, that like a flame Far-handed down from noble birth to birth, Gladdened the world for ages ere she came. "Yea, yea," they said, "from Summer's royal sun Comes that immortal line, And was create not for this age alone Nor wholly thine, Being indeed a flower whose root is one With Life Divine. "To the sweet buds that of herself are part Already she this portion hath be- queathed, As, not less surely, into thy proud heart Her nobleness, O poet, she hath breathed, THE INHERITANCE 53 That her inheritance by them and thee The world may keep alway, When the still isunlight of her eyes shall be Lost to the day, And even the fragrance of her memory Fading away." EGERIA'S SILENCE HER thought that, like a brook beside the way, Sang to my steps through all the wandering year, Has ceased from melody O Love, allay My sudden fear ! She cannot fail the beauty of that brow Could never flower above a desert heart Somewhere beneath, the well-spring even now Lives, though apart 54 EGERIA'S SILENCE 55 Some day, when winter has renewed her fount With cold, white- folded snows and quiet rain, O Love, O Love, her stream again will mount And sing again ! THE PEDLAR'S SONG I TRAMPED among the townward throng A sultry summer's morn : They mocked me loud, they mocked me long, They laughed my pack to scorn. But a likely pedlar holds his peace Until the reckoning's told : Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold. At weary noon I left the town, I left the highway straight, I climbed the silent, sunlit down And stood by a castle gate. Never yet was a house too high When the pedlar's heart was bold : Merrily I to market went, tho 1 songs were all my gold. 56 THE PEDLAR'S SONG 57 A lady leaned from her window there And asked my wares to see ; Her voice made rich the summer air, Richer my soul in me. She gave me only four little words, Words of a language old : Merrily I from market came, for all my songs were sold. BENEDICK'S SONG Though I see within thine eyes Sudden frown of cloudy skies, Yet I bid them " merry morn " For they tell me Love is born. So ha-ha ! with ha-ha-hd ! For they tell me Love is born. Storms of mocking from thy lips Lash me still like airy whips ; But to-day thy scorn I scorn For I know that Love is born. So ha-ha ! with ha-ha-ha ! For I know that Love is born. 58 BENEDICK'S SONG 59 O the hail that rattles fierce Through my hodden cloak to pierce ! What care I if rags be torn ? Love and I are beggars born ! So ha-ha! with ha-ha-hd! Love and I are beggars born. FOND COUNSEL O YOUTH, beside thy silver-springing fountain, In sight and hearing of thy father's cot, These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain, These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not. Wander not yet where noon's unpitying glare Beats down the toilers in the city bare ; Forsake not yet, not yet, the homely plot, O Youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain. 60 YOUTH HIS song of dawn outsoars the joyful bird, Swift on the weary road his footfall comes ; The dusty air that by his stride is stirred Beats with a buoyant march of fairy drums. " Awake, O Earth ! thine ancient slumber break ; To the new day, O slumbrous Earth, awake ! " Yet long ago that merry march began, His feet are older than the path they tread ; His music is the morning-song of man, His stride the stride of all the valiant dead ; 61 62 YOUTH His youngest hopes are memories, and his eyes Deep with the old, old dream that never dies. THE WANDERER To Youth there comes a whisper out of the west : " O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee A life to build, a love therein to nest, And a man's work, serving the age to be." Peace, peace awhile ! Before his tireless feet Hill beyond hill the road in sunlight goes; He breathes the breath of morning, clear and sweet, And his eyes love the high eternal snows. 63 THE ADVENTURERS OVER the downs in sunlight clear Forth we went in the spring of the year Plunder of April's gold we sought, Little of April's anger thought. Caught in a copse without defence Low we crouched to the rain-squall dense Sure, if misery man can vex, There it beat on our bended necks. Yet when again we wander on Suddenly all that gloom is gone : Under and over through the wood, Life is astir, and life is good. Violets purple, violets white, Delicate windflowers dancing light, Primrose, mercury, moscatel, Shimmer in diamonds round the dell. THE ADVENTURERS 65 Squirrel is climbing swift and lithe, Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe, Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap, Ringdove flies with a sudden clap. Rook is summoning rook to build, Dunnock his beak with moss has filled, Robin is bowing in coat-tails brown, Tomtit chattering upside down. Well is it seen that every one Laughs at the rain and loves the sun ; We too laughed with the wildwood crew, Laughed till the sky once more was blue. Homeward over the downs we went Soaked to the heart with sweet content ; April's anger is swift to fall, April's wonder is worth it all. TO CLARE ( With a Volume of Stories from Froissart) MY CLARE, These tales were told, you know, In French, five hundred years ago, By old Sir John, whose heart's delight Was lady sweet and valiant knight. A hundred years went by, and then A great lord told the tales again, When bluff King Hal desired his folk To read them in the tongue they spoke. Last, I myself among them took What I loved best and made this book 66 TO CLARE 67 Great, lesser, less these writers three Worked for the days they could not see, And certes, in their work they knew Nothing at all, dear child, of you. Yet is the book your own in truth, Because 'tis made for noble youth, And