Kitabı oku: «More Bab Ballads», sayfa 3

Ballad: An Unfortunate Likeness

 
I’ve painted SHAKESPEARE all my life—
“An infant” (even then at “play”!)
“A boy,” with stage-ambition rife,
Then “Married to ANN HATHAWAY.”
 
 
“The bard’s first ticket night” (or “ben.”),
His “First appearance on the stage,”
His “Call before the curtain”—then
“Rejoicings when he came of age.”
 
 
The bard play-writing in his room,
The bard a humble lawyer’s clerk.
The bard a lawyer¹—parson²—groom³—
The bard deer-stealing, after dark.
 
 
The bard a tradesman⁴—and a Jew⁵—
The bard a botanist⁶—a beak⁷—
The bard a skilled musician⁸ too—
A sheriff⁹ and a surgeon¹⁰ eke!
 
 
Yet critics say (a friendly stock)
That, though it’s evident I try,
Yet even I can barely mock
The glimmer of his wondrous eye!
 
 
One morning as a work I framed,
There passed a person, walking hard:
“My gracious goodness,” I exclaimed,
“How very like my dear old bard!
 
 
“Oh, what a model he would make!”
I rushed outside—impulsive me!—
“Forgive the liberty I take,
But you’re so very”—“Stop!” said he.
 
 
“You needn’t waste your breath or time,—
I know what you are going to say,—
That you’re an artist, and that I’m
Remarkably like SHAKESPEARE.  Eh?
 
 
“You wish that I would sit to you?”
I clasped him madly round the waist,
And breathlessly replied, “I do!”
“All right,” said he, “but please make haste.”
 
 
I led him by his hallowed sleeve,
And worked away at him apace,
I painted him till dewy eve,—
There never was a nobler face!
 
 
“Oh, sir,” I said, “a fortune grand
Is yours, by dint of merest chance,—
To sport his brow at second-hand,
To wear his cast-off countenance!
 
 
“To rub his eyes whene’er they ache—
To wear his baldness ere you’re old—
To clean his teeth when you awake—
To blow his nose when you’ve a cold!”
 
 
His eyeballs glistened in his eyes—
I sat and watched and smoked my pipe;
“Bravo!” I said, “I recognize
The phrensy of your prototype!”
 
 
His scanty hair he wildly tore:
“That’s right,” said I, “it shows your breed.”
He danced—he stamped—he wildly swore—
“Bless me, that’s very fine indeed!”
 
 
“Sir,” said the grand Shakesperian boy
(Continuing to blaze away),
“You think my face a source of joy;
That shows you know not what you say.
 
 
“Forgive these yells and cellar-flaps:
I’m always thrown in some such state
When on his face well-meaning chaps
This wretched man congratulate.
 
 
“For, oh! this face—this pointed chin—
This nose—this brow—these eyeballs too,
Have always been the origin
Of all the woes I ever knew!
 
 
“If to the play my way I find,
To see a grand Shakesperian piece,
I have no rest, no ease of mind
Until the author’s puppets cease.
 
 
“Men nudge each other—thus—and say,
‘This certainly is SHAKESPEARE’S son,’
And merry wags (of course in play)
Cry ‘Author!’ when the piece is done.
 
 
“In church the people stare at me,
Their soul the sermon never binds;
I catch them looking round to see,
And thoughts of SHAKESPEARE fill their minds.
 
 
“And sculptors, fraught with cunning wile,
Who find it difficult to crown
A bust with BROWN’S insipid smile,
Or TOMKINS’S unmannered frown,
 
 
“Yet boldly make my face their own,
When (oh, presumption!) they require
To animate a paving-stone
With SHAKESPEARE’S intellectual fire.
 
 
“At parties where young ladies gaze,
And I attempt to speak my joy,
‘Hush, pray,’ some lovely creature says,
‘The fond illusion don’t destroy!’
 
 
“Whene’er I speak, my soul is wrung
With these or some such whisperings:
‘’Tis pity that a SHAKESPEARE’S tongue
Should say such un-Shakesperian things!’
 
