Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch: Verses about Love

Toiling love, loose your pack,
All your sighs and tears unbind:
Care's a ware will break a back,
Will not bend a maiden's mind.
In this State a man shall need
Neither priest nor law giver:
Those same lips that are his creed
Shall confess their worshipper.
All the laws he must obey,
Now in force and now repeal'd,
Shift in eyes that shift as they,
Till alike with kisses seal'd.

Small is my secret-let it pass-
Small in your life the share I had,
Who sat beside you in the class,
Awed by the bright superior lad:
Whom yet with hot and eager face
I prompted when he missed his place.

For you the call came swift and soon:
But sometimes in your holidays
You meet me trudging home at noon
To dinner through the dusty ways,
And recognized, and with a nod
Passed on, but never guessed-thank God!

Truly our ways were separate.
I bent myself to hoe and drill,

Yea, with an honest man to mate,
Fulfilling God Almighty's will;
And bore him children. But my prayers
Were yours-and, only after, theirs.

While you-still loftier, more remote,
You sprang from stair to stair of fame,
And you've a riband on your coat,
And you've a title to your name;
But have you yet a star to shine
Above your bed, as I o'er mine?

In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,
Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar
To verses of my own,—a stout attempt
To hold communion with the Evening Star
I wrote a sonnet, rhymed it, made it scan.
Ah me! how trippingly those last lines ran.—
O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend
O'er Helen's bosom in the tranced west,
To match the hours heave by upon her breast,
And at her parted lip for dreams attend—
If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deemed,
Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?
For weeks I thought these lines remarkable;
For weeks I put on airs and called myself
A bard: till on a day, as it befell,
I took a small green Moxon from the shelf
At random, opened at a casual place,
And found my young illusions face to face
With this:—'Still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,—or else swoon to death.'
O gulf not to be crossed by taking thought!
O heights by toil not to be overcome!
Great Keats, unto your altar straight I brought
My speech, and from the shrine departed dumb.
—And yet sometimes I think you played it hard
Upon a rather hopeful minor bard.

'Tis pretty to be in Ballinderry,
'Tis pretty to be in Ballindoon,
But 'tis prettier far in County Kerry
Coortin' under the bran' new moon,
Aroon, Aroon!
'Twas there by the bosom of blue Killarney
They came by the hundther' a-coortin' me;
Sure I was the one to give back their blarney,
An' merry was I to be fancy-free.
But niver a step in the lot was lighter,
An' divvle a boulder among the bhoys,
Than Phelim O'Shea, me dynamither,
Me illigant arthist in clock-work toys.
'Twas all for love he would bring his figgers
Of iminent statesmen, in toy machines,
An' hould me hand as he pulled the thriggers
An' scattered the thraytors to smithereens.
An' to see the Queen in her Crystial Pallus
Fly up to the roof, an' the windeys broke!
And all with divvle a trace of malus,—
But he was the bhoy that enjoyed his joke!
Then O, but his cheek would flush, an' 'Bridget,'
He 'd say, 'Will yez love me?' But I 'd be coy
And answer him, 'Arrah now, dear, don't fidget!'
Though at heart I loved him, me arthist bhoy!
One night we stood by the Kenmare river,
An' 'Bridget, creina, now whist,' said he,
'I'll be goin' to-night, an' may be for iver;
Open your arms at the last to me.'
'Twas there by the banks of the Kenmare river
He took in his hands me white, white face,
An' we kissed our first an' our last for iver—
For Phelim O'Shea is disparsed in space.
'Twas pretty to be by blue Killarney,
'Twas pretty to hear the linnets's call,
But whist! for I cannot attind their blarney,
Nor whistle in answer at all, at all.
For the voice that he swore 'ud out-call the linnet's
Is cracked intoirely, and out of chune,
Since the clock-work missed it by thirteen minutes
An' scattered me Phelim around the moon,
Aroon, Aroon!

