A DEDICATION FOR THE ‘SHROPSHIRE LAD’
TO ALL THE GRAVEDIGGERS BETWEEN
LUDLOW TOWN AND HUGHLEY
A SONG IN THE MANNER OF MR WALTER DE LA MARE GO-AS-YOU-PLEASE ONCE on a summer’s night
Go-as-you-please
Saw fifty-nine witches
Sat in the trees.
Ghastly wet moon-faces
Puckered and peered;
Blind things in the darkness
Gibbered and jeered;
And ev’ry witch-woman there
Wagged a thin beard.
Each had an evil dream
Under her hood;
All spinning a witch-web
Redder than blood
Across the dim spaces
Near where he stood.
Their moonish old gabblement
Loosened his knees,
Down on his face fell
Go-as-you-please.
Now ev’ry summer’s night,
Go-as-you-please ’ll
Sing to the crazy moon
‘Pop goes the weazel.’
‘Æ’: THE INEFFABLE SPLENDOUR OF THINGUMBOB THROUGH the pearl-grey heart of twilight, lit with amethyst and gold,
We beheld the mystic Thingumbob, in visions fold on fold;
And the Ages bowed before him as he passed the glimmering deep;
We renewed our ancient beauty and arose from dewy sleep.
Where the starry thrones grew brighter as the heights were touched with flame,
High above a million faces burned the crown of What’s-his-Name.
In what ivory-towered city, in what thronged and radiant street,
Shall we see through mists of violet the shining Feet of Feet?
Not the lily nor the lotus but the crimson flow’r of Pain
Blossoms now to lead the spirit to the Light of Lights again;
Now the bard of faery song and rune is set down as a bore,
Far from Babylon and Sackville Street and boggy Carrowmore;
Gods and heroes flee before us in a reeling fiery rout;
Earth grows faint and hungry-hearted now as dream on dream fades out;
And the dim blue reader wonders what the poem is all about.
SIR WM WATSON: ON RECEIVING
AN ÉDITION-DE-LUXE OF ELLA
WHEELER WILCOX A QUEENLY gift that wears a regal dress
Of wine-flushed velvet blazoned with fine gold;
Sumptuous these lettered heralds that remain
Without the hall, bidding us enter there,
Proclaiming puissant titles for their queen;
More sumptuous still, the largesse and the feast
Of poesie within. Here in this Isle,
Where once were mighty poets, we have but known
A fugitive or sterile muse of late:
Across the sundering floods and leagues of foam,
On younger peoples in a riper clime
There falls no blight of song, but in full tide
Of passion, poets have blossomed year by year.
And greatest among these, O Wilcox, thou!
Song lived again in thee: no single note
Of human bliss or woe that did not come
Unto thy tutored and melodious tongue
And swell thy opulence of rhyme.
Shall we, who share a common speech, forget
Thy guerdon? Nay, not Tupper’s beaten gold,
Nor Mistress Hemans, that white garden rose
Of song, nor Bulwer Lytton’s mystic peaks
Of thought, nor Morris (Lewis of that name)
With all his large discourse and epic strain,
Shall move us more in the dark days to come.
PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY: FROM THE HISTORY OF THE THREE BLIND MICE (PERIODS OF EUROPEAN NONSENSE) COMING to the conclusion of the whole matter, the present writer, who has more than once gone over all that has been written on the subject—with the exception of some things in Romansch and Czech—while he has been engaged on this task, must refuse to discuss at length the motives of the mice or the far-reaching results to their seemingly (though not to the literary critic or historian who has adopted the comparative method) eccentric and ill-timed trick of ‘running after,’ both of which have engaged the attention of some very excellent persons to the exclusion of all other aspects of the problem. Whoever looks at such things with one eye open for the swing of the pendulum will not be easily persuaded that the cleaving blade—for, let it be repeated, the Farmer’s Wife is worthiest of attention here—has not the fullest significance of all, from the lever de rideau of the ‘running after’ to the noisy epilogue of the ‘Never saw such a thing in my life.’ To some, whose engouement for the Classical is not entirely absurd, the structure of the three shorn rodents, in their new simplicity and austerity of outline, will come almost as a ‘Pisgah-sight.’ As a reaction from the fulltailed Romanticism that scampered blindly and heedlessly after what seemed rather a new crotchet than a true ideal, their attitude—not unforeseen at the time when the ‘Carving-knife’ was first menacingly brandished—can at least be tolerated. But to the other extremists, who from their stucco citadel of the sham Romantic have derided the ‘cutting-off,’ and have hailed with contempt the new-old, perhaps to them unfamiliar, form of the blind three, the present writer can hold out no eirenicon. With the exception of some worthy persons who ought to have known better, and who shall be nameless here, the scoffers were for the most part half-educated journalists and other hangers-on to letters, who imagine that it is possible to write a clear lucid style without so much as a glance at Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and who cannot be expected.... Etc., Etc. MR JAMES STEPHENS: ‘SEUMAS BEG AGAIN’ ALONG the road I met a red-nosed man
Who stumbled as he walked. He said to me:
‘You keep away from that pub if you can;
It’s all gone queer.’ I said I didn’t see
What could be wrong with Doolan’s. ‘I can’t think,’
Said he, ‘what we’ll have next. I went in there,
Five minutes since; I’d scarcely got my drink
Before three angels with long shining hair
Came in. The first two took the dominoes
And played daft tunes upon them, while the third
Sang songs and balanced bottles on his nose.