 
“I should not thus be criticised
Had I a face of common wont:
Don’t envy me—now, be advised!”
And, now I think of it, I don’t!
 

Ballad: Gregory Parable, LL.D

 
A leafy cot, where no dry rot
Had ever been by tenant seen,
Where ivy clung and wopses stung,
Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed,
Where treeses grew and breezes blew—
A thatchy roof, quite waterproof,
Where countless herds of dicky-birds
Built twiggy beds to lay their heads
(My mother begs I’ll make it “eggs,”
But though it’s true that dickies do
Construct a nest with chirpy noise,
With view to rest their eggy joys,
’Neath eavy sheds, yet eggs and beds,
As I explain to her in vain
Five hundred times, are faulty rhymes).
’Neath such a cot, built on a plot
Of freehold land, dwelt MARY and
Her worthy father, named by me
GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
 
 
He knew no guile, this simple man,
No worldly wile, or plot, or plan,
Except that plot of freehold land
That held the cot, and MARY, and
Her worthy father, named by me
GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
 
 
A grave and learned scholar he,
Yet simple as a child could be.
He’d shirk his meal to sit and cram
A goodish deal of Eton Gram.
No man alive could him nonplus
With vocative of filius;
No man alive more fully knew
The passive of a verb or two;
None better knew the worth than he
Of words that end in b, d, t.
Upon his green in early spring
He might be seen endeavouring
To understand the hooks and crooks
Of HENRY and his Latin books;
Or calling for his “Caesar on
The Gallic War,” like any don;
Or, p’raps, expounding unto all
How mythic BALBUS built a wall.
So lived the sage who’s named by me
GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
 
 
To him one autumn day there came
A lovely youth of mystic name:
He took a lodging in the house,
And fell a-dodging snipe and grouse,
For, oh! that mild scholastic one
Let shooting for a single gun.
 
 
By three or four, when sport was o’er,
The Mystic One laid by his gun,
And made sheep’s eyes of giant size,
Till after tea, at MARY P.
And MARY P. (so kind was she),
She, too, made eyes of giant size,
Whose every dart right through the heart
Appeared to run that Mystic One.
The Doctor’s whim engrossing him,
He did not know they flirted so.
For, save at tea, “musa musae,”
As I’m advised, monopolised
And rendered blind his giant mind.
But looking up above his cup
One afternoon, he saw them spoon.
“Aha!” quoth he, “you naughty lass!
As quaint old OVID says, ‘Amas!’”
 
 
The Mystic Youth avowed the truth,
And, claiming ruth, he said, “In sooth
I love your daughter, aged man:
Refuse to join us if you can.
Treat not my offer, sir, with scorn,
I’m wealthy though I’m lowly born.”
“Young sir,” the aged scholar said,
“I never thought you meant to wed:
Engrossed completely with my books,
I little noticed lovers’ looks.
I’ve lived so long away from man,
I do not know of any plan
By which to test a lover’s worth,
Except, perhaps, the test of birth.
I’ve half forgotten in this wild
A father’s duty to his child.
It is his place, I think it’s said,
To see his daughters richly wed
To dignitaries of the earth—
If possible, of noble birth.
If noble birth is not at hand,
A father may, I understand
(And this affords a chance for you),
Be satisfied to wed her to
A BOUCICAULT or BARING—which
Means any one who’s very rich.
Now, there’s an Earl who lives hard by,—
My child and I will go and try
If he will make the maid his bride—
If not, to you she shall be tied.”
 
 
They sought the Earl that very day;
The Sage began to say his say.
The Earl (a very wicked man,
Whose face bore Vice’s blackest ban)
Cut short the scholar’s simple tale,
And said in voice to make them quail,
“Pooh! go along! you’re drunk, no doubt—
Here, PETERS, turn these people out!”
 
 
The Sage, rebuffed in mode uncouth,
Returning, met the Mystic Youth.
“My darling boy,” the Scholar said,
“Take MARY—blessings on your head!”
 
 
The Mystic Boy undid his vest,
And took a parchment from his breast,
And said, “Now, by that noble brow,
I ne’er knew father such as thou!
The sterling rule of common sense
Now reaps its proper recompense.
Rejoice, my soul’s unequalled Queen,
For I am DUKE OF GRETNA GREEN!”
 

