VERSES
AND
TRANSLATIONS.
BY C. S. C.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED.
CAMBRIDGE:
DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO.
LONDON: BELL AND DALDY.
1862.
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER, SIDNEY STREET.
CONTENTS.
Page
Visions
1
Gemini and Virgo
6
“There Stands a City”
14
Striking
18
Voices of the Night
21
Lines Suggested by the 14th of February
24
A, B, C.
26
To Mrs. Goodchild
28
Ode—‘On a Distant Prospect’ of Making a Fortune
33
Isabel
37
Dirge
40
Lines Suggested by the 14th of February
45
“Hic Vir, Hic Est”
47
Beer
52
Ode to Tobacco
60
Dover to Munich
63
Charades
77
Proverbial Philosophy
97
TRANSLATIONS:
Lycidas
106
In Memoriam
128
Laura Matilda’s Dirge
132
“Leaves have their time to Fall”
136
“Let us turn Hitherward our Bark”
140
Carmen Sæculare
144
TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE:
To a Ship
152
To Virgil
154
To the Fountain of Bandusia
156
To Ibycus’s Wife
158
Soracte
160
To Leuconöe
162
Juno’s Speech
163
To a Faun
168
To Lyce
170
To his Slave
172
TRANSLATIONS:
From Virgil
173
From Theocritus
175
Speech of Ajax
177
From Lucretius
180
From Homer
188
VISIONS.
“She was a phantom,” &c.
In lone Glenartney’s thickets lies couched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier’s tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding ploughmen’s weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on towards home, or home-brewed liquor.
It is (in fact) the evening—that pure and pleasant time,
When stars break into splendour, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine—
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild’s is prominent in mine.
Miss Goodchild!—Julia Goodchild!—how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:
When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb’s instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction!
“She wore” her natural “roses, the night when first we met”—
Her golden hair was gleaming ’neath the coercive net:
“Her brow was like the snawdrift,” her step was like Queen Mab’s,
And gone was instantly the heart of every boy at Crabb’s.
The parlour-boarder chasséed tow’rds her on graceful limb;
The onyx decked his bosom—but her smiles were not for him:
With me she danced—till drowsily her eyes “began to blink,”
And I brought raisin wine, and said, “Drink, pretty creature, drink!”
And evermore, when winter comes in his garb of snows,
And the returning schoolboy is told how fast he grows;
Shall I—with that soft hand in mine—enact ideal Lancers,
And dream I hear demure remarks, and make impassioned answers:—
I know that never, never may her love for me return—
At night I muse upon the fact with undisguised concern—
But ever shall I bless that day: (I don’t bless, as a rule,
The days I spent at “Dr. Crabb’s Preparatory School.”)
And yet—we two may meet again—(Be still, my throbbing heart!)—
Now rolling years have weaned us from jam and raspberry tart:—
One night I saw a vision—’Twas when musk-roses bloom
I stood—we stood—upon a rug, in a sumptuous dining-room:
One hand clasped hers—one easily reposed upon my hip—
And “Bless ye!” burst abruptly from Mr. Goodchild’s lip:
I raised my brimming eye, and saw in hers an answering gleam—
My heart beat wildly—and I woke, and lo! it was a dream.
Some vast amount of years ago,
Ere all my youth had vanished from me,
A boy it was my lot to know,
Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.
I love to gaze upon a child;
A young bud bursting into blossom;
Artless, as Eve yet unbeguiled,
And agile as a young opossum:
And such was he. A calm-browed lad,
Yet mad, at moments, as a hatter:
Why hatters as a race are mad
I never knew, nor does it matter.
He was what nurses call a ‘limb;’
One of those small misguided creatures,
Who, though their intellects are dim,
Are one too many for their teachers:
And, if you asked of him to say
What twice 10 was, or 3 times 7,
He’d glance (in quite a placid way)
From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven:
And smile, and look politely round,
To catch a casual suggestion;
But make no effort to propound
Any solution of the question.
