Kitabı oku: «A Parody Anthology», sayfa 10

IMITATION OF WALT WHITMAN

 
THE clear cool note of the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate nest-holder,
The whistle of the railway guard despatching the train to the inevitable collision,
The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal,
The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural;
All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea to let your ribs re-echo with.
But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the apparently inexhaustible pianoforte player.
 

J. K. Stephen.

THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE

 
SAID a poet to a woodlouse, "Thou art certainly my brother;
I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole;
And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother,
In the colors shaded off thee, the suggestions of a soul.
 
 
"Yea," the poet said, "I smell thee by some passive divination,
I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house;
What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion,
Had the æons thought of making thee a man and me a louse.
 
 
"The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion,
Food and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test,
Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question,
And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best.
 
 
"Man the fleshly marvel always feels a certain kind of awe stick
To the skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight;
Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic,
On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate."
 
 
"Notwithstanding which, O poet," spake the woodlouse, very blandly,
"I am likewise the created, – I the equipoise of thee;
I the particle, the atom, I behold on either hand lie
The inane of measured ages that were embryos of me.
 
 
"I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences,
And the air I breathe is colored with apocalyptic blush;
Ripest-budded odors blossom out of dim chaotic stenches,
And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues of human slush.
 
 
"I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings,
Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee;
And earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs,
Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy.
 
 
"And I sacrifice, a Levite; and I palpitate, a poet;
Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things?
Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of her heroic;
Earth's worst spawn, you said, and cursed me? Look! approve me! I have wings.
 
 
"Ah, men's poets! men's conventions crust you round and swathe you mist-like,
And the world's wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye overtrod;
We stand sinlessly stark-naked in effulgence of the Christlight,
And our polecat chokes not cherubs; and our skunk smells sweet to God.
 
 
"For he grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles,
Till a Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunder-storms,
Shimmers up the non-existence round the churning feet of angels;
And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms.
 
 
"Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us;
Ye, with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong?
For the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos,
Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song.
 
 
"Eyes once purged from homebred vapors through humanitarian passion
See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;
Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration,
Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism.
 
 
"Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode,
Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;
All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collapsèd,
While he makes his mundane music – and He will not stop, I think."
 

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

AFTER CHARLES KINGSLEY

THREE LITTLE FISHERS

 
THREE little fishers trudged over the hill,
Over the hill in the sun's broad glare,
With rods and crooked pins, to the brookby the mill,
While three fond mothers sought them everywhere.
For boys will go fishing, though mothers deny.
Watching their chance they sneak off on the sly
To come safely back in the gloaming.
 
 
Three mothers waited outside the gate.
Three little fishers, tired, sunburnt, and worn,
Came into sight as the evening grew late,
Their chubby feet bleeding, their clothing all torn,
For "boys will be boys" – have a keen eye for fun,
While mothers fret, fume, scold, and – succumb,
And welcome them home in the gloaming.
 
 
Three little fishers were called to explain —
Each stood condemned, with his thumb in his eye,
They promised never to do so again,
And were hung up in the pantry to dry.
Three mothers heaved great sighs of relief,
An end had been put to their magnified grief,
When the boys came home in the gloaming.
 

Frank H. Stauffer.

THE THREE POETS

 
THREE poets went sailing down Boston Bay,
All into the East as the sun went down.
Each felt that the editors loved him best,
And would welcome spring poetry in Boston town.
For poets must dream, though the editors frown;
Their revel in visions will not be turned down,
Though the general reader is moaning!
 
 
Three editors climbed to the loftiest tower
That they could find in all Boston town.
And they planned to conceal themselves, hour after hour,
Till the Sun – and the poets – had both gone down.
For spring poets must write, though the editors rage.
The artistic nature must thus be engaged,
Though the publishers all are groaning!
 
 
Three corpses lay out on the Back Bay sand
Just after the first Spring Sun went down,
And the Press sat down to a banquet grand
In honor of poets no more in the town.
For poets will write while the editors sleep,
Though they've little to earn and nothing to keep,
And the populace all are moaning!
 

Lilian Whiting.

