Poems from The Teacups | Page 6

soul;?The scattering shots become a steady roll,?Broke by sharp cracks that run along the line,?The light artillery of the talker's wine.?The kindling goblets flame with golden dews,?The hoarded flasks their tawny fire diffuse,?And the Rhine's breast-milk gushes cold and bright,?Pale as the moon and maddening as her light;?With crimson juice the thirsty southern sky?Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie,?So that the dreamy passion it imparts?Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers' hearts.?But lulls will come; the flashing soul transmits?Its gleams of light in alternating fits.?The shower of talk that rattled down amain?Ends in small patterings like an April's rain;
With the dry sticks all bonfires are begun;?Bring the first fagot, proser number one?The voices halt; the game is at a stand;?Now for a solo from the master-hand?'T is but a story,--quite a simple thing,--?An aria touched upon a single string,?But every accent comes with such a grace?The stupid servants listen in their place,?Each with his waiter in his lifted hands,?Still as a well-bred pointer when he stands.?A query checks him: "Is he quite exact?"?(This from a grizzled, square-jawed man of fact.)?The sparkling story leaves him to his fate,?Crushed by a witness, smothered with a date,?As a swift river, sown with many a star,?Runs brighter, rippling on a shallow bar.?The smooth divine suggests a graver doubt;?A neat quotation bowls the parson out;?Then, sliding gayly from his own display,?He laughs the learned dulness all away.?So, with the merry tale and jovial song,?The jocund evening whirls itself along,?Till the last chorus shrieks its loud encore,?And the white neckcloths vanish through the door.
One savage word!--The menials know its tone,?And slink away; the master stands alone.?Well played, by ------"; breathe not what were best unheard; His goblet shivers while he speaks the word,--?"If wine tells truth,--and so have said the wise,--?It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies!?Bankrupt to-morrow,--millionnaire to-day,--?The farce is over,--now begins the play!"?The spring he touches lets a panel glide;?An iron closet harks beneath the slide,?Bright with such treasures as a search might bring?From the deep pockets of a truant king.?Two diamonds, eyeballs of a god of bronze,?Bought from his faithful priest, a pious bonze;?A string of brilliants; rubies, three or four;?Bags of old coin and bars of virgin ore;?A jewelled poniard and a Turkish knife,?Noiseless and useful if we come to strife.?Gone! As a pirate flies before the wind,?And not one tear for all he leaves behind?From all the love his better years have known?Fled like a felon,--ah! but not alone!?The chariot flashes through a lantern's glare,--?Oh the wild eyes! the storm of sable hair!?Still to his side the broken heart will cling,--?The bride of shame, the wife without the ring?Hark, the deep oath,--the wail of frenzied woe,--?Lost! lost to hope of Heaven and peace below!
He kept his secret; but the seed of crime?Bursts of itself in God's appointed time.?The lives he wrecked were scattered far and wide;?One never blamed nor wept,--she only died.?None knew his lot, though idle tongues would say?He sought a lonely refuge far away,?And there, with borrowed name and altered mien,?He died unheeded, as he lived unseen.?The moral market had the usual chills?Of Virtue suffering from protested bills;?The White Cravats, to friendship's memory true,?Sighed for the past, surveyed the future too;?Their sorrow breathed in one expressive line,--?"Gave pleasant dinners; who has got his wine?"
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The reader paused,--the Teacups knew his ways,--?He, like the rest, was not averse to praise.?Voices and hands united; every one?Joined in approval: "Number Three, well done!"
"Now for the Exile's story; if my wits?Are not at fault, his curious record fits?Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard;?Not wholly wild the fancy, nor absurd?That this our island hermit well might be?That story's hero, fled from over sea.?Come, Number Seven, we would not have you strain?The fertile powers of that inventive brain.?Read us 'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough?Of dream-like fiction and fantastic stuff?In the strange web of mystery that invests?The lonely isle where sea birds build their nests."
"Lies! naught but lies!" so Number Seven began,--?No harm was known of that secluded man.?He lived alone,--who would n't if he might,?And leave the rogues and idiots out of sight??A foolish story,--still, I'll do my best,--?The house was real,--don't believe the rest.?How could a ruined dwelling last so long?Without its legends shaped in tale and song??Who was this man of whom they tell the lies??Perhaps--why not?--NAPOLEON! in disguise,--?So some said, kidnapped from his ocean coop,?Brought to this island in a coasting sloop,--?Meanwhile a sham Napoleon in his place?Played Nap. and saved Sir Hudson from disgrace.?Such was one story; others used to say,?"No,--not Napoleon,--it was Marshal Ney."?"Shot?" Yes, no doubt, but not with balls of lead,?But balls of pith that never shoot folks dead.?He wandered round, lived South for many a year,?At last came North