Ballad: The King Of Canoodle-Dum

 
The story of FREDERICK GOWLER,
A mariner of the sea,
Who quitted his ship, the Howler,
A-sailing in Caribbee.
For many a day he wandered,
Till he met in a state of rum
CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP,
The King of Canoodle-Dum.
 
 
That monarch addressed him gaily,
“Hum!  Golly de do to-day?
Hum!  Lily-white Buckra Sailee”—
(You notice his playful way?)—
“What dickens you doin’ here, sar?
Why debbil you want to come?
Hum!  Picaninnee, dere isn’t no sea
In City Canoodle-Dum!”
 
 
And GOWLER he answered sadly,
“Oh, mine is a doleful tale!
They’ve treated me werry badly
In Lunnon, from where I hail.
I’m one of the Family Royal—
No common Jack Tar you see;
I’m WILLIAM THE FOURTH, far up in the North,
A King in my own countree!”
 
 
Bang-bang!  How the tom-toms thundered!
Bang-bang!  How they thumped this gongs!
Bang-bang!  How the people wondered!
Bang-bang!  At it hammer and tongs!
Alliance with Kings of Europe
Is an honour Canoodlers seek,
Her monarchs don’t stop with PEPPERMINT DROP
Every day in the week!
 
 
FRED told them that he was undone,
For his people all went insane,
And fired the Tower of London,
And Grinnidge’s Naval Fane.
And some of them racked St. James’s,
And vented their rage upon
The Church of St. Paul, the Fishmongers’ Hall,
And the Angel at Islington.
 
 
CALAMITY POP implored him
In his capital to remain
Till those people of his restored him
To power and rank again.
CALAMITY POP he made him
A Prince of Canoodle-Dum,
With a couple of caves, some beautiful slaves,
And the run of the royal rum.
 
 
Pop gave him his only daughter,
HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP:
FRED vowed that if over the water
He went, in an English ship,
He’d make her his Queen,—though truly
It is an unusual thing
For a Caribbee brat who’s as black as your hat
To be wife of an English King.
 
 
And all the Canoodle-Dummers
They copied his rolling walk,
His method of draining rummers,
His emblematical talk.
For his dress and his graceful breeding,
His delicate taste in rum,
And his nautical way, were the talk of the day
In the Court of Canoodle-Dum.
 
 
CALAMITY POP most wisely
Determined in everything
To model his Court precisely
On that of the English King;
And ordered that every lady
And every lady’s lord
Should masticate jacky (a kind of tobaccy),
And scatter its juice abroad.
 
 
They signified wonder roundly
At any astounding yarn,
By darning their dear eyes roundly
(’T was all they had to darn).
They “hoisted their slacks,” adjusting
Garments of plantain-leaves
With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches,
Instead of a dress like EVE’S!)
 
 
They shivered their timbers proudly,
At a phantom forelock dragged,
And called for a hornpipe loudly
Whenever amusement flagged.
“Hum!  Golly! him POP resemble,
Him Britisher sov’reign, hum!
CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP,
De King of Canoodle-Dum!”
 
 
The mariner’s lively “Hollo!”
Enlivened Canoodle’s plain
(For blessings unnumbered follow
In Civilization’s train).
But Fortune, who loves a bathos,
A terrible ending planned,
For ADMIRAL D. CHICKABIDDY, C.B.,
Placed foot on Canoodle land!
 
 
That rebel, he seized KING GOWLER,
He threatened his royal brains,
And put him aboard the Howler,
And fastened him down with chains.
The Howler she weighed her anchor,
With FREDERICK nicely nailed,
And off to the North with WILLIAM THE FOURTH
These horrible pirates sailed.
 
 
CALAMITY said (with folly),
“Hum! nebber want him again—
Him civilize all of us, golly!
CALAMITY suck him brain!”
The people, however, were pained when
They saw him aboard his ship,
But none of them wept for their FREDDY, except
HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP.
 

