Kitabı oku: «A Parody Anthology», sayfa 11

AFTER DANTE GABRIEL
ROSSETTI

A CHRISTMAS WAIL

(Not by Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

 
ON Christmas day I dined with Brown.
(Oh the dinner was fine to see!)
I drove to his house, right merrily down,
To a western square of London town.
(And I moan and I cry, Woe's me!)
 
 
We dined off turkey and Christmas beef:
(Oh the dinner was fine to see!)
My anguish is sore and my comfort's brief,
And nought but blue pills can ease my grief,
(As I moan and I cry, Woe's me!)
 
 
We gorged plum-pudding and hot mince pies,
(Oh the dinner was fine to see!)
And other nameless atrocities,
The weight of which on my – bosom lies.
(And I moan and I cry, Woe's me!)
 
 
We drank dry Clicquot and rare old port,
(Oh the dinner was fine to see!)
And I pledged my host for a right good sort
In bumpers of both, for I never thought
(I should moan and cry, Woe's me!)
 
 
But I woke next day with a fearful head,
(Oh that dinner was fine to see!)
And on my chest is a weight like lead,
And I frequently wish that I were dead,
(And I moan and I cry, Woe's me!)
 
 
And as for Brown – why the truth to tell —
(Oh that dinner was fine to see!)
I hate him now with the hate of hell,
Though before I loved him passing well,
(And I moan and I cry, Woe's me!)
 

Anonymous.

BALLAD

 
THE auld wife sat at her ivied door
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese),
A thing she had frequently done before,
And her spectacles lay on her apron'd knees.
 
 
The piper he piped on the hill-top high
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese),
Till the cow said "I die," and the goose ask'd "Why?"
And the dog said nothing, but search'd for fleas.
 
 
The farmer he strode through the square farmyard
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese);
His last brew of ale was a trifle hard —
The connection of which with the plot one sees.
 
 
The farmer's daughter had frank blue eyes
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese);
She hears the rooks caw in the windy skies,
As she sits at her lattice and shells her peas.
 
 
The farmer's daughter hath ripe red lips
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese);
If you try to approach her, away she skips
Over tables and chairs with apparent ease.
 
 
The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese),
And I met with a ballad, I can't say where,
Which wholly consisted of lines like these.
 

Part II

 
She sat with her hands 'neath her dimpled cheeks
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese),
And spake not a word. While a lady speaks
There is hope, but she didn't even sneeze.
 
 
She sat, with her hands 'neath her crimson cheeks
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese);
She gave up mending her father's breeks,
And let the cat roll in her new chemise.
 
 
She sat, with her hands 'neath her burning cheeks
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese),
And gazed at the piper for thirteen weeks;
Then she follow'd him out o'er the misty leas.
 
 
Her sheep follow'd her, as their tails did them
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese),
And this song is consider'd a perfect gem,
And as to the meaning, it's what you please.
 

Charles S. Calverley.

CIMABUELLA

 
FAIR-TINTED cheeks, clear eyelids drawn
In crescent curves above the light
Of eyes, whose dim, uncertain dawn
Becomes not day: a forehead white
Beneath long yellow heaps of hair:
She is so strange she must be fair.
 
 
Had she sharp, slant-wise wings outspread,
She were an angel; but she stands
With flat dead gold behind her head,
And lilies in her long thin hands:
Her folded mantle, gathered in,
Falls to her feet as it were tin.
 
 
Her nose is keen as pointed flame;
Her crimson lips no thing express;
And never dread of saintly blame
Held down her heavy eyelashes:
To guess what she were thinking of
Precludeth any meaner love.
 
 
An azure carpet, fringed with gold,
Sprinkled with scarlet spots, I laid
Before her straight, cool feet unrolled;
But she nor sound nor movement made
(Albeit I heard a soft, shy smile,
Printing her neck a moment's while).
 
 
And I was shamed through all my mind
For that she spake not, neither kissed,
But stared right past me. Lo! behind
Me stood, in pink and amethyst,
Sword-girt and velvet-doubleted,
A tall, gaunt youth, with frowzy head.
 
