New Collected Rhymes
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“A Highly Valuable chain of Thoughts.”
Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn,No man would be a funkerOf whin, or burn, or bunker.There were no need for mashies, The turf would ne’er be torn,Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn.Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn,The big trout would not everEscape into the river.No gut the salmon smashes Would leave us all forlorn,Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne’er a thorn.But ’tis an unideal, Sad world in which we’re born,And things will “go contrairy”With Martin and with Mary:And every day the real Comes bleakly in with morn,And cigarettes have ashes, And every rose a thorn.Matrimony
(Matrimony – Advertiser would like to hear from well-educated Protestant lady, under thirty, fair, with view to above, who would have no objection to work Remington type-writer, at home. Enclose photo. T. 99. This Office. Cork newspaper.)
T. 99 would gladly hear From one whose years are few,A maid whose doctrines are severe, Of Presbyterian blue,Also – with view to the above — Her photo he would see,And trusts that she may live and love His Protestant to be!But ere the sacred rites are done (And by no Priest of Rome)He’d ask, if she a Remington Type-writer works – at home?If she have no objections to This task, and if her hair —In keeping with her eyes of blue — Be delicately fair,Ah, then, let her a photo send Of all her charms divine,To him who rests her faithful friend, Her own T. 99.Piscatori Piscator
In Memory of Thomas Tod StoddartAn angler to an angler here, To one who longed not for the bays,I bring a little gift and dear, A line of love, a word of praise,A common memory of the ways, By Elibank and Yair that lead;Of all the burns, from all the braes, That yield their tribute to the Tweed.His boyhood found the waters clean, His age deplored them, foul with dye;But purple hills, and copses green, And these old towers he wandered by,Still to the simple strains reply Of his pure unrepining reed,Who lies where he was fain to lie, Like Scott, within the sound of Tweed.The Contented Angler
The Angler hath a jolly life Who by the rail runs down,And leaves his business and his wife, And all the din of town.The wind down stream is blowing straight, And nowhere cast can he:Then lo, he doth but sit and wait In kindly company.The miller turns the water off, Or folk be cutting weed,While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed.Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne’er a rise may see;For why, there are not any flies To bear him company.Or, if he mark a rising trout, He straightway is caught up,And then he takes his flasket out, And drinks a rousing cup.Or if a trout he chance to hook, Weeded and broke is he,And then he finds a godly book Instructive company.Off My Game
“I’m of my game,” the golfer said, And shook his locks in woe;“My putter never lays me dead, My drives will never go;Howe’er I swing, howe’er I stand, Results are still the same,I’m in the burn, I’m in the sand — I’m off my game!“Oh, would that such mishaps might fall On Laidlay or Macfie,That they might toe or heel the ball, And sclaff along like me!Men hurry from me in the street, And execrate my name,Old partners shun me when we meet — I’m off my game!“Why is it that I play at all? Let memory remind meHow once I smote upon my ball, And bunkered it —behind me.I mostly slice into the whins, And my excuse is lame —It cannot cover half my sins — I’m off my game!“I hate the sight of all my set, I grow morose as Byron;I never loved a brassey yet, And now I hate an iron.My cleek seems merely made to top, My putting’s wild or tame;It’s really time for me to stop — I’m off my game!”The Property of a Gentleman who has given up Collecting
Oh blessed be the cart that takes Away my books, my curse, my clog,Blessed the auctioneer who makes Their inefficient catalogue.Blessed the purchasers who pay However little – less were fit —Blessed the rooms, the rainy day, The knock-out and the end of it.For I am weary of the sport, That seemed a while agone so sweet,Of Elzevirs an inch too short, And First Editions – incomplete.Weary of crests and coats of arms, “Attributed to Padeloup”The sham Deromes have lost their charms, The things Le Gascon did not do.I never read the catalogues Of rubbish that come thick as rooks,But most I loathe the dreary dogs That write in prose, or worse, on books.Large paper surely cannot hide Their grammar, nor excuse their rhyme,The anecdotes that they provide Are older than the dawn of time.Ye bores, of every shape and size, Who make a tedium of delight,Good-bye, the last of my good-byes. Good night, to all your clan good night!* * * *Thus in a sullen fit we swore, But on mature reflection,Went on collecting more and more, And kept our old collection!The Ballade of the Subconscious Self