And so not much esteemed was he
Of the authorities: and therefore
He fraternized by chance with me,
Needing a somebody to care for:
And three fair summers did we twain
Live (as they say) and love together;
And bore by turns the wholesome cane
Till our young skins became as leather:
And carved our names on every desk,
And tore our clothes, and inked our collars;
And looked unique and picturesque,
But not, it may be, model scholars.
We did much as we chose to do;
We’d never heard of Mrs. Grundy;
All the theology we knew
Was that we mightn’t play on Sunday;
And all the general truths, that cakes
Were to be bought at four a-penny,
And that excruciating aches
Resulted if we ate too many:
And seeing ignorance is bliss,
And wisdom consequently folly,
The obvious result is this—
That our two lives were very jolly.
At last the separation came.
Real love, at that time, was the fashion;
And by a horrid chance, the same
Young thing was, to us both, a passion.
Old Poser snorted like a horse:
His feet were large, his hands were pimply,
His manner, when excited, coarse:—
But Miss P. was an angel simply.
She was a blushing gushing thing;
All—more than all—my fancy painted;
Once—when she helped me to a wing
Of goose—I thought I should have fainted.
The people said that she was blue:
But I was green, and loved her dearly.
She was approaching thirty-two;
And I was then eleven, nearly.
I did not love as others do;
(None ever did that I’ve heard tell of;)
My passion was a byword through
The town she was, of course, the belle of.
Oh sweet—as to the toilworn man
The far-off sound of rippling river;
As to cadets in Hindostan
The fleeting remnant of their liver—
To me was Anna; dear as gold
That fills the miser’s sunless coffers;
As to the spinster, growing old,
The thought—the dream—that she had offers.
I’d sent her little gifts of fruit;
I’d written lines to her as Venus;
I’d sworn unflinchingly to shoot
The man who dared to come between us:
And it was you, my Thomas, you,
The friend in whom my soul confided,
Who dared to gaze on her—to do,
I may say, much the same as I did.
One night I saw him squeeze her hand;
There was no doubt about the matter;
I said he must resign, or stand
My vengeance—and he chose the latter.
We met, we ‘planted’ blows on blows:
We fought as long as we were able:
My rival had a bottle-nose,
And both my speaking eyes were sable.
When the school-bell cut short our strife,
Miss P. gave both of us a plaster;
And in a week became the wife
Of Horace Nibbs, the writing-master.
* * *
I loved her then—I’d love her still,
Only one must not love Another’s:
But thou and I, my Tommy, will,
When we again meet, meet as brothers.
It may be that in age one seeks
Peace only: that the blood is brisker
In boy’s veins, than in theirs whose cheeks
Are partially obscured by whisker;
Or that the growing ages steal
The memories of past wrongs from us.
But this is certain—that I feel
Most friendly unto thee, oh Thomas!
And wheresoe’er we meet again,
On this or that side the equator,
If I’ve not turned teetotaller then,
And have wherewith to pay the waiter,
To thee I’ll drain the modest cup,
Ignite with thee the mild Havannah;
And we will waft, while liquoring up,
Forgiveness to the heartless Anna.
“There Stands a City.”
Ingoldsby.
Year by year do Beauty’s daughters,
In the sweetest gloves and shawls,
Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,
And adorn the Chattenham balls.
‘Nulla non donanda lauru’
Is that city: you could not,
Placing England’s map before you,
Light on a more favoured spot.
If no clear translucent river
Winds ’neath willow-shaded paths,
“Children and adults” may shiver
All day in “Chalybeate baths:”
If “the inimitable Fechter”
Never brings the gallery down,
Constantly “the Great Protector”
There “rejects the British crown:”
And on every side the painter
Looks on wooded vale and plain
And on fair hills, faint and fainter
Outlined as they near the main.
There I met with him, my chosen
Friend—the ‘long’ but not ‘stern swell,’ [15a]
Faultless in his hats and hosen,
Whom the Johnian lawns know well:—
Oh my comrade, ever valued!
Still I see your festive face;
Hear you humming of “the gal you’d
Left behind” in massive bass:
See you sit with that composure
On the eeliest of hacks,
Manly limbs encased in wax:
Or anon,—when evening lent her
Tranquil light to hill and vale,—
Urge, towards the table’s centre,
With unerring hand, the squail.
