Frederick Locker-Lampson

“ Red Riding Hoods small in thy woods, Piccadilly!
And there is a Statesman, the Man of the Day,
A laughing philosopher, gallant and gay;
No darling of Fortune more manfully trod,
Full of years, full of fame, and the world at his nod,
Can the thought reach his heart, and then leave it more chilly,—
“Old P or Old Q I must quit Piccadilly?”
p. 18Life is chequer’d, a patchwork of smiles and of frowns;
We valued its ups, let us muse on its downs.
There’s a side that is bright, it will then turn the other,
One turn, if a good one, deserves such another. ”

“ Death grins from yonder cynical old thorn.
I dare not speak of Michael Angelo—
Such theme were all too splendid for my pen.
And if I breathe the name of Sanzio
(The brightest of Italian gentlemen) ,
It is that love casts out my fear—and so
I claim with him a kindredship. Ah! when
We love, the name is on our hearts engraven,
As is thy name, my own dear Bard of Avon!
Nor is the Colosseum theme of mine,
'Twas built for poet of a larger daring;
The world goes there with torches—I decline
Thus to affront the moonbeams with their flaring. ”

“ The lass he loved is gone;
Death lifts the burthen from the poor,
And will not spare the throne.
And vainly are we fenced about
From peril, day and night,
The awful rapids must be shot,
Our shallop is but slight;
So pray, when parting, we descry
A cheering beacon-light.
[81]
O pleasant Earth! This happy home!
The darling at my knee!
My own dear wife! Thyself, old Friend!
And must it come to me
That any face shall fill my place
Unknown to them and thee?
[82]
RUSSET PITCHER.
"The pot goeth so long to the water til at length it commeth broken home." ”

“ No one would deny to Praed the gift of humour. But the period in which he wrote was one which admired primarily wit; and while it would be too much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope’s couplet and Ovid’s pentameter. ”

“ A spouse thus was airing his fancies
Below—'twas a labour of love,—
And calmly reflecting on Nancy's
More practical labour above;
[134]
Yet while it so pleased him to ponder,
Elated, at ease, and alone;
That pale, patient victim up yonder
Had budding delights of her own;
Sweet thoughts, in their essence diviner
Than paltry ambition and pelf;
A cherub, no babe will be finer,
Invented and nursed by herself.
One breakfasting, dining, and teaing,
With appetite nought can appease,
And quite a young Reasoning Being
When called on to yawn and to sneeze. ”

“ Locker’s Muse is not the Muse of high spirits. He does not start with the intention of jesting. He is the gentle and serious spectator of things which are not the most serious in life—with a sense of the humorous which is not repressible, and which enters into all his reflections, but which he never allows wholly to master him. ”

“ She will study the Rose and the Ring.
It pleased the kind Wizard to send her
The last and the best of his toys,
His heart had a sentiment tender
For innocent women and boys:
And though he was great as a scorner,
The guileless were safe from his sting,—
How sad is past mirth to the mourner!—
A tear on the Rose and the Ring!
She reads—I may vainly endeavour
Her mirth-chequered grief to pursue;
For she hears she has lost—and for ever—
A Heart that was known by so few ”

“ They crowd the door to see her go—
The bliss of one brings many woe—
Oh! kiss the bride, and I will throw
The old shoe after.
[46]
What change in one short afternoon,—
My Charming Neighbour gone,—so soon!
Is yon pale orb her honey-moon
Slow rising hither?
O lady, wan and marvellous,
How often have we communed thus;
Sweet memories shall dwell with us,
And joy go with her!
[47]
PICCADILLY.
Piccadilly!—shops, palaces, bustle, and breeze,
The whirring of wheels, and the murmur of trees,
By daylight, or nightlight,—or noisy, or stilly,—
Whatever my mood is—I love Piccadilly. ”

“ And Darby, at least, is resigned to his lot,
And Joan, rather proud of the sphere he's adorning,
Has well-nigh forgotten that Gunpowder Plot,
And he won't recall it till ten the next morning.
A kindly good man, quite a stranger to fame,
His heart still is green, though his head shows a hoar lock;
Perhaps his particular star is to blame,—
It may be, he never took time by the forelock.
A day must arrive when, in pitiful case,
He will drop from his Branch, like a fruit more than mellow ”

