Part 11
"Could but our tempers move like this machine, Not urged by passion, nor delayed by spleen; But true to Nature's regulating power, By virtuous acts distinguish every hour: Then health and joy would follow, as they ought, The laws of motion and the laws of thought: On earth would pass the pleasant moments o'er To rest in Heaven when Time shall be no more!"
The last lines of this watch-paper have been occasionally varied to--
"Sweet health to pass the pleasant moments o'er And everlasting joy when Time shall be no more."
A watchmaker named Adams, who practised his craft many years ago in Church Street, Hackney, was fond of putting scraps of poetry in the outer case of watches sent him for repair. One of his effusions follow:
"To-morrow! yes, to-morrow! you'll repent A train of years in vice and folly spent. To-morrow comes--no penitential sorrow Appears therein, for still it is to-morrow; At length to-morrow such a habit gains That you'll forget the time that Heaven ordains; And you'll believe that day too soon will be When more to-morrows you're denied to see."
Another old engraved specimen contained this verse:
"Content thy selfe withe thyne estat, And sende no poore wight from thy gate; For why, this councell I thee give, To learne to dye, and dye to lyve."
The following lines by Pope, occurring in his Epistle to the Earl of Oxford, have been used in this way:
"Absent or dead Still let a friend be Dear. The Absent claims a sigh, the dead a tear. May Angels guard The friend I love."
Milman's poems have furnished a verse for this purpose:
"It matters little at what hour o' the day The righteous fall asleep; death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die. The less of this cold world, the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality."
Various other examples of watch-case verses follow:
THE WATCH'S MOMENTS.
"See how the moments pass, How swift they fly away! In the instructive glass Behold thy life's decay. Oh! waste not then thy prime In sin's pernicious road; Redeem thy misspent time, Acquaint thyself with God. So when thy pulse shall cease Its throbbing transient play, The soul to realms of bliss May wing its joyful way."
"Deign, lady fair, this watch to wear, To mark how moments fly; For none a moment have to spare, Who in a moment die."
TO A LADY WITH THE PRESENT OF A WATCH.
"With me while present, may thy lovely eyes, Be never turned upon this golden toy; Think every pleasing hour too swiftly flies, And measure time by joy succeeding joy. But when the cares that interrupt our bliss, To me not always will thy sight allow, Then oft with fond impatience look on this, Then every minute count--as I do now."
"Time is thou hast, employ the portion small; Time past is gone, thou canst not it recall; Time future is not, and may never be; Time present is the only time for thee."
"Watch against evil thoughts Watch against idle words; Watch against sinful ways; Watch against wicked actions. What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch."
The following lines have a sand-glass engraved between the first four and the last four lines:
"Mark the rapid motion Of this timepiece; hear it say, Man, attend to thy salvation; Time does quickly pass away. Why, heedless of the warning Which my tinkling sound doth give, Do forget, vain frame adorning, Man thou art not born to live?"
On a sun-dial the following verse has been found engraved:
"Once at a potent leader's voice it stayed; Once it went back when a good monarch prayed; Mortals! howe'er ye grieve, howe'er deplore, The flying shadow shall return no more."
This was found under an hour-glass in a grotto near water:
"This babbling stream not uninstructive flows, Nor idly loiters to its destined main; Each flower it feeds that on its margin grows, Now bids thee blush, whose days are spent in vain.
Nor void of moral, though unheeded glides Time's current, stealing on with silent haste; For lo! each falling sand _his_ folly chides, Who lets one precious moment run to waste."
_PROSE POEMS._
Several pages of this kind appeared at the end of an early volume of "Cornhill Magazine," of which this is the beginning:
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
"'Tis in the middle of the night; and as with weary hand we write, 'Here endeth C. M. volume seven,' we turn our grateful eyes to heaven. The fainting soul, oppressèd long, expands and blossoms into song; but why 'twere difficult to state, for here commenceth volume eight.
