Lang, Andrew - Ballads And Verses Vain

by Ballads

  BALLADES AND VERSES VAIN

  BY

  ANDREW LANG

  AUTHOR OF "HELEN OF TROY "

  * Brattles, virelais, Ballades, and Verses vain."

  The Faerie Queene.

  NEW-YORK

  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  1884

  'HORARY

  CONTENTS.

  PAGE

  To the Reader . . . Austin Dobson . . vii.

  XXXVI.â BALLADES:

  Ballade Dedicatory 3

  Ballade of Literary Fame 5

  Ballade of Blue China j

  Ballade of the Book-hunter g

  Ballade to Theocritus 11

  Valentine in Form of Ballade 13

  Ballade of Summer 15

  Ballade of Autumn 17

  Ballade of Old Plays 19

  Ballade of Roulette 21

  Ballade of Fr^re Lubin 23

  Ballade of Queen Anne 25

  Ballade of Primitive Man 27

  Ballade of Sleep 29

  Ballade of Cleopatra's Needle 31

  Ballade of True Wisdom 33

  Ballade of the Muse 35

  Ballade for a Baby 37

  Ballade of his Own Country 39

  Ballade of the Tweed . 41

  Ballade of The Royal Game of Golf ... 43

  Ballade of the Midnight Forest 45

  Ballade of Cricket .47

  Ballade of The Book-man's Paradise . . . -49

  Ballade of Worldly Wealth 51

  Ballade of the May Term 53

  Ballade of Dead Cities 55

  Ballade of the Voyage to Cythera . . . .57

  Ballade of Life 59

  Ballade of ^^Esthetic Adjectives 61

  Ballade of Dead Ladies 63

  Ballade of Good Counsel 65

  Ballade Amoureuse 67

  Ballade against the Jesuits 69

  Ballade of Blind Love 71

  Ballade of his Choice of a Sepulchre ... 73

  Dizain . . . 6y A usiin Dobson . 75

  Almae Matres. . 79

  Nightingale Weather 82

  Colinette 84

  From the East to the West 86

  A Dream 87

  Twilight on Tweed 88

  A Sunset of Watteau 90

  Romance 92

  A Sunset on Yarrow ... . ... 93

  A Portrait of 1783 94

  The Barbarous Birds 97

  POST HOMERICA: page

  Hesperothen 103

  The Seekers for PHyEACiA 103

  The Departure from PnyEACiA 106

  A Ballad of Departure 108

  They Hear the Sirens for the Second Time . . 109

  Circe's Isle Revisited iii

  The Limit of Lands 113

  The Shade of Helen 115

  PisiDicE 117

  SONNETS :

  The Odyssey 121

  The Sirens , . 122

  Love's Easter 124

  Twilight 125

  BlON 126

  San Terenzo 127

  Natural Theology 128

  Homer 129

  Ronsard 130

  GERARD DE Nerval 131

  In Ithaca 132

  Dreams 133

  Homeric Unity 134

  Ideal 135

  TRANSLATIONS :

  Hymn to the Winds 139

  A Vow to Heavenly Venus 140

  Of his Lady's Old Age 145

  Shadows of his Lady 146

  Moonlight 147

  The Grave and the Rose 148

  The Birth of Butterflies 149

  An Old Tune 150

  Spring in the Student's Quarter .... 151

  Spring. (After Meleager.) 153

  Old Loves 154

  Iannoula 156

  The Milk White Doe 157

  A LA belle Hel^ne 160

  Burial of Moli^re 162

  Before the Snow 163

  The Cloud Chorus 164

  Laughter and song the poet brings.

  And lends them form and gives them â-wings;

  Then sets his chirping squadron Jree

  To post at luill by land or sea,

  Andjind their home, if that may be.

  Laughter and so7ig this poet, too,

  O l^estern brothers, sends to you :

  With dcubtjul flight the darting train

  Have crossed the bleak Atlantic main, â

  Novj luarm them in your hearts again !

  A. D.

  Mr. Austin Dobson has been so iindas to superintend

  the making of the following selectionfrom " Ballads

  and Lyrics of Old France" (1872), "Ballades in

  Blue China" (1880, 1881, 1883), and from verses

  previously unprinted or not collected.

  BALLADES,

  BALLADE DEDICATORY.

  TO

  MRS. ELTON

  OF WHITE STAUNTON.

  THE painted Briton built his mound,

  And left his celts and clay,

  On yon fair slope of sunlit ground

  That fronts your garden gay;

  The Roman came, he bore the sway,

  He bullied, bought, and sold.

  Your fountain sweeps his works away

  Beside your manor old !

  'BALLADES.

  But still his crumbling urns are found

  Within the window-bay,

  Where once he listened to the sound

  That lulls you day by day ; â

  The sound of summer winds at play,

  The noise of waters cold

  To Yarty wandering on their way.

  Beside your manor old !

