WRITTEN UPON LOVE"S FRONTIER-POST.
(From "Troy Town".)
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.
t.i.tANIA.
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 c.o.c.k, 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.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
By O--r K--m.
Wake! for the closed Pavilion doors have kept Their silence while the white-eyed Kaffir slept, And wailed the Nightingale with "Jug, jug, jug!"
Whereat, for empty cup, the White Rose wept.
Enter with me where yonder door hangs out Its Red Triangle to a world of drought, Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn, Where Death, Aladdin, waits as Chuckerout.
Methought, last night, that one in suit of woe Stood by the Tavern-door and whispered, "Lo, The Pledge departed, what avails the Cup?
Then take the Pledge and let the Wine-cup go."
But I: "For every thirsty soul that drains This Anodyne of Thought its rim contains-- Free-will the _can_, Necessity the _must_, Pour off the _must_, and, see, the _can_ remains.
"Then, pot or gla.s.s, why label it "_With Care_"?
Or why your Sheepskin with my Gourd compare?
Lo! here the Bar and I the only Judge:-- O, Dog that bit me, I exact an hair!"
We are the Sum of things, who jot our score With Caesar"s clay behind the Tavern door: And Alexander"s armies--where are they, But gone to Pot--that Pot you push for more?
And this same Jug I empty, could it speak, Might whisper that itself had been a Beak And dealt me Fourteen Days "without the Op."-- Your Worship, see, my lip is on your cheek.
Yourself condemned to three score years and ten, Say, did you judge the ways of other men?
Why, now, sir, you are hourly filled with wine, And has the clay more licence now than then?
Life is a draught, good sir; its brevity Gives you and me our measures, and thereby Has docked your virtue to a tankard"s span, And left of my criterion--a Cri"!
RETROSPECTION.
After C. S. C.
When the hunter-star Orion (Or, it may be, Charles his Wain) Tempts the tiny elves to try on All their little tricks again; When the earth is calmly breathing Draughts of slumber undefiled, And the sire, unused to teething, Seeks for errant pins his child;
When the moon is on the ocean, And our little sons and heirs From a natural emotion Wish the luminary theirs; Then a feeling hard to stifle, Even harder to define, Makes me feel I "d give a trifle For the days of Auld Lang Syne.
James--for we have been as brothers (Are, to speak correctly, twins), Went about in one another"s Clothing, bore each other"s sins, Rose together, ere the pearly Tint of morn had left the heaven, And retired (absurdly early) Simultaneously at seven--
James, the days of yore were pleasant.
Sweet to climb for alien pears Till the irritated peasant Came and took us unawares; Sweet to devastate his chickens, As the ambush"d catapult Scattered, and the very d.i.c.kens Was the natural result;
Sweet to snare the thoughtless rabbit; Break the next-door neighbour"s pane; Cultivate the smoker"s habit On the not-innocuous cane; Leave the exercise unwritten; Systematically cut Morning school, to plunge the kitten In his bath, the water-b.u.t.t.
Age, my James, that from the cheek of Beauty steals its rosy hue, Has not left us much to speak of: But "tis not for this I rue.
Beauty with its thousand graces, Hair and tints that will not fade, You may get from many places Practically ready-made.
No; it is the evanescence Of those lovelier tints of Hope-- Bubbles, such as adolescence Joys to win from melted soap-- Emphasizing the conclusion That the dreams of Youth remain Castles that are An delusion (Castles, that"s to say, in Spain).
Age thinks "fit," and I say "fiat."
Here I stand for Fortune"s b.u.t.t, As for Sunday swains to shy at Stands the stoic coco-nut.
If you wish it put succinctly, Gone are all our little games; But I thought I "d say distinctly What I feel about it, James.
WHY THIS VOLUME IS SO THIN.
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.