By the late W. W. (of H.M. Inland Revenue Service).
And is it so? Can Folly stalk
And aim her unrespecting darts
In shades where grave Professors walk
And Bachelors of Arts?
I have a boy, not six years old,
A sprite of birth and lineage high:
His birth I did myself behold,
His caste is in his eye.
And oh! his limbs are full of grace,
His boyish beauty past compare:
His mother's joy to wash his face,
And mine to brush his hair!
One morn we strolled on our short walk,
With four goloshes on our shoes,
And held the customary talk
That parents love to use.
(And oft I turn it into verse,
And write it down upon a page,
Which, being sold, supplies my purse
And ministers to age.)
So as we paced the curving High,
To view the sights of Oxford town
We raised our feet (like Nelly Bly),
And then we put them down.
'Now, little Edward, answer me'—
I said, and clutched him by the gown—
'At Cambridge would you rather be,
Or here in Oxford town?'
My boy replied with tiny frown
(He'd been a year at Cavendish),
'I'd rather dwell in Oxford town,
If I could have my wish.'
'Now, little Edward, say why so;
My little Edward, tell me why.'
'Well, really, Pa, I hardly know.'
'Remarkable!' said I:
'For Cambridge has her 'King's Parade,'
And much the more becoming gown;
Why should you slight her so,' I said,
'Compared with Oxford town?'
At this my boy hung down his head,
While sterner grew the parent's eye;
And six-and-thirty times I said,
'Come, Edward, tell me why?'
For I loved Cambridge (where they deal—
How strange!—in butter by the yard);
And so, with every third appeal,
I hit him rather hard.
Twelve times I struck, as may be seen
(For three times twelve is thirty-six),
When in a shop the Magazine
His tearful sight did fix.
He saw it plain, it made him smile,
And thus to me he made reply:—
'At Oxford there's a Crocodile;
And that's the reason why.'
Oh, Mr. Editor! my heart
For deeper lore would seldom yearn,
Could I believe the hundredth part
Of what from you I learn.

By Lord T-n.
So bluff Sir Leolin gave the bride away:
And when they married her, the little church
Had seldom seen a costlier ritual.
The coach and pair alone were two-pound-ten,
And two-pound-ten apiece the wedding-cakes;—
Three wedding-cakes. A Cupid poised a-top
Of each hung shivering to the frosted loves
Of two fond cushats on a field of ice,
As who should say 'I see you!'—Such the joy
When English-hearted Edwin swore his faith
With Mariana of the Moated Grange.
For Edwin, plump head-waiter at The Cock,
Grown sick of custom, spoilt of plenitude,
Lacking the finer wit that saith,
'I wait, They come; and if I make them wait, they go,'
Fell in a jaundiced humour petulant-green,
Watched the dull clerk slow-rounding to his cheese,
Flicked a full dozen flies that flecked the pane—
All crystal-cheated of the fuller air,
Blurted a free 'Good-day t'ye,' left and right,
And shaped his gathering choler to this head:—
'Custom! And yet what profit of it all?
The old order changeth yielding place to new,
To me small change, and this the Counter-change
Of custom beating on the self-same bar—
Change out of chop. Ah me! the talk, the tip,
The would-be-evening should-be-mourning suit,
The forged solicitude for petty wants
More petty still than they,—all these I loathe,
Learning they lie who feign that all things come
To him that waiteth. I have waited long,
And now I go, to mate me with a bride
Who is aweary waiting, even as I!'
But when the amorous moon of honeycomb
Was over, ere the matron-flower of Love—
Step-sister of To-morrow's marmalade—
Swooned scentless, Mariana found her lord
Did something jar the nicer feminine sense
With usage, being all too fine and large,
Instinct of warmth and colour, with a trick
Of blunting 'Mariana's' keener edge
To 'Mary Ann'—the same but not the same:
Whereat she girded, tore her crisped hair,
Called him 'Sir Churl,' and ever calling 'Churl!'
Drave him to Science, then to Alcohol,
To forge a thousand theories of the rocks,
Then somewhat else for thousands dewy cool,
Wherewith he sought a more Pacific isle
And there found love, a duskier love than hers.