Identity

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 Cock,
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,

(A painting by Whistler.)

A thing of flesh and blood? Not so!
Yet what you are I do not know.
A paper sword? A pasteboard flame?
Ah no, I cannot find the name!

Whate'er you are, 'tis not of earth,
Nor did high Heaven give you birth;
A marionette your mother? Well
But you were sired by Ariel!

        ah quoties dubies Scriptis exarsit amator.
        OVID.


The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice that thrilled the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
    Hath fired thy blood or flusht thy brow,
"Lover of Liberty, rouse thee now!"

The Benthamite yawning left his bed--
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of Greece so high,
That it fired his blood, it flusht his eye,
And oh! 'twas a sight for the Ghost to see,
For never was Greek more Greek than he!
And still as the premium higher went,
His ecstasy rose--so much per cent.
(As we see in a glass that tells the weather
The heat and the silver rise together,)
And ...

When I have noticed how man acts at times, and how, in a thousand ways, he comports himself just as the lower animals do, I have often said to myself that the lord of these lower orders has no fewer faults than his subjects.

Nature has allowed every living thing a drop or two from the fount at which the spirits of all creatures imbibe.

I will prove what I say.

If at the hour when night has scarcely passed and day hardly begun I climb into a tree, on the edge of some wood, and, like a new Jupiter from the heights of Olympus, I send a shot at some unsuspecting rabbit, then the whole colony of rabbits, who were enjoying their thyme-scented meal with open eyes and listening ears upon the heath, immediately scamper away. The report sends them all to seek refuge in their subterranean city.

But their g...

Sweet are my Julia's lips and clean,
As if o'erwashed in Hippocrene.

Little Miss Brag has much to say
To the rich little lady from over the way
And the rich little lady puts out a lip
As she looks at her own white, dainty slip,
And wishes that she could wear a gown
As pretty as gingham of faded brown!
For little Miss Brag she lays much stress
On the privileges of a gingham dress -
"Aha,
Oho!"

The rich little lady from over the way
Has beautiful dolls in vast array;
Yet she envies the raggedy home-made doll
She hears our little Miss Brag extol.
For the raggedy doll can fear no hurt
From wet, or heat, or tumble, or dirt!
Her nose is inked, and her mouth is, too,
And one eye's black and the other's blue -
"Aha,
Oho!"

The rich little lady goes out to ride
With footmen standing up outside,
Y...

Beneath the surface of a shallow lake,
Where grasses rank and mammoth rushes grow,
And playful fish their bright fins nimbly shake,
Or madly chase each other to and fro,
The larva of the dragon-fly submerged,
In family large, had taken their abode,
And tho' the waves around them daily surged,
Upon the bending grass they safely rode.

Content were they with life as there enjoyed;
To brighter world they never had aspired,
Had they not felt unfilled an aching void,
And heard a whisper of a life attired
In sapphire robes, 'midst gleams of golden light,
Above their present world, so dank and chill,
Where all day long they wing their happy flight
From roses sweet to lovely daffodil.

But some essayed to doubt if it were so.
Who ever had returned to ma...

Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but give relief
To the lank stranger and the sour swain,
Where both may feed and come again;
For no black-bearded Vigil from thy door
Beats with a button'd-staff the poor;
But from thy warm love-hatching gates, each may
Take friendly morsels, and there stay
To sun his thin-clad members, if he likes;
For thou no porter keep'st who strikes.
No comer to thy roof his guest-rite wants;...

Awm sittin o' that old stooan seeat,
Wheear last aw set wi' thee;
It seems long years sin' last we met,
Awm sure it must be three.

Awm wond'rin what aw sed or did,
Or what aw left undone:
'At made thi hook it, an' get wed,
To one tha used to shun.

Aw dooant say awm a handsom chap,
Becoss aw know awm net;
But if aw wor 'ith' mind to change,
He isn't th' chap, aw'll bet.

Awm net a scoller, but aw know
A long chawk moor ner him;
It couldn't be his knowledge box
'At made thi change thi whim.

He doesn't haddle as mich brass
As aw do ivery wick:
An' if he gets a gradely shop,
It's seldom he can stick.

An' then agean, - he goes on th' rant;
Nah, that aw niver do; -
Aw allus mark misen content,
Wi' an od...

There’s a fellow on the station
(He dropped in on a call,
Just casual to stay a pleasant week),
He’s a banker’s near relation,
Strongly built, and very tall,
Not altogether destitute of cheek;
He’s a descent judge of whisky,
And the hardest working youth
Who ever played a polo on a cob;
His anecdotes are risky,
And to tell the honest truth,
He’s waiting here until he gets a job.

