New Collected Rhymes | Page 7

so constantly ply me?With Ships in the Night?
Dear ladies, in vain you approach us,?With books to your taste in your hands;?For, alas! though you offer to coach us,?Yet the soul of no man understands?Why the grubby is always the moral,?Why the nasty's preferred to the nice,?While you keep up a secular quarrel?With a gay little Vice;
Yes, a Vice with her lips full of laughter,?A Vice with a rose in her hair,?You condemn in the present and after,?To darkness of utter despair:?But a sin, if no rapture redeem it,?But a passion that's pale and played out,?Or in surgical hands--you esteem it?Worth scribbling about!
What is sauce for the goose, for the gander?Is sauce, ye inconsequent fair!?It is better to laugh than to maunder,?And better is mirth than despair;?And though Life's not all beer and all skittles,?Yet the Sun, on occasion, can shine,?And, mon Dieu! he's a fool who belittles?This cosmos of Thine!
There are cakes, there is ale--ay, and ginger?Shall be hot in the mouth, as of old:?And a villain, with cloak and with whinger,?And a hero, in armour of gold,?And a maid with a face like a lily,?With a heart that is stainless and gay,?Make a tale worth a world of the silly?Sad trash of to-day!
RHYME OF RHYMES
Wild on the mountain peak the wind?Repeats its old refrain,?Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned,?And fain would sin again.
For "wind" I do not rhyme to "mind,"?Like many mortal men,?"Again" (when one reflects) 'twere kind?To rhyme as if "agen."
I never met a single soul?Who SPOKE of "wind" as "wined,"?And yet we use it, on the whole,?To rhyme to "find" and "blind."
We SAY, "Now don't do that AGEN,"?When people give us pain;?In poetry, nine times in ten,?It rhymes to "Spain" or "Dane."
Oh, which are wrong or which are right??Oh, which are right or wrong??The sounds in prose familiar, quite,?Or those we meet in song?
To hold that "love" can rhyme to "prove"?Requires some force of will,?Yet in the ancient lyric groove?We meet them rhyming still.
This was our learned fathers' wont?In prehistoric times,?We follow it, or if we don't,?We oft run short of rhymes.
RHYME OF OXFORD COCKNEY RHYMES--(EXHIBITED IN THE OXFORD MAGAZINE)
Though Keats rhymed "ear" to "Cytherea,"?And Morris "dawn" to "morn,"?A worse example, it is clear,?By Oxford Dons is "shorn."?G-y, of Magdalen, goes beyond?These puny Cockneys far,?And to "Magrath" rhymes--Muse despond! -?"Magrath" he rhymes to "star"!
Another poet, X. Y. Z.,?Employs the word "researcher,"?And then,--his blood be on his head, -?He makes it rhyme to "nurture."?Ah, never was the English tongue?So flayed, and racked, and tortured,?Since one I love (who should be hung)?Made "tortured" rhyme to "orchard."
Unkindly G-y's raging pen?Next craves a rhyme to "sooner;"?Rejecting "Spooner," (best of men,)?He fastens on LACUNA(R).?Nay, worse, in his infatuate mind?He ends a line "explainer,"?Nor any rhyme can G-y find?Until he reaches Jena(r).
Yes, G-y shines the worst of all,?He needs to rhyme "embargo;"?The man had "Margot" at his call,?He had the good ship ARGO;?Largo he had; yet doth he seek?Further, and no embargo?Restrains him from the odious, weak,?And Cockney rhyme, "Chicago"!
Ye Oxford Dons that Cockneys be,?Among your gardens tidy,?If you would ask a maid to tea,?D'ye call the girl "a lydy"??And if you'd sing of Mr. Fry,?And need a rhyme to "swiper,"?Are you so cruel as to try?To fill the blank with "paper"?
Oh, Hoxford was a pleasant plice?To many a poet dear,?And Saccharissa had the grice?In Hoxford to appear.?But Waller, if to Cytherea?He prayed at any time,?Did not implore "her friendly ear,"?And think he had a rhyme.
Now, if you ask to what are due?The horrors which I mention,?I think we owe them to the UNiversity?extension.?From Hoxton and from Poplar come?The 'Arriets and 'Arries,?And so the Oxford Muse is dumb,?Or, when she sings, miscarries.
ROCOCO
("My name is also named 'Played Out.'")
When first we heard Rossetti sing,?We twanged the melancholy lyre,?We sang like this, like anything,?When first we heard Rossetti sing.?And all our song was faded Spring,?And dead delight and dark desire,?When first we heard Rossetti sing,?We twanged the melancholy lyre.
(And this is how we twanged it) -
THE NEW ORPHEUS TO HIS EURYDICE
Why wilt thou woo, ah, strange Eurydice,?A languid laurell'd Orpheus in the shades,?For here is company of shadowy maids,?Hero, and Helen and Psamathoe:
And life is like the blossom on the tree,?And never tumult of the world invades,?The low light wanes and waxes, flowers and fades,?And sleep is sweet, and dreams suffice for me;
"Go back, and seek the sunlight," as of old,?The wise ghost-mother of Odysseus said,?Here am I half content, and scarce a-cold,?But one light fits the living, one the dead;?Good-bye, be glad, forget! thou canst not hold?In thy kind arms, alas! this powerless head.
When first we heard Rossetti sing,?We also wrote this kind of thing!
THE FOOD OF FICTION
To breakfast, dinner, or to lunch?My steps are languid, once so speedy;?E'en though, like the old gent in PUNCH,?"Not hungry, but, thank goodness! greedy."?I gaze upon