Charles Kingsley: Verses about Park

Hence a while, severer Muses;
Spare your slaves till drear October.
Hence; for Alma Mater chooses
Not to be for ever sober:
But, like stately matron gray,
Calling child and grandchild round her,
Will for them at least be gay;
Share for once their holiday;
And, knowing she will sleep the sounder,
Cheerier-hearted on the morrow
Rise to grapple care and sorrow,
Grandly leads the dance adown, and joins the children's play.
So go, for in your places
Already, as you see,
(Her tears for some deep sorrow scarcely dried),
Venus holds court among her sinless graces,
With many a nymph from many a park and lea.
She, pensive, waits the merrier faces
Of those your wittier sisters three,
O'er jest and dance and song who still preside,
To cheer her in this merry-mournful tide;
And bids us, as she smiles or sighs,
Tune our fancies by her eyes.

Then let the young be glad,
Fair girl and gallant lad,
And sun themselves to-day
By lawn and garden gay;
'Tis play befits the noon
Of rosy-girdled June:
Who dare frown if heaven shall smile?
Blest, who can forget a while;
The world before them, and above
The light of universal love.
Go, then, let the young be gay;
From their heart as from their dress
Let darkness and let mourning pass away,
While we the staid and worn look on and bless.

Health to courage firm and high!
Health to Granta's chivalry!
Wisely finding, day by day,
Play in toil, and toil in play.
Granta greets them, gliding down
On by park and spire and town;
Humming mills and golden meadows,
Barred with elm and poplar shadows;
Giant groves, and learned halls;
Holy fanes and pictured walls.
Yet she bides not here; around
Lies the Muses' sacred ground.
Most she lingers, where below
Gliding wherries come and go;
Stalwart footsteps shake the shores;
Rolls the pulse of stalwart oars;
Rings aloft the exultant cry
For the bloodless victory.
There she greets the sports, which breed
Valiant lads for England's need;
Wisely finding, day by day,
Play in toil, and toil in play.
Health to courage, firm and high!
Health to Granta's chivalry!

Yet stay a while, severer Muses, stay,
For you, too, have your rightful parts to-day.
Known long to you, and known through you to fame,
Are Chatsworth's halls, and Cavendish's name.
You too, then, Alma Mater calls to greet
A worthy patron for your ancient seat;
And bid her sons from him example take,
Of learning purely sought for learning's sake,
Of worth unboastful, power in duty spent;
And see, fulfilled in him, her high intent.

Come, Euterpe, wake thy choir;
Fit thy notes to our desire.
Long may he sit the chiefest here,
Meet us and greet us, year by year;
Long inherit, sire and son,
All that their race has wrought and won,
Since that great Cavendish came again,
Round the world and over the main,
Breasting the Thames with his mariners bold,
Past good Queen Bess's palace of old;
With jewel and ingot packed in his hold,
And sails of damask and cloth of gold;
While never a sailor-boy on board
But was decked as brave as a Spanish lord,
With the spoils he had won
In the Isles of the Sun,
And the shores of Fairy-land,
And yet held for the crown of the goodly show,
That queenly smile from the Palace window,
And that wave of a queenly hand.
Yes, let the young be gay,
And sun themselves to-day;-
And from their hearts, as from their dress,
Let mourning pass away.
But not from us, who watch our years fast fleeing,
And snatching as they flee, fresh fragments of our being.
Can we forget one friend,
Can we forget one face,
Which cheered us toward our end,
Which nerved us for our race?
Oh sad to toil, and yet forego
One presence which has made us know
To Godlike souls how deep our debt!
We would not, if we could, forget.

Severer Muses, linger yet;
Speak out for us one pure and rich regret.
Thou, Clio, who, with awful pen,
Gravest great names upon the hearts of men,
Speak of a fate beyond our ken;
A gem late found and lost too soon; {306}
A sun gone down at highest noon;
A tree from Odin's ancient root,
Which bore for men the ancient fruit,
Counsel, and faith and scorn of wrong,
And cunning lore, and soothing song,
Snapt in mid-growth, and leaving unaware
The flock unsheltered and the pasture bare
Nay, let us take what God shall send,
Trusting bounty without end.
God ever lives; and Nature,
Beneath His high dictature,
Hale and teeming, can replace
Strength by strength, and grace by grace,
Hope by hope, and friend by friend:
Trust; and take what God shall send.
So shall Alma Mater see
Daughters fair and wise
Train new lands of liberty
Under stranger skies;
Spreading round the teeming earth
English science, manhood, worth.


1862.

Down beside the loathly Pitch Lake,
In the stately Morichal,
Sat an ancient Spanish Indian,
Peering through the columns tall.

Watching vainly for the flashing
Of the jewelled colibris;
Listening vainly for their humming
Round the honey-blossomed trees.

'Few,' he sighed, 'they come, and fewer,
To the cocorite bowers;
Murdered, madly, through the forests
Which of yore were theirs-and ours

By there came a negro hunter,
Lithe and lusty, sleek and strong,
Rolling round his sparkling eyeballs,
As he loped and lounged along.