’Fore Stephens’ time, such things never occurred!
I said I didn’t believe him. But I did.
He only whispered: ‘Got a tanner, kid?’
A LECTURE NOT YET WRITTEN
OR DELIVERED BY
PROFESSOR SIR A. T. QUILLER-COUCH:
ON THE DIRECT METHOD (To be included afterwards in ‘The Art of Lecturing’) BEAR with me, gentlemen, while I return, not unrefreshed by an eight months’ interval—‘apart sat on a hill retired,’ to the argument of my last lecture but one, wherein we found that the Capital Difficulty of Criticism consisted in keeping to the matter in hand. ‘When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires.’ So Bacon, in his letter of expostulation to Coke; and we shall do well to perpend the passage without taking to ourselves that plea of ‘having a large and fruitful mind’ which Bacon, in his wisdom, presented to Coke. Let us hold by the words of a writer whom our Tripos is gradually restoring to popular favour, Quintilian—‘it is enough for us to mind our present business.’ Suffer me then to proffer a personal experience. Once, when an undergraduate, I ... [anecdote omitted] ... an unforgettable experience, at least to one who is willing to pass among you as a sentimental old Victorian. But let us tune our instruments. And this brings me—for, believe me, gentlemen, I must eventually arrive somewhere—to the point I wish to make. It is this, that if we examine our literature curiously, we shall find there a certain thread, a cord of silver, twisting its way through all Letters and linking up one noble author with another. Let me remind you that this thread was first spun in Greece ... [passages on compulsory Greek, the Education Act of 1870, and the Teaching of English in Schools—omitted]. You may realise, gentlemen, how this tradition has been kept alive by men often sundered from one another by generations, if you allow me to bring before you several illuminating passages from diverse authors whose names are not pronounced here for the first time.... [Quotations from Aristotle, Longinus, Cervantes, Lessing, Sainte-Beuve, Newman, and Walter de la Mare omitted.] One and all of these craftsmen, whom it is our business to study, tell us that we shall abjure the direct method only at our peril, that ultimately we shall come by more profit if we keep to the narrow road and leave the hedgerows and fields beyond innocent of our feet. It will not be easy. But—and I thank heaven for it!—literature is not easy; and even in these days, when the Correspondence School flourisheth and Pelman is in the land, no one, not I nor another, can make it so. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI:
NEW STYLE. AS IT MIGHT POSSIBLY BE WRITTEN
BY MR LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE Snavel
O WHAT can ail you, Blogg? These days you sit
Here with your pint as mum as a dead rat,
And sick-faced too. Like an old man you look.
The harvest’s in, the moon’s up, girls are out;
What’s got you, man?
Blogg Strange fleering things
Are working in my blood. I’ll tell you this:
The other night I went down Magger’s Lane,
And saw a woman there. Stood still she was,
Eating out of a paper cold wet tripe,
And drinking from a bottle. When I came
Close up to her, the clouds slid from the moon;
I saw her plain. Her greasy shawl slipt back:
Skinny and small she was. Her matted hair
Hung down about her face, but her two eyes
Burnt through like forest fires. She had a look
Of foreign parts, wild lands where witches thrive—
Snavel
O crimini! These are the tales for me.
Blogg
She lookt at me, shook back her hair and smiled.
