J.K.S.

“ You must never give us pleasure,
⁠Grinder, after 8 p.m.
When the dawn with rosy finger,
⁠Dissipates the eastern gloom,
You and your machine must linger
⁠Silent in your silent room.
Grinder, if you are not willing,
⁠When invited, to desist,
You must pay your fortieth shilling,
⁠Wretched instrumentalist!
Failing that,—a fate unkinder—
⁠You must languish in a gaol
One laborious fortnight: grinder,
⁠Pray, oh pray that they may fail.
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ The pulses of a busy throng,
⁠The rest of spirits over-wrought:
⁠Are these—is all beside them, naught?
Here, everywhere, and every day,
⁠The seeker finds right human stuff:
To laugh, to weep, to work, to play;
⁠Are joy and sorrow not enough? ”

“ It seems that he who dares to write
⁠Is all unfit to teach:
And literary fame is quite
⁠Beyond an usher's reach.
I dared imprisonment in vain:
The little bantling of my brain
⁠I am compelled to sacrifice.
The moral, after all, is this:—
That here, where ignorance is bliss,
⁠'Tis folly to be wise. ”

“ For a furlong or so,
And to glow with a patriot's fire:
There is glory to win in the fray,
There are crowds to applaud all the way,
We shall very soon be
At the top of the tree
If we all go out every day. ”

“ To T. M. W.
(Air: Drink to me only.)
Drink to me only with thine eyes and I'll pledge thee with mine,
Leave but some coffee in thy cup and I'll not ask for wine.
A circuit dinner, as I know, doth ask a drink divine,
Yet would I scorn the mess champagne, could I get but that liquor of thine. ”

“ Surely some victim of woe
⁠Left it to bleach on the brink,
⁠Left it to plunge and to sink
Under the waters below.
Doubt, hesitation and fear,
⁠Madness, delusion, despair,
⁠All of them culminate there,
There by the swift rushing weir. ”

“ And many will find where few will seek.
For many are called and few are chosen,
And the few grow many as ages lapse:
But when will the many grow few: what dozen
Is fused into one by Time's hammer-taps? ”

“ There's something more than half divine
In fifty multiplied by nine:
And never integer has been
So grand as thirty times fifteen:
The total I could doubtless praise
In many other striking ways:
But this at least is very plain,—
The same will never come again. ”

“ Men have figured in the dock,
And behind the prison lock,
⁠Who were fitter for the gallows than the cell:
But the hardest thing they've seen
Is the try-your-weight machine
⁠Or a prison suit which doesn't fit them well.
Chorus.
They disgrace their country's name,
And they know no touch of shame;
⁠They promote the crimes they never dared have done ”

“ Which half o'erwhelm with waves our frailer craft,
While graceless shop-boys chuckle fore and aft:
Foul water-toadstools, noisome filth-stained shapes,
Fit only to be manned by dogs and apes:
Blots upon nature: scars that mar her smile:
Obscene, obtrusive, execrable, vile? ”

“ Or guide my boat down the familiar stream,
And taste the joys which recollection yields,
When youth's delights are but a fading dream,
Where Windsor's keep his hoary head doth lift,
I'll think upon your gift. ”

“ But sure there is not one whose pen
⁠Was half so apt as thine
To catch the ears of listening men,
⁠Or wake the Sacred Nine.
None saw reflected in her glass
⁠A more distinguished face:
But thou art born too late, alas! ”

“ Or if it shall most kindly be
Can never favour more than three.
Not all that I have named shall strive
The deadly struggle to survive:
Smith may despise all worldly pelf,
Start others but not start himself ”

“ If all the harm that women have done
Were put in a bundle and rolled into one,
⁠Earth would not hold it,
⁠The sky could not enfold it,
It could not be lighted nor warmed by the sun;
⁠Such masses of evil
⁠Would puzzle the devil
And keep him in fuel while Time's wheels run. ”

“ And if old truths thou canst not rediscover,
Yet canst thou live those truths out here on earth:
Make stagnant conversations, void of mirth,
To circulate with quip and crank and story,
Make life's dull dish with piquant sauce run over. ”

“ Your behaviour would discredit
⁠Tigers, crocodiles, or worms:
You have ruined and disgraced us,
And successfully effaced us
From the proud commanding station
Where the zeal and penetration
⁠Of our ancestors had placed us.
Go! we are a ruined nation ”

“ Who comfortest the greatest and the least,—
⁠How wonderful, how very fair thou art!
Fair to the horny-handed sons of toil
⁠Who, if they mean to have their daily bread,
Must ply their trade or plough the unyielding soil
⁠When greasy citizens are still abed. ”

“ Unable to fly let me crawl,
⁠Your patronage kindly bestow:
I am not the author of Saul,
⁠I am not Voltaire or Rousseau:
⁠I am not desirous, oh no!
To rise from the ranks of the fools,
⁠To shine with Gosse, Dobson and Co. ”

“ And you, a maid divinely fair,
⁠The cynosure of every eye,
Have fixed the wandering minds of men,
⁠And found a fare for scores of hearses,
You still will open, now and then,
⁠My little book of verses ”

“ Probing a bottomless When,
⁠Dreamfully wandering,
⁠Ceaselessly pondering,
What is the Wherefore of men:
Bartering life for a There,
Selling his soul for a Then,
⁠Baffling obscurity,
⁠Conning futurity,
Usefulest, wisest of men! ”