every word that's living there Must die when Clares are no more Clare. THE RETURN OF SUMMER: AN ECLOGUE Scene : ASHDOWN FOREST IN MAY Persons : H. A POET ; C. His DAUGHTER 77. Here then, if you insist, my daughter : still, I must confess that I preferred the hill. The warm scent of the pinewood seemed to me The first true breath of summer ; did you see The waxen hurt-bells with their promised fruit Already purple at the blossom's root, 68 THE RETURN OF SUMMER 69 And thick among the rusty bracken strown Sunburnt anemones long overblown ? Summer is come at last ! C. And that is why Mine is a better place than yours to lie. This dark old yew tree casts a fuller shade Than any pine ; the stream is simply made For keeping bottles cool ; and when we've dined I could just wade a bit while you . . . reclined. H. Empty the basket then, without more words . . . But I still wish we had not left the birds. C. Father ! you are perverse ! Since when, I beg, Have forest birds been tethered by the leg? 70 THE RETURN OF SUMMER They're everywhere ! What more can you desire ? The cuckoo shouts as though he'd never tire, The nuthatch, knowing that of noise you're fond, Keeps chucking stones along a frozen pond, And busy gold-crest, somewhere out of sight, Works at his saw with all his tiny might. I do not count the ring-doves or the rooks, We hear so much about them in the books They're hardly real ; but from where I sit I see two chaffinches, a long-tailed tit, A missel-thrush, a yaffle THE RETURN OF SUMMER 71 H. That will do : I may have overlooked a bird or two. Where are the biscuits ? Are you getting cramp Down by the water there it must be damp ? C. I'm only watching till your bottle's cool : It lies so snug beneath this glassy pool, Like a sunk battleship ; and overhead The water-boatmen get their daily bread By rowing all day long, and far below Two little eels go winding, winding slow . . . Oh ! there's a shark ! H. A what? C- A miller's thumb. Don't move, I'll tempt him with a tiny crumb. 72 THE RETURN OF SUMMER H. Be quick about it, please, and don't forget I am at least as dry as he is wet. C. Oh, very well then, here's your drink. H. That's good ! I feel much better now. C. I thought you would (exit quietly). PL How beautiful the world is when it breathes The news of summer ! when the bronzy sheathes Still hang about the beech-leaf, and the oaks Are wearing still their dainty tasselled cloaks, While on the hillside every hawthorn pale Has taken now her balmy bridal veil, And, down below, the drowsy mur- muring stream Lulls the warm noonday in an endless dream. THE RETURN OF SUMMER 73 O little brook, far more thou art to me Than all the pageantry of field and tree : Es singen wohl die Nixen ah ! 'tis truth Tief unten iJiren Ret/in but only Youth Can hear them joyfully, as once I lay And heard them singing of the world's highway, Of wandering ended, and the maiden found, And golden bread by magic mill-wheel ground. Lost is the magic now, the wheel is still, And long ago the maiden left the mill : Yet once a year, one day, when summer dawns, The old, old murmur haunts the river- lawns, 10 74 THE RETURN OF SUMMER The fairies wake, the fairy song is sung, And for an hour the wanderer's feet are young (lie dozes). C. (returning) Father ! I called you twice. H. I did not know : Where have you been ? C. Oh, down the stream. H. Just so : Well, / went up. C. I wish you'd been with me. H. When East is West, my daughter, that may be. DREAM-MARKET A MASQUE PRESENTED AT WILTON HOUSE, JULY 28, 1909 Scene. A LAWN IN THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA Enter FLORA, Lady of Summer, with her maidens, PHYLLIS and AMARYLLIS. She takes her seat upon a bank, playing with a basket of freshly gathered flowers, one of ivhicJi she presently holds up in her hand. FLORA. Ah ! how I love a rose ! But come, my girls, Here's for your task : to-day you, Amaryllis, Shall take the white, and, Phyllis, you the red. 75 76 DREAM-MARKET Hold out your kirtles for them. White, red, white, Red, red, and white again. . . . Wonder you not How the same sun can breed such dif- ferent beauties ? [She divides all her roses between them. Well, take them all, and go scatter them wide In gardens where men love me, and be sure Where even one flower falls, or one soft petal, Next year shall see a hundred. [As they turn to go, enter LUCIA in hunting dress, with bow in hand and a hound by her side. FLORA rises to meet her, and recalls her maidens. Stay ! attend me. LUCIA. Greeting, fair ladies ; you, I think, must be DREAM-MARKET 77 Daughters of this green Earth, and one of you The sweet Dame Flora. FLORA. Your true servant, madam. But if my memory be not newly withered I have not known the pleasure. . . . LUCIA. Yes, you have seen me At least, you might have seen me ; I am Lucia, Lady of Moonlight, and I often hunt These downs of yours with all my nightly pack Of questing beams and velvet-footed shadows. FLORA. I fear at night. . . . LUCIA. Oh, yes ! at night you are sleeping ! And I by day am always rather faint ; So we don't meet ; but sometimes your good folk Have torn my nets by raking in the water ; 78 DREAM-MARKET And though their neighbours laughed there are worse ways Of spending time, and far worse things to rake for Than silver lights upon a crystal stream. But come ! My royal Sire, the Man in the Moon He has been here ? FLORA. So many kings come here, I can't be sure ; I've heard the Man in the Moon Did once come down and ask his way to Norwich. But that was years agone hundreds of years It may not be the same I do not know You royal father's age. . . . LUCIA. His age ? Oh surely ! He never can be more than one month old. DREAM-MARKET 