Who suddenly calls to our ken The knowledge that should not be there;Who charms Mr. Stead with the pen, Of the Prince of the Powers of the Air;Who makes Physiologists stare — Is he ghost, is he demon, or elf,Who fashions the dream of the fair? It is just the Subconscious Self.He’s the ally of Medicine Men Who consult the Australian bear,And ’tis he, with his lights on the fen, Who helps Jack o’ Lanthorn to snareThe peasants of Devon, who swear Under Commonwealth, Stuart, or Guelph,That they never had half such a scare — It is just the Subconscious Self.It is he, from his cerebral den, Who raps upon table and chair,Who frightens the housemaid, and then Slinks back, like a thief, to his lair:’Tis the Brownie (according to Mair) Who rattles the pots on the shelf,But the Psychical sages declare “It is just the Subconscious Self.”Prince, each of us all is a pair — The Conscious, who labours for pelf,And the other, who charmed Mr. Blair, It is just the Subconscious Self.Ballade of the Optimist
Heed not the folk who sing or say In sonnet sad or sermon chill,“Alas, alack, and well-a-day, This round world’s but a bitter pill.”Poor porcupines of fretful quill! Sometimes we quarrel with our lot:We, too, are sad and careful; still We’d rather be alive than not.What though we wish the cats at play Would some one else’s garden till;Though Sophonisba drop the tray And all our worshipped Worcester spill,Though neighbours “practise” loud and shrill, Though May be cold and June be hot,Though April freeze and August grill, We’d rather be alive than not.And, sometimes on a summer’s day To self and every mortal illWe give the slip, we steal away, To walk beside some sedgy rill:The darkening years, the cares that kill, A little while are well forgot;When deep in broom upon the hill, We’d rather be alive than not.Pistol, with oaths didst thou fulfil The task thy braggart tongue begot,We eat our leek with better will, We’d rather be alive than not.Zimbabwe
(The ruined Gold Cities of Rhodesia. The Ophir of Scripture.)Into the darkness whence they came, They passed, their country knoweth none,They and their gods without a name Partake the same oblivion.Their work they did, their work is done, Whose gold, it may be, shone like fireAbout the brows of Solomon, And in the House of God’s Desire.Hence came the altar all of gold, The hinges of the Holy Place,The censer with the fragrance rolled Skyward to seek Jehovah’s face;The golden Ark that did encase The Law within Jerusalem,The lilies and the rings to grace The High Priest’s robe and diadem.The pestilence, the desert spear, Smote them; they passed, with none to tellThe names of them who laboured here: Stark walls and crumbling crucible,Strait gates, and graves, and ruined well, Abide, dumb monuments of old,We know but that men fought and fell, Like us, like us, for love of Gold.Love’s Cryptogram
[The author (if he can be so styled) awoke from a restless sleep, with the first stanza of the following piece in his mind. He has no memory of composing it, either awake or asleep. He had long known the perhaps Pythagorean fable of the bean-juice, but certainly never thought of applying it to an amorous correspondence! The remaining verses are the contribution of his Conscious Self!]
ElleI cannot write, I may not write, I dare not write to thee,But look on the face of the moon by night, And my letters shalt thou see.For every letter that lovers write, By their loves on the moon is seen,If they pen their thought on the paper white, With the magic juice of the bean!LuiOh, I had written this many a year, And my letters you had read.Had you only told me the spell, my dear, Ere ever we twain were wed!But I have a lady and you have a lord, And their eyes are of the green,And we dared not trust to the written word, Lest our long, long love be seen!Elle“Oh, every thought that your heart has thought, Since the world came us between,The birds of the air to my heart have brought, With no word heard or seen.”’Twas thus in a dream we spoke and said Myself and my love unseen,But I woke and sighed on my weary bed, For the spell of the juice of the bean!Tusitala