“ Why “smoothly written verse, where a boudoir decorum is or ought always to be preserved: where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment” should be conventionally called “society verse,” or “occasional verse,” is not very clear. To write “society verse” is to be the laureate of the cultured, leisured, pleasure-loving upper classes; but some poets satisfy the above requirements—Locker himself included—yet certainly do not write exclusively of or for “Society.” ”

“ The tone should not be pitched high: it should be terse and idiomatic, and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish, and completeness: for, however trivial the subject-matter may be, indeed, rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition, and perfection of execution, are of the utmost importance.” Among the enviable versifiers who can satisfy these requirements Praed and Locker both hold a high place. ”

“ MY NEIGHBOUR ROSE.
Though slender walls our hearths divide,
No word has passed from either side,
Your days, red-lettered all, must glide
Unvexed by labour:
I've seen you weep, and could have wept;
I've heard you sing, and may have slept;
Sometimes I hear your chimneys swept,
My charming neighbour!
Your pets are mine. Pray what may ail
The pup, once eloquent of tail?
I wonder why your nightingale
Is mute at sunset!
Your puss, demure and pensive, seems
Too fat to mouse. She much esteems
Yon sunny wall—and sleeps and dreams
Of mice she once ate. ”

“ No light step comes, but, evil-starred,
He finds a mournful token,—
There lies a russet pitcher marred,—
The damsel's pitcher broken!
Profoundly moved, that muser cried,
"The spoiler has been hither;
O would the maiden first had died,—
The fairest rose must wither!" ”

“ He is far more genuine and spontaneous than Praed. It is difficult and perhaps invidious to compare the two as “humorists.” It may be that Locker’s vein of humour is larger and truer than the earlier poet’s. Praed belongs, as has been said, to a period of other men and other manners. Probably he is the wittier of the two; yet this might be contradicted. Locker’s humour has the reflective vein, with a suggestion of pathos, of the great writers who flourished in the early and middle Victorian era. ”

“ A streamlet soothes her now,—the bird has flown,—
Some dust is waiting there—a soul has risen.
No city smoke to stain the heather bells,—
Sigh, gentle winds, around my lone love sleeping,—
She bore her burthen here, but now she dwells
Where scorner never came, and none are weeping.
[57]
O cough! O cruel cough! O gasping breath!
These arms were round my darling at the latest:
All scenes of death are woe—but painful death
In those we dearly love is surely greatest! ”

“ The variety of forms under which his verses appear at different periods will probably make the poet’s works a happy hunting-ground for the future commentator, who will no doubt assign this “lay” (as he will probably call it) to Locker, that to Lampson, that again to the Lockeridae or the Lampsonschule. The method is familiar. No one, probably, ever was so careful of the “limae labor.” “He took,” we are told, “great pains with his verses,” always aiming at a more perfect finish, with no loss of that naturalness which, as has been said, characterises all his work. ”

“ The pranks that brought poor souls mishap
When baby Time was fond of pap;
And still will cheat with feigning joys,
While ladies smile, and men are boys.
The blooming rose conceals an asp,
And bliss, coquetting, flies the grasp. ”

“ So many people even now confuse minor p. ixpoetry with bad poetry that it is almost invidious to call a poet minor. Yet there is no doubt that minor poetry can be good in its way, just as major poetry can be good in its way. “If he [Locker] was a minor poet he was at least [why ‘at least’?] a master of the instrument he touched, which cannot,” writes Mr Coulson Kernahan in the Nineteenth Century for October 1895, “be said of all who would be accounted major.” Locker was not of those, in his own opinion, who would be accounted major. ”

“ His place then no longer will know him—but, hearken,
The widow and orphan appeal to their God.
Much peace will be hers! "If our lot must be lowly,
Resemble thy father, though with us no more;"
And only on days that are high or are holy,
She will show him the cross that her warrior wore.
[103]
So taught, he will rather take after his father,
And wear a long sword to our enemies' loss;
Till some day or other he'll bring to his mother
Victoria's gift—the Victoria Cross!
And still she'll be charming, though ringlet and dimple
Perchance may have lost their peculiar spell ”

“ Praed, indeed, is the chief among writers of “vers de société,” for not only does his manner conform to the laws laid down by high authorities, but his theme is generally “Society” with a capital S. “Praed,” says Locker in “My Confidences,” “is the very best of his school: indeed, he has a unique p. xiiiposition; for in his narrower vein of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may correctly be called vers de société in its most perfected form, and its exactest sense, he has never been equalled.” ”