AFTER MRS. R. H. STODDARD

THE NETTLE

 
IF days were nights, I could their weight endure,
This darkness cannot hide from me the plant
I seek; I know it by the rasping touch.
The moon is wrapped in bombazine of cloud;
The capes project like crooked lobster-shears
Into the bobbery of the waves; the marsh,
At ebb, has now a miserable smell.
I will not be delayed nor hustled back,
Though every wind should muss my outspread hair.
I snatch the plant that seems my coming fate;
I pass the crinkled satin of the rose,
The violets, frightened out of all their wits,
And other flowers, to me so commonplace,
And cursed with showy mediocrity,
To cull the foliage which repels and stings.
Weak hands may bleed; but mine are tough with pride,
And I but smile where others sob and screech.
The draggled flounces of the willow lash
My neck; I tread upon the bouncing rake,
Which bangs me sorely, but I hasten on,
With teeth firm-set as biting on a wire,
And feet and fingers clinched in bitter pain.
This, few would comprehend; but, if they did,
I should despise myself and merit scorn.
We all are riddles which we cannot guess;
Each has his gimcracks and his thingumbobs,
And mine are night and nettles, mud and mist,
Since others hate them, cowardly avoid.
Things are mysterious when you make them so,
And the slow-pacing days are mighty queer;
But Fate is at the bottom of it all,
And something somehow turns up in the end.
 

Bayard Taylor.

AFTER BAYARD TAYLOR

HADRAMAUT

 
THE grand conglomerate hills of Araby,
That stand empanoplied in utmost thought,
With dazzling ramparts front the Indian sea,
Down there in Hadramaut.
 
 
The sunshine smashes in the doors of morn
And leaves them open; there the vibrant calm
Of life magniloquent pervades forlorn
The giant fronds of palm.
 
 
The cockatoo upon the upas screams;
The armadillo fluctuates o'er the hill;
And like a flag, incarnadined in dreams,
All crimsonly I thrill!
 
 
There have iconoclasts no power to harm,
So, folded grandly in translucent mist,
I let the lights stream down my jasper arm,
And o'er my opal fist.
 
 
An Adamite of old, primeval Earth,
I see the Sphinx upon the porphyry shore,
Deprived of utterance ages ere her birth,
As I am, – only more!
 
 
Who shall ensnare me with invested gold,
Or prayer symbols, backed like malachite?
Let gaunt reformers objurgate and scold,
I gorge me with delight.
 
 
I do not yearn for what I covet most;
I give the winds the passionate gifts I sought;
And slumber fiercely on the torrid coast,
Down there in Hadramaut!
 

Bayard Taylor.

AFTER WILLIAM MORRIS

ESTUNT THE GRIFF

(Argument: Showing how a man of England, hearing from certain Easterlings of the glories of their land, set sail to rule it)

 
AND so unto the End of Graves came he,
Where nigh the staging, ready for the sea,
Oarless and sailless lay the galley's bulk,
Albeit smoke did issue from the hulk
And fell away, across the marshes dun,
Into the visage of the wan-white sun.
And seaward ran the river, cold and gray,
Bearing the brown-sailed Eastland boats away
'Twixt the low shore and shallow sandy spit.
Yet he, being sad, took little heed of it,
But straightly fled toward the misty beach,
And hailed in choked and swiftly spoken speech
A shallop, that for men's conveyance lay
Hard by the margin of that watery way.
Then many that were in like evil plight —
Sad folk, with drawn, dumb lips and faces white,
That writhed themselves into a hopeless smile —
Crowded the shallop, making feint the while
Of merriment and pleasure at that tide,
Though oft upon the laughers' lips there died
The jest, and in its place there came a sigh,
So that men gat but little good thereby,
And, shivering, clad themselves about with furs.
Strange faces of the swarthy outlanders
Looked down upon the shallop as she threw
The sullen waters backward from her screw
And, running forward for some little space,
Stayed featly at the galley's mounting-place,
Where slowly these sad-faced landsmen went
Crabwise and evil-mouthed with discontent,
Holding to sodden rope and rusty chain
And bulwark that was wetted with the rain:
For 'neath their feet the black bows rose and fell,
Nor might a man walk steadfastly or well
Who had not hand upon a rail or rope;
And Estunt turned him landward, and wan hope
Grew on his spirit as an evil mist,
Thinking of loving lips his lips had kissed
An hour since, and how those lips were sweet
An hour since, far off in Fenchurch Street.
Then, with a deep-drawn breath most like a sigh,
He watched the empty shallop shoreward hie;
Then turned him round the driving rain to face,
And saw men heave the anchor from its place;
Whereat, when by the river-mouth, the ship
Began, amid the waters' strife to dip,
His soul was heaved between his jaws that day,
And to the East the good ship took her way.
 