The tripe slid noiselessly out of the paper—
A sudden gleam and it was gone. She paid
No heed, but held the bottle out to me
And spoke. Her foreign tongue made fiddlers’ tunes
Not words to me; but then all women’s words
At sometime are but tunes to fill their men
With moonlit madness. By now the chill air
To me came more like warmed old ale: my head
Was humming round. I grabbed the bottle neck
And drank deep, while the woman smiled and smiled,
But spoke no word. It was a witches’ brew.
We plunged into the night that now was lit
With dancing fires, and roared like a great sea—
Etc., Etc.
THE LATER MANNER OF
MR W. B. YEATS BECAUSE the fairies died in ’Ninety-nine
A queen or two, a beggar or a fool
Now serve the turn of this slow craft of mine;
Old Paudeen’s rags cover the three-legged stool
Of ancient prophecy. A host of faces,
Foolish as dust, now mouth the reed-born song
At Clooth-na-bare and other windy places
Of three quaint syllables. It is a wrong
Not to be borne. What poet shall put the blame
Upon me that I now love best to sing
And dream my dream of him that had no name
Yet suddenly confronted the High King,
And cried: Sisters and brothers have I none,
Yet this man’s father is my father’s son?
A SONG: NOT IN THE COLLECTED
POEMS OF MR ALFRED NOYES FAIRIES in the Forest, now the moon is mellow,
Dancing as they never danced through all the dreams of men;
While I sit in the firelight, like any other fellow,
Writing little lyrics with a fountain-pen:
Poetry like a paint-box, red and blue and yellow;
Songs about the Homeland: God save the King!
Scent of the wild thyme from the earth is springing,
Drifting like a galleon is the golden moon;
Hear the fairy voices, singing ever singing;
Faintly from the greenwood, I can hear them croon:
Never mind the sense of it, if the verse is ringing!
Never mind how thin it is, keep to the tune!
The Queen is in the parlour; Drake’s upon the high seas;
Newbolt’s in the schoolbooks and I’m there too;
For singing songs of England, of her seas (and my seas);
Songs about the homeland, red and white and blue:
They’ve put me in the schoolbooks, green and purple schoolbooks
Of England, O England (that’s the way to sing);
While Drake’s gone with the fairies, sailing where the dreams go:
Never mind how thin they are if the verses ring
For we’re singing songs of England and God save the King!
FROM A GREAT POLITICAL-BIOGRAPHICAL
DRAMA, ‘BUBB BODINGTON’ NOT YET WRITTEN BY
MR JOHN DRINKWATER Two Chroniclers: First Chronicler:
Kinsmen who have known the Cotswold haze,
You will remember
April and June have thirty days,
So, too, November.
Second Chronicler:
Men’s sowings and their reapings will deflow’r
Each blossomed chine;
Yet will a stitch prompt to occasion’s hour
Give maintenance to nine.
The two together:
Circumstance brims all our years
With agonies and doubts and fears,
Generations that have flown
Harvesting but bitter loss;
Kinsmen, shall the moving stone
Garner yet its little moss?
First Chronicler:
Happy the spirits that can grow
In steadfastness,
Yet to the end possess
Their ardours.
Second Chronicler:
They alone shall know
Felicity, the wages of content,
Who thus transmute the vain and fleeting show
Into event.
The two together:
O vision on its lonely way shall find,
Kinsmen, it is an ill
And evil-blowing wind
That does not speak to someone of goodwill;
And a poor tale, shapeless indeed and crude,
Whose fragments we two cannot bind
With some such smooth and pompous platitude.
AN EPILOGUE TO ‘TRIVIA’
(With apologies to Mr Logan Pearsall Smith) I PEEPED in the Library of the Strange House and saw the dark figure of a man bobbing about. There was, too, such a rush of nasty cheap perfume through the door that I thought at first some of the bad portraits had come to life. Or is it, I asked myself, someone engaged in secret worship, the Baronet placating his private Mumbo-Jumbo or the Vicar turning in weariness to Sasabonsum? And I thought of monstrous African gods, of terrifying shapes and evil rites hidden in deep forests, of all the wildness and wonder of the dark untamed Universe.... But when I looked again, I saw that it was only one of our whimsical prosemen drenching his newly and meticulously written sheets with inexpensive Parma Violet and Jockey Club to hide the smell of the lamp.
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