“ Ay, here is your Cradle, and Hope, a bright spirit,
With Love now is watching beside it, I know.
They guard the small nest you yourself did inherit
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.
It is Hope gilds the future,—Love welcomes it smiling ”

“ And where is all that boasted wealth of flowers?
If life no more can yield us what it gave,
It still is linked with much that calls for praises;
A very worthless rogue may dig the grave,
But hands unseen will dress the turf with daisies. ”

“ This is the art which does not conceal itself. One may not be able to do the trick; but it is possible to see how the trick is done.
p. xv“No one,” says Locker, when speaking of occasional or society verse, “has fully succeeded who did not possess a certain gift of irony.” That is profoundly true. A would-be writer of light verse who has not an ironical habit of mind had better change his purpose and write an epic. ”

“ But we are not, presumably, to class “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints” among occasional pieces, nor is Wordsworth’s sonnet on London at dawn to be called occasional; yet the source of it, the fact that the poet happened to be upon Westminster Bridge in the p. xiiearly morning, was transient, not (apparently) inherent in the nature of things. However, these names must be accepted as we find them. Here is Locker’s own law: “Occasional verse,” he says, “should be short, graceful, refined, and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful. ”

“ In our last month's Magazine you may remember there were some verses about a portion of a skeleton. Did you remark how the poet and present proprietor of the human skull at once settled the sex of it, and determined off-hand that it must have belonged to a woman? Such skulls are locked up in many gentlemen's hearts and memories. Bluebeard, you know, had a whole museum of them—as that imprudent little last wife of his found out to her cost. ”

“ The bloom is a gift of the fays, who declare it
Will shield me from sorrow as long as I wear it.
p. 40And sigh not, old man, such a doleful ‘heigh-ho,’
Dost think I possess not the will to say, ‘No’?
And shake not thy head, I could pitiless be
Should supplicants come even younger than thee. ”

“ His red-tape was tied in a true-lover's bow
Each night when returning to Rosemary Crescent.
There Joan meets him smiling, the young ones are there,
His coming is bliss to the half-dozen wee things;
Of his advent the dog and the cat are aware,
And Phyllis, neat-handed, is laying the tea-things.
East wind! sob eerily! sing, kettle! cheerily!
Baby's abed,—but its father will rock it;
Little ones boast your permission to toast
The cake that good fellow brought home in his pocket.
This greeting the silent old Clerk understands,—
His friends he can love, had he foes, he could mock them ”

“ When soldiers were—as Love is still—
Content with bow and arrow.
But why should we the fancy chide?
The world will always hunger
To know how people lived and died
When all the world was younger.
We like to read of knightly parts
In maidenhood's distresses:
Of trysts with sunshine in light hearts,
And moonbeams on dark tresses ”

“ Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man
Came up, and kiss’d the pretty Lass:
She did not make the least objection! ”

“ Their sides are many, too,—and all
(Except ourselves) have got a weak one.
Some sanguine people love for life—
Some love their hobby till it flings them.—
And many love a pretty wife
For love of the éclat she brings them!
We all have secrets—you have one
Which may not be your charming spouse's,—
We all lock up a skeleton
In some grim chamber of our houses ”

“ It is really impossible to classify poets on any satisfactory principle. Every good poet is a class by himself. But if the attempt must be made, one may say that the author of “London Lyrics” belongs to that school of which the other chief representatives, in p. xiEnglish or American literature, have been Praed, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mr Austin Dobson. It has always been the fashion to class him with the first named of the trio as a writer of “occasional verse” or “vers de société.” ”

“ Said Slyboots to me— (just as if she had none) ,
"Papa, let's give Bruin a bit of your bun."
Says I, "A plum bun might please wistful old Bruin,
For he can't eat the stone that the cruel boy threw in;
Stick yours on the point of mama's parasol,
And then he will climb to the top of the pole.
"Some bears have got two legs, some bears have got more,—
Be good to old bears if they've no legs or four:
Of duty to age you should never be careless,
My dear, I am bald—and I soon shall be hairless! ”

“ We are perhaps a little out of tune now with the sentiment of the middle of the nineteenth century and perhaps, too, with Praed’s “antithetical rhetoric”; but Locker’s humour can never be quite out of fashion. ”

