Dirge
'Dr. Birch's young friends will reassemble to-day, Feb. 1st.'
White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And 'M's and 'N's are mostly
Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's:
'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted,
The sheep stands, mute and stolid:
And ducks find out, disgusted,
That all the ponds are solid.
Many a stout steer's work is
(At least in this world) finished;
The gross amount of turkies
Is sensibly diminished:
The holly-boughs are faded,
The painted crackers gone;
Would I could write, as Gray did,
An Elegy thereon!
For Christmas-time is ended:
Now is 'our youth' regaining
Those sweet spots where are 'blended
Home-comforts and school-training.'
Now they're, I dare say, venting
Their grief in transient sobs,
And I am 'left lamenting'
At home, with Mrs. Dobbs.
O Posthumus! 'Fugaces
Labuntur anni' still;
Time robs us of our graces,
Evade him as we will.
We were the twins of Siam:
Now SHE thinks ME a bore,
And I admit that _I_ am
Inclined at times to snore.
I was her own Nathaniel;
With her I took sweet counsel,
Brought seed-cake for her spaniel,
And kept her bird in groundsel:
We've murmured, 'How delightful
A landscape, seen by night, is,' -
And woke next day in frightful
Pain from acute bronchitis.
* * *
But ah! for them, whose laughter
We heard last New Year's Day, -
(They reeked not of Hereafter,
Or what the Doctor'd say,) -
For those small forms that fluttered
Moth-like around the plate,
When Sally brought the buttered
Buns in at half-past eight!
Ah for the altered visage
Of her, our tiny Belle,
Whom my boy Gus (at his age!)
Said was a 'deuced swell!'
P'raps now Miss Tickler's tocsin
Has caged that pert young linnet;
Old Birch perhaps is boxing
My Gus's ears this minute.
Yet, though your young ears be as
Red as mamma's geraniums,
Yet grieve not! Thus ideas
Pass into infant craniums.
Use not complaints unseemly;
Tho' you must work like bricks;
And it IS cold, extremely,
Rising at half-past six.
Soon sunnier will the day grow,
And the east wind not blow so;
Soon, as of yore, L'Allegro
Succeed Il Penseroso:
Stick to your Magnall's Questions
And Long Division sums;
And come--with good digestions -
Home when next Christmas comes.
Lovers And A Reflection
In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean;
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble with words a-tween.
Thro' God's own heather we wonned together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitter-bats wavered alow, above;
Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite,)
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!
Thro' the rare red heather we danced together
(O love my Willie,) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was glorious weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:
By rises that flushed with their purple favors,
Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen,
We walked or waded, we two young shavers,
Thanking our stars we were both so green.
We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes:
Song-birds darted about, some inky
As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds;
Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky-
They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!
But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes,
Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;
They need no parasols, no goloshes;
And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.
Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather),
That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt-(it was perfectly charming weather)-
Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms:
And Willie 'gan sing-(Oh, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea)-
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of 'ancientry':
Bowers of flowers encountered showers
In William's carol-(O love my Willie!)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe tomorrow
I quite forget what-say a daffodilly.
A nest in a hollow, 'with buds to follow,'
I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was 'kneaden' of course in 'Eden'-
A rhyme most novel I do maintain:
Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
And all least furlable things got 'furled';
Not with any design to conceal their glories,
But simply and solely to rhyme with 'world.'
O if 'billows' and 'pillows' and 'hours' and 'flowers,'
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,
And carted or carried on wafts away,
Nor ever again trotted out-ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be.
1 In those old days which poets say were golden --
2 (Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves:
3 And, if they did, I'm all the more beholden
4 To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves,
5 Who talk to me 'in language quaint and olden'
6 Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves,
7 Pan with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards,
8 And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds:)
9 In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette
10 (Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born.
11 They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet,
12 No fashions varying as the hues of morn.
13 Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate,
14 Sang hymns to Ceres (their John Barleycorn)
15 And danced unchaperoned, and laughed unchecked,
16 And were no doubt extremely incorrect.
17 Yet do I think their theory was pleasant:
18 And oft, I own, my 'wayward fancy roams'
19 Back to those times, so different from the present;
20 When no one smoked cigars, nor gave At-homes,
21 Nor smote a billiard-ball, nor winged a pheasant,
22 Nor 'did' her hair by means of long-tailed combs,
23 Nor migrated to Brighton once a year,
24 Nor -- most astonishing of all -- drank Beer.
25 No, they did not drink Beer, 'which brings me to'
26 (As Gilpin said) 'the middle of my song.'
