Charles Stuart Calverley

“ The muse herself for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless muse? ”

“ Home may fall out or be stolen or stray;
True that the tip-cat you toss about may
Strike an old gentleman, cause him to sway,
Stumble, and p’raps be run o’er by a dray:
Still why delay? Play, my son, play! ”

“ Life is with such all beer and skittles;
They are not difficult to please
About their victuals:
p. ”

“ Yet the grape of Italy,
The stored-up feast hath wrought no harm to him:
Green leaf and taintless grass are all their fare;
The clear rill or the travel-freshen’d stream
Their cup: nor one care mars their honest sleep. ”

“ White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And ‘M’s and ‘N’s are mostly
Pronounced like ‘B’s and ‘D’s:
’Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted,
The sheep stands, mute and stolid:
And ducks find out, disgusted,
That all the ponds are solid. ”

“ O my own, my beautiful, my blue eyed!
To be young once more, and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I’d
Give no inconsiderable sum. ”

“ Why should a low-bred gardener’s boy pursue me with a besom?
Should china fall or chandeliers, or anything but stocks—
Nay stocks, when they’re in flowerpots—the cat expects hard knocks:
Should ever anything be missed—milk, coals, umbrellas, brandy—
The cat’s pitch’d into with a boot or any thing that’s handy.
“I remember, I remember,” how one night I “fleeted by,”
And gain’d the blessed tiles and gazed into the cold clear sky.
p. 42“I remember, I remember, how my little lovers came;”
And there, beneath the crescent moon, play’d many a little game. ”

“ Saltem aliquid, ficta ludantur imagine mentes.
Me miserum! Tua nam litus, pelagusque sonorum
Ossa ferunt, queiscunque procul jacteris in oris;
Sive procellosas ultra Symplegadas ingens
Jam subter mare visis, alit quæ monstra profundum;
Sive (negavit enim precibus te Jupiter udis)
Cum sene Bellero, veterum qui fabula, dormis,
Qua custoditi montis prægrandis imago
Namancum atque arces longe prospectat Iberas.
Verte retro te, verte deum, mollire precando:
Et vos infaustum juvenem delphines agatis.
Ponite jam lacrymas, sat enim flevistis, agrestes. ”

“ (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
If you try to approach her, away she skips
Over tables and chairs with apparent ease.
The farmer’s daughter hath soft brown hair;
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
And I met with a ballad, I can’t say where,
Which wholly consisted of lines like these. ”

“ While men might count a score:
Then spake he to Tigerius,
A Buttons bold was he:
“Buttons, I think there’s thieves about;
Just strike a light and tumble out;
If you can’t find one, go without,
And see what you may see.” ”

“ Fun, Glowworm, and Echo, and Evening Star:
And thou hintest withal that thou fain would’st shine,
p. 21As I con them, these bulgy old boots of mine.
But I shrink from thee, Arab! Thou eat’st eel-pie,
Thou evermore hast at least one black eye;
There is brass on thy brow, and thy swarthy hues
Are due not to nature but handling shoes;
And the hit in thy mouth, I regret to see,
Is a bit of tobacco-pipe—Flee, child, flee! ”

“ But there was war in the spirit of Atreus’ son, Agamemnon;
Disdainful he dismissed him, a right stern fiat appending:—
“Woe be to thee, old man, if I find thee lingering longer,
Yea or returning again, by the hollow ships of Achaians!
Scarce much then will avail thee the great god’s sceptre and emblem.
p. 191Her will I never release. Old age must first come upon her,
In my own home, yea in Argos, afar from the land of her fathers,
Following the loom and attending upon my bed. But avaunt thee!
Go, and provoke not me, that thy way may be haply securer.” ”

“ And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet;
When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour
To discover—but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet.
“To their feet,” I say, for Leech’s sketch indisputably teaches
That the mermaids of our beaches do not end in ugly tails,
p. 9Nor have homes among the corals; but are shod with neat balmorals,
An arrangement no one quarrels with, as many might with scales.
Sweet to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady,
Lalage, Neæra, Haidee, or Elaine, or Mary Ann:
Love, you dear delusive dream, you! ”

“ Blurring stars which were else cloudlessly brilliant.
What suits her who is beautiful
Suits not equally thee: rightly devastates
Thy fair daughter the homes of men,
Wild as Thyad, who wakes stirred by the kettle-drums. ”

“ Or if learned, on nodes and the moon’s apogees,
Or, if serious, on something of AKHB’s,
Or the latest attempt to convert the Chaldees;
Or in short about all things, from earthquakes to fleas.
Some sit in twos or (less frequently) threes,
With their innocent lambswool or book on their knees,
And talk, and enact, any nonsense you please,
As they gaze into eyes that are blue as the seas ”

“ Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon;
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged ’neath the sun and the starlight,
Up as they toil to the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.
O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eyesight!
’Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers,
Move ye thro’ this thing, Life, this fragment! Fools, that ye hear not
Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only; that, all pain
p. 182Parted and past from the Body, the Mind too bask in a blissful
Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over! ”