“ A Father, infinite in pity.
[100]
When Beauty smiles, when Sorrow weeps,
When sunbeams play, when shadows darken,
One inmate of our dwelling keeps
A ghastly carnival—but hearken!
How dry the rattle of those bones!—
The sound was not to make you start meant,—
Stand by! Your humble servant owns
The Tenant of this Dark Apartment.
[101]
THE VICTORIA CROSS.
A LEGEND OF TUNBRIDGE WELLS.
She gave him a draught freshly drawn from the springlet,—
O Tunbridge, thy waters are bitter, alas!
But Love finds an ambush in dimple and ringlet,—
"Thy health, pretty maiden!"—he emptied the glass. ”

“ THE HOUSEMAID.
"Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide."
Alone she sits, with air resigned
She watches by the window-blind:
Poor girl! No doubt
The pilgrims here despise thy lot:
Thou canst not stir—because 'tis not
Thy Sunday out.
To play a game of hide and seek
With dust and cobwebs all the week,
Small pleasure yields:
O dear, how nice it is to drop
One's scrubbing-brush, one's pail and mop—
And scour the fields!
Poor Bodies some such Sundays know;
They seldom come. How soon they go!
But Souls can roam. ”

“ It is an ugly world. Offend
Good people—how they wrangle!
The manners that they never mend!
The characters they mangle!
They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,
And go to church on Sunday—
And many are afraid of God—
And more of Mrs. ”

“ She sang, her sweet voice filled the gay garden alleys;
I jested, but Brown would not smile at my sallies;
And Selina remarked that a swell met at Rome,
Is not always a swell when one meets him at home. ”

“ Still, I don't seem to care for pup, pony, or kitten;
Though their virtues I've heard Little Pitcher extol:
She's too old for a watch, and too young for a doll!
Of a worthless old Block she's the dearest of Chips,
For what nonsense she talks when she opens her lips.
Then her mouth—when she's happy—indeed, it appears
To laugh at the tips of her comical EARS.
Her Ears,—Ah, her Ears!—I remember the squallings
That greeted my own ears, when Rambert and
Lawlings Were boring (as I do) her Organs of Hearing—
Come, I'll give her for each of those Organs an Earring. ”

“ And Joan's pretty face has been clouded with care
Since Jack bought her ribbons at Vanity Fair.
Contemptible Dives! too credulous Joan!
Yet we all have a Vanity Fair of our own;—
My son, you have yours, but you need not despair,
Myself I've a weakness for Vanity Fair.
Philosophy halts, wisest counsels are vain,—
We go—we repent—we return there again;
To-night you will certainly meet with us there—
Exceedingly merry in Vanity Fair.
[127]
THE LEGENDE OF SIR GYLES GYLES.
Notissimum illud Phædri, Gallus quum tauro. ”

“ Ah, love is good for little.
"Sweet maiden, set thy pitcher down,
And heed a Truth neglected:—
The more this sorry world is known,
The less it is respected.
"Though youth is ardent, gay, and bold,
It flatters and beguiles ”

“ The patriarch strolls in the path of the maid,
Where cornfields are ripe, and awaiting the blade.
And Echo was mute to his leisurely tread,—
"How tranquil is nature reposing," he said;
He onward advances, where boughs overshade,
"How lonely," quoth he—and his footsteps he stayed!
He gazes around, not a creature is there,
No sound on the ground, and no voice in the air;
But fading there lies a poor Bloom that he knows,
—Bad luck to the Fairies that gave her the Rose.
[89]
1863.
These verses were published in 1863, in "A Welcome," dedicated to the Princess of Wales. ”

“ Attached to the Rose and the Ring!
[80]
TO MY OLD FRIEND POSTUMUS.
(J. G.)
My Friend, our few remaining years
Are hasting to an end,
They glide away, and lines are here
That time will never mend;
Thy blameless life avails thee not,—
Alas, my dear old Friend! ”

“ He looks just as if he'd been blown from a gibbet.
I pause ... and pass on—and beside the club fire
I settle that Sophy is all I desire.
As I walk from the club, and am deep in a strophè,
Which rolls upon all that's delicious in Sophy,
I half tumble over an "object" unnerving—
So frightful a hag must be "highly deserving."
[158]
She begs—my heart's moved—but I've much circumspection;
I stifle remorse with the soothing reflection
That cases of vice are by no means a rarity—
The worst vice of all's indiscriminate charity. ”