Andrew Lang

“ But happy Loves flit round the mast, and keen
The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.
Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,
Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar,
Yet haste, light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;
Love’s panthers sleep ’mid roses, as of yore:
“It may be we shall touch the happy isle!” ”

“ When the flower of the chestnut is splendid,
When drags are at all of the gates
(Those drags the philosopher “ slates”
With a scorn that is truly sublime) , [34]
Life wins from the grasp of the Fates
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
When wickets are bowl’d and defended,
When Isis is glad with “the Eights,”
When music and sunset are blended,
When Youth and the summer are mates,
p. 35When Freshmen are heedless of “Greats,”
And when note-books are cover’d with rhyme,
Ah, these are the hours that one rates—
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time! ”

“ We should ever be “blithesome,” but never be gay,
And “splendid” is suited to “summer” and “sea;”
“Consummate,” they say, is enjoying its day,—
“Intense” is the adjective dearest to me!
p. 70The Snows and the Rose they are “windy” and “fleet,”
And “frantic” and “faint” are Delight and Dismay;
Yea, “sanguine,” it seems, as the juice of the beet,
Are “the hands of the King” in a general way:
There be loves that quicken, and sicken, and slay;
“Supreme” is the song of the Bard of the free;
But of adjectives all that I name in my lay,
“Intense” is the adjective dearest to me! ”

“ On a chair by Chippendale—
We’ve no others in our modern training shipping.
There’s our first Liftenant, too,
Is a rare old (China) Blue,
And you do not very often catch him tripping
At a monogram or mark,
But no more than Noah’s ark,
Does he know the way to manage this here shipping.
But the Boys? the Boys, they stands
With white lilies in their hands,
And they do not know the meaning of a whipping:
For the whole delightful ship is
Like a dream of Lippo Lippi’s,
More than what you mostly see in modern shipping. ”

“ That meshes the feet in the flowers that stray;
There were we taken and snared, Lisette,
In the dungeon of La Fausse Amistié;
Help was there none in the wide world’s fray,
Joy was there none in the gift and the debt;
p. 81Too late we knew it, too long regret—
I shall never forget till my dying day!
We must live our lives, though the sun be set,
Must meet in the masque where parts we play,
Must cross in the maze of Life’s minuet ”

“ Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,
While magical his fingers o’er thee strayed,
Or that great pupil of Verrocchio
Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade
That hides all fair things lost, and things unborn,
Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace,
p. 112And that grave tenderness of thine awhile;
Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her face
Is pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn,
And only on thy lips I find her smile. ”

“ Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tastes of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know:
Old school books, useless long ago,
Old Logics, where the spirit, railed in,
Could scarcely answer “yes” or “no”—
The many things I’ve tried and failed in! ”

“ More than her hounds that follow on the flight;
The goddess draws a golden bow of might
And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay.
She tosses loose her locks upon the night,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.
p. 26ENVOY.
Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite,
The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight:
Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray
There is the mystic home of our delight,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way. ”

“ The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping
Far from ‘the forest ground called Thessaly’) ,
These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,
And are but echoes of the moan for thee.
p. 96SPRING. (AFTER MELEAGER.)
Now the bright crocus flames, and now
The slim narcissus takes the rain,
And, straying o’er the mountain’s brow,
The daffodilies bud again.
The thousand blossoms wax and wane
On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough,
But fairer than the flowers art thou,
Than any growth of hill or plain. ”

“ A. D.
p. 85VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS.
p. 86Oronte—Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux,
Mais de petits vers!
“Le Misanthrope,” Acte i., Sc. 2.
p. 87A PORTRAIT OF 1783. Your hair and chin are like the hair
And chin Burne-Jones’s ladies wear;
You were unfashionably fair
In ’83;
And sad you were when girls are gay,
You read a book about Le vrai
Mérite de l’homme, alone in May.
What can it be,
Le vrai mérite de l’homme? Not gold,
Not titles that are bought and sold,
Not wit that flashes and is cold,
But Virtue merely! ”

“ St. Paul and the Devil disputing about the Immortality of Man’s Soul, and St. Paul maintaining the same, (from the similitude of the corn-seed sown, which again sprouteth,) the Devil refutes him by his atheistic subtlety, but is put to shame by the evidence of three witnesses, namely, Persephone, Hela, and St. Lucy.
The Scene is Mount Gerizim.
Intrabunt Sanctus Paulus, et Diabolus, inter
se de immortalitate Animae disputantes.
SANCTUS PAULUS.
Ye say that when a man is dead
He never more shall lift his head,
As doth the flower perishèd,
Nor break ne sweet ne bitter bread. ”

“ And cry aloud, like anything,—
A Lady wants my autograph!
p. 73Oh Flatt’ry, soft, delicious flame!
Oh, fairer than the flowers of Spring,
These blossoms of the noblest name
A lady’s good enough to fling! ”