Charles Stuart Calverley

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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;) ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Dawned; and Achilles said, “Be a council called of the people.”
(Such thought came to his mind from the goddess, Hera the white-armed,
Hera who loved those Greeks, and who saw them dying around her.)
p. 194So when all were collected and ranged in a solemn assembly,
Straightway rose up amidst them and spake swift-footed Achilles:—
“Atreus’ son! it were better, I think this day, that we wandered
Back, re-seeking our homes, (if a warfare may be avoided) ;
Now when the sword and the plague, these two things, fight with Achaians. ”

“ That they seek never to rebuild,
Too fond, too bold, their grandsires’ home.
p. 167“With darkest omens, deadliest strife,
Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat
Her history; I the victor-fleet
Shall lead, Jove’s sister and his wife.
“Thrice let Apollo rear the wall
Of brass; and thrice my Greeks shall hew
The fabric down; thrice matrons rue
In chains their sons’, their husbands’ fall.” ”

“ Hopes that reach into the future. While I speak, hath stol’n away
Jealous Time. Mistrust To-morrow, catch the blossom of To-day.
p. 163JUNO’S SPEECH.
Od. iii. 3. The just man’s single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings’ frowns shake his will
Which is as rock; not warrior-winds
That keep the seas in wild unrest;
Nor bolt by Jove’s own finger hurled:
The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.
Jove’s wandering son reached, thus endowed,
The fiery bastions of the skies ”

“ Lingua procul male prompta loqui, suasorque morarum
Sit pudor: alloquiis ut mollior una secundis
Pieridum faveat, cui mox ego destiner, urnæ:
Et gressus prætergrediens convertat, et “Esto”
Dicat “amoena quies atra tibi veste latenti:”
Uno namque jugo duo nutribamur: eosdem
Pavit uterque greges ad fontem et rivulum et umbram. ”

“ Therefore the Far-darter sendeth, and yet shall send on us, evil.
Nor shall he stay from the slaughter the hand that is heavy upon you,
Till to her own dear father the bright-eyed maiden is yielded,
No price asked, no ransom; and ships bear hallowèd oxen
Chryse-wards:—then, it may be, will he shew mercy and hear us.”
These words said, sat he down. Then rose in his place and addressed them
Atreus’ warrior son, Agamemnon king of the nations,
p. 199Sore grieved. ”

“ Does not exist. For we see how wastes each separate substance;
So flow piecemeal away, with the length’ning centuries, all things,
p. 187Till from our eye by degrees that old self passes, and is not.
Still Universal Nature abides unchanged as aforetime. ”

“ Jamque—soporat enim pectus Vindicta Virago;
Omnibus a venis sanguinis unda salit;
Gorgoneique greges præceps (adverte!) feruntur—
Sim, precor, o! semper sim tibi junctus ego.
p. 136“LEAVES HAVE THEIR TIME TO FALL.” Felicia Hemans.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the North-wind’s breath,
And stars to set: but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! ”

“ But never spake a word:
p. 79Then to my whole he made his way;
Took one long lingering survey;
And softly, as he stole away,
Remarked, “By Jove, a bird!”
p. 80II.
If you’ve seen a short man swagger tow’rds the footlights at Shoreditch,
Sing out “Heave aho! my hearties,” and perpetually hitch
Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace,
Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his pleased companion’s face;
If he preluded with hornpipes each successive thing he did,
From a sun-browned cheek extracting still an ostentatious quid ”

“ And Mr. Briggs) —or men, like Jones and Jackson?
Then Nectar—was that beer, or whiskey-toddy?
Some say the Gaelic mixture, I the Saxon:
I think a strict adherence to the latter
Might make some Scots less pigheaded, and fatter.
p. 55Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shews
That the real beverage for feasting gods on
Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose
And also to the palate, known as ‘Hodgson.’
I know a man—a tailor’s son—who rose
To be a peer: and this I would lay odds on,
(Though in his Memoirs it may not appear,)
That that man owed his rise to copious Beer. ”

“ Depulso jam lacte gregi, dum tondet agellos;
Sive quod, indutis verna jam veste, pruinæ
Floribus, albet ubi primum paliurus in agris:
Tale fuit nostris, Lycidam periisse, bubulcis.
Qua, Nymphæ, latuistis, ubi crudele profundum
p. 113Delicias Lycidam vestras sub vortice torsit?
Nam neque vos scopulis tum ludebatis in illis
Quos veteres, Druidæ, Vates, illustria servant
Nomina; nec celsæ setoso in culmine Monæ,
Nec, quos Deva locos magicis amplectitur undis.
Væ mihi! delusos exercent somnia sensus:
Venissetis enim; numquid venisse juvaret? ”