Ah delectablest of summers!
How my heart—that “muffled drum”
Which ignores the aid of drummers—
Beats, as back thy memories come!
Oh, among the dancers peerless,
Fleet of foot, and soft of eye!
Need I say to you that cheerless
Must my days be till I die?
At my side she mashed the fragrant
Strawberry; lashes soft as silk
Drooped o’er saddened eyes, when vagrant
Gnats sought watery graves in milk:
Then we danced, we walked together;
Talked—no doubt on trivial topics;
Such as Blondin, or the weather,
Which “recalled us to the tropics.”
But—oh! in the deuxtemps peerless,
Fleet of foot, and soft of eye!—
Once more I repeat, that cheerless
Shall my days be till I die.
And the lean and hungry raven,
As he picks my bones, will start
To observe ‘M. N.’ engraven
Neatly on my blighted heart.
STRIKING.
It was a railway passenger,
And he lept out jauntilie.
“Now up and bear, thou stout portèr,
My two chattèls to me.
“Bring hither, bring hither my bag so red,
And portmanteau so brown:
(They lie in the van, for a trusty man
He labelled them London town:)
“And fetch me eke a cabman bold,
That I may be his fare, his fare;
And he shall have a good shilling,
If by two of the clock he do me bring
To the Terminus, Euston Square.”
“Now,—so to thee the saints alway,
Good gentleman, give luck,—
As never a cab may I find this day,
For the cabman wights have struck:
And now, I wis, at the Red Post Inn,
Or else at the Dog and Duck,
Or at Unicorn Blue, or at Green Griffin,
The nut-brown ale and the fine old gin
Right pleasantly they do suck.”
“Now rede me aright, thou stout portèr,
What were it best that I should do:
For woe is me, an I reach not there
Or ever the clock strike two.”
“I have a son, a lytel son;
Fleet is his foot as the wild roebuck’s:
Give him a shilling, and eke a brown,
And he shall carry thy chattels down,
To Euston, or half over London town,
On one of the station trucks.”
Then forth in a hurry did they twain fare,
The gent, and the son of the stout portèr,
Who fled like an arrow, nor turned a hair,
Through all the mire and muck:
“A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray:
For by two of the clock must I needs away.”
“That may hardly be,” the clerk did say,
“For indeed—the clocks have struck.”
VOICES OF THE NIGHT.
“The tender Grace of a day that is past.”
The dew is on the roses,
The owl hath spread her wing;
And vocal are the noses
Of peasant and of king:
“Nature” (in short) “reposes;”
But I do no such thing.
Pent in my lonesome study
Here I must sit and muse;
Sit till the morn grows ruddy,
Till, rising with the dews,
“Jeameses” remove the muddy
Spots from their masters’ shoes.
Yet are sweet faces flinging
Their witchery o’er me here:
I hear sweet voices singing
A song as soft, as clear,
As (previously to stinging)
A gnat sings round one’s ear.
Does Grace draw young Apollos
In blue mustachios still?
Does Emma tell the swallows
How she will pipe and trill,
When, some fine day, she follows
Those birds to the window-sill?
And oh! has Albert faded
From Grace’s memory yet?
Albert, whose “brow was shaded
By locks of glossiest jet,”
Whom almost any lady’d
Have given her eyes to get?
Does not her conscience smite her
For one who hourly pines,
Thinking her bright eyes brighter
Than any star that shines—
I mean of course the writer
Of these pathetic lines?
Who knows? As quoth Sir Walter,
“Time rolls his ceaseless course:
“The Grace of yore” may alter—
And then, I’ve one resource:
I’ll invest in a bran-new halter,
And I’ll perish without remorse.
LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.
Ere the morn the East has crimsoned,
When the stars are twinkling there,
(As they did in Watts’s Hymns, and
Made him wonder what they were:)
When the forest-nymphs are beading
Fern and flower with silvery dew—
My infallible proceeding
Is to wake, and think of you.
