Drives half of us into the begging-trade:
If for taking to water you praise a duck,
For taking to beer why a man upbraid?
XIV.
The sermon’s over: they’re out of the porch,
And it’s time for me to move a leg;
But in general people who come from church,
And have called themselves sinners, hate chaps to beg.
I’ll wager they’ll all of ’em dine to-day!
I was easy half a minute ago.
If that isn’t pig that’s baking away,
May I perish!—we’re never contented—heigho!
Notes
1. Originally published in Once a Week on 30 March 1861, illustrated by Charles Keene (see fig. 7).
2. peat-fire: Peat is dried, decomposed plant matter, often used by the poor as fuel in place of wood or coal.
3. lucifer match: strikable, quick-burning match
4. scenting of lard: an early process of making perfume
5. heath: evergreen shrub with pink or purple flowers
6. tallowy: having the properties of tallow, a pale-yellow fat-based substance used to make candles and soap
7. Spider and Fly: preying on his customers like a spider would a fly
8. Cherubim!: angels
9. character: a letter of reference
10. a better sphere!: in heaven, likely
11. patch-breech: literally, one whose pants are patched; also a clown in Shakespeare’s Pericles, but doubtful the speaker would know that
The Patriot Engineer1
“Sirs! may I shake your hands?
My countrymen, I see!
I’ve lived in foreign lands
Till England’s Heaven to me.
A hearty shake will do me good,
And freshen up my sluggish blood.”
Into his hard right hand we struck,
Gave the shake, and wish’d him luck.
“—From Austria I come,
An English wife to win, 10
And find an English home,
And live and die therein.
Great Lord! how many a year I’ve pined
To drink old ale and speak my mind!”
. . .
Loud rang our laughter, and the shout
Hills round the Meuse-boat2 echoed about.
“—Ay, no offense: laugh on,
Young gentlemen: I’ll join.
Had you to exile gone,
Where free speech is base coin, 20
You’d sigh to see the jolly nose
Where Freedom’s native liquor flows!”
He this time the laughter led,
Dabbing his oily bullet head.
“—Give me, to suit my moods,
An ale-house on a heath,
I’ll hand the crags and woods
To B’elzebub3 beneath.
A fig for scenery! what scene
Can beat a Jackass on a green?” 30
Gravely he seem’d, with gaze intense,
Putting the question to common sense.
“—Why, there’s the ale-house bench:
The furze-flower4 shining round:
And there’s my waiting-wench,
As lissome5 as a hound.
With ‘hail Britannia!’ ere I drink,
I’ll kiss her with an artful wink.”
. . .
Fair flash’d the foreign landscape while
Breath’d we thus our native Isle. 40
“—The geese may swim hard-by;
They gabble, and you talk:
You’re sure there’s not a spy
To mark your name with chalk.
My heart’s an oak, and it won’t grow
In flower-pots, foreigners must know.”
Pensive he stood: then shook his head
Sadly; held out his fist, and said:
“—You’ve heard that Hungary’s floor’d?
They’ve got her on the ground. 50
A traitor broke her sword:6
Two despots7 hold her bound.
I’ve seen her gasping her last hope:
I’ve seen her sons strung up b’ the rope.
“Nine gallant gentlemen
In Arad they strung up!8
I work’d in peace till then:—
That poison’d all my cup.
A smell of corpses haunted me:
My nostril sniff’d like life for sea. 60
“Take money for my hire
From butchers?—not the man!
I’ve got some natural fire,
And don’t flash in the pan;—
A few ideas I reaveal’d:—
’Twas well old England stood my shield!
“Said I, ‘The Lord of Hosts
Have mercy on your land!
I see those dangling ghosts,—
And you may keep command, 70
And hang, and shoot, and have your day:
They hold your bill, and you must pay.
“‘You’ve sent them where they’re strong,
You carrion Double-Head!
I hear them sound a gong
In Heaven above!’—I said.
My God, what feathers won’ you moult
For this! says I: and then I bolt.9
“The Bird’s a beastly Bird,
And what is more, a fool. 80
I shake hands with the herd
That flock beneath his rule.
They’re kindly; and their land is fine.
I thought it rarer once than mine.
“And rare would be its lot,
But that he baulks its powers:
It’s just an earthen pot
For hearts of oak like ours.
Think! think!—four days from those frontiers,
And I’m a-head full fifty years. 90
“It tingles to your scalps,
To think of it, my boys!
Confusion on their Alps,
And all their baby toys!
The mountains Britain boasts are men:
And scale you them, my brethren!”
Cluck, went his tongue; his fingers, snap.
Britons were proved all heights to cap.
And we who worshipp’d crags,
Where purple splendours burn’d, 100
Our idol saw in rags,
And right about were turn’d.
Horizons rich with trembling spires
On violet twilights, lost their fires.
