Rhymes a la Mode

Andrew Lang

Rhymes a la Mode

BALLADE DEDICATORY

TOMRS. ELTONOF WHITE STAUNTONThepainted Briton built his mound,And left his celts and clay,On yon fair slope of sunlit groundThat fronts your garden gay;The Roman came, he bore the sway,He bullied, bought, and sold,Your fountain sweeps his works awayBeside your manor old!But still his crumbling urns are foundWithin the window-bay,Where once he listened to the soundThat lulls you day by day; —The sound of summer winds at play,The noise of waters coldTo Yarty wandering on their way,Beside your manor old!The Roman fell: his firm-set boundBecame the Saxon’s stay;The bells made music all aroundFor monks in cloisters grey,Till fled the monks in disarrayFrom their warm chantry’s fold,Old Abbots slumber as they may,Beside your manor old!EnvoyCreeds, empires, peoples, all decay,Down into darkness, rolled;May life that’s fleet be sweet, I pray,Beside your manor old.

THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS

A DREAM IN JUNE

In twilight of the longest day   I lingered over Lucian,Till ere the dawn a dreamy way   My spirit found, untrod of man,Between the green sky and the grey.Amid the soft dusk suddenly   More light than air I seemed to sail,Afloat upon the ocean sky,   While through the faint blue, clear and pale,I saw the mountain clouds go by:   My barque had thought for helm and sail,And one mist wreath for canopy.Like torches on a marble floor   Reflected, so the wild stars shone,Within the abysmal hyaline,   Till the day widened more and more,And sank to sunset, and was gone,And then, as burning beacons shine   On summits of a mountain isle,      A light to folk on sea that fare,   So the sky’s beacons for a while      Burned in these islands of the air.Then from a starry island set   Where one swift tide of wind there flows,Came scent of lily and violet,   Narcissus, hyacinth, and rose,Laurel, and myrtle buds, and vine,So delicate is the air and fine:And forests of all fragrant trees   Sloped seaward from the central hill,And ever clamorous were theseWith singing of glad birds; and still   Such music came as in the woodsMost lonely, consecrate to Pan,   The Wind makes, in his many moods,Upon the pipes some shepherd Man,   Hangs up, in thanks for victory!On these shall mortals play no more,   But the Wind doth touch them, over and o’er,And the Wind’s breath in the reeds will sigh.Between the daylight and the dark   That island lies in silver air,And suddenly my magic barque   Wheeled, and ran in, and grounded there;And by me stood the sentinel   Of them who in the island dwell;      All smiling did he bind my hands,      With rushes green and rosy bands,They have no harsher bonds than these   The people of the pleasant landsWithin the wash of the airy seas!Then was I to their city led:   Now all of ivory and goldThe great walls were that garlandedThe temples in their shining fold,   (Each fane of beryl built, and each   Girt with its grove of shadowy beech,)And all about the town, and through,There flowed a River fed with dew,   As sweet as roses, and as clear      As mountain crystals pure and cold,And with his waves that water kissedThe gleaming altars of amethyst   That smoke with victims all the year,And sacred are to the Gods of old.There sat three Judges by the Gate,   And I was led before the Three,And they but looked on me, and straight   The rosy bonds fell down from me   Who, being innocent, was free;And I might wander at my willAbout that City on the hill,   Among the happy people clad      In purple weeds of woven airHued like the webs that Twilight weavesAt shut of languid summer eves   So light their raiment seemed; and gladWas every face I looked on there!There was no heavy heat, no cold,   The dwellers there wax never old,      Nor wither with the waning time,But each man keeps that age he had      When first he won the fairy clime.The Night falls never from on high,   Nor ever burns the heat of noon.But such soft light eternally   Shines, as in silver dawns of JuneBefore the Sun hath climbed the sky!Within these pleasant streets and wide,   The souls of Heroes go and come,Even they that fell on either side   Beneath the walls of Ilium;And sunlike in that shadowy isleThe face of Helen and her smile   Makes glad the souls of them that knewGrief for her sake a little while!And all true Greeks and wise are there;And with his hand upon the hair   Of Phaedo, saw I Socrates,About him many youths and fair,   Hylas, Narcissus, and with theseHim whom the quoit of Phoebus slew   By fleet Eurotas, unaware!All these their mirth and pleasure made   Within the plain Elysian,      The fairest meadow that may be,With all green fragrant trees for shade   And every scented wind to fan,      And sweetest flowers to strew the lea;The soft Winds are their servants fleet   To fetch them every fruit at will   And water from the river chill;And every bird that singeth sweet   Throstle, and merle, and nightingale   Brings blossoms from the dewy vale, —Lily, and rose, and asphodel —   With these doth each guest twine his crown   And wreathe his cup, and lay him down      Beside some friend he loveth well.There with the shining Souls I layWhen, lo, a Voice that seemed to say,   In far-off haunts of Memory,Whoso death taste the Dead Men’s bread,Shall dwell for ever with these Dead,   Nor ever shall his body lieBeside his friends, on the grey hillWhere rains weep, and the curlews shrill   And the brown water wanders by!Then did a new soul in me wake,The dead men’s bread I feared to break,Their fruit I would not taste indeedWere it but a pomegranate seed.Nay, not with these I made my choiceTo dwell for ever and rejoice,For otherwhere the River rollsThat girds the home of Christian souls,And these my whole heart seeks are foundOn otherwise enchanted ground.Even so I put the cup away,   The vision wavered, dimmed, and broke,   And, nowise sorrowing, I wokeWhile, grey among the ruins greyChill through the dwellings of the dead,   The Dawn crept o’er the Northern sea,Then, in a moment, flushed to red,   Flushed all the broken minster old,   And turned the shattered stones to gold,And wakened half the world with me!

