Part 9

She wunna fush at ony gait, She’s roarin’ reid in wrathfu’ spate; Maist like yer kimmer when ye’re late Frae Girvan Fair! Forbye to speer for leave I’m blate For fushin’ there!

O Louis, you that writes in Scots, Ye’re far awa’ frae stirks and stots, Wi’ drookit hurdies, tails in knots, An unco way! My mirth’s like thorns aneth the pots In Ballantrae!

SONG BY THE SUB-CONSCIOUS SELF

RHYMES MADE IN A DREAM

I KNOW not what my secret is, I know but it is mine; I know to dwell with it were bliss, To die for it divine. I cannot yield it in a kiss, Nor breathe it in a sigh. I know that I have lived for this; For this, my love, I die.

THE HAUNTED HOMES OF ENGLAND

THE Haunted Homes of England, How eerily they stand, While through them flit their ghosts—to wit, The Monk with the Red Hand, The Eyeless Girl—an awful spook— To stop the boldest breath, The boy that inked his copybook, And so got ‘wopped’ to death!

Call them not shams—from haunted Glamis To haunted Woodhouselea, I mark in hosts the grisly ghosts I hear the fell Banshie! I know the spectral dog that howls Before the death of Squires; In my ‘Ghosts’-guide’ addresses hide For Podmore and for Myers!

I see the Vampire climb the stairs From vaults below the church; And hark! the Pirate’s spectre swears! O Psychical Research, Canst thou not hear what meets my ear, The viewless wheels that come? The wild Banshie that wails to thee? The Drummer with his drum?

O Haunted Homes of England, Though tenantless ye stand, With none content to pay the rent, Through all the shadowy land, Now, Science true will find in you A sympathetic perch, And take you all, both Grange and Hall, For Psychical Research!

THE DISAPPOINTMENT

A HOUSE I took, and many a spook Was deemed to haunt that House, I bade the glum Researchers come With Bogles to carouse. That House I’d sought with anxious thought, ’Twas old, ’twas dark as sin, And deeds of bale, so ran the tale, Had oft been done therein.

Full many a child its mother wild, Men said, had strangled there, Full many a sire, in heedless ire, Had slain his daughter fair! ’Twas rarely let: I can’t forget A recent tenant’s dread, This widow lone had heard a moan Proceeding from her bed.

The tenants next were chiefly vexed By spectres grim and grey. A Headless Ghost annoyed them most, And so they did not stay. The next in turn saw corpse lights burn, And also a Banshie, A spectral Hand they could not stand, And left the House to me.

Then came my friends for divers ends, Some curious, some afraid; No direr pest disturbed their rest Than a neat chambermaid. The grisly halls were gay with balls, One melancholy nook Where ghosts galore were seen before Now yielded ne’er a spook.

When man and maid, all unafraid, ‘Sat out’ upon the stairs, No spectre dread, with feet of lead, Came past them unawares. I know not why, but alway I Have found that it is so, That when the glum Researchers come The brutes of bogeys—go!

TO THE GENTLE READER

‘A French writer (whom I love well) speaks of three kinds of companions,—men, women, and books.’

SIR JOHN DAVYS.

THREE kinds of companions, men, women, and books, Were enough, said the elderly Sage, for his ends. And the women we deem that he chose for their looks, And the men for their cellars: the books were his friends: ‘Man delights me not,’ often, ‘nor woman,’ but books Are the best of good comrades in loneliest nooks.

For man will be wrangling—for woman will fret About anything infinitesimal small: Like the Sage in our Plato, I’m ‘anxious to get On the side’—on the sunnier side—‘of a wall.’ Let the wind of the world toss the nations like rooks, If only you’ll leave me at peace with my Books.

And which are my books? why, ’tis much as you please, For, given ’tis a book, it can hardly be wrong, And Bradshaw himself I can study with ease, Though for choice I might call for a Sermon or Song; And Locker on London, and Sala on Cooks, ‘Tom Brown,’ and Plotinus, they’re all of them Books.

There’s Fielding to lap one in currents of mirth; There’s Herrick to sing of a flower or a fay; Or good Maître Françoys to bring one to earth, If Shelley or Coleridge have snatched one away: There’s Müller on Speech, there is Gurney on Spooks, There is Tylor on Totems, there’s all sorts of Books.

There’s roaming in regions where every one’s been, Encounters where no one was ever before, There’s ‘Leaves’ from the Highlands we owe to the Queen, There’s Holly’s and Leo’s adventures in Kôr: There’s Tanner who dwelt with Pawnees and Chinooks, You can cover a great deal of country in Books.

There are books, highly thought of, that nobody reads, There is Geusius’ dearly delectable tome Of the Cannibal—he on his neighbour who feeds— And in blood-red morocco ’tis bound, by Derome; There’s Montaigne here (a Foppens), there’s Roberts (on Flukes), There’s Elzevirs, Aldines, and Gryphius’ Books.

There’s Bunyan, there’s Walton, in early editions, There’s many a quarto uncommonly rare; There’s quaint old Quevedo adream with his visions, There’s Johnson the portly, and Burton the spare; There’s Boston of Ettrick, who preached of the ‘Crooks In the Lots’ of us mortals, who bargain for Books.

There’s Ruskin to keep one exclaiming ‘What next?’ There’s Browning to puzzle, and Gilbert to chaff, And Marcus Aurelius to soothe one if vexed, And good MARCUS TVAINUS to lend you a laugh; There be capital tomes that are filled with fly-hooks, And I’ve frequently found them the best kind of Books.

THE SONNET