"And ah! what mischiefs him environ who claps the editorial tiar on! 'Tis but a paper thing, no doubt; but those who don it soon find out the weight of lead--ah me, how weary!--one little foolscap sheet may carry. Pleasing, we hear, to gods and man was Mr. William Gladstone when he calmed the paper duty fuss; but oh, 'twas very hard on Us. Before he took the impost off, one gentleman was found enough (he _was_ Herculean, but still!--) to bear the letters from Cornhill: two men are needed now, and these are clearly going at the knees. Yet happy hearts had we to-day if one in fifteen hundred, say, of all the packets, white and blue, which we diurnally go through, yielded an ounce of sterling brains, or ought but headache for our pains. Ah, could the Correspondent see the Editor in his misery, no more injurious ink he'd shed, but tears of sympathy instead. What is this tale of straws and bricks? A hen with fifty thousand chicks clapt in Sahara's sandy plain to peck the wilderness for grain--in that unhappy fowl is seen the despot of a magazine. Only one difference we find; but that is most important, mind. Instinct compels _her_ patient beak; ours--in all modesty we speak--is kept by CONSCIENCE (sternly chaste) pegging the literary waste. Our barns are stored, our garners--well, the stock in them's considerable; yet when we're to the desert brought, again comes back the welcome thought that somewhere in its depths may hide one little seed, which, multiplied in our half-acre on Cornhill, might all the land with gladness fill. Experience then no more we heed; but, though we seldom find the seed, we read, and read, and read, and read." &c. &c.
This is also an instance of this hidden verse in the beginning of one of Macaulay's letters to his sister Hannah:
"MY DARLING,--Why am I such a fool as to write to a gipsy at Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my three? A lazy chit, whose fingers tire in penning a page in reply to a quire! There, miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse."
When Mr. Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House" was first published, the "Athenæum" furnished the following unique criticism:
"The gentle reader we apprise, That this new Angel in the House Contains a tale not very wise, About a person and a spouse. The author, gentle as a lamb, Has managèd his rhymes to fit, And haply fancies he has writ Another 'In Memoriam.' How his intended gathered flowers, And took her tea and after sung, Is told in style somewhat like ours, For delectation of the young. But, reader, lest you say we quiz The poet's record of his she, Some little pictures you shall see, Not in our language but in his:
'While thus I grieved and kissed her glove, My man brought in her note to say Papa had bid her send his love, And hoped I dine with them next day; They had learned and practised Purcell's glee, To sing it by to-morrow night: The postscript was--her sisters and she Inclosed some violets blue and white.
* * * * *
'Restless and sick of long exile, From those sweet friends I rode, to see The church repairs, and after a while Waylaying the Dean, was asked to tea. They introduced the Cousin Fred I'd heard of, Honor's favourite; grave, Dark, handsome, bluff, but gently bred, And with an air of the salt wave.'
Fear not this saline Cousin Fred; He gives no tragic mischief birth; There are no tears for you to shed, Unless they may be tears of mirth. From ball to bed, from field to farm, The tale flows nicely purling on; With much conceit there is no harm, In the love-legend here begun. The rest will come another day, If public sympathy allows; And this is all we have to say About the 'Angel in the House.'"
THE PRINTER.
"The printer-man had just set up a 'stickful' of brevier, filled with italic, fractions, signs, and other things most queer; the type he lifted from the stick, nor dreamt of coming woes, when lo! a wretched wasp thought fit to sting him on the nose: the printer-man the type let fall, as quick as quick could be, and gently murmured a naughty word beginning with a D."
MY LOVE.
"I seen her out a-walking in her habit de la rue, and it ain't no use a-talking, but she's pumpkins and a few. She glides along in glory like a duck upon a lake, and I'd be all love and duty, if I only were her drake!"
THE SOLO.
"He drew his breath with a gasping sob, with a quivering voice he sang, but his voice leaked out and could not drown the accompanist's clamorous bang. He lost his pitch on the middle A, he faltered on the lower D, and foundered at length like a battered wreck adrift on the wild high C."
PONY LOST.
_On Feb. 21st, 1822, this devil bade me adieu._
"Lost, stolen, or astray, not the least doubt but run away, a mare pony that is all bay,--if I judge pretty nigh, it is about eleven hands high; full tail and mane, a pretty head and frame; cut on both shoulders by the collar, not being soft nor hollow; it is about five years old, which may be easily told; for spirit and for speed, the devil cannot her exceed."
An excellent specimen of this kind of literary work is to be found in J. Russell Lowell's "Fable for Critics," of which the title-page and preface are written in this fashion, and there is here given an extract from the latter:
"Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure,--that, in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun _at_ them or _with_ them.
"So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land, but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics call _lofty_ and _true_, and about thirty thousand (_this_ tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed _full of promise_ and _pleasing_. The public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about courting _them_, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot.
"As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them send in their cards, without further delay, to my friend G. P. Putnam, Esquire, in Broadway, where a list will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his proper position, at the rate of one author to each new edition. Thus, a premium is offered sufficiently high (as the Magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to club their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill." &c. &c.