L’Envoi

To E. W. G(Who also had rhymed on the Fortune Islands of Lucian)Each in the self-same field we gleanThe field of the Samosatene,Each something takes and something leaves   And this must choose, and that foregoIn Lucian’s visionary sheaves,   To twine a modern posy so;But all any gleanings, truth to tell,Are mixed with mournful asphodel,While yours are wreathed with poppies red,   With flowers that Helen’s feet have kissed,With leaves of vine that garlanded   The Syrian Pantagruelist,The sage who laughed the world away,   Who mocked at Gods, and men, and care,More sweet of voice than Rabelais,   And lighter-hearted than Voltaire.

THE NEW MILLENIUM

(THE UNFORTUNATE ISLANDS.)

A VISION IN THE STRAND

The jaded light of late July   Shone yellow down the dusty Strand,The anxious people bustled by,Policeman, Pressman, you and I,   And thieves, and judges of the land.So swift they strode they had not time   To mark the humours of the Town,But I, that mused an idle rhyme,   Looked here and there, and up and down,And many a rapid cart I spied   That drew, as fast as ponies can,The Newspapers of either side,   These joys of every Englishman!The Standard here, the Echo there,And cultured ev’ning papers fair,With din and fuss and shout and blareThrough all the eager land they bare,   The rumours of our little span.’Midst these, but ah, more slow of speed,   A biggish box of sanguine hueWas tugged on a velocipede,   And in and out the crowd, and through,An earnest stripling urged it wellPerched on a cranky tricycle!A seedy tricycle he rode,   Perchance some three miles in the hour,But, on the big red box that glowed   Behind him, was a name of Power,Justice, (I read it e’er I wist,)The Organ of the Socialist!The paper carts fled fleetly by   And vanished up the roaring Strand,And eager purchasers drew nigh   Each with his penny in his hand,But Justice, scarce more fleet than I,   Began to permeate the land,And dark, methinks, the twilight fell,   Or ever Justice reached Pall Mall.Oh Man, (I stopped to moralize,)   How eager thou to fight with Fate,To bring Astraea from the skies;   Yet ah, how too inadequateThe means by which thou fain wouldst copeWith Laws and Morals, King and Pope!“Justice!” – how prompt the witling’s sneer, —“Justice!  Thou wouldst have Justice here!And each poor man should be a squire,Each with his competence a year,Each with sufficient beef and beer,   And all things matched to his desire,While all the Middle Classes should   With every vile CapitalistBe clean reformed away for good,   And vanish like a morning mist!“Ah splendid Vision, golden time,An end of hunger, cold, and crime.An end of Rent, an end of Rank,An end of balance at the Bank,An end of everything that’s meantTo bring Investors five per cent!”How fair doth Justice seem, I cried,   Yet oh, how strong the embattled powersThat war against on every side   Justice, and this great dream of ours,And what have we to plead our cause’Gainst Masters, Capital, and laws,What but a big red box indeed,With copies of a weekly screed,   That’s slowly jolted, up and down,Behind an old velocipede   To clamour Justice through the town:How touchingly inadequateThese arms wherewith we’d vanquish Fate!Nay, the old Order shall endure   And little change the years shall know,And still the Many shall be poor,   And still the Poor shall dwell in woe;Firm in the iron Law of things   The strong shall be the wealthy still,And (called Capitalists or Kings)   Shall seize and hoard the fruits of skill.Leaving the weaker for their gain,   Leaving the gentler for their prizeSuch dens and husks as beasts disdain, —   Till slowly from the wrinkled skiesThe fireless frozen Sun shall wane,Nor Summer come with golden grain;   Till men be glad, mid frost and snowTo live such equal lives of pain   As now the hutted Eskimo!Then none shall plough nor garner seed,   Then, on some last sad human shore,Equality shall reign indeed,   The Rich shall be with us no more,Thus, and not otherwise, shall comeThe new, the true Millennium!