When the hunter’s ringing bugle
Sounds farewell to field and copse,
And I sit before my frugal
Meal of gravy-soup and chops:
When (as Gray remarks) “the moping
Owl doth to the moon complain,”
And the hour suggests eloping—
Fly my thoughts to you again.
May my dreams be granted never?
Must I aye endure affliction
Rarely realised, if ever,
In our wildest works of fiction?
Madly Romeo loved his Juliet;
Copperfield began to pine
When he hadn’t been to school yet—
But their loves were cold to mine.
Give me hope, the least, the dimmest,
Ere I drain the poisoned cup:
Tell me I may tell the chymist
Not to make that arsenic up!
Else, this heart shall soon cease throbbing;
And when, musing o’er my bones,
Travellers ask, “Who killed Cock Robin?”
They’ll be told, “Miss Sarah J—s.”
A, B, C.
A is an Angel of blushing eighteen:
B is the Ball where the Angel was seen:
C is her Chaperone, who cheated at cards:
D is the Deuxtemps, with Frank of the Guards:
E is the Eye which those dark lashes cover:
F is the Fan it peeped wickedly over:
G is the Glove of superlative kid:
H is the Hand which it spitefully hid:
I is the Ice which spent nature demanded:
J is the Juvenile who hurried to hand it:
K is the Kerchief, a rare work of art:
L is the Lace which composed the chief part.
M is the old Maid who watch’d the girls dance:
N is the Nose she turned up at each glance:
P is the Partner who wouldn’t keep time:
Q ’s a Quadrille, put instead of the Lancers:
R the Remonstrances made by the dancers:
S is the Supper, where all went in pairs:
T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs:
U is the Uncle who ‘thought we’d be going’:
V is the Voice which his niece replied ‘No’ in:
W is the Waiter, who sat up till eight:
X is his Exit, not rigidly straight:
Y is a Yawning fit caused by the Ball:
Z stands for Zero, or nothing at all.
TO MRS. GOODCHILD.
The night-wind’s shriek is pitiless and hollow,
The boding bat flits by on sullen wing,
And I sit desolate, like that “one swallow”
Who found (with horror) that he’d not brought spring:
Lonely as he who erst with venturous thumb
Drew from its pie-y lair the solitary plum.
And to my gaze the phantoms of the Past,
The cherished fictions of my boyhood, rise:
I see Red Ridinghood observe, aghast,
The fixed expression of her grandam’s eyes;
I hear the fiendish chattering and chuckling
Which those misguided fowls raised at the Ugly Duckling.
The House that Jack built—and the Malt that lay
Within the House—the Rat that ate the Malt—
The Cat, that in that sanguinary way
Punished the poor thing for its venial fault—
The Worrier-Dog—the Cow with Crumpled horn—
And then—ah yes! and then—the Maiden all forlorn!
O Mrs. Gurton—(may I call thee Gammer?)
Thou more than mother to my infant mind!
I loved thee better than I loved my grammar—
I used to wonder why the Mice were blind,
And who was gardener to Mistress Mary,
And what—I don’t know still—was meant by “quite contrary”?
“Tota contraria,” an “Arundo Cami”
Has phrased it—which is possibly explicit,
Ingenious certainly—but all the same I
Still ask, when coming on the word, ‘What is it?’
There were more things in Mrs. Gurton’s eye,
Mayhap, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
No doubt the Editor of ‘Notes and Queries’
Or ‘Things not generally known’ could tell
That word’s real force—my only lurking fear is
That the great Gammer “didna ken hersel”:
(I’ve precedent, yet feel I owe apology
For passing in this way to Scottish phraseology).
Alas, dear Madam, I must ask your pardon
For making this unwarranted digression,
Starting (I think) from Mistress Mary’s garden:—
And beg to send, with every expression
Of personal esteem, a Book of Rhymes,
For Master G. to read at miscellaneous times.
There is a youth, who keeps a ‘crumpled Horn,’
(Living next me, upon the selfsame story,)
And ever, ’twixt the midnight and the morn,
He solaces his soul with Annie Laurie.
The tune is good; the habit p’raps romantic;
But tending, if pursued, to drive one’s neighbours frantic.