“ For where my way leads, thither I shall go:
Do ye my bidding; haply ye may hear,
Though now is my dark hour, that I have peace.
p. 180FROM LUCRETIUS.
Book II. Sweet, when the great sea’s water is stirred to his depths by the storm-winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour’s sorrow to you yields blissful enjoyment;
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt from. ”

“ Fond hands caress me oftentimes, yet would that I might die!
Why was I born to be abhorr’d of man and bird and beast?
The bulfinch marks me stealing by, and straight his song hath ceased;
p. 40The shrewmouse eyes me shudderingly, then flees; and, worse than that,
The housedog he flees after me—why was I born a cat?
Men prize the heartless hound who quits dry-eyed his native land;
Who wags a mercenary tail and licks a tyrant hand.
The leal true cat they prize not, that if e’er compell’d to roam
Still flies, when let out of the bag, precipitately home. ”

“ Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:
Seared is (of course) my heart—but unsubdued
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.
I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen:
But on one statement I may safely venture;
p. 59That few of our most highly gifted men
Have more appreciation of the trencher.
I go. One pound of British beef, and then
What Mr. Swiveller called a “modest quencher;”
That home-returning, I may ‘soothly say,’
“Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.” ”

“ And (in spite of the pleas of her lorn vis-a-vis)
Goes to wrap up her uncle—a patient of Skey’s,
Who is prone to catch chills, like all old Bengalese:—
But at bedtime I trust he’ll remember to grease
The bridge of his nose, and preserve his rupees
From the premature clutch of his fond legatees ”

“ Flanked by stout girls with steeple hats,
And waists that paralyse a Briton;—
By many a tidy little town,
Where tidy little Fraus sit knitting;
(The men’s pursuits are, lying down,
Smoking perennial pipes, and spitting;) ”

“ When, heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can.
Sweet to haste, a licensed lover, to Miss Pinkerton the glover,
Having managed to discover what is dear Neæra’s “size”:
p. 10P’raps to touch that wrist so slender, as your tiny gift you tender,
And to read you’re no offender, in those laughing hazel eyes.
Then to hear her call you “Harry,” when she makes you fetch and carry—
O young men about to marry, what a blessed thing it is!
To be photograph’d—together—cased in pretty Russia leather—
Hear her gravely doubting whether they have spoilt your honest phiz! ”

“ For I’ve read in many a novel that, unless they’ve souls that grovel,
Folks prefer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls:
To sit, happy married lovers; ”

“ That suffers loss; but another is elsewhere gaining an increase:
So that, as one thing wanes, still a second bursts into blossom,
Soon, in its turn, to be left. Thus draws this Universe always
Gain out of loss; thus live we mortals one on another.
Bourgeons one generation, and one fades. Let but a few years
Pass, and a race has arisen which was not: as in a racecourse,
One hands on to another the burning torch of Existence.
p. 188FROM HOMER.
Il. I. Sing, O daughter of heaven, of Peleus’ son, of Achilles,
Him whose terrible wrath brought thousand woes on Achaia. ”

“ disasters have their use;
And life might e’en be too sunshiny:
Nor would I make myself a goose,
If some big dog should swallow Tiny. ”

“ If of a truth men’s fears, and the cares which hourly beset them,
p. 185Heed not the jav’lin’s fury, regard not clashing of broadswords;
But all-boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers of empires
Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling glare of the red gold,
Not from the pomp of the monarch, who walks forth purple-apparelled:
These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of Reason;
When too all Man’s life through a great Dark laboureth onward. ”

“ Lads and “fair shes” (that is Byron, and he’s
An authority) lie very much at their ease;
Taking their teas, or their duck and green peas,
Or, if they prefer it, their plain bread and cheese:
Not objecting at all though it’s rather a squeeze
And the glass is, I daresay, at 80 degrees.
Some get up glees, and are mad about Ries
And Sainton, and Tamberlik’s thrilling high Cs;
p. 90Or if painters, hold forth upon Hunt and Maclise,
And the tone and the breadth of that landscape of Lee’s ”

“ Chiefly to Atreus’ sons, twin chieftains, ordering armies
“Chiefs sprung of Atreus’ loins; and ye, brazen-greavèd Achaians!
So may the Gods this day, the Olympus-palacèd, grant you
p. 190Priam’s city to raze, and return unscathed to your homesteads:
Only my own dear daughter I ask; take ransom and yield her,
Rev’rencing His great name, son of Zeus, far-darting Apollo.”
Then from the host of Achaians arose tumultuous answer:
“Due to the priest is his honour; accept rich ransom and yield her.” ”

“ I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
’Tis that I can’t remember how
They go. ”

“ Floods with light the dazzled heaven;
And the schoolboy groans on hearing
That eternal clock strike seven:—
Now the waggoner is driving
Towards the fields his clattering wain;
Now the bluebottle, reviving,
Buzzes down his native pane. ”

“ Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life; ”

“ Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween; ”

“ Better is saving alive, I hold, than slaying a nation.
Meanwhile deck me a guerdon in her stead, lest of Achaians
I should alone lack honour; an unmeet thing and a shameful.
See all men, that my guerdon, I wot not whither it goeth.”
Then unto him made answer the swift-foot chieftain Achilles:
p. 201“O most vaunting of men, most gain-loving, off-spring of Atreus! ”

