Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories, And all least furlable things got furled'; Not with any design to conceal their 'glories,' But simply and solely to rhyme with world.'
O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together, this genial weather,
And carted, or carried on wafts' away,
Nor ever again trotted out-ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be! C. S. Calverley.
LINES ON HEARING THE ORGAN
GRINDER, who serenely grindest
At my door the Hundredth Psalm, "
Till thou ultimately findest
Pence in thy unwashen palm:
Grinder, jocund-hearted Grinder,
Near whom Barbary's nimble son
Poised with skill upon his hinder
Paws, accepts the proffered bun:
Dearly as I love thy grinding;
Joy to meet thee on thy road
Where thou prowlest through the blinding
Dust with that stupendous load,
'Neath the baleful star of Sirius,
When the postmen slowlier jog,
And the ox becomes delirious
And the muzzle decks the dog.
Tell me by what art thou bindest
On thy feet those ancient shoon:
Tell me, Grinder, if thou grindest
Always, always out of tune.
Tell me if, as thou art buckling
On thy straps with eager claws,
Thou forecastest, inly chuckling,.
All the rage that thou wilt cause.
Tell me if at all thou mindest
When folks flee, as if on wings,
From thee as at ease thou grindest :
Tell me fifty thousand things.
Grinder, gentle-hearted Grinder!
Ruffians who lead evil lives,
Soothed by thy sweet strains, are kinder
To their bullocks and their wives:
Children, when they see thy supple
Form approach, are out like shots;
Half-a-bar sets several couple
Waltzing in convenient spots;
Not with clumsy Jacks or Georges ;
Unprofaned by grasp of man
Maidens speed those simple orgies,
Betsey Jane with Betsey Ann.
As they love thee in St Giles's
Thou art loved in Grosvenor Square,
None of those engaging smiles is
Unreciprocated there.
Often, ere yet thou hast hammer'd
Through thy four delicious airs,
Coins are flung thee by enamour'd
Housemaids upon area stairs:
E'en the ambrosial-whiskered flunkey
Eyes thy boots and thine unkempt
Beard and melancholy monkey
More in pity than contempt.
Far from England, in the sunny
South, where Anio leaps in foam,
Thou wast rear'd, till lack of money
Drew thee from thy vine-clad home:
And thy mate, the sinewy Jocko,
From Brazil or Afric came,
Land of simoon and sirocco-
And he seems extremely tame.
There he quaff'd the undefilèd
Spring, or hung with ape-like glee,
By his teeth or tail or eyelid,
To the slippery mango-tree :
There he woo'd and won a dusky
Bride, of instincts like his own;
Talk'd of love till he was husky
In a tongue to us unknown:
Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage
The potato ground, or cut
Down the unsuspecting savage
With the well-aimed cocoa-nut :
Till the miscreant stranger tore him Screaming from his blue-faced fair; And they flung strange raiment o'er him, Raiment which he could not bear :
Sever'd from the pure embraces
Of his children and his spouse,
He must ride fantastic races
Mounted on reluctant sows:
But the heart of wistful Jocko
Still was with his ancient flame
In the nut groves of Morocco;
Or if not it's all the same.
Grinder, winsome grinsome Grinder !
They who see thee and whose soul
Melts not at thy charms, are blinder
Than a trebly-bandaged mole :
They to whom thy curt (yet clever)
Talk, thy music and thine ape,
Seem not to be joys for ever,
Are but brutes in human shape.
'Tis not that thy mien is stately,
'Tis not that thy tones are soft;
'Tis not that I care so greatly
For the same thing play'd so oft:
But I've heard mankind abuse thee
And perhaps it's rather strange,
But I thought that I would choose thee
For enconium, as a change.
THOU who when fears attack
Bidst them avaunt, and Black
Care, at the horseman's back
Perching, unseatest;
Sweet, when the morn is grey;
Sweet, when they've cleared away
Lunch; and at close of day
Possibly sweetest:
I have a liking old
For thee, though manifold
Stories, I know, are told
Not to thy credit;
How one (or two at most)
Drops make a cat a ghost-
Useless, except to roast-
Doctors have said it.
How they who use fusees
All grow by slow degrees
Brainless as chimpanzees,
Meagre as lizards;
Go mad, and beat their wives;
Plunge, after shocking lives,
Razors and carving-knives
Into their gizzards.
Confound such knavish tricks!
Yet I know five or six
Smokers who freely mix
Still with their neighbours;
|