Ballad: First Love

 
A clergyman in Berkshire dwelt,
The REVEREND BERNARD POWLES,
And in his church there weekly knelt
At least a hundred souls.
 
 
There little ELLEN you might see,
The modest rustic belle;
In maidenly simplicity,
She loved her BERNARD well.
 
 
Though ELLEN wore a plain silk gown
Untrimmed with lace or fur,
Yet not a husband in the town
But wished his wife like her.
 
 
Though sterner memories might fade,
You never could forget
The child-form of that baby-maid,
The Village Violet!
 
 
A simple frightened loveliness,
Whose sacred spirit-part
Shrank timidly from worldly stress,
And nestled in your heart.
 
 
POWLES woo’d with every well-worn plan
And all the usual wiles
With which a well-schooled gentleman
A simple heart beguiles.
 
 
The hackneyed compliments that bore
World-folks like you and me,
Appeared to her as if they wore
The crown of Poesy.
 
 
His winking eyelid sang a song
Her heart could understand,
Eternity seemed scarce too long
When BERNARD squeezed her hand.
 
 
He ordered down the martial crew
Of GODFREY’S Grenadiers,
And COOTE conspired with TINNEY to
Ecstaticise her ears.
 
 
Beneath her window, veiled from eye,
They nightly took their stand;
On birthdays supplemented by
The Covent Garden band.
 
 
And little ELLEN, all alone,
Enraptured sat above,
And thought how blest she was to own
The wealth of POWLES’S love.
 
 
I often, often wonder what
Poor ELLEN saw in him;
For calculated he was not
To please a woman’s whim.
 
 
He wasn’t good, despite the air
An M.B. waistcoat gives;
Indeed, his dearest friends declare
No greater humbug lives.
 
 
No kind of virtue decked this priest,
He’d nothing to allure;
He wasn’t handsome in the least,—
He wasn’t even poor.
 
 
No—he was cursed with acres fat
(A Christian’s direst ban),
And gold—yet, notwithstanding that,
Poor ELLEN loved the man.
 
 
As unlike BERNARD as could be
Was poor old AARON WOOD
(Disgraceful BERNARD’S curate he):
He was extremely good.
 
 
A BAYARD in his moral pluck
Without reproach or fear,
A quiet venerable duck
With fifty pounds a year.
 
 
No fault had he—no fad, except
A tendency to strum,
In mode at which you would have wept,
A dull harmonium.
 
 
He had no gold with which to hire
The minstrels who could best
Convey a notion of the fire
That raged within his breast.
 
 
And so, when COOTE and TINNEY’S Own
Had tootled all they knew,
And when the Guards, completely blown,
Exhaustedly withdrew,
 
 
And NELL began to sleepy feel,
Poor AARON then would come,
And underneath her window wheel
His plain harmonium.
 
 
He woke her every morn at two,
And having gained her ear,
In vivid colours AARON drew
The sluggard’s grim career.
 
 
He warbled Apiarian praise,
And taught her in his chant
To shun the dog’s pugnacious ways,
And imitate the ant.
 
 
Still NELL seemed not, how much he played,
To love him out and out,
Although the admirable maid
Respected him, no doubt.
 
 
She told him of her early vow,
And said as BERNARD’S wife
It might be hers to show him how
To rectify his life.
 
 
“You are so pure, so kind, so true,
Your goodness shines so bright,
What use would ELLEN be to you?
Believe me, you’re all right.”
 
 
She wished him happiness and health,
And flew on lightning wings
To BERNARD with his dangerous wealth
And all the woes it brings.
 

Ballad: Brave Alum Bey

 
Oh, big was the bosom of brave ALUM BEY,
And also the region that under it lay,
In safety and peril remarkably cool,
And he dwelt on the banks of the river Stamboul.
 
 
Each morning he went to his garden, to cull
A bunch of zenana or sprig of bul-bul,
And offered the bouquet, in exquisite bloom,
To BACKSHEESH, the daughter of RAHAT LAKOUM.
 
 
No maiden like BACKSHEESH could tastily cook
A kettle of kismet or joint of tchibouk,
As ALUM, brave fellow! sat pensively by,
With a bright sympathetic ka-bob in his eye.
 