Rusty firelock on his shoulder;
Rusty cutlass on his thigh;
Never jollier British subject
Rollicked underneath the sky.

British law to give him safety,
British fleets to guard his shore,
And a square of British freehold-
He had all we have, and more.

Fattening through the endless summer,
Like his own provision ground,
He had reached the summum bonum
Which our latest wits have found.

So he thought; and in his hammock
Gnawed his junk of sugar-cane,
Toasted plantains at the fire-stick,
Gnawed, and dozed, and gnawed again.

Had a wife in his ajoupa -
Or, at least, what did instead;
Children, too, who died so early,
He'd no need to earn their bread.

Never stole, save what he needed,
From the Crown woods round about;
Never lied, except when summoned-
Let the warden find him out.

Never drank, except at market;
Never beat his sturdy mate;
She could hit as hard as he could,
And had just as hard a pate.

Had no care for priest nor parson,
Hope of heaven nor fear of hell;
And in all his views of nature
Held with Comte and Peter Bell.

Healthy, happy, silly, kindly,
Neither care nor toil had he,
Save to work an hour at sunrise,
And then hunt the colibri.

Not a bad man; not a good man:
Scarce a man at all, one fears,
If the Man be that within us
Which is born of fire and tears.

Round the palm-stems, round the creepers,
Flashed a feathered jewel past,
Ruby-crested, topaz-throated,
Plucked the cocorite bast,

Plucked the fallen ceiba-cotton,
Whirred away to build his nest,
Hung at last, with happy humming,
Round some flower he fancied best.

Up then went the rusty muzzle,
'Dat de tenth I shot to-day:'
But out sprang the Indian shouting,
Balked the negro of his prey.

'Eh, you Senor Trinidada!
What dis new ondacent plan?
Spoil a genl'man's chance ob shooting?
I as good as any man.

'Dese not your woods; dese de Queen's woods:
You seem not know whar you ar,
Gibbin' yuself dese buckra airs here,
You black Indian Papist! Dar!'

Stately, courteous, stood the Indian;
Pointed through the palm-tree shade:
'Does the gentleman of colour
Know how yon Pitch Lake was made?'

Grinned the negro, grinned and trembled-
Through his nerves a shudder ran-
Saw a snake-like eye that held him;
Saw-he'd met an Obeah man.

Saw a fetish-such a bottle-
Buried at his cottage door;
Toad and spider, dirty water,
Rusty nails, and nine charms more.

Saw in vision such a cock's head
In the path-and it was white!
Saw Brinvilliers in his pottage:
Faltered, cold and damp with fright.

Fearful is the chance of poison:
Fearful, too, the great unknown:
Magic brings some positivists
Humbly on their marrow-bone.

Like the wedding-guest enchanted,
There he stood, a trembling cur;
While the Indian told his story,
Like the Ancient Mariner.

Told how-'Once that loathly Pitch Lake
Was a garden bright and fair;
How the Chaymas off the mainland
Built their palm ajoupas there.

'How they throve, and how they fattened,
Hale and happy, safe and strong;
Passed the livelong days in feasting;
Passed the nights in dance and song.

'Till they cruel grew, and wanton:
Till they killed the colibris.
Then outspake the great Good Spirit,
Who can see through all the trees,

'Said-'And what have I not sent you,
Wanton Chaymas, many a year?
Lapp, agouti, cachicame,
Quenc and guazu-pita deer.

''Fish I sent you, sent you turtle,
Chip-chip, conch, flamingo red,
Woodland paui, horned screamer,
And blue ramier overhead.

''Plums from balata and mombin,
Tania, manioc, water-vine;
Let you fell my slim manacques,
Tap my sweet moriche wine.

''Sent rich plantains, food of angels;
Rich ananas, food of kings;
Grudged you none of all my treasures:
Save these lovely useless things.'

'But the Chaymas' ears were deafened;
Blind their eyes, and could not see
How a blissful Indian's spirit
Lived in every colibri.

'Lived, forgetting toil and sorrow,
Ever fair and ever new;
Whirring round the dear old woodland,
Feeding on the honey-dew.

'Till one evening roared the earthquake:
Monkeys howled, and parrots screamed:
And the Guaraons at morning
Gathered here, as men who dreamed.

'Sunk were gardens, sunk ajoupas;
Hut and hammock, man and hound:
And above the Chayma village
Boiled with pitch the cursed ground.

'Full, and too full; safe, and too safe;
Negro man, take care, take care.
He that wantons with God's bounties
Of God's wrath had best beware.

'For the saucy, reckless, heartless,
Evil days are sure in store.
You may see the Negro sinking
As the Chayma sank of yore.'

Loudly laughed that stalwart hunter-
'Eh, what superstitious talk!
Nyam {337} am nyam, an' maney maney;
Birds am birds, like park am park;
An' dere's twenty thousand birdskins
Ardered jes' now fram New Yark.'


Eversley, 1870.