Part 20

LOVE THE VAMPIRE.

Ο ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ’Σ ΤΟΝ ΤΑΦΟ.

THE level sands and grey, Stretch leagues and leagues away, Down to the border line of sky and foam, A spark of sunset burns, The grey tide-water turns, Back, like a ghost from her forbidden home!

Here, without pyre or bier, Light Love was buried here, Alas, his grave was wide and deep enough, Thrice, with averted head, We cast dust on the dead, And left him to his rest. An end of Love.

“No stone to roll away, No seal of snow or clay, Only soft dust above his wearied eyes, But though the sudden sound Of Doom should shake the ground, And graves give up their ghosts, he will not rise!”

So each to each we said! Ah, but to either bed Set far apart in lands of North and South, Love as a Vampire came With haggard eyes aflame, And kissed us with the kisses of his mouth!

Thenceforth in dreams must we Each other’s shadow see Wand’ring unsatisfied in empty lands, Still the desirèd face Fleets from the vain embrace, And still the shape evades the longing hands.

BALLADE OF THE BOOK-MAN’S PARADISE

THERE is a Heaven, or here, or there,— A Heaven there is, for me and you, Where bargains meet for purses spare, Like ours, are not so far and few. Thuanus’ bees go humming through The learned groves, ’neath rainless skies, O’er volumes old and volumes new, Within that Book-man’s Paradise!

There treasures bound for Longepierre Keep brilliant their morocco blue, There Hookes’ Amanda is not rare, Nor early tracts upon Peru! Racine is common as Rotrou, No Shakespeare Quarto search defies, And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew, Within that Book-man’s Paradise!

There’s Eve,—not our first mother fair,— But Clovis Eve, a binder true; Thither does Bauzonnet repair, Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup! But never come the cropping crew That dock a volume’s honest size, Nor they that “letter” backs askew, Within that Book-man’s Paradise!

ENVOY.

Friend, do not Heber and De Thou, And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise, La chasse au bouquin still pursue Within that Book-man’s Paradise?

BALLADE OF A FRIAR.

(Clement Marot’s Frère Lubin, though translated by Longfellow and others, has not hitherto been rendered into the original measure of ballade à double refrain.)

SOME ten or twenty times a day, To bustle to the town with speed, To dabble in what dirt he may,— Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! But any sober life to lead Upon an exemplary plan, Requires a Christian indeed,— Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

Another’s wealth on his to lay, With all the craft of guile and greed, To leave you bare of pence or pay,— Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! But watch him with the closest heed, And dun him with what force you can,— He’ll not refund, howe’er you plead,— Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

An honest girl to lead astray, With subtle saw and promised meed, Requires no cunning crone and grey,— Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! He preaches an ascetic creed, But,—try him with the water can— A dog will drink, whate’er his breed,— Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

ENVOY.

In good to fail, in ill succeed, Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need! In honest works to lead the van, Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. {194}

I HAVE scribbled in verse and in prose, I have painted “arrangements in greens,” And my name is familiar to those Who take in the high class magazines; I compose; I’ve invented machines; I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”; For my county I played, in my teens, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows; I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens; I have climbed the Caucasian snows; I abstain, like the ancients, from beans,— I’ve a guess what Pythagoras means When he says that to eat them’s a crime,— I have lectured upon the Essenes, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s, I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,” I have breasted the river that flows Through the land of the wild Gadarenes; I can gossip with Burton on skenes, I can imitate Irving (the Mime), And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

ENVOY.

So the tower of mine eminence leans Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime; I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans, But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS.

LET others praise analysis And revel in a “cultured” style, And follow the subjective Miss {196} From Boston to the banks of Nile, Rejoice in anti-British bile, And weep for fickle hero’s woe, These twain have shortened many a mile, Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.