And heights where morning wakes
With one cheek over snow;—
And iron-wallëd lakes
Where sits the white moon low;—
For us on youthful travel bent,
The robing picturesque was rent. 110
Wherever Beauty show’d
The wonders of her face,
This man his Jackass rode,
Despotic in the place.
Fair dreams of our enchanted life,
Fled fast from his shrill island fife.
And yet we liked him well;
We laugh’d with honest hearts:—
He shock’d some inner spell,
And rous’d discordant parts. 120
We echoed what we half abjured;
And hating, smilingly endured.
. . .
Moreover, could we be
To our dear land disloyal?
And were not also we
Of History’s blood-Royal?
We glow’d to think how donkeys graze
In England, thrilling at their brays.
For there a man may view
An aspect more sublime 130
Than Alps against the blue:—
The morning eyes of Time!
The very Ass participates
The glory Freedom radiates!
Notes
1. Originally published in Once a Week on 14 December 1861, illustrated by Charles Keene (see fig. 8).
2. Meuse: a river that flows through France, Belgium, and the Neth
erlands before emptying into the North Sea
3. B’elzebub: the devil
4. furze-flower: yellow flowers of the evergreen furze shrub
5. lissome: limber
6. You’ve heard . . . sword: The engineer refers to the Magyar revolt of 1849, when the Magyars, an ethnic group native to Hungary, took on both Austrian and Russian forces as part of an ongoing revolution and bid for independence; the traitor was Arthur Gyorgy, a Magyar general who commanded the Magyars’ surrender to the Russians.
7. Two despots: Austria and Russia
8. Nine . . . strung up!: Army leaders of the revolution were executed by the Austrians in Arad.
9. I bolt: The engineer leaves the mercenary forces.
Poems and Ballads
Cassandra1
I.
Captive on a foreign shore,
Far from Ilion’s2 hoary wave,
Agamemnon’s bridal slave
Speaks futurity no more:
Death is busy with her grave.
II.
Thick as water, bursts remote
Round her ears the alien din,
While her little sullen chin
Fills the hollows of her throat:
Silent lie her slaughter’d kin.
III.
Once, to many a pealing shriek,
Lo, from Ilion’s topmost tower,
Ilion’s fierce prophetic flower3
Cried the coming of the Greek!
Black in Hades4 sits the hour.
IV.
Eyeing phantoms of the Past,
Folded like a prophet’s scroll,
In the deep’s long shoreward roll
Here she sees the anchor cast:
Backward moves her sunless soul.5
V.
Chieftains, brethren of her joy,
Shades, the white light in their eyes
Slanting to her lips, arise,
Crowding quick the plains of Troy:
Now they tell her not she lies.
VI.
O the bliss upon the plains
Where the joining heroes clash’d
Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
Challeng’d with hot chariot-reins
Gods!—they glimmer ocean-wash’d.
VII.
Alien voices round the ships,
Thick as water, shouting Home,
Argives,6 pale as midnight foam,
Wax before her awful lips:
White as stars that front the gloom.
VIII.
Like a torch-flame that by day
Up the daylight twists, and, pale,
Catches air in leaps that fail,
Crush’d by the inveterate ray,
Through her shines the Ten-Years’ Tale!7
IX.
Once, to many a pealing shriek,
Lo, from Ilion’s topmost tower,
Ilion’s fierce prophetic flower
Cried the coming of the Greek!
Black in Hades sits the hour.
X.
Still upon her sunless soul,
Gleams the narrow hidden space
Forward, where her fiery race
Falters on its ashen goal:
Still the Future strikes her face.
XI.
See, towards the conqueror’s car
Step the purple Queen8 whose hate
Wraps red-armed her royal mate
With his Asian tempest-star:
Now Cassandra views her Fate.
XII.
King of men! the blinded host
Shout:—she lifts her brooding chin:
Glad along the joyous din
Smiles the grand majestic ghost:9
Clytemnestra leads him in.
XIII.
Lo, their smoky limbs aloof,
Shadowing Heaven and the seas,
Fates and Furies, tangling Threes,
Tear and mix above the roof:
Fates and fierce Eumenides.10
XIV.
Is the prophetess with rods
Beaten, that she writhes in air?
With the gods who never spare,
Wrestling with the unsparing gods,
Lone, her body struggles there.
XV.
Like the snaky torch-flame white,
Levell’d as aloft it twists,—
She, with soaring arms, and wrists
Drooping, struggles with the light,
Helios, bright above all mists!
XVI.
In his orb she sees the tower,
Dusk against its flaming rims,
Where of old her wretched limbs
Twisted with the stolen power:
Ilion all the lustre dims!
XVII.
O the bliss upon the plains,
Where the joining heroes clash’d
Shield and spear, and, unabash’d,
Challenged with hot chariot-reins
Gods!—they glimmer ocean-wash’d.