 
Wide nostrils in the air, dull eyes,
Thick lips that simpered, but, ah me!
I saw, with most forlorn surprise,
He was the Thirteenth Century,
I but the Nineteenth; then despair
Curdled beneath my curling hair.
 
 
O Love and Fate! How could she choose
My rounded outlines, broader brain,
And my resuscitated Muse?
Some tears she shed, but whether pain
Or joy in him unlocked their source,
I could not fathom which, of course.
 
 
But I from missals quaintly bound,
With cither and with clavichord,
Will sing her songs of sovran sound:
Belike her pity will afford
Such fain return as suits a saint
So sweetly done in verse and paint.
 

Bayard Taylor.

THE POSTER GIRL

 
THE blessed Poster girl leaned out
From a pinky-purple heaven.
One eye was red and one was green;
Her bang was cut uneven;
She had three fingers on her hand,
And the hairs on her head were seven.
 
 
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No sunflowers did adorn,
But a heavy Turkish portière
Was very neatly worn;
And the hat that lay along her back
Was yellow, like canned corn.
 
 
It was a kind of wobbly wave
That she was standing on,
And high aloft she flung a scarf
That must have weighed a ton;
And she was rather tall – at least
She reached up to the sun.
 
 
She curved and writhed, and then she said
Less green of speech than blue:
"Perhaps I am absurd – perhaps
I don't appeal to you;
But my artistic worth depends
Upon the point of view."
 
 
I saw her smile, although her eyes
Were only smudgy smears;
And then she swished her swirling arms,
And wagged her gorgeous ears.
She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob,
And wept some purple tears.
 

Carolyn Wells.

AFTER JEAN INGELOW

LOVERS, AND A REFLECTION

 
IN moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean;
Meaning, however, is no great matter),
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;
 
 
Thro' God's own heather we wonn'd together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats waver'd alow, above:
 
 
Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And oh, the sundazzle on bark and bight!
 
 
Thro' the rare red heather we danced together,
(O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:
 
 
By rises that flush'd with their purple favors,
Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen,
We walked and waded, we two young shavers,
Thanking our stars we were both so green.
 
 
We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes:
 
 
Songbirds darted about, some inky
As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds;
Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky —
They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!
 
 
But they skim over bents which the millstream washes,
Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;
They need no parasols, no goloshes;
And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.
 
 
Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather)
That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt – (it was perfectly charming weather) —
Our fingers at Fate and her goodness-glooms:
 
 
And Willie 'gan sing (oh, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea) —
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry:"
 
 
Bowers of flowers encounter'd showers
In William's carol – (O love my Willie!)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow
I quite forget what – say a daffodilly:
 
 
A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow,"
I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was "kneaden" of course in Eden —
A rhyme most novel, I do maintain:
 
 
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!
 

Charles S. Calverley.

THE SHRIMP-GATHERERS

 
SCARLET spaces of sand and ocean,
Gulls that circle and winds that blow;
Baskets and boats and men in motion,
Sailing and scattering to and fro.
 
 
Girls are waiting, their wimples adorning
With crimson sprinkles the broad gray flood;
And down the beach the blush of the morning
Shines reflected from moisture and mud.
 
 
Broad from the yard the sail hangs limpy;
Lightly the steersman whistles a lay;
Pull with a will, for the nets are shrimpy,
Pull with a whistle, our hearts are gay!
 
 
Tuppence a quart; there are more than fifty!
Coffee is certain, and beer galore;
Coats are corduroy, minds are thrifty,
Won't we go it on sea and shore!
 
 
See, behind, how the hills are freckled
With low white huts, where the lasses bide
See, before, how the sea is speckled
With sloops and schooners that wait the tide
 
 
Yarmouth fishers may rail and roister,
Tyne-side boys may shout, "Give way!"
Let them dredge for the lobster and oyster,
Pink and sweet are our shrimps to-day!
 
 
Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle,
Such are the sea-fruits lasses love;
Ho! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle,
And the shutterless cottages gleam above!
 

Bayard Taylor.