“ Alas, poor victims that we are,
⁠Who sport beside the Cam's clear tide,
Before we get us to the Bar,
⁠To Church or to Hospital go,
We study Mr Paley's views,
⁠We have to deal with yards of steel,
We likewise woo the tragic muse,
⁠And all to pass the Littlego. ”

“ Did he praise the professors of murder?
⁠Does he preach the evangel of theft?
When he urges our eloquent neighbours
⁠To keep other men's land in their gripe,
Grows he black in his face with his labours? ”

“ He hardly took up any room;
⁠His life was retired; his end bright.
⁠With destiny no one can fight
All poets and prosers agree,
⁠And a tribute to destiny's might
Is the song of the drowning fusee.
Friend! would you be gratified quite
⁠The first of our poets to be? ”

“ That landlords rule by Right Divine,
⁠That Firmness will remove Distress.
I see with horror undisguised
⁠That freedom of debate is dead:
The Liberals are organised:
⁠The Caucus rears its hideous head. ”

“ To buy my book—if you will be so kind—
⁠Is all I ask of you; and not to look
What fruit lies hid beneath the azure rind:
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To buy my book.
This for her hymn-book Rosalind mistook,
⁠When worshipping with yokel, maid, and hind ”

“ Which I did publish? Let them beg or threaten,
I'll not regard them. Oh my trusty friend,
There is no rock defies the elements,
With half the constancy that kinglike men
Shut up their breasts against such routs as these. ”

“ Let football rowdies show their straining thews,
And tell their triumphs to a mud-stained Muse;
Let india-rubber pellets dance on grass
Where female arts the ruder sex surpass;
Let other people play at other things ”

“ Man, is it thou that hast proved unruly?
⁠They are broiling thee, thou sinful beast.
Languid and frenzied, most despairing
⁠When least's to despair at, such we grow,
When the sun's rays down on our heads, naught sparing,
⁠Burn and blister. ”

“ If we aren't at home for lunch at two
I don't know what Papa will do;
But I know full well he will say to me
"I never approved of Mr B.:
"It's the very devil that you and he
⁠"Ride, ride together, for ever ride." ”

“ That sorrow and care may be drowned
⁠By a timely consumption of drink.
Does not man, these enthusiasts ask,
⁠Most nearly approach the divine
When engaged in the soul-stirring task
⁠Of filling his body with wine? ”

“ That the rudder gets mixed with the bowsprit at sea,
⁠Or that birds can be salted in glue.
"The third is his manner of making a jest,
⁠Which is quite and entirely his own,
And he seeks after witty remarks with a zest
⁠That might find the philosopher's stone.
"The fourth is the way that he sticks to a word,
⁠Such as beamish, galumph, and the rest,
Which he thinks is amusing as well as absurd,
⁠An opinion I beg to contest.
"The fifth is pure folly. ”

“ A factory of orators and fighters,
⁠A forcing-house of genius? Now and then,
The world at large shrinks back, abashed and beaten,
Unable to endure the glare of Eton.
I think I said I knew a man: what then? ”

“ Nature has done her part, and why
⁠Is mightier man in his to fail?
I want to hear the porters cry,
⁠"Change here for Ennerdale!"
Man! nature must be sought and found
⁠In lonely pools, on verdant banks ”

“ Stands, firmly sucking, in the cause of science,
⁠Just such a peppermint as schoolboys love.
Suck, placid K.: the world will be thy debtor;
⁠Though thine eyes water and thine heart grow faint,
Suck: and the less thou likest it the better ”

“ This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed—and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same license as this one. ”

“ J'espère bien vous trouver toute prête
⁠À recevoir mes Lapsus Calami;
Si ce n'est pas l'ouvrage d'un poète
⁠Prenez au moins l'hommage d'un ami.
Translation
I hope to find you quite ready
⁠To receive my Lapsus Calami ”

“ And they're breaking one another's heads in Committee Room fifteen.
There's bloody Arthur Balfour, that priest-destroying man,
'Tis he that passed Coercion, and does all the harm he can,
A blacker and a baser brute there never yet has been,
And he chuckles o'er the broken heads in Committee Room fifteen.
He gets upon an outside car,—'tis he that has the power—
Goes up and down the land and seeks for what we may devour—
And bedad we're glad to see him, and 'tis he likes being seen,
And they're breaking one another's heads in Committee Room fifteen.
And here is Mr S. . . . . ”

“ Give me your help while I sing how Smith, on the 4th of December,
Did us the honour to read a paper entitled "Pompeii,"
In a Society whose name defies the restriction of metre.
Scarce need we tell of his fervour, research, erudition and learning,
These we must all have observed for ourselves, or at all events heard of,
Heard of from President Pashley, our eloquent President Pashley ”

“ As J. K. S. I made my bid for fame
⁠And money, which is sweeter than success,
Though Mr —————— is possibly the same
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠as J. K. S.
Was it perhaps an error of the press?
⁠Is some malign compositor to blame? ”

“ All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea to let your very ribs re-echo with:
But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the apparently inexhaustible pianoforte player.
Feb. 1891. The Granta. ”

“ Nor will we trouble our readers with all the particulars,—pictures,
Writings on walls and the like: but this we will say, that Sir Walter,
G. P. R. James and Lord Lytton must yield him the palm in description. ”