ALMAE MATRES

(ST. ANDREWS, 1862. OXFORD, 1865)St. Andrews by the Northern sea,   A haunted town it is to me!A little city, worn and grey,   The grey North Ocean girds it round.And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,   The long sea-rollers surge and sound.And still the thin and biting spray   Drives down the melancholy street,And still endure, and still decay,   Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.Ghost-like and shadowy they standDim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.St. Leonard’s chapel, long ago   We loitered idly where the tallFresh budded mountain ashes blow   Within thy desecrated wall:The tough roots rent the tomb below,   The April birds sang clamorous,We did not dream, we could not know   How hardly Fate would deal with us!O, broken minster, looking forth   Beyond the bay, above the town,O, winter of the kindly North,   O, college of the scarlet gown,And shining sands beside the sea,   And stretch of links beyond the sand,Once more I watch you, and to me   It is as if I touched his hand!And therefore art thou yet more dear,   O, little city, grey and sere,Though shrunken from thine ancient pride   And lonely by thy lonely sea,Than these fair halls on Isis’ side,   Where Youth an hour came back to me!A land of waters green and clear,   Of willows and of poplars tall,And, in the spring time of the year,   The white may breaking over all,And Pleasure quick to come at call.   And summer rides by marsh and wold,And Autumn with her crimson pall   About the towers of Magdalen rolled;And strange enchantments from the past,   And memories of the friends of old,And strong Tradition, binding fast   The “flying terms” with bands of gold, —All these hath Oxford: all are dear,   But dearer far the little town,The drifting surf, the wintry year,   The college of the scarlet gown,      St. Andrews by the Northern sea,      That is a haunted town to me!

DESIDERIUM

IN MEMORIAM S. F. AThe call of homing rooks, the shrill   Song of some bird that watches late,The cries of children break the still   Sad twilight by the churchyard gate.And o’er your far-off tomb the grey   Sad twilight broods, and from the treesThe rooks call on their homeward way,   And are you heedless quite of these?The clustered rowan berries red   And Autumn’s may, the clematis,They droop above your dreaming head,   And these, and all things must you miss?Ah, you that loved the twilight air,   The dim lit hour of quiet best,At last, at last you have your share   Of what life gave so seldom, rest!Yes, rest beyond all dreaming deep,   Or labour, nearer the Divine,And pure from fret, and smooth as sleep,   And gentle as thy soul, is thine!So let it be!  But could I know   That thou in this soft autumn eve,This hush of earth that pleased thee so,   Hadst pleasure still, I might not grieve.

RHYMES A LA MODE

BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE

Our youth began with tears and sighs,With seeking what we could not find;Our verses all were threnodies,In elegiacs still we whined;Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,We sought and knew not what we sought.We marvel, now we look behind:Life’s more amusing than we thought!Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!What? not content with seas and skies,With rainy clouds and southern wind,With common cares and faces kind,With pains and joys each morning brought?Ah, old, and worn, and tired we findLife’s more amusing than we thought!Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;We set our souls on salmon flies,We whistle where we once repined.Confound the woes of human-kind!By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;Who hum, contented or resigned,“Life’s more amusing than we thought!”EnvoyO nate mecum, worn and linedOur faces show, but that is naught;Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:Life’s more amusing than we thought!