Rudyard Kipling.

AFTER ALFRED AUSTIN

AN ODE

 
I SING a song of sixpence, and of rye
A pocketful – recalling, sad to state,
The niggardly emoluments which I
Receive as Laureate!
 
 
Also I sing of blackbirds – in the mart
At four-a-penny. Thus, in other words,
The sixpence which I mentioned at the start
Purchased two dozen birds.
 
 
So four-and-twenty birds were deftly hid —
Or shall we say, were skilfully concealed? —
Within the pie-dish. When they raised the lid,
What melody forth pealed!
 
 
Now I like four-and-twenty blackbirds sing,
With all their sweetness, all their rapture keen;
And isn't this a pretty little thing
To set before the Queen?
 
 
The money-counting monarch – sordid man! —
His wife, who robbed the little busy bees,
I disregard. In fact a poet can
But pity folks like these.
 
 
The maid was in the garden. Happy maid!
Her choice entitles her to rank above
Master and Mistress. Gladly she surveyed
The Garden That I Love!
 
 
– Where grow my daffodils, anemones,
Tulips, auriculas, chrysanthemums,
Cabbages, asparagus, sweet peas,
With apples, pears, and plums —
 
 
(That's a parenthesis. The very name
Of garden really carries one astray!)
But suddenly a feathered ruffian came,
And stole her nose away.
 
 
Eight stanzas finished! So my Court costume
I lay aside: the Laureate, I suppose,
Has done his part; the man may now resume
His journalistic prose.
 

Anthony C. Deane.

AFTER W. S. GILBERT

ODE TO A LONDON FOG

 
ROLL on, thick haze, roll on!
Through each familiar way
Roll on!
What though I must go out to-day?
What though my lungs are rather queer?
What though asthmatic ills I fear?
What though my wheeziness is clear?
Never you mind!
Roll on!
 
 
Roll on, thick haze, roll on!
Through street and square and lane
Roll on!
It's true I cough and cough again;
It's true I gasp and puff and blow;
It's true my trip may lay me low —
But that's not your affair, you know.
Never you mind!
Roll on!
 

Anonymous.

PRESIDENT GARFIELD

 
WHEN he was a lad he served a term
On a big canal with a boatman's firm;
With a heart so free and a will so strong,
On the towpath drove two mules along.
And he drove those mules so carefullee
He's a candidate now for the Presidencee.
 
 
As a driver boy he made such a mark
He came to the deck of the inland barque
And all of the perils to boat and crew.
He stood at the helm and guided thro'.
He stood at the helm so manfullee
He's a candidate now for the Presidencee.
 
 
He did so well with the helm and mules,
They made him a teacher of district schools;
And when from college in a bran new suit,
A Greek Professor at the Institute,
Where Greek and Latin he taught so free
He's a candidate now for the Presidencee.
 
 
Now boys who cherish ambitious schemes,
Though now you may be but drivers of teams,
Look well to the work you may chance to do,
And do it with a hand that is kind and true.
Whatever you do, do it faithfullee,
And you may aspire to the Presidencee.
 

Anonymous.

PROPINQUITY NEEDED

 
CELESTINE Silvousplait Justine de Mouton Rosalie,
A coryphée who lived and danced in naughty, gay Paree,
Was every bit as pretty as a French girl e'er can be
(Which isn't saying much).
 