79 FLORA. Yet he's your father ! LUCIA. Well, he is and is not ; [Proudly] I am the daughter of a million moons. They month by month and year by circling year, From their celestial palace looking down On your day-wearied Earth, have soothed her sleep, And rocked her tides, and made a magic world For all her lovers and her nightin- gales. You owe them much, my ancestors. No doubt, At times they suffered under clouds ; at times They were eclipsed ; yet in their brighter hours They were illustrious ! FLORA. And may I hope 8o DREAM-MARKET Your present Sire, his present Serene Highness, Is in his brighter hours to-day ? LUCIA. Ah! no. Be sure he is not else I had not left My cool, sweet garden of unfading stars For the rank meadows of this sun-worn mould. FLORA. What is your trouble, then? LUCIA. Although my father Has been but ten days reigning, he is sad With all the sadness of a phantom realm, And all the sorrows of ten thousand years. We in our Moonland have no life like yours, No birth, no death : we live but in our dreams : And when they are grown old these mortal visions Of an immortal sleep we seem to lose them. DREAM-MARKET 81 They are too strong for us, too self- sufficient To live for us ; they go their ways and leave us, Like shadows grown substantial. FLORA. I have heard Something on earth not unlike this com- plaint ; But can I help you ? LuciA. Lady, if you cannot, No one can help. In Moonland there is famine, We are losing all our dreams, and I come hither To buy a new one for my father's house. FLORA. To buy a dream ? LUCIA. Some little darling dream That will be always with us, night and day, Loving and teasing, sailing light of heart Over our darkest deeps, reminding us ii 82 DREAM-MARKET Of our lost childhood, playing our old games, Singing our old songs, asking our old riddles, Building our old hopes, and with our old gusto Rehearsing for us in one endless act The world past and the world to be. FLORA. Oh ! now I see your meaning. Yes, I have indeed Plenty of such sweet dreams : we call them children. They are our dreams too, and though they are born of us, Truly in them we live. But, dearest lady, We do not sell them. LUCIA. Do you mean you will not? Not one? Could you not lend me one just one ? FLORA. Ah ! but to lend what cannot be returned DREAM-MARKET 83 Is merely giving who can bring again Into the empty nest those winged years? Still, there are children here well worth your hopes, And you shall venture : if there be among them One that your heart desires, and she con- sent, Take her and welcome for the will of Love Is the wind's will, and none may guess his going. LUCIA. O dearest Lady Flora ! FLORA. Stay ! they are here, Mad as a dance of May-flies. [The childnn run in dancing and singing. Shall we sit And watch these children ? Phyllis, bid them play, And let them heed us no more than the trees 84 DREAM-MARKET That girdle this green lawn with whisper- ing beauty. \The children play and sing at their games ', till at a convenient moment tJie LADY FLORA holds up her hand. FLORA. Now, Amaryllis, stay the rush- ing stream, The meadows for this time have drunk enough. \To LUCIA.] And you, what think you, lady, of these maids ? Has their sweet foolish singing moved your heart To choose among them ? LUCIA. I have heard them gladly, And if I could, would turn them all to elves, That if they cannot live with me, at least I might look down when our great galleon sails Close over earth, and see them always here DREAM-MARKET 85 Dancing upon the moonlit shores of night. But how to choose ! and though they are young and fair Their every grace foretells the fatal change, The swift short bloom of girlhood, like a flower Passing away, for ever passing away. Have you not one with petals tenderer yet, More deeply folded, further from the hour When the bud dies into the mortal rose? FLORA [pointing]. There is my youngest blossom and my fairest, But my most wilful too you'll pluck her not Without some aid of magic. LUCIA. Time has been When I have known even your forest trees Sway to a song of moonland. I will try it. \SJie sings and dances a witching measure. 86 DREAM-MARKET SONG (To an air by HENRY LAWES, published in 1652) THE flowers that in thy garden rise, Fade and are gone when Summer flies, And as their sweets by time decay, So shall thy hopes be cast away. The Sun that gilds the creeping moss Stayeth not Earth's eternal loss : He is the lord of all that live, Yet there is life he cannot give. The stir of Morning's eager breath Beautiful Eve's impassioned death Thou lovest these, thou lovest well, Yet of the Night thou canst not tell. In every land thy feet may tread, Time like a veil is round thy head : Only the land thou seek'st with me Never hath been nor yet shall be. It is not far, it is not near, Name it hath none that Earth can hear ; DREAM-MARKET 87 But there thy Soul shall build again Memories long destroyed of men, And Joy thereby shall like a river Wander from deep to deep for ever. [ When she has finished the child runs into her arms. FLORA. Your spell has won her, and I marvel not : She was but half our own. [To the Chilcf] Farewell, dear child, 'Tis time to part, you with this lovely lady To dance in silver halls, and gather stars And be the dream you are : while we return To the old toil and harvest of the Earth. Farewell ! and farewell all ! ALL. Farewell ! farewell ! [Exeunt omnes. THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL Scene: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT Persons: A LADY AND A POET THE POET DIMLY I see your face : I hear your breath Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death : And when you whisper, you but stir the air With a soft hush like summer's own despair. THE LADY (aloud) O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest, Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest. Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away, Let her no more endure the shame of day. 88 THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL 89 THE POET A thousand ages have not made less bright The stars that in this fountain shine to-night : Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam That every son of man desires in dream. THE LADY Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold ; And Beauty lingers but her tale is told : Mankind has left her for a game of toys, And fleets the golden hour with speed and noise. THE POET Think you the human heart no longer feels Because it loves the swift delight of wheels ? 12 90 THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL And is not Change our one true guide on earth, The surest hand that leads us from our birth ? THE LADY Change were not always loss, if we could keep Beneath all change a clear and windless deep : But more and more the tides that through us roll Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul. THE POET The foam of transient passions cannot fret The sea-bed of the race, profounder yet : And there, where Greece and her founda- tions are, Lies Beauty, built below the tide of war. THE CICALAS : AN IDYLL 91 THE LADY So to the desert, once in fifty years Some poor mad poet sings, and no one hears : But what belated race, in what far clime, Keeps even a legend of Arcadian time? THE POET Not ours perhaps : a nation still so young, So late in Rome's deserted orchard sprung, Bears not as yet, but strikes a hopeful root Till the soil yield its old Hesperian fruit. THE LADY Is not the hour gone by ? The mystic strain, Degenerate once, may never spring again. What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke To grant such increase to our common oak ? 92 THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL THE POET Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth, More deeply planted in that genial earth, From her Italian wild wood even now Revert, and bear once more the golden bough. THE LADY A poet's dream was never yet less great Because it issued through the ivory gate! Show me one leaf from that old wood divine, And I perchance might take your hopes for mine. THE POET May Venus bend me to no harder task ! For, Pan be praised ! I hold the gift you ask. The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils, To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills. THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL 93 THE LADY Your young Italian yes ! I saw you stand And point his path across our well- vvalled land : A sculptor's model, but alas ! no god : These narrow fields the goat-foot never trod ! THE POET Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced To which the streams of old Arcadia danced ; And on his tongue still lay the childish lore Of that lost world for which you hope no more. THE LADY Tell me ! from where I watched I saw his face, And his hands moving with a rustic grace, 94 THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL Caught too the alien sweetness of his speech, But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach. THE POET He asked if we in England ever heard The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird, That neither eat nor sleep, but die content When they in endless song their strength have spent. THE LADY Cicalas ! how the name enchants me back To the grey olives and the dust-white track ! Was there a story then ? I have forgot, Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not. THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL 95 THE POET Lover of music, you at least should know That these were men, in ages long ago, Ere music was, and then the Muses came, And love of song took hold on them like flame. THE LADY Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks Most living still of all the deathless Greeks Yet tell me how they died divinely mad, And of the Muses what reward they had. THE POET They are reborn on earth, and from the first They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst : 96 THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill, Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill. THE LADY They are reborn indeed ! and rightly you The far-heard echo of their music knew ! Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem, Were there with Phaedrus, by Ilissus' stream. THE POET Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace For ever haunts our short life's resting- place, Outward and inward make me one true whole, And grant me beauty in the inmost soul. THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL 97 THE LADY And thou O Night, O starry Queen of Air, Remember not my blind and faithless prayer ! Let me too live, let me too sing again, Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men. EPISTLE To COLONEL FRANCIS EDWARD YOUNGHUSBAND ACROSS the Western World, the Arabian Sea, The Hundred Kingdoms and the Rivers Three, Beyond the rampart of Himalayan snows, And up the road that only Rumour knows, Unchecked, old friend, from Devon to Thibet, Friendship and Memory dog your foot- steps yet. Let not the scornful ask me what avails So small a pack to follow mighty trails : Long since I saw what difference must be Between a stream like you, a ditch like me. EPISTLE 99 This drains a garden and a homely field Which scarce at times a living current yield ; The other from the high lands of his birth Plunges through rocks and spurns the pastoral earth, Then settling silent to