That which is considered, however, one of the best of Prose Poems is the following, which appeared originally in _Fraser's Magazine_, and will also be found in Maclise and Maginn's "Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters,"[11] being part of the introductory portion of a notice of the late Earl of Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, and known at the time as an aspirant to literary and political fame:
"O Reader dear! do pray look here, and you will spy the curly hair, and forehead fair, and nose so high, and gleaming eye, of Benjamin D'Is-ra-e-li, the wondrous boy who wrote _Alroy_ in rhyme and prose, only to show how long ago victorious Judah's lion-banner rose. In an earlier day he wrote _Vivian Grey_--a smart enough story, we must say, until he took his hero abroad, and trundled him over the German road; and taught him there not to drink beer, and swallow schnapps, and pull mädschen's caps, and smoke the cigar and the meersham true, in alehouse and lusthaus all Fatherland through, until all was blue, but talk secondhand that which, at the first, was never many degrees from the worst,--namely, German cant and High Dutch sentimentality, maudlin metaphysics, and rubbishing reality. But those who would find how Vivian wined with the Marchioness of Puddledock, and other great grandees of the kind, and how he talked æsthetic, and waxed eloquent and pathetic, and kissed his Italian puppies of the greyhound breed, they have only to read--if the work be still alive--Vivian Grey, in volumes five.
"As for his tentative upon the _Representative_, which he and John Murray got up in a very great hurry, we shall say nothing at all, either great or small; and all the wars that thence ensued, and the Moravian's deadly feud; nor much of that fine book, which is called 'the Young Duke,' with his slippers of velvet blue, with clasps of snowy-white hue, made out of the pearl's mother, or some equally fine thing or other; and 'Fleming' (_Contarini_), which will cost ye but a guinea; and 'Gallomania' (get through it, can you?) in which he made war on (assisted by a whiskered baron--his name was Von Haber, whose Germanical jabber, Master Ben, with ready pen, put into English smart and jinglish), King Philippe and his court; and many other great works of the same sort--why, we leave them to the reader to peruse; that is to say, if he should choose.
"He lately stood for Wycombe, but there Colonel Grey did lick him, he being parcel Tory and parcel Radical--which is what in general mad we call; and the latest affair of his we chanced to see, is 'What is he?' a question which, by this time, we have somewhat answered in this our pedestrian rhyme. As for the rest,--but writing rhyme is, after all, a pest; and therefore"----
_MISCELLANEOUS ODDS AND ENDS._
Some years ago _Punch_ gave "revised versions" of a few of the old popular songs, and, referring to the one we have chosen as a specimen, says that "its simplicity, its truthfulness, and, above all, its high moral, have recommended it to him for selection. It is well known to the million--of whose singing, indeed, it forms a part. Perhaps it will be recognised; perhaps not."
A POLISHED POEM.
_Air._--"If I had a donkey vot vouldn't go, Do you think I'd wallop," &c.
"Had I an ass averse to speed, Deem'st thou I'd strike him? No, indeed! Mark me, I'd try persuasion's art, For cruelty offends my heart: Had all resembled me, I ween, Martin, thy law had needless been Of speechless brutes from blows to screen The poor head; For had I an ass averse to speed I ne'er would strike him, no, indeed! I'd give him hay, and cry, 'Proceed,' And 'Go on, Edward!'
Why speak I thus? This very morn, I saw that cruel William Burn, Whilst crying 'Greens' upon his course, Assail his ass with all his force; He smote him o'er the head and thighs, Till tears bedimmed the creature's eyes! Oh! 'twas too much, my blood 'gan rise And I exclaimed, 'Had I an,' &c.
Burn turn'd and cried, with scornful eye, 'Perchance thou'rt one of Martin's fry, And seek'st occasion base to take, The vile informer's gain to make.' Word of denial though I spoke, Full on my brow his fury broke, And thus, while I return'd the stroke, I exclaimed, 'Had I an,' &c.
To us, infringing thus the peace, Approach'd his guardians--the police; And, like inevitable Fate, Bore us to where stern Justice sate; Her minister the tale I told; And to support my word, made bold To crave he would the ass behold: 'For,' I declared, 'Had I an,' &c.
They called the creature into court Where, sooth to say, he made some sport, With ears erect, and parted jaws, As though he strove to plead his cause: I gained the palm of feelings kind; The ass was righted; William fined. For Justice, one with me in mind, Exclaimed, by her Minister, 'Had I an,' &c.
Cried William to his judge, ''Tis hard (Think not the fine that I regard), But things have reached a goodly pass-- One may not beat a stubborn ass!' Nought spoke the judge, but closed his book; So William thence the creature took, Eyeing me--ah! with what a look, As gently whispering in his ear, I said, 'William, had I an,' &c."
CUMULATIVE PARODYING.