 
Maurice Boulanger (there's a name that would adorn a king),
But Morris Baker was the name they called the man I sing.
He lived in New York City in the Street that's labeled Spring
(Chosen because it rhymed).
 
 
Now Baker was a lonesome youth and wanted to be wed,
And for a wife, all over town he hunted, it is said;
And up and down Fifth Avenue he ofttimes wanderéd
(He was a peripatetic Baker, he was).
 
 
And had he met Celestine, not a doubt but Cupid's darts
Would in a trice have wounded both of their fond, loving hearts;
But he has never left New York to stray in foreign parts
(Because he hasn't the price).
 
 
And she has never left Paree and so, of course, you see
There's not the slightest chance at all she'll marry Morris B.
For love to get well started, really needs propinquity
(Hence my title).
 

Charles Battell Loomis.

AFTER R. H. STODDARD

THE CANTELOPE

 
SIDE by side in the crowded streets,
Amid its ebb and flow,
We walked together one autumn morn;
('Twas many years ago!)
 
 
The markets blushed with fruits and flowers;
(Both Memory and Hope!)
You stopped and bought me at the stall,
A spicy cantelope.
 
 
We drained together its honeyed wine,
We cast the seeds away;
I slipped and fell on the moony rinds,
And you took me home on a dray!
 
 
The honeyed wine of your love is drained;
I limp from the fall I had;
The snow-flakes muffle the empty stall,
And everything is sad.
 
 
The sky is an inkstand, upside down,
It splashes the world with gloom;
The earth is full of skeleton bones,
And the sea is a wobbling tomb!
 

Bayard Taylor.

AFTER A. A. PROCTOR

THE LOST VOICE

 
SEATED at Church in the winter
I was frozen in every limb;
And the village choir shrieked wildly
Over a noisy hymn.
 
 
I do not know what they were singing,
For while I was watching them
Our Curate began his sermon
With the sound of a slight "Ahem!"
 
 
It frightened the female portion,
Like the storm which succeeds a calm,
Both maidens and matrons heard it
With a touch of inane alarm.
 
 
It told them of pain and sorrow,
Cold, cough, and neuralgic strife,
Bronchitis, and influenza
All aimed at our Curate's life.
 
 
It linked all perplex'd diseases
Into one precious frame;
They trembled with rage if a sceptic
Attempted to ask its name.
 
 
They have wrapped him in mustard plasters,
Stuffed him with food and wine,
They have fondled, caressed, and nursed him,
With sympathy divine.
 
 
It may be that other Curates
Will preach in that Church to them,
Will there be every time, Good Heavens!
Such a fuss for a slight – Ahem!
 

A. H. S.

THE LOST APE

 
SEATED one day on an organ,
A monkey was ill at ease,
When his fingers wandered idly,
In search of the busy fleas.
I knew not what he was slaying,
Or what he was dreaming then,
But a sound burst forth from that organ,
Not at all like a grand Amen.
 
 
It came through the evening twilight
Like the close of the feline psalm,
But the melody raised by their voices
Compared to this noise was balm!
It was worse than Salvation's Sorrow,
With their band of drum and fife,
And cut, like an evening "Echo,"
The Tit-Bits out of "Life."
 
 
I upset my table and tea things,
And left not one perfect piece;
I gazed at the wreck in silence,
Not loth, but unable to speak!
Then I sought him, alas! all vainly,
The source of that terrible whine,
With his cracked and tuneless organ,
And its melodies undivine.
 
 
Of course there was no policeman
To move him away, – and men
Who grind organs smile demurely
At your curses, and smile again.
It may be that I could choke him —
Could kill him – but organ men,
If you kill a dozen to-day,
To-morrow will come again!
 

J. W. G. W.

THE LOST WORD

 
SEATED one day at the typewriter,
I was weary of a's and e's,
And my fingers wandered wildly
Over the consonant keys.
 
 
I know not what I was writing,
With that thing so like a pen;
But I struck one word astounding —
Unknown to the speech of men.
 
 
It flooded the sense of my verses,
Like the break of a tinker's dam,
And I felt as one feels when the printer
Of your "infinite calm" makes clam.
 