AFTER CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

REMEMBER

 
REMEMBER it, although you're far away —
Too far away more fivers yet to land,
When you no more can proffer notes of hand,
Nor I half yearn to change my yea to nay.
Remember, when no more in airy way,
You tell me of repayment sagely planned:
Only remember it, you understand!
It's rather late to counsel you to pay;
Yet if you should remember for awhile,
And then forget it wholly, I should grieve;
For, though your light procrastinations leave
Small remnants of the hope that once I had,
Than that you should forget your debt and smile,
I'd rather you'd remember and be sad.
 

Judy.

AFTER LEWIS CARROLL

WAGGAWOCKY

 
'TWAS Maytime, and the lawyer coves
Did jibe and jabber in the wabe,
All menaced were the Tichborne groves,
And their true lord, the Babe.
 
 
"Beware the Waggawock, my son,
The eyelid twitch, the knees' incline,
Beware the Baignet network, spun
For gallant Ballantine."
 
 
He took his ton-weight brief in hand,
Long time the hidden clue he sought,
Then rested he by the Hawkins tree,
And sat awhile in thought.
 
 
And as in toughish thought he rocks,
The Waggawock, sans truth or shame,
Came lumbering to the witness box,
And perjured out his Claim.
 
 
"Untrue! untrue!" Then, through and through
The weary weeks he worked the rack;
But March had youth, ere with the Truth
He dealt the final whack.
 
 
"And hast thou slain the Waggawock
Come to my arms, my Beamish Boy!
O Coleridge, J.! Hoorah! hooray!"
Punch chortled in his joy.
 

Shirley Brooks.

THE VULTURE AND THE HUSBANDMAN

(By Louisa Caroline)

 
THE rain was raining cheerfully
As if it had been May,
The Senate House appeared inside
Unusually gay;
And this was strange, because it was
A Viva-Voce day.
 
 
The men were sitting sulkily,
Their paper work was done,
They wanted much to go away
To ride or row or run;
"It's very rude," they said, "to keep
Us here and spoil our fun."
 
 
The papers they had finished lay
In piles of blue and white,
They answered everything they could,
And wrote with all their might,
But though they wrote it all by rote,
They did not write it right.
 
 
The Vulture and the Husbandman
Besides these piles did stand;
They wept like anything to see
The work they had in hand:
"If this were only finished up,"
Said they, "it would be grand!"
 
 
"If seven D's or seven C's
We give to all the crowd,
Do you suppose," the Vulture said,
"That we could get them ploughed?"
"I think so," said the Husbandman,
"But pray don't talk so loud."
 
 
"O Undergraduates, come up,"
The Vulture did beseech,
"And let us see if you can learn
As well as we can teach;
We cannot do with more than two,
To have a word with each."
 
 
Two Undergraduates came up,
And slowly took a seat;
They knit their brows and bit their thumbs,
As if they found them sweet;
And this is odd, because, you know,
Thumbs are not good to eat.
 
 
"The time has come," the Vulture said,
"To talk of many things,
Of Accidence and Adjectives,
And names of Jewish kings;
How many notes a sackbut has,
And whether shawms have strings."
 
 
"Please, Sir," the Undergraduates said,
Turning a little blue,
"We did not know that was the sort
Of thing we had to do."
"We thank you much," the Vulture said;
"Send up another two."
 
 
Two more came up, and then two more,
And more, and more, and more,
And some looked upwards at the roof,
And some down upon the floor,
But none were any wiser than
The pair that went before.
 
 
"I weep for you," the Vulture said;
"I deeply sympathize!"
With sobs and tears he gave them all
D's of the largest size,
While at the Husbandman he winked
One of his streaming eyes.
 
 
"I think," observed the Husbandman,
"We're getting on too quick;
Are we not putting down the D's
A little bit too thick?"
The Vulture said with much disgust,
"Their answers make me sick."
 
 
"Now, Undergraduates," he cried,
"Our fun is nearly done;
Will anybody else come up?"
But answer came there none;
But this was scarcely odd, because
They'd ploughed them every one!
 

A. C. Hilton.

AFTER A. C. SWINBURNE

GILLIAN

 
JACK and Jille
I have made me an end of the moods of maidens,
I have loosed me, and leapt from the links of love;
From the kiss that cloys and desire that deadens,
The woes that madden, the words that move.
In the dim last days of a spent September,
When fruits are fallen, and flies are fain;
Before you forget, and while I remember,
I cry as I shall cry never again.
 