his deeper course Draws in his fellows to augment his force, Becomes a name, and broadening as he goes, Gives power and purity where'er he flows, Till, great enough for any commerce grown, He links all nations while he serves his own. Soldier, explorer, statesman, what in truth Have you in common with homekeeping youth ? ioo EPISTLE " Youth " comes your answer like an echo faint ; And youth it was that made us first acquaint. Do you remember when the Downs were white With the March dust from highways glaring bright, How you and I, like yachts that toss the foam, From Penpole Fields came stride and stride for home? One grimly leading, one intent to pass, Mile after mile we measured road and grass, Twin silent shadows, till the hour was done, The shadows parted and the stouter won. Since then I know one thing beyond appeal How runs from stem to stern a trim- built keel. EPISTLE 101 Another day but that's not mine to tell, The man in front does not observe so well ; Though, spite of all these five-and-twenty years, As clear as life our schoolday scene appears. The guarded course, the barriers and the rope; The runners, stripped of all but shivering hope ; The starter's good grey head ; the sudden hush ; The stern white line ; the half-unconscious rush ; The deadly bend, the pivot of our fate ; The rope again ; the long green level straight ; The lane of heads, the cheering half un- heard, The dying spurt, the tape, the judge's word. 102 EPISTLE You, too, I doubt not, from your Lama's hall Can see the Stand above the worn old wall, Where then they clamoured as our race we sped, Where now they number our heroic dead. 1 As clear as life you, too, can hear the sound Of voices once for all by " lock-up " bound, And see the flash of eyes still nobly bright But in the " Bigside scrimmage " lost to sight. Old loves, old rivalries, old happy times, These well may move your memory and my rhymes ; 1 In the school quadrangle at Clifton, the site from which, upon occasion, the grand stand used to overlook the Close is now occupied by the Memorial to those Cliftonians who fell in the South African War. EPISTLE 103 These are the Past ; but there is that, my friend, Between us two, that has nor time nor end. Though wide apart the lines our fate has traced Since those far shadows of our boyhood raced, In the dim region all men must explore The mind's Thibet, where none has gone before Rounding some shoulder of the lonely trail We met once more, and raised a lusty hail. " Forward ! " cried one, " for us no beaten track, No city continuing, no turning back : The past we love not for its being past, But for its hope and ardour forward cast : 104 EPISTLE The victories of our youth we count for gain Only because they steeled our hearts to pain, And hold no longer even Clifton great Save as she schooled our wills to serve the State. Nay, England's self, whose thousand-year- old name Burns in our blood like ever-smouldering flame, Whose Titan shoulders as the world are wide And her great pulses like the Ocean tide, Lives but to bear the hopes we shall not see Dear mortal Mother of the race to be." Thereto you answered, " Forward ! in God's name : I own no lesser law, no narrower claim. EPISTLE 105 A freeman's Reason well might think it scorn To toil for those who may be never born, But for some Cause not wholly out of ken, Some all-directing Will that works with men, Some Universal under which may fall The minor premiss of our effort small ; In Whose unending purpose, though we cease, We find our impulse and our only peace." So passed our greeting, till we turned once more, I to my desk and you to rule Indore. To meet again ah ! when ? Yet once we met, And to one dawn our faces still are set. EXETER, Sept. 10, 1904. 14 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 'TIS hard to say if greater waste of time Is seen in writing or in reading rhyme ; But, of the two, less dangerous it appears To tire our own than poison others' ears. Time was, the owner of a peevish tongue, The pebble of his wrath unheeding flung, Saw the faint ripples touch the shore and cease, And in the duckpond all again was peace. But since that Science on our eyes hath laid The wondrous clay from her own spittle made, We see the widening ripples pass beyond, The pond becomes the world, the world a pond, All ether trembles when the pebble falls, And a light word may ring in starry halls. 106 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 107 When first on earth the swift iambic ran Men here and there were found but no- where Man. From whencesoe'er their origin they drew, Each on its separate soil the species grew, And by selection, natural or not, Evolved a fond belief in one small spot. The Greek himself, with all his wisdom, took For the wide world his bright ^Egean nook, For fatherland, a town, for public, all Who at one time could hear the herald bawl : For him barbarians beyond his gate Were lower beings, of a different date ; He never thought on such to spend his rhymes, And if he did, they never read the Times, io8 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM Now all is changed, on this side and on that, The Herald's learned to print and pass the hat; His tone is so much raised that, far or near, All with a sou to spend his news may hear, And who but, far or near, the sou affords To learn the worst of foreigners and lords ! So comes the Pressman's heaven on earth, wherein One touch of hatred proves the whole world kin " Our rulers are the best, and theirs the worst, Our cause is always just and theirs accurst, Our troops are heroes, hirelings theirs or slaves, Our diplomats but children, theirs but knaves, AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 