We spoke of a rest in a fairy knowe of the North, but he, Far from the firths of the East, and the racing tides of the West,Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite Southern Sea, Weary and well content in his grave on the Vaëa crest.Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales, Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world’s delight,Looks o’er the labours of men in the plain and the hill; and the sails Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night.Winds of the West and the East in the rainy season blow Heavy with perfume, and all his fragrant woods are wet,Winds of the East and West as they wander to and fro, Bear him the love of the land he loved, and the long regret.Once we were kindest, he said, when leagues of the limitless sea Flowed between us, but now that no wash of the wandering tidesSunders us each from each, yet nearer we seem to be, Whom only the unbridged stream of the river of Death divides.Disdainful Diaphenia
There is no venom in the Rose That any bee should shrink from it;No poison from the Lily flows, She hath not a disdainful wit;But thou, that Rose and Lily art,Thy tongue doth poison Cupid’s dart!Nature herself to deadly flowers Refuseth beauty lest the vainInsects that hum through August hours With beauty should suck in their bane;But thou, as Rose or Lily fair,Art circled with envenomed air!Like Progne didst thou lose thy tongue, Thy lovers might adore and live;Like that witch Circe, oft besung, Thou hast dear gifts, if thou wouldst give;But since thou hast a wicked wit,Thy lovers fade, or flee from it.Tall Salmacis
Were an apple tree a pine, Tall and slim, and softly swaying,Then her beauty were like thine, Salmacis, when boune a Maying,Tall as any poplar tree,Sweet as apple blossoms be!Had the Amazonian Queen Seen thee ’midst thy maiden peers,Thou the Coronel hadst been Of that lady’s Grenadiers;Troy had never mourned her fall,With thine axe to guard her wall.As Penthesilea brave Is the maiden (in her dreams);Ilium she well might save, Though Achilles’ armour gleams,’Midst the Greeks; all vain it is,’Gainst the glance of Salmacis!JUBILEE POEMS
BY BARDS WHO WERE SILENT
What Francesco said of the Jubilee
By R. BWhat if we call it fifty years! ’Tis steep!To climb so high a gradient? Prate of Guides?Are we not roped? The Danger? Nay, the Turf,No less nor more than mountain peaks, my friend,Hears talk of Roping, – but the Jubilee!Nay, there you have me: old Francesco once(This was in Milan, in Visconti’s time,Our wild Visconti, with one lip askance,And beard tongue-twisted in the nostril’s nook)Parlous enough, – these times – what? “So are ours”?Or any times, i’fegs, to him who thinks, —Well ’twas in Spring “the frolic myrtle treesThere gendered the grave olive stocks,” – you cry“A miracle!” – Sordello writeth thus, —Believe me that indeed ’twas thus, and he,Francesco, you are with me? Well, there’s gloomNo less than gladness in your fifty years,“And so,” said he, “to supper as we may.”“Voltairean?” So you take it; but ’tis late,And dinner seven, sharp, at Primrose Hill.The Poet and the Jubilee
Poscimur!By A. DA Birthday Ode for Meg or Nan,A Rhyme for Lady Flora’s Fan,A Verse on Smut, who’s gone astray,These Things are in the Poet’s way;At Home with praise of Julia’s Lace,Or Delia’s Ankles, Rose’s Face,But “Something overparted” He,When asked to rhyme the jubilee!He therefore turns, the Poet wary,And Thumbs his Carmen Seculare,To Phœbus and to Dian prays,Who tune Men’s Lyres of Holidays,He reads of the Sibylline Shades,Of Stainless Boys and chosen Maids.He turns, and reads the other Page,Of docile Youth, and placid Age,Then Sings how, in this golden YearFides Pudorque reappear, —And if they don’t appear, you know itWere quite unjust to blame the Poet!On any Beach
By M. AYes, in the stream and stress of things, That breaks around us like the sea,There comes to Peasants and to Kings, The solemn Hour of Jubilee. If they, till strenuous Nature give Some fifty harvests, chance to live!Ah, Fifty harvests! But the corn Is grown beside the barren main,Is salt with sea-spray, blown and borne Across the green unvintaged plain. And life, lived out for fifty years, Is briny with the spray of tears!Ah, such is Life, to us that live Here, in the twilight of the Gods,Who weigh each gift the world can give, And sigh and murmur, What’s the odds So long’s you’re happy? Nay, what Man Finds Happiness since Time began?Ode of Jubilee
