Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses | Page 9

the splintering noise?Of shattered ash-plant and of battered shank,?Mixed with a higher. For Susan, overwrought,?Lost footing, and with one clear dolorous wail?Fell headlong, only more so. And I saw,?Clothed in black stockings, mystic, wonderful,?That which I saw. The coolies yelled. The crowd?Closed round, and so the tourney reached an end.
Then home they bore the bold Sir Referee?In Susan's litter; and they tended him?With curious tendance; and they drowned his views?On Susan, and the tourney, and the place?Whither he'd see them ere again he ruled?Such functions, with a sweet, small song (I call?It sweet that should not!). This is how it ran:--
'Our Referee has fall'n, has fall'n. The stick,?The little stick he leapt at in the lists?Has riven and cleft the bark, and raised a bulk?Of crescent span, that spreads on every side?A thousand hues, all flushing into one.
'Our Referee has fall'n, has fall'n. She came,?The woman with her ash, and lo the wound!?But we will make a bandage for the limb,?And swathe it, heel to knee, with splints and wool,?And embrocations for the hurts of man.
'Our Referee has fall'n, has fall'n; he wailed;?With our own ears we heard him, and we knew?_There dwelt an iron nature in the grain_!?The splintering ash was cloven on his limb;?His limb was battered to the cannon-bone.'
So passed that stout but choleric knight away;?And we, by certain wandering instincts led,?Made for a small pavilion, where we found?Viands and what not, and the thirsty flower?Of mountain knighthood gathered at the board.?And entering, here we lingered, and discussed?The what not, and the viands, and in time?Drew to the tourney, giving each his views;--?But mostly wondering what the coolies thought?To see these ladies of the Ruling Race,?'Yoked in all _exercise_ of noble end,'?And Public Exhibition. Was it wise??Some questioned; others, was it quite the thing?
And here indeed we left it, for the shades?Deepened, the high, swift-narrowing crest of day?Brake from the hills, and down the path we went,?Well pleased, for it was guest-night at the Club.
'FAREWELL'
'Farewell. What a subject! How sweet
It looks to the careless observer!?So simple; so easy to treat
With tenderness, mark you, and fervour.?_Farewell_. It's a poem; the song
Of nightingales crying and calling!'?O Reader, you're utterly wrong.
It's not. It's appalling!
And yet when she asked me to send
Some trifle of verse to remind her?Of days that had come to an end,
And one she was leaving behind her,?It looked, as we stood on the shore,
A theme so entirely delightsome?That I, like a lunatic, swore
(Quite calmly) to write some.
I've toiled with unwavering pluck;
I've struggled if ever a man did;?Infringed every postulate, stuck
At nothing,--nay, once, to be candid,?I shifted the cadence--designed
A fresh but unauthorised _fare_-well;?'Twas plausible, too, but I find
The thing doesn't wear well.
I know that it shouldn't be hard;
That dozens, who claim to be poets,?Could scribble off stuff by the yard
And fare very well; and I know it's?A theme that the Masters of Rhyme
Have written some excellent verse on,?Which proves, as I take it, that I'm
Not that sort of person.
But that we can leave. It remains
To state that my present appearance?Is something too awful, my brains
Are tending to wild incoherence;?My mental condition's absurd;
My thoughts are at sixes and sevens,?Inextrica--lord! what a word!
Inextri--good heavens!
My dear, you can do what you like,--
Forgive, or despise, or abuse me--?But frankly, I'm going on strike,
And really you'll have to excuse me.?Indeed it's my only resource,
For, sure as I stuck to my promise, I'd?Be booked in a week for a course
Of sui-_cum_-homicide.
A HAPPY NEW YEAR
11.30 P.M., DEC. 31
Friend, when the year is on the wing,?'Tis held a fair and comely thing
To turn reflective glances?Over the days' forbidden Scroll,?See if we're better on the whole,
And average our chances.
Yet 'tis an awful thing to drag?Each separate deed from out the bag
That up till now has hidden 't,?And bring before the shuddering view?All that we swore we wouldn't do,
Or should have done, but didn't.
The broken code, the baffled laws?Our little private faults and flaws,
And every naughty habit,?Come whistling through the Waste of Life,?Until one longs to take a knife,
Feel for his heart, and stab it.
Unchanged, exultant, one and all?Rise up spontaneous to the call,
And bring their stings behind them;?But when the search is duly plied?For items on the credit side,
One has a job to find them!
I know not _why_ they change. I know--?None better--how one's feelings grow
Distinctly kin to mutiny,?To see one's assets limping in,?All too preposterously thin
To stand a moment's scrutiny.
I know that shock must follow shock,?Until the sole remaining Rock
That all one's hopes exist on,?Crumbles beneath the crushing force?Of Conscience, kicking like a horse,
And pounding like a piston.
Hardly a little year has past?Since you, I take it, swore to cast
Aside the bonds that girt you,?And thought to stun the dazzled earth,?A pillared Miracle of Worth,
Raised on a plinth of Virtue.
One always does. One wonders why.?One knows that, as the years go by,
One finds the same old