There was a young damsel; oh, bless her, It cost very little to dress her; She was sweet as a rose In her everyday clothes, But had no young man to caress her. --_Meridien Recorder._
There was a young turkey; oh, bless her: It cost very little to dress her; Some dry bread and thyme, About Thanksgiving time, And they ate the last bit from the dresser. --_American Punch._
A newspaper poet; oh, dang him! And pelt him and club him and bang him! He kept writing away, Till the people one day Rose up and proceeded to hang him. --_Detroit Free Press._
BLANK VERSE IN RHYME.
(A NOCTURNAL SKETCH.)
"Even is come; and from the dark Park, hark The signal of the setting sun--one gun! And six is sounding from the chime, prime time To go and see the Drury-lane Dane slain,-- Or hear Othello's jealous doubt spout out,-- Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade, Denying to his frantic clutch much touch; Or else to see Ducrow with wide stride ride Four horses as no other man can span; Or in the small Olympic pit, sit split Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz.
Anon night comes, and with her wings brings things Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung; The gas up-blazes with its bright white light, And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl, About the streets, and take up Pall Mall Sal, Who hastening to her nightly jobs, robs fobs.
Now thieves to enter for your cash, smash, crash, Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep, But frightened by Policeman B 3, flee, And while they're going whisper low, 'No go!' Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads, And sleepers waking, grumble--'Drat that cat!' Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill-will.
Now Bulls of Bashan, of a prize-size, rise In childish dreams, and with a roar gore poor Georgey, or Charles, or Billy, willy-nilly; But nursemaid in a nightmare rest, chest-pressed, Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Games, And that she hears--what faith is man's!--Ann's banns And his, from Reverend Mr. Rice, twice, thrice; White ribbons flourish, and a stout shout out, That upward goes, shows Rose knows those bows' woes!" --_Thomas Hood._
The following excellent specimen of mono-syllabic verse comes from an old play in the Garrick Collection:
SONG.
"Let us sip, and let it slip, And go which way it will a; Let us trip, and let us skip, And let us drink our fill a.
Take the cup, and drink all up, Give me the can to fill a; Every sup, and every cup, Hold here and my good will a.
Gossip mine and gossip thine; Now let us gossip still a; Here is good wine, this ale is fine, Now drink of which you will a.
Round about, till all be out, I pray you let us swill a; This jolly grout is jolly and stout, I pray you stout it still a.
Let us laugh and let us quaff, Good drinkers think none ill a; Here is your bag, here is your staffe, Be packing to the mill a."
ELESSDÉ.
"In a certain fair island, for commerce renown'd, Whose fleets sailed in every sea, A set of fanatics, men say, there was found, Who set up an island and worship around, And called it by name Elessdé.
Many heads had the monster, and tails not a few, Of divers rare metals was he And temples they built him right goodly to view, Where oft they would meet, and, like idolists true, Pay their vows to the great Elessdé.
Moreover, at times would their frenzy attain ('Twas nought less) to so high a degree, That his soul-blinded votaries did not complain, But e'en laid down their lives his false favour to gain-- So great was thy power, Elessdé.
As for morals, this somewhat unscrupulous race Were lax enough, 'twixt you and me; Men would poison their friends with professional grace, And of the fell deed leave behind ne'er a trace, For the sake of the fiend, Elessdé.
Then forgery flourished, and rampant and rife Was each form of diablerie; While the midnight assassin, with mallet and knife, Would steal on his victim and rob him of life, And all for thy love, Elessdé.
There were giants of crime on the earth in that day, The like of which we may not see: Although, peradventure, some sceptic will say There be those even now who acknowledge the sway Of the god of the world--_£ s. d._"
EARTH.
"What is earth, Sexton?--A place to dig graves. What is earth, Rich man?--A place to work slaves. What is earth, Greybeard?--A place to grow old. What is earth, Miser?--A place to dig gold. What is earth, Schoolboy?--A place for my play. What is earth, Maiden?--A place to be gay. What is earth, Seamstress?--A place where I weep. What is earth, Sluggard?--A good place to sleep. What is earth, Soldier?--A place for a battle. What is earth, Herdsman?--A place to raise cattle. What is earth, Widow?--A place of true sorrow. What is earth, Tradesman?--I'll tell you to-morrow. What is earth, Sick man?--'Tis nothing to me. What is earth, Sailor?--My home is the sea. What is earth, Statesman?--A place to win fame. What is earth, Author?--I'll write there my name. What is earth, Monarch?--For my realm it is given. What is earth, Christian?--The gateway of heaven."
INDEX.
Acrostics, 198
Ad Chloen, M.A., 105
Addresses, the Rejected, 15
Ad Mortem, 56
Ad Professorem Linguæ Germanicæ, 101
"Alice in Wonderland," verses from, 42, 43