Wind! a word with thee! thou goest where my Well-Preservéd lies

On her bed of bonny briers keeping off the wicked flies.

Thou shalt know her by th’ aroma of her bosom, which is musk,

And her ivories that glisten like an elephantine tusk.

9

Seek her coral-guarded tympanum and whisper “Poppinjai!”

And (referring to her lover) kindly add “A-lal-lal-lai!”

Breeze! thou knowest my condition; state it broadly, if you please,

In a smattering of Indo-Turco-Perso-Japanese.

Say my youth is flitting freely, and before the season goes

From the garden of my Tûtsi I am fain to pluck a rose.

Tell her I’m a wanton Sufí (what a Sufí really is

She may know, perhaps––I count it one of Allah’s mysteries).

Fly, O blessed Breeze, and hither bring me back the net result;

Fly as flies the rude mosquito from Abdullah’s catapult.

10

Fly as flies the rusty rickshaw of the Kurumayasan,

When he scents a Hippopotam down the groves of Gulistan.

Fly and cull, O cull, a section of my Pipkin’s purple tress;

Thou shalt find me drinking deeply with the Lords that rule the Mess;

Quaffing mead and mighty sodas with the Johnís, Lords of War,

Talking ‘jungle in the gun-room,’ underneath the deodar.

Hoo Tawâ! I go to join them; he that cometh late is curst,

For the Lords of War (by Akbar) have a most amazing thirst!

 Next I saw

A pensive gentleman of middle age,

That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe

Pendent beneath his chin––a double one––

(Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath,

For he had mingled in the Morris dance

And rested blown; but damsels in their teens,

All decorous and decorously clad,

Their very ankles hardly visible,

Recalled his motions; while, for chaperon,

Good Mrs. Grundy up against the wall

Beamed approbation.

 On his face I read

Signs of high sadness such as poets wear,

Being divinely discontented with

The praise of jeunes filles. Even as I looked,

He touched the portion of his pipe reserved

12

For minor poetry of solemn tone,

Checking the humorous stops intended for

Electioneering posters and the like;

And therewithal he made the following

Addition to his Songs Unsung, or else

His Unremarked Remarks:

 “Dear Sir,” he said,

“Excuse my saying ‘Sir’ like that; it is

Our way in Hades here among the damned;

For you must know that some of us are damned

Not only by faint praise but full applause

Of simple critics. Take my case. In me

Behold the good knight Marsyas, M.A.,

Three times a candidate for Parliament,

And twice retired; a Justice of the Peace;

Master of Arts (I said), and better known

In literary spheres as Master of

The Mediocre-Obvious; and read

By boarding-misses in their myriads.

These dote upon me. Sweetly have I sung

The commonplaces of philosophy

In common parlance.

13

 You have read perhaps

The Cymric Triads? Poetry, they say,

Excels alone by sheer simplicity

Of language, subject, and invention. Sir!

The excellence of mine lay that way too.

But fate is partial. Heaven’s fulgour moulds

‘To happiness some, some to unhappiness!’

(Look you, the harp was Welsh that figured forth

That excellent last line.) I ask you, Sir,

What would you? Ill content with mortal praise,

And haply somewhat overbold, I sought

To be as gods be; sought, in fact, to filch

Apollo’s bays!

 Ah me! Dear me! I fain

Would use a stronger phrase, but hardly dare,

Being, whatever else, respectable.

I say I tired of vulgar homage, gift

Of ignorance. ‘High failure overleaps

The bounds of low successes’ (there, again,

The harp that twanged was Welsh, but with an echo

Of Browning). Godlike it must be, I thought,

14

To climb the giddy brink; to pen, for instance,

An Ode to the Imperial Institute,

And fall, if bound to, from a decent height.

 I did and missed the laurel; still I go

On writing; what you hear just now is blank,

Distinctly blank, and might be measured by

The kilomètre; yet I rhyme as well

A little; but it takes a lot of time,

And checks the lapse of my pellucid stream

Not all conveniently.”

 Thereat he paused,

And wrung the moisture from his pipe; but I,

As one that was intolerably bored,

Took even this occasion to be gone;

And, going, marked him how he took his stile,

Polished the waxen tablets, and began

To make a Royal Pæan by request,

Or so he said.

Away by the haunts of the Yang-tse-boo,

 Where the Yuletide runs cold gin,

And the rollicking sign of the Lord Knows Who

 Sees mariners drink like sin;

Where the Jolly Roger tips his quart

 To the luck of the Union Jack;

And some are screwed on the foreign port,

 And some on the starboard tack;––

Ever they tell the tale anew

 Of the chase for the kipperling swag;

How the smack Tommy This and the smack Tommy That

They broached each other like a whiskey-vat,

 And the Fuzzy-Wuz took the bag.

16

Now this is the law of the herring fleet that harries the northern main,

Tattooed in scars on the chests of the tars with a brand like the brand of Cain:

That none may woo the sea-born shrew save such as pay their way

With a kipperling netted at noon of night and cured ere the crack of day.

It was the woman Sal o’ the Dune, and the men were three