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 Bookseller's door,-
They are all in the Fourpenny Box !
&nb
sp; 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
VERSES VAIN.
For you still hold it wrong if a hcbm * belong to the