Lyra Frivola | Page 8

in Smalls!
QUIETA MOVERE
"Any leap in the dark is better than standing still."--New Proverb.
Talk not to us of the joys of the Present,?Say not what is is undoubtedly best:?Never be ours to be merely quiescent--?Anything, everything rather than rest!
Placid prosperity bores us and vexes:?What if philosophers Latin and Greek?Say that well-being's a Status and Exis? [1]?Nothing should please you for more than a week.
Tinkering, doctoring, shifting, deranging,?Urged by a constant satiety on,?Ever the new for the newer exchanging,?Hazarding ever the gains we have won--
Only perpetual flux can delight us,?Blown like a billow by winds of the sea:?Still let us bow to the shrine of St. Vitus--?Vite Sanctissime, ora pro me!
Pray, that when leaps in the darkness uncaring?End in a fall (as they probably will),?Mine be the credit for valiantly daring,?Others be charged with defraying the bill!
[1. Transcriber's note: The word "Exis" was transliterated from the Greek as follows: Epsilon (with the rough-breathing diacritical), xi, iota, sigma.]
GRAECULUS ESURIENS
There came a Grecian Admiral to pale Britannia's shore--?In Eighteen Ninety-eight he came, and anchored off the Nore; An ultimatum he despatched (I give the text complete),?Addressing it "To Kurio, the Premier, Downing-street." [1]
"Whereas the sons of Liberty with indignation view?The number of dependencies which governed are by you--?With Hellas (Freedom's chosen land) we purpose to unite?Some part of those dependencies--let's say the Isle of Wight."
"The Isle of Wight!" said Parliament, and shuddered at the word, "Her Majesty's at Osborne, too--of course, the thing's absurd!" And this response Lord Salisbury eventually gave:?"Such transfers must attended be by difficulties grave."
"My orders," said the Admiral, "are positive and flat:?I am not in the least deterred by obstacles like that:?We're really only acting in the interests of peace:?Expansion is a nation's law--we've aims sublime in Greece."
With that Britannia blazed amain with patriotic flames!?They built a hundred ironclads and launched them in the Thames: They girded on their fathers' swords, both commoners and peers; They mobilized an Army Corps, and drilled the Volunteers!
The Labour Party armed itself, invasion's path to bar,?"Truth" and the "Daily Chronicle" proclaimed a Righteous War; Sir William Harcourt stumped the towns that sacred fire to fan, And Mr Gladstone every day sent telegrams from Cannes.
But ere they marched to meet the foe and drench the land with gore, Outspake that Grecian Admiral--from somewhere near the Nore-- And "Ere," he said, "hostilities are ordered to commence, Just hear a last appeal unto your educated sense:--
"You can't intend," he said, said he, "to turn your Maxims on The race that fought at Salamis, that bled at Marathon!?You can't propose with brutal force to drive from off your seas The men of Homer's gifted line--the sons of Socrates!"
Britannia heard the patriot's plea, she checked her murderous plans: Homer's a name to conjure with, 'mong British artisans:?Her Army too, profoundly moved by arguments like these,?Said 'e'd be blowed afore 'e'd fight the sons of Socrates.
They cast away their fathers' swords, those commoners and peers,-- Demobilized their Army Corps--dismissed their Volunteers: Soft Sentiment o'erthrew the bars that nations disunite,?And Greece, in Freedom's sacred name, annexed the Isle of Wight.
[1. Transcriber's note: The phrase "To Kurio" was transliterated from the Greek as follows: "To"--Tau, omega; "Kurio"--Kappa, upsilon, rho, iota, omega.]
THE ROAD TO RENOWN
If it still is your luck to be left in the ruck,
and of fame you're an impotent seeker,?If you fruitlessly aim at a Senate's acclaim
when you can't catch the eye of the Speaker,?If whenever you rise you observe with surprise
that the House is perceptibly thinner,?And your eloquent pleas are a sign to M.P.'s
that it's nearly the time for their dinner:
Should you sigh for the heights where the eminent lights,
in the region of letters who shine, are;?Should your novels and tales have indifferent sales
and your verses be hopelessly minor,?Should the public refuse your attempts to peruse
when you try to instruct or to shock it,?While it adds to the spoils of its Barries and Doyles,
and increases the hoards of a Crockett:
If you're baffled, in short, by the fame that you court,
and your name's overlooked by the papers,--?There's a road to success without toil or distress,
or nocturnal consumption of tapers:?By adopting this plan you're a prominent man,
and no longer a painful aspirant:?You must come on the scene as a bold Philhellene,
and a foe to the Turk and the Tyrant!
You'll orate to the crowd on the heritage proud
which by Greece is bequeathed to the nations?(You can gain in a week an acquaintance with Greek
by a liberal use of translations),?And the names that you quote with the aid of your "Grote"
and a noble assumption of choler,?Will attest that you feel that excusable zeal
which belongs to an eminent scholar.
You will prate before mobs of Lord Salisbury's jobs
and the villainous schemes of the Kaiser,?Which will make them believe you've a plan up your sleeve
if they'd only take you for adviser;?You may cheerfully speak of assisting the