He’s waiting, as I mention,
And whene’er he says his prayers,
Which he doesn’t do as frequently as some,
And I fear that his intention
Isn’t quite so good as theirs
For he prays to God the work may never come.
He marches with the banner
Of the noble unemployed,
He mixes with the fashionable mob,
But while he’s got a tanner
He scorns to be decoyed

Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!

Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;

We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers
Our ploughs their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.

We dropped the seed o’er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.

All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
A...

[21]


No trophy this - a Stone unhewn,
And stands where here the field immures
The nameless brave whose palms are won.
Outcast they sleep; yet fame is nigh -
Pure fame of deeds, not doers;
Nor deeds of men who bleeding die
In cheer of hymns that round them float:
In happy dreams such close the eye.
But withering famine slowly wore,
And slowly fell disease did gloat.
Even Nature's self did aid deny;
They choked in horror the pensive sigh.
Yea, off from home sad Memory bore
(Though anguished Yearning heaved that way),
Lest wreck of reason might befall.
As men in gales shun the lee shore,
Though there the homestead be, and call,
And thitherward winds and waters sway -
As such lorn mariners, so fared they.
But naught shall now their ...

SHOWING THE CRUELTY OF A JEW'S DAUGHTER


Four and twenty bonny boys
Were playing at the ba',
And up it stands him sweet Sir Hugh,
The flower among them a'.

He kicked the ba' there wi' his foot,
And keppit it wi' his knee,
Till even in at the Jew's window
He gart the bonny ba' flee.

"Cast out the ba' to me, fair maid,
Cast out the ba' to me."
"Never a bit," says the Jew's daughter,
Till ye come up to me."

"Come up, sweet Hugh, come up, dear Hugh,
Come up and get the ba'."
"I winna come, I mayna come,
Without my bonny boys a'."

She's ta'en her to the Jew's garden,
Where the grass grew lang and green,
She's pu'd an apple red and white,
To wyle the bonny boy in.

She's wyled him in through ae chamber...

Rapt above earth by power of one fair face,
Hers in whose sway alone my heart delights,
I mingle with the blest on those pure heights
Where Man, yet mortal, rarely finds a place.
With Him who made the Work that Work accords
So well, that by its help and through his grace
I raise my thoughts, inform my deeds and words,
Clasping her beauty in my soul's embrace.
Thus, if from two fair eyes mine cannot turn,
I feel how in their presence doth abide
Light which to God is both the way and guide;
And, kindling at their lustre, if I burn,
My noble fire emits the joyful ray
That through the realms of glory shines for aye.

I remarked that man is saddest, and his heart is filled with woe,
When he hasn’t any money, and his pants begin to go;
But I think I was mistaken, and there are many times I find
When you do not care a candle if your pants are gone behind;
For a fellow mostly loses all ambition, hope, and pride,
When, to put the matter mildly, he is bad in his inside.

Bobby Burns was down on toothache, and it troubled him no doubt;
But you know a man can always have a molar taken out,
And be all right then, excepting for the duller pain that comes
To the hollow that is lying like a gully in the gums.
But you can’t extract your innards, they must stay within your hide,
And you’ve got to moan and cuss it, when you’re bad in your inside.

You dunno what to take for it, you dunno what to d...

They meet to say farewell: Their way
Of saying this is hard to say.
He holds her hand an Instant, wholly
Distressed - and she unclasps it slowly,

He lends his gaze evasively
Over the printed page that she
Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder
Glimpsed from the lace-mists that infold her.

The clock, beneath its crystal cup,
Discreetly clicks"Quick! Act! Speak up!"
A tension circles both her slender
Wrists - and her raised eyes flash in splendor,

Even as he feels his dazzled own.
Then blindingly, round either thrown,
They feel a stress of arms that ever
Strain tremblingly - and "Never! Never!"

Is whispered brokenly, with half
A sob, like a belated laugh,
While cloyingly their blurred kiss closes,
Sweet as the dew's lip to the...

    Peg, peg, with a wooden leg,
        Her father was a miller:
    He tossed the dumpling at her head,
        And said he could not kill her.

When with a serious musing I behold
The grateful and obsequious marigold,
How duly every morning she displays
Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays;
How she observes him in his daily walk,
Still bending towards him her small slender stalk;
How when he down declines, she droops and mourns,
Bedewed, as 'twere with tears, till he returns;
And how she veils her flowers when he is gone,
As if she scornèd to be lookèd on
By an inferior eye; or did contemn
To wait upon a meaner light than him.
When this I meditate, methinks the flowers
Have spirits far more generous than ours,
And give us fair examples to despise
The servile fawnings and idolatries,
Wherewith we court these earthly things below,
Which merit not the service we bestow....