109 Our Press for independence justly prized, Theirs bought or blind, inspired or subsidised. For the world's progress what was ever made Like to our tongue, our Empire and our trade ? " So chant the nations, till at last you'd think Men could no nearer howl to folly's brink ; Yet some in England lately won renown By howling word for word, but upside down. But where, you cry, could poets find a place (If poets we possessed) in this disgrace ? Mails will be mails, Reviews must be reviews, But why the Critic with the Bard con- fuse? no AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM Alas! Apollo, it must be confessed Has lately gone the way of all the rest. No more alone upon the far-off hills With song serene the wilderness he fills, But in the forum now his art employs And what he lacks in knowledge gives in noise. At first, ere he began to feel his feet, He begged a corner in the hindmost sheet, Concealed with Answers and Acrostics lay, And held aloof from Questions of the Day. But now, grown bold, he dashes to the front, Among the leaders bears the battle's brunt, Takes steel in hand, and cheaply unafraid Spurs a lame Pegasus on Jameson's Raid, AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM in Or pipes the fleet in melodrama's tones To ram the Damned on their Infernal Thrones. Sure, Scriblerus himself could scarce have guessed The Art of Sinking might be further pressed : But while these errors almost tragic loom The Indian Drummer has but raised a boom. " So well I love my country that the man Who serves her can but serve her on my plan ; Be slim, be stalky, leave your Public Schools To muffs like Bobs and other flannelled fools ; ii2 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM The lordliest life (since Buller made such hay) Is killing men two thousand yards away ; You shoot the pheasant, but it costs too much And does not tend to decimate the Dutch ; Your duty plainly then before you stands, Conscription is the law for seagirt lands ; Prate not of freedom ! Since I learned to shoot I itch to use my ammunition boot." An odd way this, we thought, to criticise This barrackyard " Attention ! d your eyes ! " But England smiled and lightly pardoned him, For was he not her Mowgli and her Kim ? AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 113 But now the neighbourhood remonstrance roars, He's naughty still, and naughty out of doors. Tis well enough that he should tell Mamma Her sons are tired of being what they are, But to give friendly bears, expecting buns, A paper full of stale unwholesome Huns One might be led to think, from all this work That little master's growing quite a Turk. O Rudyard, Rudyard, in our hours of ease (Before the war) you were not hard to please : 15 H4 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM You loved a regiment whether fore or aft, You loved a subaltern, however daft, You loved the very dregs of barrack life, The amorous colonel and the sergeant's wife. You sang the land where dawn across the Bay Comes up to waken queens in Mandalay, The land where comrades sleep by Cabul ford, And Valour, brown or white, is Border- lord, The secret Jungle-life of child and beast, And all the magic of the dreaming East. These, these we loved with you, and loved still more The Seven Seas that break on Britain's shore, AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 115 The winds that know her labour and her pride, And the Long Trail whereon our fathers died. In that Day's Work be sure you gained, my friend, If not the critic's name, at 'least his end; Your song and story might have roused a slave To see life bodily and see it brave. With voice so genial and so long of reach To your Own People you the Law could preach, And even now and then without offence To Lesser Breeds expose their lack of sense. Return, return ! and let us hear again The ringing engines and the deep-sea rain, ii6 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM The roaring chanty of the shore-wind's verse, Too bluff to bicker and too strong to curse. Let us again with hearts serene behold The coastwise beacons that we knew of old; So shall you guide us when the stars are veiled, And stand among the Lights that never Failed. LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS; OR, THE ENGLISH BAB AND CROSS REVIEWERS STILL must I hear? while Austin prints his verse And Satan's sorrows fill Corelli's purse, Must I not write lest haply some K.C. To flatter Tennyson should sneer at me ? Or must the Angels of the Darker Ink No longer tell the public what to think Must lectures and reviewing all be stayed Until they're licensed by the Board of Trade ? Prepare for rhyme I'll risk it bite or bark I'll stop the press for neither Gosse nor Clarke. 117 ii8 LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS O sport most noble, when two cocks engage With equal blindness and with equal rage ! When each, intent to pick the other's eye, Sees not the feathers from himself that fly, And, fired to scorch his rival's every bone, Ignores the inward heat that grills his own ; Until self-plucked, self-spitted and self- roast, Each to the other serves himself on toast. But stay, but stay, you've pitched the key, my Muse, A semi-tone too low for great Re- views ; LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS 119 Such penny whistling suits the cockpit's hum, But here's a scene deserves the biggest drum. Behold where high above the clamorous town The vast Cathedral-towers in peace look down : Hark to the entering crowd's incessant tread They bring their homage to the mighty dead. Who in silk gown and fullest-bottomed wig Approaches yonder, with emotion big ? Room for Sir Edward ! now we shall be told Which shrines are tin, which silver and which gold. Tis done ! and now by life-long habit bound He turns to prosecute the crowd around ; 120 LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS Indicts and pleads, sums up the pro and con, The verdict finds and puts the black cap on. " Prisoners, attend ! of Queen Victoria's day I am the Glory, you are the Decay. You cannot think like Tennyson deceased, You do not sing like Browning in the least, Of Tennyson I sanction every word, Browning I cut to something like one- third : Though, mind you this, immoral he is not, Still quite two-thirds I hope will be forgot. He was to poetry a Tom Carlyle And that reminds me, Thomas too was vile. LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS 121 He wrote a life or two, but parts, I'm sure, Compared with other parts are very poor. Now Dickens most extraordinary dealt In fiction with what people really felt. That proves his genius. Thackeray again Is so unequal as to cause me pain. And last of all, with History to conclude, I've read Macaulay and I've heard of Froude. That list, with all deductions, Gentlemen, Will show that ' now ' is not the same as ' then ' : If you believe the plaintiff you'll declare That English writers are not what they were." Down sits Sir Edward with a glowing breast, And some applause is instantly sup- pressed. 16 122 LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS Now up the nave of that majestic church A quick uncertain step is heard to lurch. Who is it ? no one knows ; but by his mien He's the head verger, if he's not the Dean. " What fellow's this that dares to treat us so? This is no place for lawyers, out you go! He is a brawler, Sir, who here presumes To move our laurels and arrange our tombs. Suppose that Meredith or Stephen said (Or do you think those gentlemen are dead ?) This age has borne no advocates of rank, Would not your face in turn be rather blank ? LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS 123 Come now, I beg you, go without a fuss, And leave these high and heavenly things to us ; You may perhaps be some one, at the Bar, But you are not in Orders, and we are." Sir Edward turns to go, but as he wends, One swift irrelevant retort he sends. " Your logic and your taste I both dis- dain, You've quoted wrong from Jonson and Montaigne." The shaft goes home, and somewhere in the rear Birrell in smallest print is heard to cheer. And yet and yet conviction's not com- plete : There was a time when Milton walked the street, 124 LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS And Shakespeare singing in a tavern dark Would not have much impressed Sir Ed- ward Clarke. To be alive ay ! there's the damning thing, For who will buy a bird that's on the wing ? Catch, kill and stuff the creature, once for all, And he may yet adorn Sir Edward's hall ; But while he's free to go his own wild way He's not so safe as birds of yesterday. In fine, if I must choose although I see That both are wrong Great Gosse ! I'd rather be A critic suckled in an age outworn Than a blind horse that starves knee- deep in corn. LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS 125 NOTE. The foregoing parody, which first appeared in The Monthly Review seven years ago, was an attempt to sum up and commemorate a literary discussion of the day. On Saturday night, November 15, 1902, at the Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., delivered an address on "The Glory and Decay of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria." " Sir Edward Clarke, who mentioned incidentally that he lectured at the College forty years ago, said that there was a rise from the beginning of that reign to the period 1850-60, and that from the latter date there had been a very strange and lamentable decline to the end of the reign would, he thought, be amply demonstrated. A glorious galaxy of talent adorned the years 1850-60. There were two great poets, two great novelists, and two great historians. The two great poets were Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. The first named would always stand at the head of the literature of the Victorian period. There was no poet in the whole course of our history whose works were more likely to live as a complete whole than he, and there was not a line which his friends would wish to see blotted out. Robert Browning was a poet of strange inequality and of extra- ordinary and fantastic methods in his composition. How- ever much one could enjoy some of his works, one could only hope that two-thirds of them would be as promptly as possible forgotten not, however, from any moral objection to what he wrote. He was the Carly le of poetry. By his Lives of Schiller and Sterling, Carlyle showed that he could write beautiful and pure English, but that he should descend to the style of some of his later works was a melancholy ex- ample of misdirected energy. . . . Charles Dickens was per- haps the most extraordinary genius of those who had endeavoured to deal with fiction as illustrative of the actual experiences of life. With Dickens there stood the great figure of Thackeray, who had left a great collection of books, very unequal in their quality, but contain ing amongst them some of the finest things ever written in the English tongue. The two great historians were Macaulay and Froude. To-day we had no great novelist. Would any one 126 LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS suggest we had a poet? (Laughter.) After the year 1860 there were two great names in poetry the two Rossettis. There had been no book produced in the last ten years which could compete with any one of the