By A. C. SMe, that have sung and shrieked, and foamed in praise of Freedom, Me do you ask to singParochial pomps, and waste, the wail of Jubileedom For Queen, or Prince, or King!* * * * *Nay, by the foam that fleeting oars have feathered, In Grecian seas;Nay, by the winds that barques Athenian weathered — By all of theseI bid you each be mute, Bards tamed and tethered, And fee’d with fees!For you the laurel smirched, for you the gold, too, Of Magazines;For me the Spirit of Song, unbought, unsold to Pale Priests or Queens!For you the gleam of gain, the fluttering cheque Of Mr. Knowles,For me, to soar above the ruins and wreck Of Snobs and “Souls”!When aflush with the dew of the dawn, and the Rose of the Mystical Vision,The spirit and soul of the Men of the Future shall rise and be free,They shall hail me with hymning and harping, With eloquent Art and Elysian, —The Singer who sung not but spurned them, The slaves that could sing “Jubilee;” With pinchbeck lyre and tongue, Praising their tyrant sung,They shall fail and shall fade in derision, As wind on the ways of the sea!Jubilee Before Revolution
By W. M“Tell me, O Muse of the Shifty, the Man who wandered afar,”So have I chanted of late, and of Troy burg wasted of war —Now of the sorrows of Menfolk that fifty years have been,Now of the Grace of the Commune I sing, and the days of a Queen!Surely I curse rich Menfolk, “the Wights of the Whirlwind” may they —This is my style of translating ‘Αρπυίαι, – snatch them away!The Rich Thieves rolling in wealth that make profit of labouring men,Surely the Wights of the Whirlwind shall swallow them quick in their den!O baneful, O wit-straying, in the Burg of London ye dwell,And ever of Profits and three per cent. are the tales ye tell,But the stark, strong Polyphemus shall answer you back again,Him whom “No man slayeth by guile and not by main.”(By “main” I mean “main force,” if aught at all do I mean.In the Greek of the blindfold Bard it is simpler the sense to glean.)You Polyphemus shall swallow and fill his mighty maw,What time he maketh an end of the Priests, the Police, and the Law,And then, ah, who shall purchase the poems of old that I sang,Who shall pay twelve-and-six for an epic in Saga slang?But perchance even “Hermes the Flitter” could scarcely expound what I mean,And I trow that another were fitter to sing you a song for a Queen.FOLK SONGS
French Peasant Songs
IOh, fair apple tree, and oh, fair apple tree,As heavy and sweet as the blossoms on thee, My heart is heavy with love.It wanteth but a little wind To make the blossoms fall;It wanteth but a young lover To win me heart and all.III send my love letters By larks on the wing;My love sends me letters When nightingales sing.Without reading or writing, Their burden we know:They only say, “Love me, Who love you so.”IIIAnd if they ask for me, brother, Say I come never home,For I have taken a strange wife Beyond the salt sea foam.The green grass is my bridal bed, The black tomb my good mother,The stones and dust within the grave Are my sister and my brother.BALLADS
The Young Ruthven
The King has gi’en the Queen a gift, For her May-day’s propine,He’s gi’en her a band o’ the diamond-stane, Set in the siller fine.The Queen she walked in Falkland yaird, Beside the Hollans green,And there she saw the bonniest man That ever her eyes had seen.His coat was the Ruthven white and red, Sae sound asleep was heThe Queen she cried on May Beatrix, That seely lad to see.“Oh! wha sleeps here, May Beatrix, Without the leave o’ me?”“Oh! wha suld it be but my young brother Frae Padua ower the sea!“My father was the Earl Gowrie, An Earl o’ high degree,But they hae slain him by fause treason, And gar’d my brothers flee.“At Padua hae they learned their leir In the fields o’ Italie;And they hae crossed the saut sea-faem, And a’ for love o’ me!”* * * *The Queen has cuist her siller band About his craig o’ snaw;But still he slept and naething kenned, Aneth the Hollans shaw.The King he daundered thro’ the yaird, He saw the siller shine;“And wha,” quoth he, “is this galliard That wears yon gift o’ mine?”The King has gane till the Queen’s ain bower, An angry man that day;But bye there cam’ May Beatrix And stole the band away.And she’s run in by the dern black yett, Straight till the Queen ran she:“Oh! tak ye back your siller band, Or it gar my brother dee!”The Queen has linked her siller band About her middle sma’;And then she heard her ain gudeman Come rowting through the ha’.“Oh! whare,” he cried, “is the siller band I gied ye late yestreen?The knops was a’ o’ the diamond stane, Set in the siller sheen.”