THE LAST CAST

THE ANGLER’S APOLOGYJust one cast more! how many a year   Beside how many a pool and stream,Beneath the falling leaves and sere,   I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!Dreamed of the sport since April first   Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,Adown the pastoral valleys burst   Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.Dreamed of the singing showers that break,   And sting the lochs, or near or far,And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”   From Urigil to Lochinvar.Dreamed of the kind propitious sky   O’er Ari Innes brooding grey;The sea trout, rushing at the fly,   Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!* * * * *Brief are man’s days at best; perchance   I waste my own, who have not seenThe castled palaces of France   Shine on the Loire in summer green.And clear and fleet Eurotas still,   You tell me, laves his reedy shore,And flows beneath his fabled hill   Where Dian drave the chase of yore.And “like a horse unbroken” yet   The yellow stream with rush and foam,’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,   Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!I may not see them, but I doubt   If seen I’d find them half so fairAs ripples of the rising trout   That feed beneath the elms of Yair.Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,   And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,And Autumn in that lonely vale   Where wedded Avons westward sweep,Or where, amid the empty fields,   Among the bracken of the glen,Her yellow wreath October yields,   To crown the crystal brows of Ken.Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,   Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,You never heard the ringing reel,   The music of the water side!Though Gods have walked your woods among,   Though nymphs have fled your banks along;You speak not that familiar tongue   Tweed murmurs like my cradle song.My cradle song, – nor other hymn   I’d choose, nor gentler requiem dearThan Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,   Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!

TWILIGHT

SONNET(AFTER RICHEPIN.)Light has flown!Through the greyThe wind’s wayThe sea’s moanSound alone!   For the day   These repayAnd atone!Scarce I know,Listening so   To the streams      Of the sea,   If old dreams      Sing to me!

BALLADE OF SUMMER

TO C. H. ARKCOLLWhen strawberry pottles are common and cheap,Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,When midnight dances are murdering sleep,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And far from Fleet Street, far from here,The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!When clamour that doves in the lindens keepMingles with musical plash of the weir,Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And better a crust and a beaker of beer,With rose-hung hedges on either hand,Than a palace in town and a prince’s cheer,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!When big trout late in the twilight leap,When cuckoo clamoureth far and near,When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer,Where kine knee deep in the water stand,On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!EnvoyFriend, with the fops while we dawdle here,Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand,When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS GHOSTS

Between the moonlight and the fireIn winter twilights long ago,What ghosts we raised for your desireTo make your merry blood run slow!How old, how grave, how wise we grow!No Christmas ghost can make us chill,Save those that troop in mournful row,The ghosts we all can raise at will!The beasts can talk in barn and byreOn Christmas Eve, old legends know,As year by year the years retire,We men fall silent then I trow,Such sights hath Memory to show,Such voices from the silence thrill,Such shapes return with Christmas snow, —The ghosts we all can raise at will.Oh, children of the village choir,Your carols on the midnight throw,Oh bright across the mist and mireYe ruddy hearths of Christmas glow!Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,Let’s cheerily descend the hill;Be welcome all, to come or go,The ghosts we all can raise at will!EnvoyFriend, sursum corda, soon or slowWe part, like guests who’ve joyed their fill;Forget them not, nor mourn them so,The ghosts we all can raise at will!

LOVE’S EASTER

SONNETLove died hereLong ago; —O’er his bier,   Lying low,   Poppies throw;      Shed no tear;      Year by year,   Roses blow!Year by year,Adon – dear   To Love’s Queen —      Does not die!   Wakes when green      May is nigh!

BALLADE OF THE GIRTON GIRL

She has just “put her gown on” at Girton,   She is learned in Latin and Greek,But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on   That the prudish remark with a shriek.In her accents, perhaps, she is weak   (Ladies are, one observes with a sigh),But in Algebra —there she’s unique,   But her forte’s to evaluate π.She can talk about putting a “spirt on”   (I admit, an unmaidenly freak),And she dearly delighteth to flirt on   A punt in some shadowy creek;Should her bark, by mischance, spring a leak,   She can swim as a swallow can fly;She can fence, she can put with a cleek,   But her forte’s to evaluate π.She has lectured on Scopas and Myrton,   Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique,Old tiles with the secular dirt on,   Old marbles with noses to seek.And her Cobet she quotes by the week,   And she’s written on κεν and on καὶ,And her service is swift and oblique,   But her forte’s to evaluate π.EnvoyPrincess, like a rose is her cheek,   And her eyes are as blue as the sky,And I’d speak, had I courage to speak,   But – her forte’s to evaluate pi.