books produced from 1850 to 1860." To this Mr. Edmund Gosse replied a week later at the Dinner of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He reminded his audience that even the most perspicuous people in past times had made the grossest blunders when they judged their own age. Let them remember the insensibility of Montaigne to the merits of all his contemporaries. In the next age and in their own country, Ben Jonson took occasion at the very moment when Shakespeare was producing his masterpieces to lament the total decay of poetry in England. We could not see the trees for the wood behind them, but we ought to be confident they were growing all the time. Mr. Gosse also wrote to the Times on behalf of " the Profession" of Letters, reminding Sir Edward of the names of Swinburne and William Morris, Hardy and Stevenson, Creighton and Gardiner, and asking what would be the feelings of the learned gentleman if Meredith or Leslie Stephen (of whose existence he was perhaps unaware) should put the question in public, " Would any one suggest we have an Advocate?" Sir Edward, in his rejoinder, had no difficulty in showing that Mr. Gosse's citation of Montaigne and Jonson was not verbally exact. Mr. Birrell added some comments which were distinguished by being printed in type of a markedly different size. To the author of these lines, the controversy appears so typical and so likely to arise again, that he desires to record, in however slight a form, his recollection of it, and his own personal bias, which is in no degree lessened by reconsidera- tion after seven years. Works by Henry Newbolt. THE SAILING OF THE LONG- SHIPS AND OTHER POEMS. Small crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. " This volume will be acquired and valued by all who care for vigorous and tender verse." Globe. "Admirable verses . . . themes of patriotism expressed in lines of true poetry." St. James's Gazette. CLIFTON CHAPEL AND OTHER SCPIOOL POEMS. F'cap. 8vo. is. &/. net. This is a selection from the Author's well-known volumes, "The Island Race" and "The Sailing of the Long-ships," with a longer poelical Ktiistle, addressed to Sir Francis Younghusband when in Thibet, and now reprinted for the first time. The whole collection deals with English School life, mainly in its Imperial aspect ; it is publi*hed by special request for the use of Clifton College, and will, it is hoped, commend itself to members of other Public Schools. THE YEAR OF TRAFALGAR. With Photogravure Porlrait of Lord Nelson, and Plans of Battles, etc. Large crown 8vo. 5*. net. "This combination of naval history, tactical criticism, and poetical appreciation affords a theme which seems specially suited to Mr. Newbolt's genius. . . . We can only be grateful to Mr. New- bolt for giving us a book at once opportune for the moment, and withal so written as to be valuable and interesting for much more than the moment." Times Literary Supplement, July 7th, 1905. THE LIFE AND WORKS OF GEORGE CRABBE. 1754-1832. Edited by His SON. Wiih three Steel Plates including Portrait. Royal 8vo. Full leather, "]s. 6d. net ; also cloth, 6s. net. GEORGE CRABBE AND HIS TIMES. 1754-1832. A Critical and Biographical Study. By RN HucilON. Translated by FREDERICK CLARKE, M.A. With Portrait. Demy 8vo. 15^. net. The Works of Lord Byron. A NEW TEXT. Collated with the Original MSS. and Revised Proofs which are still in existence, with many hitherto unpublished additions. POETRY Edited by E. H. COLERIDGE. LETTERS Edited by R. E. PROTHERO, M.v.o. With Portraits and Illus- trations. 13 Vols. (6 vols. Letters, 7 vols. Poetry). Large crown 8vo. 6s. each. THE POETICAL WORKS OF LORD BYRON. The only Complete and Copyright Text in one volume. Edited by ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE. With Portrait. 6s. net. "It takes its place as incontestably the standard single-volume edition of Byron's works." Guardian. DON JUAN. Complete in one volume, with New Additional Stanzas pub- lished for the first time in 1904. 6s. THE CONFESSIONS OF LORD BYRON. A Collection of his Private Opinions of Men and of Matters. Arranged by W. A. LEWIS BETTANY. With two Portraits. IDS. 6ii. net. A SHORT DAY'S WORK. Original Verses, Translations from Heine, and Prose Essays. By MONICA PEVERIL TURNBULL. With Additional Pieces and a Portrait in Photogravure of the Author. Crown 8vo. 3$. 6cf net. "A book which may be read in an hour, but is not likely to be forgotten in a lifetime." Spectator. THE VIGIL OF BRUNHILD. A Narrative Poem. By FREDERICK MANNING. F'cap 8vo. 2S. dd. net. The name of Brunhild raises memories of tragedy, of rivalry with the murderous Fredegonde, and of her cruel death by wild horses. But, though she is one of the greatest figures in early French history, she has never been celebrated, so far as is known, in English poetry ; nor has she received the honour she deserves from her own countrymen. INTRODUCTION TO POETRY. Poetic Expression, Poetic Truth, the Progress of Poetry. By LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A. 2s. " This volume is full of scholastic detail, and iyet devoid of pedantry ; it is a little masterpiece of fluency and literary charm. From beginning to end it is excellent, and the delightful style, the breadth and incisiveness of view, the sidelights which it opens upon life and thought, and the frequently deep philosophy which is attractively veiled in the author's persuasive rhetoric, make it at times fascinating. No better small book could be put into the hands of the kind of student for whom it was primarily written ; and it is to be unreservedly commended." School World. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLK STREET, W. "'iiiiii