“Ye hae camped birling at the wine, A’ nicht till the day did daw;Or ye wad ken your siller band About my middle sma’!”The King he stude, the King he glowered, Sae hard as a man micht stare.“Deil hae me! Like is a richt ill mark, — Or I saw it itherwhere!“I saw it round young Ruthven’s neck As he lay sleeping still;And, faith, but the wine was wondrous guid, Or my wife is wondrous ill!”* * * *There was na gane a week, a week, A week but barely three;The King has hounded John Ramsay out, To gar young Ruthven dee!They took him in his brother’s house, Nae sword was in his hand,And they hae slain him, young Ruthven, The bonniest in the land!And they hae slain his fair brother, And laid him on the green,And a’ for a band o’ the siller fine And a blink o’ the eye o’ the Queen!Oh! had they set him man to man, Or even ae man to three,There was na a knight o’ the Ramsay bluid Had gar’d Earl Gowrie dee!The Queen O’ Spain and the Bauld Mclean
A Ballad of the Sound of Mull1588The Queen o’ Spain had an ill gude-man. The carle was auld and grey.She has keeked in the glass at Hallow-een A better chance to spae.She’s kaimit out her lang black hair, That fell below her knee.She’s ta’en the apple in her hand, To see what she might see.Then first she saw her ain fair face, And then the glass grew white,And syne as black as the mouth o’ Hell Or the sky on a winter night.But last she saw the bonniest man That ever her eyes had seen,His hair was gold, and his eyes were grey, And his plaid was red and green.“Oh! the Spanish men are unco black And unco blate,” she said;“And they wear their mantles swart and side, No the bonny green and red.”“Oh! where shall I find sic a man? That is the man for me!”She has filled a ship wi’ the gude red gold, And she has ta’en the sea.And she’s sailed west and she’s sailed east, And mony a man she’s seen;But never the man wi’ the hair o’ gold, And the plaid o’ red and green.And she’s sailed east and she’s sailed west, Till she cam’ to a narrow sea,The water ran like a river in spate, And the hills were wondrous hie.And there she spied a bonny bay, And houses on the strand,And there the man in the green and red Came rowing frae the land.Says “Welcome here, ye bonny maid, Ye’re welcome here for me.Are ye the Lady o’ merry Elfland, Or the Queen o’ some far countrie?”“I am na the Lady o’ fair Elfland, But I am the Queen o’ Spain.”He’s lowted low, and kissed her hand, Says “They ca’ me the McLean!”“Then it’s a’ for the aefold love o’ thee That I hae sailed the faem!”“But, out and alas!” he has answered her, “For I hae a wife at hame.”“Ye maun cast her into a massymore, Or away on a tide-swept isle;”“But, out and alas!” he’s answered her, “For my wife’s o’ the bluid o’ Argyll!”Oh! they twa sat, and they twa grat, And made their weary maen,Till McLean has ridden to Dowart Castle, And left the Queen her lane.His wife was a Campbell, fair and fause, Says “Lachlan, where hae ye been?”“Oh! I hae been at Tobermory, And kissed the hand o’ a Queen!”“Oh! we maun send the Queen a stag, And grouse for her propine,And we’ll send her a cask o’ the usquebaugh, And a butt o’ the red French wine!”She has put a bomb in the clairet butt, And eke a burning lowe,She has sent them away wi’ her little foot-page That cam’ frae the black Lochow.* * * *The morn McLean rade forth to see The last blink o’ his Queen,There stude her ship in the harbour gude, Upon the water green.But there cam’ a crash like a thunder-clap, And a cloud on the water green.The bonny ship in flinders flew, And drooned was the bonny Queen.McLean he speirit nor gude nor bad, His skian dubh he’s ta’en,And he’s cuttit the throat o’ that fause foot-page, And sundered his white hausebane.Keith of Craigentolly
O Keith o’ Craigentolly! Ye sall live to rue the dayWhen ye brak the berried holly Beside St. Andrew’s bay!When Pitcullo’s kineCard down to the brine, And were drooned in the driving spray!In the bower o’ Craigentolly Is a wan and waefu’ bride,Singing, O waly! waly! Through the whole country side;And a river to wadeFor a dying maid, And a weary way to ride!O Keith o’ Craigentolly, The bairn’s grave by the sea!O Keith o’ Craigentolly, The graves of maidens three!And a bluidy shift,And a sainless shrift, For Keith o’ Craigentolly!1
One verse and the refrain are of 1750 or thereabouts. At Laffen, where William, Duke of Cumberland, was defeated and nearly captured by the Scots and Irish in the French service, Prince Charles is said to have served as a volunteer.
2
So Nyren tells us.