“ As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun. ”

“ And, lighting somewhere on an untrodden way,
I will bury this my lance, this hateful thing,
Deep in some earth-hole where no eye shall see—
p. 178Night and Hell keep it in the underworld!
For never to this day, since first I grasped
The gift that Hector gave, my bitterest foe,
Have I reaped aught of honour from the Greeks.
So true that byword in the mouths of men,
“A foeman’s gifts are no gifts, but a curse.”
Wherefore henceforward shall I know that God
Is great; and strive to honour Atreus’ sons.
Princes they are, and should be obeyed. How else? ”

“ Sleek porporate or bloated Cardinal.
(Isn’t it, old Fatchaps? You’re in Euclid now.)
So, having the shilling—having i’ fact a lot—
And pence and halfpence, ever so many o’ them,
I purchased, as I think I said before,
The pebble (lapis, lapidis, -di, -dem, -de—
What nouns ’crease short i’ the genitive, Fatchaps, eh?)
O’ the boy, a bare-legg’d beggarly son of a gun,
For one-and-fourpence. Here we are again.
Now Law steps in, bigwigg’d, voluminous-jaw’d;
Investigates and re-investigates.
Was the transaction illegal? Law shakes head. ”

“ Spake John Grogblossom the coachman to Eliza Spinks the cook:
“Mrs. Spinks,” says he, “I’ve foundered: ‘Liza dear, I’m overtook.
Druv into a corner reglar, puzzled as a babe unborn;
Speak the word, my blessed ‘Liza; speak, and John the coachman’s yourn.”
Then Eliza Spinks made answer, blushing, to the coachman John:
p. 76“John, I’m born and bred a spinster: I’ve begun and I’ll go on.
Endless cares and endless worrits, well I knows it, has a wife:
Cooking for a genteel family, John, it’s a goluptious life! ”

“ Two of Jingle’s speeches are here quoted, the first being in Chapter III., and the second in Chapter II. For “Spanish traveller” see Chapter III., and for “narcotic bedstead” see Chapter XLI. “Go on, Jemmy,” is Mr. Jingle’s adjuration to the actor whom he has previously designated “Dismal Jemmy,” urging the commencement of the ‘Stroller’s Tale.’ “Like black-eyed Susan—all in the Downs” has the double application to the stroller’s melancholy and the first line of Gay’s song of ‘Black-eyed Susan’—“All in the Downs the fleet was moored.” ”

“ ’tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deem’d it two:
Can you imagine so absurd
A view? ”

“ All by the Power of the Art, which he gained from Phoebus Apollo.
Thus then, kindliest-hearted, arising spake he before them:
“Peleus’ son! Thou demandest, a man heavenfavor’d, an answer
p. 196Touching the Great King’s wrath, the afar-off-aiming Apollo:
Therefore I lift up my voice. Swear thou to me, duly digesting
All,—that with right good will, by word and by deed, thou wilt aid me.
Surely the ire will awaken of one who mightily ruleth
Over the Argives all: and upon him wait the Achaians. ”

“ Acris hyems jam venit: hyems genus omne perosa
Foemineum, et senibus glacies non æqua rotundis:
Apparent rari stantes in tramite glauco;
Radit iter, cogitque nives, sua tela, juventus.
Trux matrona ruit, multos dominata per annos,
Digna indigna minans, glomeratque volumina crurum;
Illa parte senex, amisso forte galero,
Per plateas bacchatur; eum chorus omnis agrestum
Ridet anhelantem frustra, et jam jamque tenentem
Quod petit; illud agunt venti prensumque resorbent. ”

“ To sit, happy married lovers; Phillis trifling with a plover’s
Egg, while Corydon uncovers with a grace the Sally Lunn,
p. 12Or dissects the lucky pheasant—that, I think, were passing pleasant;
As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun. ”

“ Atreus’ sceptred son, and the chos’n of heaven, Achilles.
Say then, which of the Gods bid arise up battle between them?
p. 189Zeus’s and Leto’s son. With the king was kindled his anger:
Then went sickness abroad, and the people died of the sickness:
For that of Atreus’ son had his priest been lightly entreated,
Chryses, Apollo’s priest. For he came to the ships of Achaia,
Bearing a daughter’s ransom, a sum not easy to number:
And in his hand was the emblem of Him, far-darting Apollo,
High on a sceptre of gold: and he made his prayer to the Grecians ”

“ Now not all they seek to do
Is create upon a sampler
Beasts which Buffon never knew:
But their venturous muslins rustle
O’er the cragstone and the snow,
Or at home their biceps muscle
Grows by practising the bow.
Worthier they those dames who, fable
Says, rode “palfreys” to the war
With gigantic Thanes, whose “sable
Destriers caracoled” before;
Smiled, as—springing from the war-horse
As men spring in modern ‘cirques’—
They plunged, ponderous as a four-horse
Coach, among the vanished Turks:—
In the good times when the jester
Asked the monarch how he was,
p. ”