And now,—at this unprecedented hour,
When the young Dawn is “trampling out the stars,”—
I hear that youth—with more than usual power
And pathos—struggling with the first few bars.
And I do think the amateur cornopean
Should be put down by law—but that’s perhaps Utopian.
Who knows what “things unknown” I might have “bodied
Forth,” if not checked by that absurd Too-too?
But don’t I know that when my friend has plodded
Through the first verse, the second will ensue?
Considering which, dear Madam, I will merely
Send the aforesaid book—and am yours most sincerely.
ODE—‘ON A DISTANT PROSPECT’ OF MAKING A FORTUNE.
Now the “rosy morn appearing”
Floods with light the dazzled heaven;
And the schoolboy groans on hearing
That eternal clock strike seven:—
Now the waggoner is driving
Towards the fields his clattering wain;
Now the bluebottle, reviving,
Buzzes down his native pane.
But to me the morn is hateful:
Wearily I stretch my legs,
Dress, and settle to my plateful
Of (perhaps inferior) eggs.
Yesterday Miss Crump, by message,
Mentioned “rent,” which “p’raps I’d pay;”
And I have a dismal presage
That she’ll call, herself, to-day.
Once, I breakfasted off rosewood,
Smoked through silver-mounted pipes—
Then how my patrician nose would
Turn up at the thought of “swipes!”
Ale,—occasionally claret,—
Graced my luncheon then:—and now
I drink porter in a garret,
To be paid for heaven knows how.
When the evening shades are deepened,
And I doff my hat and gloves,
No sweet bird is there to “cheep and
Twitter twenty million loves:”
No dark-ringleted canaries
Sing to me of “hungry foam;”
No imaginary “Marys”
Call fictitious “cattle home.”
Araminta, sweetest, fairest!
Solace once of every ill!
How I wonder if thou bearest
Mivins in remembrance still!
If that Friday night is banished
Yet from that retentive mind,
When the others somehow vanished,
And we two were left behind:—
When in accents low, yet thrilling,
I did all my love declare;
Mentioned that I’d not a shilling—
Hinted that we need not care:
And complacently you listened
To my somewhat long address—
(Listening, at the same time, isn’t
Quite the same as saying Yes).
Once, a happy child, I carolled
O’er green lawns the whole day through,
Not unpleasingly apparelled
In a tightish suit of blue:—
What a change has now passed o’er me!
Now with what dismay I see
Every rising morn before me!
Goodness gracious, patience me!
And I’ll prowl, a moodier Lara,
Through the world, as prowls the bat,
And habitually wear a
Cypress wreath around my hat:
And when Death snuffs out the taper
Of my Life, (as soon he must),
I’ll send up to every paper,
“Died, T. Mivins; of disgust.”
ISABEL.
Now o’er the landscape crowd the deepening shades,
And the shut lily cradles not the bee;
The red
And faint the echoes of the slumberous sea:
And ere I rest, one prayer I’ll breathe for thee,
The sweet Egeria of my lonely dreams:
Lady, forgive, that ever upon me
Thoughts of thee linger, as the soft starbeams
Linger on Merlin’s rock, or dark Sabrina’s streams.
On gray Pilatus once we loved to stray,
And watch far off the glimmering roselight break
O’er the dim mountain-peaks, ere yet one ray
Pierced the deep bosom of the mist-clad lake.
Oh! who felt not new life within him wake,
And his pulse quicken, and his spirit burn—
(Save one we wot of, whom the cold did make
Feel “shooting pains in every joint in turn,”)
When first he saw the sun gild thy green shores, Lucerne?
And years have past, and I have gazed once more
On blue lakes glistening beneath mountains blue;
And all seemed sadder, lovelier than before—
For all awakened memories of you.
Oh! had I had you by my side, in lieu
Of that red matron, whom the flies would worry,
(Flies in those parts unfortunately do,)
Who walked so slowly, talked in such a hurry,
And with such wild contempt for stops and Lindley Murray!