 
It mixed up s's and x's
Like an alphabet coming to strife.
It seemed the discordant echo
Of a row between husband and wife.
 
 
It brought a perplexed meaning
Into my perfect piece,
And set the machinery creaking
As though it were scant of grease.
 
 
I have tried, but I try it vainly,
The one last word to divine
Which came from the keys of my typewriter
And so would pass as mine.
 
 
It may be some other typewriter
Will produce that word again,
It may be, but only for others —
I shall write henceforth with a pen.
 

C. H. Webb.

AFTER GEORGE MEREDITH

AT THE SIGN OF THE COCK

(FRENCH STYLE, 1898)

(Being an Ode in further "Contribution to the Song of French History," dedicated, without malice or permission, to Mr. George Meredith)

I

 
ROOSTER her sign,
Rooster her pugnant note, she struts
Evocative, amazon spurs aprick at heel;
Nid-nod the authentic stump
Of the once ensanguined comb vermeil as wine;
With conspuent doodle-doo
Hails breach o' the hectic dawn of yon New Year,
Last issue up to date
Of quiverful Fate
Evolved spontaneous; hails with tonant trump
The spiriting prime o' the clashed carillon-peal;
Ruffling her caudal plumes derisive of scuts;
Inconscient how she stalks an immarcessibly absurd Bird.
 

II

 
Mark where her Equatorial Pioneer
Delirant on the tramp goes littoralwise.
His Flag at furl, portmanteaued; drains to the dregs
The penultimate brandy-bottle, coal-on-the-headpiece gift
Of who avenged the Old Sea-Rover's smirch.
Marchant he treads the all-along of inarable drift
On dubiously connivent legs,
The facile prey of predatory flies;
Panting for further; sworn to lurch
Empirical on to the Menelik-buffered, enhavened blue,
Rhyming – see Cantique I. – with doodle-doo.
 

III

 
Infuriate she kicked against Imperial fact;
Vulnant she felt
What pin-stab should have stained Another's pelt
Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon,
Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed,
The perjured Scythian she lacked
At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed
Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour
When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke
Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower,
She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked
Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower;
Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon
She woke,
A nuptial-knotted derelict;
Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined
By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace
In guise of heavy-armed Gospeller to men,
Tyrannical unto fraternal equal liberal, her. Not she;
Not till Alsace her consanguineous find
What red deteutonising artillery
Shall shatter her beer-reek alien police
The just-now pluripollent; not till then.
 

IV

 
More pungent yet the esoteric pain
Squeezing her pliable vitals nourishes feud
Insanely grumous, grumously insane.
For lo!
Past common balmly on the Bordereau,
Churns she the skim o' the gutter's crust
With Anti-Judaic various carmagnole,
Whooped praise of the Anti-Just;
Her boulevard brood
Gyratory in convolvements militant-mad;
Theatrical of faith in the Belliform,
Her Og,
Her Monstrous. Fled what force she had
To buckle the jaw-gape, wide agog
For the Preconcerted One,
The Anticipated, ripe to clinch the whole;
Queen-bee to hive the hither and thither volant swarm.
 
 
Bides she his coming; adumbrates the new
Expurgatorial Divine,
Her final effulgent Avatar,
Postured outside a trampling mastodon
Black as her Baker's charger; towering; visibly gorged
With blood of traitors. Knee-grip stiff,
Spine straightened, on he rides;
Embossed the Patriot's brow with hieroglyph
Of martial dossiers, nothing forged
About him save his armour. So she bides
Voicing his advent indeterminably far,
Rooster her sign,
Rooster her conspuent doodle-doo.
 

V

 
Behold her, pranked with spurs for bloody sport,
How she acclaims,
A crapulous chanticleer,
Breach of the hectic dawn of yon New Year.
Not yet her fill of rumours sucked;
Inebriate of honour; blushfully wroth;
Tireless to play her old primeval games;
Her plumage preened the yet unplucked
Like sails of a galleon, rudder hard amort
With crepitant mast
Fronting the hazard to dare of a dual blast
The intern and the extern, blizzards both.
 

Owen Seaman.