Fly Leaves | Page 3

sombre and yet so gay!?Still away, my lithe Arab, once more away!
Nay, tempt me not, Arab, again to stay;?Since I crave neither Echo nor Fun to-day.?For thy HAND is not Echoless--there they are?Fun, Glowworm, and Echo, and Evening Star:?And thou hintest withal that thou fain would'st shine,?As I con them, these bulgy old boots of mine.?But I shrink from thee, Arab! Thou eat'st eel-pie,?Thou evermore hast at least one black eye;?There is brass on thy brow, and thy swarthy hues?Are due not to nature but handling shoes;?And the hit in thy mouth, I regret to see,?Is a bit of tobacco-pipe--Flee, child, flee!
LINES ON HEARING THE ORGAN.
Grinder, who serenely grindest
At my door the Hundredth Psalm,?Till thou ultimately findest
Pence in thy unwashen palm:
Grinder, jocund-hearted Grinder,
Near whom Barbary's nimble son,?Poised with skill upon his hinder
Paws, accepts the proffered bun:
Dearly do I love thy grinding;
Joy to meet thee on thy road?Where thou prowlest through the blinding
Dust with that stupendous load,
'Neath the baleful star of Sirius,
When the postmen slowlier jog,?And the ox becomes delirious,
And the muzzle decks the dog.
Tell me by what art thou bindest
On thy feet those ancient shoon:?Tell me, Grinder, if thou grindest
Always, always out of tune.
Tell me if, as thou art buckling
On thy straps with eager claws,?Thou forecastest, inly chuckling,
All the rage that thou wilt cause.
Tell me if at all thou mindest
When folks flee, as if on wings,?From thee as at ease thou grindest:
Tell me fifty thousand things.
Grinder, gentle-hearted Grinder!
Ruffians who led evil lives,?Soothed by thy sweet strains, are kinder
To their bullocks and their wives:
Children, when they see thy supple
Form approach, are out like shots;?Half-a-bar sets several couple
Waltzing in convenient spots;
Not with clumsy Jacks or Georges:
Unprofaned by grasp of man?Maidens speed those simple orgies,
Betsey Jane with Betsey Ann.
As they love thee in St. Giles's
Thou art loved in Grosvenor Square:?None of those engaging smiles is
Unreciprocated there.
Often, ere yet thou hast hammer'd
Through thy four delicious airs,?Coins are flung thee by enamour'd
Housemaids upon area stairs:
E'en the ambrosial-whisker'd flunkey
Eyes thy boots and thine unkempt?Beard and melancholy monkey
More in pity than contempt.
Far from England, in the sunny
South, where Anio leaps in foam,?Thou wast rear'd, till lack of money
Drew thee from thy vineclad home:
And thy mate, the sinewy Jocko,
From Brazil or Afric came,?Land of simoom and sirocco -
And he seems extremely tame.
There he quaff'd the undefiled
Spring, or hung with apelike glee,?By his teeth or tail or eyelid,
To the slippery mango-tree:
There he woo'd and won a dusky
Bride, of instincts like his own;?Talk'd of love till he was husky
In a tongue to us unknown:
Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage
The potato ground, or cut?Down the unsuspecting savage
With the well-aim'd cocoa-nut:-
Till the miscreant Stranger tore him
Screaming from his blue-faced fair;?And they flung strange raiment o'er him,
Raiment which he could not bear:
Sever'd from the pure embraces
Of his children and his spouse,?He must ride fantastic races
Mounted on reluctant sows:
But the heart of wistful Jocko
Still was with his ancient flame?In the nutgroves of Morocco;
Or if not it's all the same.
Grinder, winsome grinsome Grinder!
They who see thee and whose soul?Melts not at thy charms, are blinder
Than a trebly-bandaged mole:
They to whom thy curt (yet clever)
Talk, thy music and thine ape,?Seem not to be joys for ever,
Are but brutes in human shape.
'Tis not that thy mien is stately,
'Tis not that thy tones are soft;?'Tis not that I care so greatly
For the same thing play'd so oft:
But I've heard mankind abuse thee;
And perhaps it's rather strange,?But I thought that I would choose thee
For encomium, as a change.
CHANGED.
I know not why my soul is rack'd
Why I ne'er smile as was my wont:?I only know that, as a fact,
I don't.?I used to roam o'er glen and glade
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:?And not unfrequently I made
A joke.
A minstrel's fire within me burn'd,
I'd sing, as one whose heart must break,?Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd
To shake.?All day I sang; of love, of fame,
Of fights our fathers fought of yore,?Until the thing almost became
A bore.
I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;?'Tis that I can't remember how
They go.?I could not range the hills till high
Above me stood the summer moon:?And as to dancing, I could fly
As soon.
The sports, to which with boyish glee
I sprang erewhile, attract no more;?Although I am but sixty-three
Or four.?Nay, worse than that, I've seem'd of late
To shrink from happy boyhood--boys?Have grown so noisy, and I hate
A noise.
They fright me, when the beech is green,
By swarming up its stem for eggs:?They drive their horrid hoops between
My legs:-?It's idle to repine, I know;
I'll tell you what I'll do instead:?I'll drink my arrowroot, and go
To bed.
FIRST LOVE.
O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!?Will a swallow--or a swift, or some bird -
Fly to her and say, I love her still?
Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:?Never, never--although three times married