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    Ballads And Verses Vain


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      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

     

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