 
Went up a hylle
Where the strong fell faints in the lazy levels
Of misty meadows, and streams that stray;
We raised us at eve from our rosy revels,
With the faces aflame for the death of the day;
With pale lips parted, and sighs that shiver,
Low lids that cling to the last of love:
We left the levels, we left the river,
And turned us and toiled to the air above.
 
 
To fetch a paile of water,
By the sad sweet springs that have salved our sorrow,
The fates that haunt us, the grief that grips —
Where we walk not to-day nor shall walk not to-morrow —
The wells of Lethe for wearied lips.
With souls nor shaken with tears nor laughter,
With limp knees loosed as of priests that pray,
We bowed us and bent to the white well-water,
We dipped and we drank it and bore away.
 
 
Jack felle downe
The low light trembled on languid lashes,
The haze of your hair on my mouth was blown,
Our love flashed fierce from its fading ashes,
As night's dim net on the day was thrown.
What was it meant for, or made for, that minute,
But that our lives in delight should be dipt?
Was it yours, or my fault, or fate's, that in it
Our frail feet faltered, our steep steps slipt.
 
 
And brake his crowne, and Jille came tumblynge after.
Our linked hands loosened and lapsed in sunder,
Love from our limbs as a shift was shed,
But paused a moment, to watch with wonder
The pale pained body, the bursten head.
While our sad souls still with regrets are riven,
While the blood burns bright on our bruised brows,
I have set you free, and I stand forgiven —
And now I had better go call my cows.
 

Anonymous.

ATALANTA IN CAMDEN-TOWN

 
AY, 'twas here, on this spot,
In that summer of yore,
Atalanta did not
Vote my presence a bore,
Nor reply to my tenderest talk, "She had heard all
that nonsense before."
 
 
She'd the brooch I had bought
And the necklace and sash on,
And her heart, as I thought,
Was alive to my passion;
And she'd done up her hair in the style that the
Empress had brought into fashion.
 
 
I had been to the play
With my pearl of a Peri —
But, for all I could say,
She declared she was weary,
That "the place was so crowded and hot, and she
couldn't abide that Dundreary."
 
 
Then I thought, "'Tis for me
That she whines and she whimpers!"
And it soothed me to see
Those sensational simpers,
And I said, "This is scrumptious," – a phrase I had
learned from the Devonshire shrimpers.
 
 
And I vowed, "'Twill be said
I'm a fortunate fellow,
When the breakfast is spread,
When the topers are mellow,
When the foam of the bird-cake is white and the
fierce orange-blossoms are yellow!"
 
 
Oh, that languishing yawn!
Oh, those eloquent eyes!
I was drunk with the dawn
Of a splendid surmise surmise —
I was stung by a look, I was slain by a tear, by a
tempest of sighs.
 
 
And I whispered, "'Tis time!
Is not Love at its deepest?
Shall we squander Life's prime,
While thou waitest and weepest?
Let us settle it, License or Banns? – though
undoubtedly Banns are the cheapest."
 
 
"Ah, my Hero!" said I,
"Let me be thy Leander!"
But I lost her reply —
Something ending with "gander" —
For the omnibus rattled so loud that no mortal could
quite understand her.
 

Lewis Carroll.

THE MANLET

 
IN stature the Manlet was dwarfish —
No burly big Blunderbore he:
And he wearily gazed on the crawfish
His Wifelet had dressed for his tea.
"Now reach me, sweet Atom, my gunlet,
And hurl the old shoelet for luck;
Let me hie to the bank of the runlet
And shoot thee a Duck!"
 
 
She has reached him his minnikin gunlet:
She has hurled the old shoelet for luck;
She is busily baking a bunlet,
To welcome him home with his duck.
On he speeds, never wasting a wordlet,
Though thoughtlets cling closely as wax,
To the spot where the beautiful birdlet
So quietly quacks.
 
 
Where the Lobsterlet lurks and the Crablet
So slowly and creepily crawls:
Where the Dolphin's at home and the Dablet
Pays long ceremonious calls:
Where the Grublet is sought by the Froglet:
Where the Frog is pursued by the Duck:
Where the Ducklet is chased by the Doglet —
So runs the world's luck.
 