O Isabel, the brightest, heavenliest theme
That ere drew dreamer on to poësy,
Since “Peggy’s locks” made Burns neglect his team,
And Stella’s smile lured Johnson from his tea—
I may not tell thee what thou art to me!
But ever dwells the soft voice in my ear,
Whispering of what Time is, what Man might be,
Would he but “do the duty that lies near,”
And cut clubs, cards, champagne, balls, billiard-rooms, and beer.
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.
LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.
Darkness succeeds to twilight:
Through lattice and through skylight
The stars no doubt, if one looked out,
Might be observed to shine:
And sitting by the embers
I elevate my members
On a stray chair, and then and there
Commence a Valentine.
Yea! by St. Valentinus,
Emma shall not be minus
What all young ladies, whate’er their grade is,
Expect to-day no doubt:
Emma the fair, the stately—
Whom I beheld so lately,
Smiling beneath the snow-white wreath
Which told that she was “out.”
Wherefore fly to her, swallow,
And mention that I’d “follow,”
And “pipe and trill,” et cetera, till
I died, had I but wings:
Say the North’s “true and tender,”
The South an old offender;
And hint in fact, with your well-known tact,
All kinds of pretty things.
Say I grow hourly thinner,
Simply abhor my dinner—
Tho’ I do try and absorb some viand
Each day, for form’s sake merely:
And ask her, when all’s ended,
And I am found extended,
With vest blood-spotted and cut carotid,
To think on Her’s sincerely.
“HIC VIR, HIC EST.”
Often, when o’er tree and turret,
Eve a dying radiance flings,
By that ancient pile I linger
Known familiarly as “King’s.”
And the ghosts of days departed
Rise, and in my burning breast
All the undergraduate wakens,
And my spirit is at rest.
What, but a revolting fiction,
Seems the actual result
Of the Census’s enquiries
Made upon the 15th ult.?
Still my soul is in its boyhood;
Nor of year or changes recks.
Though my scalp is almost hairless,
And my figure grows convex.
Backward moves the
And I’m numbered once again
With those noblest of their species
Called emphatically ‘Men’:
Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime,
Through the streets, with tranquil mind,
And a long-backed fancy-mongrel
Trailing casually behind:
Past the Senate-house I saunter,
Whistling with an easy grace;
Past the cabbage-stalks that carpet
Still the beefy market-place;
Poising evermore the eye-glass
In the light sarcastic eye,
Lest, by chance, some breezy nursemaid
Pass, without a tribute, by.
Once, an unassuming Freshman,
Through these wilds I wandered on,
Seeing in each house a College,
Under every cap a Don:
Each perambulating infant
Had a magic in its squall,
For my eager eye detected
Senior Wranglers in them all.
By degrees my education
Grew, and I became as others;
Learned to court delirium tremens
By the aid of Bacon Brothers;
Bought me tiny boots of Mortlock,
And colossal prints of Roe;
And ignored the proposition
That both time and money go.
Learned to work the wary dogcart
Artfully through King’s Parade;
Dress, and steer a boat, and sport with
Amaryllis in the shade:
Struck, at Brown’s, the dashing hazard;
Or (more curious sport than that)
Dropped, at Callaby’s, the terrier
Down upon the prisoned rat.
I have stood serene on Fenner’s
Ground, indifferent to blisters,
While the Buttress of the period
Bowled me his peculiar twisters:
Sung ‘We won’t go home till morning’;
Striven to part my backhair straight;
Drunk (not lavishly) of Miller’s
Old dry wines at 78:—
When within my veins the blood ran,
And the curls were on my brow,
I did, oh ye undergraduates,
Much as ye are doing now.
Wherefore bless ye, O beloved ones:—
Now unto mine inn must I,
Your ‘poor moralist,’ [51a] betake me,
In my ‘solitary fly.’
BEER.
In those old days which poets say were golden—
(Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves:
And, if they did, I’m all the more beholden
To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves,
Who talk to me “in language quaint and olden”
Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves,
Pans with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards,
And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds:)
In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette
(Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born.
They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet,
No fashions varying as the hues of morn.
Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate,
Sang hymns to Ceres (their John Barleycorn)
And danced unchaperoned, and laughed unchecked,
And were no doubt extremely incorrect.
Yet do I think their theory was pleasant:
And oft, I own, my ‘wayward fancy roams’
Back to those times, so different from the present;
When no one smoked cigars, nor gave At-homes,
Nor smote a billiard-ball, nor winged a pheasant,
Nor ‘did’ their hair by means of long-tailed combs,
Nor migrated to Brighton once a-year,
Nor—most astonishing of all—drank Beer.
No, they did not drink Beer, “which brings me to”
(As Gilpin said) “the middle of my song.”
Not that “the middle” is precisely true,
Or else I should not tax your patience long:
If I had said ‘beginning,’ it might do;
But I have a dislike to quoting wrong:
I was unlucky—sinned against, not sinning—
When Cowper wrote down ‘middle’ for ‘beginning.’
So to proceed. That abstinence from Malt
Has always struck me as extremely curious.
The Greek mind must have had some vital fault,
That they should stick to liquors so injurious—
(Wine, water, tempered p’raps with Attic salt)—
And not at once invent that mild, luxurious,
And artful beverage, Beer. How the digestion
Got on without it, is a startling question.
Had they digestions? and an actual body
Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on?
Were they abstract ideas—(like Tom Noddy
And Mr. Briggs)—or men, like Jones and Jackson?
Then Nectar—was that beer, or whiskey-toddy?
Some say the Gaelic mixture, I the Saxon:
I think a strict adherence to the latter
Might make some Scots less pigheaded, and fatter.
Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shews
That the real beverage for feasting gods on
Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose
And also to the palate, known as ‘Hodgson.’
I know a man—a tailor’s son—who rose
To be a peer: and this I would lay odds on,
(Though in his Memoirs it may not appear,)
That that man owed his rise to copious Beer.
O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsop, Bass!
Names that should be on every infant’s tongue!
Shall days and months and years and centuries pass,
And still your merits be unrecked, unsung?
Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass,
And wished that lyre could yet again be strung
Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her
Misguided sons that “the best drink was water.”
How would he now recant that wild opinion,
And sing—as would that I could sing—of you!
I was not born (alas!) the “Muses’ minion,”
I’m not poetical, not even blue:
And he (we know) but strives with waxen pinion,
Whoe’er he is that entertains the view
Of emulating Pindar, and will be
Sponsor at last to some now nameless sea.
Oh! when the green slopes of Arcadia burned
With all the lustre of the dying day,
And on Cithæron’s brow the reaper turned,
(Humming, of course, in his delightful way,
How Lycidas was dead, and how concerned
The Nymphs were when they saw his lifeless clay;
And how rock told to rock the dreadful story
That poor young Lycidas was gone to glory:)
What would that lone and labouring soul have given,
At that soft moment, for a pewter pot!
How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven,
And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot!
If his own grandmother had died unshriven,
In two short seconds he’d have recked it not;
Such power hath Beer. The heart which Grief hath canker’d
Hath one unfailing remedy—the Tankard.
Coffee is good, and so no doubt is cocoa;
Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen:
When
Was written, real Falernian winged the pen.
When a rapt audience has encored ‘Fra Poco’
Or ‘Casta Diva,’ I have heard that then
The Prima Donna, smiling herself out,
Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout.
But what is coffee, but a noxious berry,
Born to keep used-up Londoners awake?
What is Falernian, what is Port or Sherry,
But vile concoctions to make dull heads ache?
Nay stout itself—(though good with oysters, very)—
Is not a thing your reading man should take.
He that would shine, and petrify his tutor,
Should drink draught Allsop in its “native pewter.”
But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear—
A soft and silvery sound—I know it well.
Its tinkling tells me that a time is near
Precious to me—it is the Dinner Bell.
O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer,
Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:
Seared is (of course) my heart—but unsubdued
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.
I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen:
But on one statement I may safely venture;
That few of our most highly gifted men
Have more appreciation of the trencher.
I go. One pound of British beef, and then
What Mr. Swiveller called a “modest quencher;”
That home-returning, I may ‘soothly say,’
“Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.”