XVIII.
Thrice the sun-god’s name she calls;
Shrieks the deed that shames the sky;11
Like a fountain leaping high,
Falling as a fountain falls:
Lo, the blazing wheels go by!
XIX.
Captive on a foreign shore,
Far from Ilion’s hoary wave,
Agamemnon’s bridal slave
Speaks Futurity no more:
Death is busy with her grave.
Notes
1. In Greek mythology, Cassandra of Troy is cursed by Apollo to predict the future but have no one believe her prophesies. Daughter to King Priam and Queen Hecuba, Cassandra is taken to Argos by King Agamemnon as his concubine after Troy is captured by the Greeks and set on fire. Dante Gabriel Rossetti composed a drawing (see fig. 9), which, though difficult to date exactly, was likely inspired by Meredith’s poem.
2. Ilion’s: Troy’s
3. Ilion’s . . . flower: clearly a reference to Cassandra’s powers of prophesy, but perhaps also a gesture toward Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (the first play of the Oresteia), in which Agamemnon describes Cassandra as “the finest flower of all our loot” (line 955)
4. Hades: the kingdom of the underworld that bears its ruler’s name
5. Backward . . . soul: Apollo, the Greek god of light, music, poetry, and prophecy, is often identified with Helios, the charioteer of the sun. Deprived of Apollo’s protection, Cassandra’s soul moves “backward” and is “sunless.”
6. Argives: the inhabitants of Argos
7. Ten-Years’ Tale!: According to legend, the Trojan War lasted ten years.
8. towards the . . . Queen: In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Clytemnestra goads her husband into disrespecting the gods by walking with dirty feet upon expensive purple fabric as he enters the palace.
9. grand majestic ghost: Agamemnon, who is fated to be murdered by Clytemnestra for sacrificing their daughter to Artemis
10. Eumenides: the Furies, Greek gods of vengeance. In Aeschylus’s Eumenides—the third and final play of the Oresteia—the Eumenides punish Orestes for killing Clytemnestra, his mother.
11. Thrice . . . sky: Cassandra accurately predicts that both she and Agamemnon will be murdered by Clytemnestra; of course, she is not believed.
The Young Usurper
On my darling’s bosom
Has dropp’d a living rosy-bud,
Fair as brilliant Hesper1
Against the brimming flood.
She handles him,
She dandles2 him,
She fondles him and eyes him:
And if upon a tear he wakes,
With many a kiss she dries him:
She covets every move he makes, 10
And never enough can prize him.
Ah, the young Usurper!
I yield my golden throne:
Such angel bands attend his hands
To claim it for his own.
Notes
1. Hesper: the evening star (Ven
us when visible after sunset)
2. dandles: bounces gently on the knee
Margaret’s Bridal-Eve
I.
The old grey mother she thrumm’d on her knee:
There is a rose that’s ready;
And which of the handsome young men shall it be?
There’s a rose that’s ready for clipping.1
My daughter, come hither, come hither to me:
There is a rose that’s ready;
Come, point me your finger on him that you see:
There’s a rose that’s ready for clipping.
O mother, my mother, it never can be:
There is a rose that’s ready; 10
For I shall bring shame on the man marries me:
There’s a rose that’s ready for clipping.
Now let your tongue be deep as the sea;
There is rose that’s ready;
And the man’ll jump for you, right briskly will he:
There’s a rose that’s ready for clipping.
Tall Margaret wept bitterly;
There is a rose that’s ready;
And as her parent bade did she;
There’s a rose that’s ready for clipping. 20
O the handsome young man dropp’d down on his knee;
There is a rose that’s ready;
Pale Margaret gave him her hand, woe’s me!
There’s a rose that’s ready for clipping.
II.
O mother, my mother, this thing I must say,
There is a rose in the garden;
Ere he lies on the breast where that other lay:
And the bird sings over the roses.
Now, folly, my daughter, for men are men:
There is a rose in the garden;
You marry them blindfold, I tell you again:
And the bird sings over the roses.
O mother, but when he kisses me!
There is a rose in the garden; 10
My child, ’tis which shall sweetest be!
And the bird sings over the roses.
O mother, but when I awake in the morn!
There is a rose in the garden;
My child, you are his, and the ring is worn;
And the bird sings over the roses.
Tall Margaret sigh’d and loosen’d a tress;
There is a rose in the garden;
Poor comfort she had of her comeliness;
And the bird sings over the roses. 20
My mother will sink if this thing be said:
There is a rose in the garden;
That my first betrothed came thrice to my bed;
And the bird sings over the roses.
He died on my shoulder the third cold night;
There is a rose in the garden;
I dragged his body all through the moonlight;
And the bird sings over the roses.
But when I came by my father’s door;
Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads Page 11