 
Stern duty compelled him to leave her one day—
(A ship’s supercargo was brave ALUM BEY)—
To pretty young BACKSHEESH he made a salaam,
And sailed to the isle of Seringapatam.
 
 
“O ALUM,” said she, “think again, ere you go—
Hareems may arise and Moguls they may blow;
You may strike on a fez, or be drowned, which is wuss!”
But ALUM embraced her and spoke to her thus:
 
 
“Cease weeping, fair BACKSHEESH!  I willingly swear
Cork jackets and trousers I always will wear,
And I also throw in a large number of oaths
That I never—no, never—will take off my clothes!”
 

* * * * *

 
They left Madagascar away on their right,
And made Clapham Common the following night,
Then lay on their oars for a fortnight or two,
Becalmed in the ocean of Honololu.
 
 
One day ALUM saw, with alarm in his breast,
A cloud on the nor-sow-sow-nor-sow-nor-west;
The wind it arose, and the crew gave a scream,
For they knew it—they knew it!—the dreaded Hareem!!
 
 
The mast it went over, and so did the sails,
Brave ALUM threw over his casks and his bales;
The billows arose as the weather grew thick,
And all except ALUM were terribly sick.
 
 
The crew were but three, but they holloa’d for nine,
They howled and they blubbered with wail and with whine:
The skipper he fainted away in the fore,
For he hadn’t the heart for to skip any more.
 
 
“Ho, coward!” said ALUM, “with heart of a child!
Thou son of a party whose grave is defiled!
Is ALUM in terror? is ALUM afeard?
Ho! ho!  If you had one I’d laugh at your beard.”
 
 
His eyeball it gleamed like a furnace of coke;
He boldly inflated his clothes as he spoke;
He daringly felt for the corks on his chest,
And he recklessly tightened the belt at his breast.
 
 
For he knew, the brave ALUM, that, happen what might,
With belts and cork-jacketing, he was all right;
Though others might sink, he was certain to swim,—
No Hareem whatever had terrors for him!
 
 
They begged him to spare from his personal store
A single cork garment—they asked for no more;
But he couldn’t, because of the number of oaths
That he never—no, never!—would take off his clothes.
 
 
The billows dash o’er them and topple around,
They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned.
A terrible wave o’er the quarter-deck breaks,
And the vessel it sinks in a couple of shakes!
 
 
The dreadful Hareem, though it knows how to blow,
Expends all its strength in a minute or so;
When the vessel had foundered, as I have detailed,
The tempest subsided, and quiet prevailed.
 
 
One seized on a cork with a yelling “Ha! ha!”
(Its bottle had ’prisoned a pint of Pacha)—
Another a toothpick—another a tray—
“Alas! it is useless!” said brave ALUM BEY.
 
 
“To holloa and kick is a very bad plan:
Get it over, my tulips, as soon as you can;
You’d better lay hold of a good lump of lead,
And cling to it tightly until you are dead.
 
 
“Just raise your hands over your pretty heads—so—
Right down to the bottom you’re certain to go.
Ta! ta!  I’m afraid we shall not meet again”—
For the truly courageous are truly humane.
 
 
Brave ALUM was picked up the very next day—
A man-o’-war sighted him smoking away;
With hunger and cold he was ready to drop,
So they sent him below and they gave him a chop.
 
 
O reader, or readress, whichever you be,
You weep for the crew who have sunk in the sea?
O reader, or readress, read farther, and dry
The bright sympathetic ka-bob in your eye.
 
 
That ship had a grapple with three iron spikes,—
It’s lowered, and, ha! on a something it strikes!
They haul it aboard with a British “heave-ho!”
And what it has fished the drawing will show.
 
 
There was WILSON, and PARKER, and TOMLINSON, too—
(The first was the captain, the others the crew)—
As lively and spry as a Malabar ape,
Quite pleased and surprised at their happy escape.
 
 
And ALUM, brave fellow, who stood in the fore,
And never expected to look on them more,
Was really delighted to see them again,
For the truly courageous are truly humane.