  The Roman fell : his firm-set bound

  Became the Saxon's stay;

  The bells made music all around

  For monks in cloisters grey,

  Till fled the monks in disarray

  From their warm chantry's fold,

  The Abbots slumber as they may.

  Beside your manor old !

  ENVOY.

  Creeds, empires, peoples, all decay,

  Down into darkness, rolled ;

  May life that 's fleet be sweet, I pray,

  Beside your manor old !

  BALLADE OF LITERARY FAME.

  "All these for Fourpence."

  OH, where are the endless Romances

  Our grandmothers used to adore ?

  The Knights with their helms and their lances,

  Their shields and the favours they wore ?

  And the Monks with their magical lore ?

  They have passed to Oblivion and Nox,

  They have fled to the shadowy shore, â

  They are all in the Fourpenny Box !

  And where the poetical fancies

  Our fathers were fond of, of yore ?

  The lyric's melodious expanses.

  The Epics in cantos a score ?

  They have been and are not: no more

  Shall the shepherds drive silvery flocks,

  Nor the ladies their long words deplore, â

  They are all in the Fourpenny Box !

  ^/iLLADES.

  And the Music ! The songs and the dances ?

  The tunes that Time may not restore ?

  And the tomes where Divinity prances?

  And the pamphlets where Heretics roar ?

  They have ceased to be even a bore, â

  The Divine, and the Sceptic who mocks, â

  They are "cropped," they are "foxed" to the

  core, â

  They are all in the Fourpenny Box !

  Suns beat on them ; tempests downpour,

  On the chest without cover or locks,

  Where they lie by the Bo
okseller's door,-

  They are all in the Fourpenny Box !

  BALLADE OF BLUE CHINA.

  THERE 'S a joy without canker or cark,

  There 's a pleasure eternally new,

  'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark

  Of china that 's ancient and blue ;

  Unchipp'd, all the centuries through

  It has pass'd, since the chime of it rang,

  And they fashion'd it, figure and hue.

  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

  These dragons (their tails, you remark.

  Into bunches of gillyflowers grew), â

  When Noah came out of the ark,

  Did these lie in wait for his crew ?

  They snorted, they snapp'd, and they slew,

  They were mighty of fin and of fang,

  And their portraits Celestials drew

  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

  Here 's a pot with a cot in a park,

  In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,

  Where the lovers eloped in the dark.

  Lived, died, and were changed into two

  Bright birds that eternally flew

  Through the boughs of the may, as they sang;

  'T is a tale was undoubtedly true

  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

  Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do,

  Kind critic; your "tongue has a tang,"

  But â a sage never heeded a shrew

  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

  BALLADE OF THE BOOK-HUNTER.

  IN torrid heats of late July,

  In March, beneath the bitter bise,

  He book-hunts while the loungers fly, â

  He book-hunts, though December freeze ;

  In breeches baggy at the knees,

  And heedless of the public jeers.

  For these, for these, he hoards his fees, â

  Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

  No dismal stall escapes his eye.

  He turns o'er tomes of low degrees,

  There soiled romanticists may lie.

  Or Restoration comedies ;

  Each tract that flutters in the breeze

  For him is charged with hopes and fears,

  In mouldy novels fancy sees

  Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

  9

  "BALLADES.

  With restless eyes that peer and spy,

  Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees,

  In dismal nooks he loves to pry,

  Whose motto ever more is Spes /

  But ah ! the fabled treasure flees ;

  Grown rarer with the fleeting years,

  In rich men's shelves they take their ease, â

  Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs !

  ENVOY.

  Prince, all the things that tease and please, â

  Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears.

  What are they but such toys as these â -

  Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?

  BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER.

  â was the baking of Man, and his making ; but

  now he 's forsaking his Father, Pundjel !

  Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire,

  and to crown their desire who was found but the

  Wren ?

  *The Hawk, in tho myth of the Gnhnaineros of Central Califor-

  nia, lit up the Sun.

  t Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and "culture-hero"

  of several Australian tribes.

  tThe Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.

  VERSES y^lN.

  To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he

  flame, and for this has a name in the memory of

  men ! *

  And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men

  brought it through without falter or fail ?

  Why the Hawk 't was again, and great Indra to men

  would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,

  While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night,

  the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.f

  And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung's

  mead ? why 't is told in the creed of the Sagamen

  strong,

  'T was the Eagle god who brought the drink from the

  blue, and gave mortals the brew that 's the fountain

  of song.t

  Next, who gave men their laws ? and what reason or

  cause the young brave overawes when in need of a

  squaw,

  Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, and

  his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law ?

  * In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is

  the Prometheus Purphoros ; in Normandy this part is played by the

  Wren.

  t Yehl : the Raven God of the Thhnkeets.

  Indra stole Soma as a Hawk and as a Quail. For Odin's feat

  as a Bird, see Bragi's Telling in the Younger Edda.

  99