CENTONES OR MOSAICS.

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William T. Dobson

Of this formerly favourite amusement of the learned we give several examples, only noting here that the word “Cento” primarily signified a cloak made of patches.

1. I only knew she came and went,
2. Like troutlets in a pool;
3. She was a phantom of delight,
4. And I was like a fool.
5. One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed,
6. Out of those lips unshorn,
7. She shook her ringlets round her head
8. And laughed in merry scorn.
9. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
10. You heard them, O my heart;
11. ’Tis twelve at night by the castle clock,
12. Beloved, we must part.
13. “Come back, come back!” she cried in grief,
14. My eyes are dim with tears—
15. How shall I live through all the days?
16. All through a hundred years?
17. ’Twas in the prime of summer time,
18. She blessed me with her hand;
19. We strayed together, deeply blest,
20. Into the dreaming land.
21. The laughing bridal roses blow,
22. To dress her dark-brown hair;
23. My heart is breaking with my woe,
24. Most beautiful! most rare!
25. I clasped it on her sweet, cold hand,
26. The precious golden link!
27. I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
28. “Drink, pretty creature, drink!”
29. And so I won my Genevieve,
30. And walked in Paradise;
31. The fairest thing that ever grew
32. Atween me and the skies!

1. Powell; 2. Hood; 3. Wordsworth; 4. Eastman; 5. Coleridge; 6. Longfellow; 7. Stoddard; 8. Tennyson; 9. Tennyson; 10. Alice Cary; 11. Coleridge; 12. Alice Cary; 13. Campbell; 14. Bayard Taylor; 15. Osgood; 16. T. S. Perry; 17. Hood; 18. Hoyt; 19. Edwards; 20. Cornwall; 21. Patmore; 22. Bayard Taylor; 23. Tennyson; 24. Read; 25. Browning; 26. Smith; 27. Coleridge; 28. Wordsworth; 29. Coleridge; 30. Hervey; 31. Wordsworth; 32. Osgood.

The next appeared a short time ago in one of the Edinburgh newspapers, signed R. Fleming, and is a mosaic compilation from poems written to the memory of Robert Burns:

1. Immortal bard, immortal Burns!
2. Whose lines are mottoes of the heart;
3. Affection loves and memory learns
4. Thy songs “untaught by rules of art.”
5. For dear as life—as heaven—will be,
6. As years on years successive roll;
7. Fair types of thy rich harmony
8. Who wrote to humanise the soul.
9. His lyre was sweet, majestic, grand,
10. The pride and honour of the North;
11. His song was of bold freedom’s land,
12. Brave Scotland, freedom’s throne on earth.
13. Oft by the winding banks of Ayr;
14. With sinewy arm he turned the soil;
15. He painted Scotland’s daughters fair,
16. Through twilight shades of good and ill.
17. His native wild enchanting strains,
18. Like dear memories round the hearth,
19. Immortalise the poet’s name,
20. And few have won a greener wreath.
21. From John O’Groat’s to ’cross the Tweed
22. What heart hath ever matched his flame?
23. Though rough and dark the path he trod,
24. Long shall old Scotland keep his name.
25. Great master of our Doric rhyme,
26. Though here thy course was but a span;
27. The pealing rapturous notes sublime
28. Binds man with fellow-man.
29. Peace to the dead—in Scotia’s choir—
30. Yes, future bards shall pour the lay,
31. Warmed with a “spark of nature’s fire,”
32. While years insidious steal away.

1. Bennoch; 2. Campbell; 3. Imlach; 4. Gray; 5. Glen; 6. Paul; 7. M’Laggan; 8. Tannahill; 9. Glen; 10. Allan; 11. Gilfillan; 12. Park; 13. Wallace; 14. Roscoe; 15. Vedder; 16. Wordsworth; 17. Reid; 18. Glass; 19. Paul; 20. Halleck; 21. Macindoe; 22. Ainslie; 23. Halleck; 24. Kelly; 25. Gray; 26. Mercer; 27. Vedder; 28. Imlach; 29. Montgomery; 30. Gray; 31. Rushton; 32. Gilfillan.

The three following verses are very good:

1. When first I met thee, warm and young,
2. My heart I gave thee with my hand;
3. My name was then a magic spell,
4. Casting a dim religious light.
5. But now, as we plod on our way,
6. My heart no more with rapture swells;
7. I would not, if I could, be gay,
8. When earth is filled with cold farewells!
9. The heath this night must be my bed,
10. Ye vales, ye streams, ye groves, adieu?
11. Farewell for aye, e’en love is dead,
12. Would I could add, remembrance too!

1. Moore; 2. Morris; 3. Norton; 4. Milton; 5. Percival; 6. M’Naughton; 7. Rogers; 8. Patmore; 9. Scott; 10. Pope; 11. Procter; 12. Byron.

The following is copied from “Fireside Amusements,” published by the Messrs. Chambers, every line being taken from a different poet:

“On Linden when the sun was low,
A frog he would a-wooing go;
He sighed a sigh, and breathed a prayer,
None but the brave deserve the fair.

A gentle knight was pricking o’er the plain,
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow;
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
Or who would suffer being here below.
The younger of the sister arts
Was born on the open sea;
The rest were slain at Chevy Chase,
Under the greenwood tree.
At morn the blackcock trims his jetty wings,
And says—remembrance saddening o’er each brow—
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things!
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow!
It was a friar of orders gray,
Still harping on my daughter:
Sister spirit, come away,
Across this stormy water.
On the light fantastic toe,
Othello’s occupation’s gone;
Maid of Athens, ere I go,
Were the last words of Marmion.
There was a sound of revelry by night
In Thebes’ streets three thousand years ago;
And comely virgins came with garlands dight
To censure Fate, and pious Hope forgo.
Oh! the young Lochinvar came out of the west,
An underbred fine-spoken fellow was he;
A back dropping in, an expansion of chest,
Far more than I once could foresee.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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