RONSARD’S GRAVE

Ye wells, ye founts that fallFrom the steep mountain wall,   That fall, and flash, and fleet      With silver feet,Ye woods, ye streams that laveThe meadows with your wave,   Ye hills, and valley fair,      Attend my prayer!When Heaven and Fate decreeMy latest hour for me,   When I must pass away      From pleasant day,I ask that none my breakThe marble for my sake,   Wishful to make more fair      My sepulchre.Only a laurel treeShall shade the grave of me,   Only Apollo’s bough      Shall guard me now!Now shall I be at restAmong the spirits blest,   The happy dead that dwell —      Where, – who may tell?The snow and wind and hailMay never there prevail,   Nor ever thunder fall      Nor storm at all.But always fadeless thereThe woods are green and fair,   And faithful ever more      Spring to that shore!There shall I ever hearAlcaeus’ music clear,   And sweetest of all things      There Sappho sings.

SAN TERENZO

(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the wreck of the Don Juan.)Mid April seemed like some November day,   When through the glassy waters, dull as lead,Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,   Slipped down the long shores of the Spezian bay,   Rounded a point, – and San Terenzo layBefore us, that gay village, yellow and red,The roof that covered Shelley’s homeless head, —   His house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen   Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again.   Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free,When suddenly the forest glades were stirred   With waving pinions, and a great sea birdFlew forth, like Shelley’s spirit, to the sea!1880.

ROMANCE

My Love dwelt in a Northern land.   A grey tower in a forest greenWas hers, and far on either hand   The long wash of the waves was seen,And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,   The woven forest boughs between!And through the silver Northern night   The sunset slowly died away,And herds of strange deer, lily-white,   Stole forth among the branches grey;About the coming of the light,   They fled like ghosts before the day!I know not if the forest green   Still girdles round that castle grey;I know not if the boughs between   The white deer vanish ere the day;Above my Love the grass is green,   My heart is colder than the clay!

BALLADE OF HIS OWN COUNTRY

I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves   Among the shining salmon-flies;A song for summer-time that grieves   I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves.   Between grey sea and golden sheaves,Beneath the soft wet Morvern skies,I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves   Among the shining salmon-flies.TO C. H. ARKCOLLLet them boast of Arabia, oppressed   By the odour of myrrh on the breeze;In the isles of the East and the West   That are sweet with the cinnamon treesLet the sandal-wood perfume the seas;   Give the roses to Rhodes and to Crete,We are more than content, if you please,   With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!Though Dan Virgil enjoyed himself best   With the scent of the limes, when the beesHummed low ’round the doves in their nest,   While the vintagers lay at their ease,Had he sung in our northern degrees,   He’d have sought a securer retreat,He’d have dwelt, where the heart of us flees,   With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!Oh, the broom has a chivalrous crest   And the daffodil’s fair on the leas,And the soul of the Southron might rest,   And be perfectly happy with these;But we, that were nursed on the knees   Of the hills of the North, we would fleetWhere our hearts might their longing appease   With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!EnvoyAh Constance, the land of our quest   It is far from the sounds of the street,Where the Kingdom of Galloway’s blest   With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

VILLANELLE

(TO M. JOSEPH BOULMIER, AUTHOR OF “LES VILLANELLES.”)Villanelle, why art thou mute?      Hath the singer ceased to sing?Hath the Master lost his lute?Many a pipe and scrannel flute      On the breeze their discords fling;Villanelle, why art thou mute?Sound of tumult and dispute,      Noise of war the echoes bring;Hath the Master lost his lute?Once he sang of bud and shoot      In the season of the Spring;Villanelle, why art thou mute?Fading leaf and falling fruit      Say, “The year is on the wing,Hath the Master lost his lute?”Ere the axe lie at the root,      Ere the winter come as king,Villanelle, why art thou mute?Hath the Master lost his lute?