Green Bays | Page 5

harder to define,?Makes me feel I 'd give a trifle?For the days of Auld Lang Syne.
James--for we have been as brothers?(Are, to speak correctly, twins),?Went about in one another's?Clothing, bore each other's sins,?Rose together, ere the pearly?Tint of morn had left the heaven,?And retired (absurdly early)?Simultaneously at seven--
James, the days of yore were pleasant.?Sweet to climb for alien pears?Till the irritated peasant?Came and took us unawares;?Sweet to devastate his chickens,?As the ambush'd catapult?Scattered, and the very dickens?Was the natural result;
Sweet to snare the thoughtless rabbit;?Break the next-door neighbour's pane;?Cultivate the smoker's habit?On the not-innocuous cane;?Leave the exercise unwritten;?Systematically cut?Morning school, to plunge the kitten?In his bath, the water-butt.
Age, my James, that from the cheek of?Beauty steals its rosy hue,?Has not left us much to speak of:?But 'tis not for this I rue.?Beauty with its thousand graces,?Hair and tints that will not fade,?You may get from many places?Practically ready-made.
No; it is the evanescence?Of those lovelier tints of Hope--?Bubbles, such as adolescence?Joys to win from melted soap--?Emphasizing the conclusion?That the dreams of Youth remain?Castles that are An delusion?(Castles, that's to say, in Spain).
Age thinks 'fit,' and I say 'fiat.'?Here I stand for Fortune's butt,?As for Sunday swains to shy at?Stands the stoic coco-nut.?If you wish it put succinctly,?Gone are all our little games;?But I thought I 'd say distinctly?What I feel about it, James.
WHY THIS VOLUME IS SO THIN.
In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,?Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar?To verses of my own,--a stout attempt?To hold communion with the Evening Star?I wrote a sonnet, rhymed it, made it scan.?Ah me! how trippingly those last lines ran.--
_O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend?O'er Helen's bosom in the tranced west,?To match the hours heave by upon her breast,?And at her parted lip for dreams attend--?If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deemed,?Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?_
For weeks I thought these lines remarkable;?For weeks I put on airs and called myself?A bard: till on a day, as it befell,?I took a small green Moxon from the shelf?At random, opened at a casual place,?And found my young illusions face to face
With this:--'_Still steadfast, still unchangeable,?Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast?To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,?Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;?Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,?And so live ever,--or else swoon to death._'
O gulf not to be crossed by taking thought!?O heights by toil not to be overcome!?Great Keats, unto your altar straight I brought?My speech, and from the shrine departed dumb.?--And yet sometimes I think you played it hard?Upon a rather hopeful minor bard.
NUGAE OXONIENSES.
TWILIGHT.
By W--ll--m C--wp--r.
'Tis evening. See with its resorting throng?Rude Carfax teems, and waistcoats, visited?With too-familiar elbow, swell the curse?Vortiginous. The boating man returns,?His rawness growing with experience--?Strange union! and directs the optic glass?Not unresponsive to Jemima's charms,?Who wheels obdurate, in his mimic chaise?Perambulant, the child. The gouty cit,?Asthmatical, with elevated cane?Pursues the unregarding tram, as one?Who, having heard a hurdy-gurdy, girds?His loins and hunts the hurdy-gurdy-man,?Blaspheming. Now the clangorous bell proclaims?The Times or Chronicle, and Rauca screams?The latest horrid murder in the ear?Of nervous dons expectant of the urn?And mild domestic muffin.
To the Parks?Drags the slow Ladies' School, consuming time?In passing given points. Here glow the lamps,?And tea-spoons clatter to the cosy hum?Of scientific circles. Here resounds?The football-field with its discordant train,?The crowd that cheers but not discriminates,?As ever into touch the ball returns?And shrieks the whistle, while the game proceeds?With fine irregularity well worth?The paltry shilling.--
Draw the curtains close?While I resume the night-cap dear to all?Familiar with my illustrated works.
WILLALOO.
By E. A. P.
In the sad and sodden street,
To and fro,?Flit the fever-stricken feet?Of the freshers as they meet,
Come and go,?Ever buying, buying, buying?Where the shopmen stand supplying,
Vying, vying?All they know,?While the Autumn lies a-dying
Sad and low?As the price of summer suitings when the winter breezes blow, Of the summer, summer suitings that are standing in a row
On the way to Jericho.
See the freshers as they row
To and fro,?Up and down the Lower River for an afternoon or so--?(For the deft manipulation?Of the never-resting oar,?Though it lead to approbation,?Will induce excoriation)--?They are infinitely sore,?Keeping time, time, time?In a sort of Runic rhyme?Up and down the way to Iffley in an afternoon or so;?(Which is slow).?Do they blow??'Tis the wind and nothing more,?'Tis the wind that in Vacation has a tendency to go: But the coach's objurgation and his tendency to 'score' Will be sated--nevermore.
See the freshers in the street,
The elite!?Their apparel how unquestionably neat!?How delighted at a distance,
Inexpensively attired,?I have wondered with persistence?At their butterfly existence!
How admired!?And the payment--O, the payment!?It is tardy for the raiment:?Yet the haberdasher gloats as he sells,
And he tells,?'This is best?To be dress'd?Rather better than the rest,?To be noticeably drest,
To be swells,?To be swells, swells, swells, swells,?Swells, swells, swells,?To be simply and indisputably