27 Not that 'the middle' is precisely true,
28 Or else I should not tax your patience long:
29 If I had said 'beginning,' it might do;
30 But I have a dislike to quoting wrong:
31 I was unlucky -- sinned against, not sinning --
32 When Cowper wrote down 'middle' for 'beginning.'
33 So to proceed. That abstinence from Malt
34 Has always struck me as extremely curious.
35 The Greek mind must have had some vital fault,
36 That they should stick to liquors so injurious --
37 (Wine, water, tempered p'raps with Attic salt) --
38 And not at once invent that mild, luxurious,
39 And artful beverage, Beer. How the digestion
40 Got on without it, is a startling question.
41 Had they digestions? and an actual body
42 Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on?
43 Were they abstract ideas -- (like Tom Noddy
44 And Mr. Briggs) -- or men, like Jones and Jackson?
45 Then nectar -- was that beer, or whisky-toddy?
46 Some say the Gaelic mixture, I the Saxon:
47 I think a strict adherence to the latter
48 Might make some Scots less pigheaded, and fatter.
49 Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shows
50 That the real beverage for feasting gods on
51 Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose
52 And also to the palate, known as 'Hidgson.'
53 I know a man -- a tailor's son -- who rose
54 To be a peer: and this I would lay odds on,
55 (Though in his Memoirs it may not appear,)
56 That that man owed his rise to copious Beer.
57 O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass!
58 Names that should be on every infant's tongue!
59 Shall days and months and years and centuries pass,
60 And still your merits be unrecked, unsung?
61 Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass,
62 And wished that lyre could yet again be strung
63 Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her
64 Misguided sons that the best drink was water.
65 How would he now recant that wild opinion,
66 And sing -- as would that I could sing -- of you!
67 I was not born (alas!) the 'Muses' minion,'
68 I'm not poetical, not even blue:
69 And he, we know, but strives with waxen pinion,
70 Whoe'er he is that entertains the view
71 Of emulating Pindar, and will be
72 Sponsor at last to some now nameless sea.
73 Oh! when the green slopes of Arcadia burned
74 With all the lustre of the dying day,
75 And on Cithæron's brow the reaper turned,
76 (Humming, of course, in his delightful way,
77 How Lycidas was dead, and how concerned
78 The Nymphs were when they saw his lifeless clay;
79 And how rock told to rock the dreadful story
80 That poor young Lycidas was gone to glory:)
81 What would that lone and labouring soul have given,
82 At that soft moment for a pewter pot!
83 How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven,
84 And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot!
85 If his own grandmother had died unshriven,
86 In two short seconds he'd have recked it not;
87 Such power hath Beer. The heart which Grief hath cankered
88 Hath one unfailing remedy -- the Tankard.
89 Coffee is good, and so no doubt is cocoa;
90 Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen:
91 When 'Dulce est desipere in loco'
92 Was written, real Falernian winged the pen.
93 When a rapt audience has encored 'Fra Poco'
94 Or 'Casta Diva,' I have heard that then
95 The Prima Donna, smiling herself out,
96 Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout.
97 But what is coffee, but a noxious berry,
98 Born to keep used-up Londoners awake?
99 What is Falernian, what is Port or Sherry,
100 But vile concoctions to make dull heads ache?
101 Nay stout itself -- (though good with oysters, very) --
102 Is not a thing your reading man should take.
103 He that would shine, and petrify his tutor,
104 Should drink draught Allsopp in its 'native pewter.'
105 But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear --
106 A soft and silvery sound -- I know it well.
107 Its tinkling tells me that a time is near
108 Precious to me -- it is the Dinner Bell.
109 O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer,
110 Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:
111 Seared is, of course, my heart -- but unsubdued
112 Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.
113 I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen:
114 But on one statement I may safely venture:
115 That few of our most highly gifted men
116 Have more appreciation of their trencher.
117 I go. One pound of British beef, and then
118 What Mr. Swiveller called a 'modest quencher';
119 That home-returning, I may 'soothly say,'
120 'Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.'
