Ballads in Blue China | Page 5

many
common memories. 'One is taken and another left.'
A different sort of memory attaches itself to A Ballade of Dead Cities.
It was written in a Theocritean amoebean way, in competition with Mr.
Edmund Gosse; he need not be ashamed of the circumstance, for
another shepherd, who was umpire, awarded the prize (two kids just
severed from their dams) to his victorious muse.
The Ballade of the Midnight Forest, the Ballade of the Huntress
Artemis, was translated from Theodore de Banville, whose beautiful
poem came so near the Greek, that when the late Provost of Oriel
translated a part of its English shadow into Greek hexameters, you
might suppose, as you read, that they were part of a lost Homeric
Hymn.
I never wrote a double ballade, and stanzas four and five of the Double
Ballade of Primitive Man were contributed by the learned doyen of
Anthropology, Mr. E. B. Tylor, author of Primitive Culture.
A tout seigneur tout honneur!
In Ballade of his Choice of a Sepulchre, the Windburg is a hill in
Teviotdale. A Portrait of 1783 was written on a French engraving after
Morland, and Benedetta Ramus was addressed to a mezzotint (an
artist's proof, 'very rare'). It is after Romney and is 'My Beauty,' as
Charles Lamb said (once, unluckily, to a Scot) of an engraving, after
Lionardo, of some fair dead lady.
The sonnet, Natural Theology, is the germ of what the author has since
written, in The Making of Religion, on the long neglected fact that
many of the lowest savages known share the belief in a benevolent All
Father and Judge of men.
Concerning verses in Rhymes a la Mode, visitors to St. Andrews may

be warned not to visit St. Leonard's Chapel, described in the second
stanza of Almae Matres. In the writer's youth, and even in middle age,
He loitered idly where the tall Fresh-budded mountain-ashes blow
Within its desecrated wall.
The once beautiful ruins carpeted with grass and wild flowers have
been doubly desecrated by persons, academic persons, having authority
and a plentiful lack of taste. The slim mountain-ashes, fair as the young
palm-tree that Odysseus saw beside the shrine of Apollo in Delos, have
been cut down by the academic persons to whom power is given. The
grass and flowers have been rooted up. Hideous little wooden fences
enclose the grave slabs: a roof of a massive kind has been dumped
down on the old walls, and the windows, once so graceful in their airy
lines, have been glazed in a horrible manner, while the ugly iron gate
precludes entrance to a shrine which is now a black and dismal
dungeon.
"Oh, be that roof as lead to lead Above the dull Restorer's head, A
Minstrel's malison is said!"
Notes explanatory are added to the Rhymes, and their information,
however valuable, need not here be repeated.

A BALLADE OF XXXII BALLADES.

Friend, when you bear a care-dulled eye, And brow perplexed with
things of weight, And fain would bid some charm untie The bonds that
hold you all too strait, Behold a solace to your fate, Wrapped in this
cover's china blue; These ballades fresh and delicate, This dainty troop
of Thirty-two!
The mind, unwearied, longs to fly And commune with the wise and
great; But that same ether, rare and high, Which glorifies its worthy
mate, To breath forspent is disparate: Laughing and light and airy-new
These come to tickle the dull pate, This dainty troop of Thirty-two.
Most welcome then, when you and I, Forestalling days for mirth too
late, To quips and cranks and fantasy Some choice half-hour dedicate,
They weave their dance with measured rate Of rhymes enlinked in
order due, Till frowns relax and cares abate, This dainty troop of
Thirty-two.
ENVOY.

Princes, of toys that please your state Quainter are surely none to view
Than these which pass with tripping gait, This dainty troop of
Thirty-two.
F. P.

TO AUSTIN DOBSON. Un Livre est un ami qui change--quelquefois.
1880. 1888

BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER. [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced] Id. viii. 56.

Ah! leave the smoke, the wealth, the roar Of London, and the bustling
street, For still, by the Sicilian shore, The murmur of the Muse is sweet.
Still, still, the suns of summer greet The mountain-grave of Helike,
And shepherds still their songs repeat Where breaks the blue Sicilian
sea.
What though they worship Pan no more, That guarded once the
shepherd's seat, They chatter of their rustic lore, They watch the wind
among the wheat: Cicalas chirp, the young lambs bleat, Where
whispers pine to cypress tree; They count the waves that idly beat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.
Theocritus! thou canst restore The pleasant years, and over-fleet; With
thee we live as