 
He has loaded with bullet and powder:
His footfall is noiseless as air:
But the Voices grow louder and louder
And bellow and bluster and blare.
They bristle before him and after,
They flutter above and below,
Shrill shriekings of lubberly laughter,
Weird wailings of woe!
 
 
They echo without him, within him:
They thrill through his whiskers and beard:
Like a teetotum seeming to spin him,
With sneers never hitherto sneered.
"Avengement," they cry, "on our Foelet!
Let the Manikin weep for our wrongs!
Let us drench him from toplet to toelet
With nursery songs!
 
 
"He shall muse upon Hey! Diddle! Diddle!
On the Cow that surmounted the Moon!
He shall rave of the Cat and the Fiddle,
And the Dish that eloped with the Spoon:
And his soul shall be sad for the Spider,
When Miss Muffett was sipping her whey,
That so tenderly sat down beside her,
And scared her away!
 
 
"The music of Midsummer-madness
Shall sting him with many a bite,
Till, in rapture of rollicking sadness,
He shall groan with a gloomy delight;
He shall swathe him like mists of the morning,
In platitudes luscious and limp,
Such as deck, with a deathless adorning,
The Song of the Shrimp!
 
 
"When the Ducklet's dark doom is decided,
We will trundle him home in a trice:
And the banquet so plainly provided
Shall round into rosebuds and rice:
In a blaze of pragmatic invention
He shall wrestle with Fate and shall reign:
But he has not a friend fit to mention,
So hit him again!"
 
 
He has shot it, the delicate darling!
And the Voices have ceased from their strife:
Not a whisper of sneering or snarling,
As he carries it home to his wife:
Then, cheerily champing the bunlet
His spouse was so skilful to bake,
He hies him once more to the runlet,
To fetch her the Drake!
 

Lewis Carroll.

IF!

 
IF life were never bitter,
And love were always sweet,
Then who would care to borrow
A moral from to-morrow —
If Thames would always glitter,
And joy would ne'er retreat,
If life were never bitter,
And love were always sweet!
 
 
If care were not the waiter
Behind a fellow's chair,
When easy-going sinners
Sit down to Richmond dinners,
And life's swift stream flows straighter,
By Jove, it would be rare,
If care were not the waiter
Behind a fellow's chair.
 
 
If wit were always radiant,
And wine were always iced,
And bores were kicked out straightway
Through a convenient gateway;
Then down the year's long gradient
'Twere sad to be enticed,
If wit were always radiant,
And wine were always iced.
 

Mortimer Collins.

THE MAID OF THE MEERSCHAUM

 
NUDE nymph, when from Neuberg's I led her
In velvet enshrined and encased,
When with rarest Virginia I fed her,
And pampered each maidenly taste
On "Old Judge" and "Lone Jack" and brown "Bird's-eye,"
The best that a mortal might get —
Did she know how, from whiteness of curds, I
Should turn her to jet?
 
 
She was blonde and impassive and stately
When first our acquaintance began,
When she smiled from the pipe-bowl sedately
On the "Stunt" who was scarcely a man.
But labuntur anni fugaces,
And changed in due season were we,
For she wears the blackest of faces,
And I'm a D. C.
 
 
Unfailing the comfort she gave me
In the days when I owned to a heart,
When the charmers that used to enslave me
For Home or the Hills would depart.
She was Polly or Agnes or Kitty
(Whoever pro tem. was my flame),
And I found her most ready to pity,
And – always the same.
 
 
At dawn, when the pig broke from cover,
At noon, when the pleaders were met,
She clung to the lips of her lover
As never live maiden did yet;
At the Bund, when I waited the far light
That brought me my Mails o'er the main —
At night, when the tents, in the starlight,
Showed white on the plain.
 
 
And now, though each finely cut feature
Is flattened and polished away,
I hold her the loveliest creature
That ever was fashioned from clay.
Let an epitaph thus, then, be wrought for
Her tomb, when the smash shall arrive:
"Hic jacet the life's love I bought for
Rupees twenty-five."
 

Rudyard Kipling.