Part 6

"Oh had I but loved with a boyish love, It would have been well for me."

How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the obvious, simple, meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, let us mock as we will, Bayly could do, and we cannot? He really had a slim, serviceable, smirking, and sighing little talent of his own; and--well, we have not even that. Nobody forgets

"The lady I love will soon be a bride."

Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh brother minor poet, mon semblable, mon frere! Nor can we rival, though we publish our books on the largest paper, the buried popularity of

"Gaily the troubadour Touched his guitar When he was hastening Home from the war, Singing, "From Palestine Hither I come, Lady love! Lady love! Welcome me home!"

Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of a Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediaeval, but of the comic opera. Any one of us could get in more local colour for the money, and give the crusader a cithern or citole instead of a guitar. This is how we should do "Gaily the Troubadour" nowadays:--

"Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! Soldans seven hath he slain in fight, Honneur a la belle Isoline!

"Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail, Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale, Honneur a la belle Isoline!

"His eyes they blaze as the burning coal, Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! He smiteth a stave on his gold citole, Honneur a la belle Isoline!

"From her mangonel she looketh forth, Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! 'Who is he spurreth so late to the north?' Honneur a la belle Isoline!

"Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name, Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame, Honneur a la belle Isoline!

"For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night, Honneur a la belle Isoline!"

Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of saying--

"Hark, 'tis the troubadour Breathing her name Under the battlement Softly he came, Singing, "From Palestine Hither I come. Lady love! Lady love! Welcome me home!"

The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and that the butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the fashion of a time simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the whole, minor poetry for minor poetry, this artless singer, piping his native drawing-room notes, gave a great deal of perfectly harmless, if highly uncultivated, enjoyment.

It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to his bow--or, rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great deal, to be sure, about the passion of love, which Count Tolstoi thinks we make too much of. He did not dream that the affairs of the heart should be regulated by the State--by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage Office. That is what we are coming to, of course, unless the enthusiasts of "free love" and "go away as you please" failed with their little programme. No doubt there would be poetry if the State regulated or left wholly unregulated the affections of the future. Mr. Bayly, living in other times, among other manners, piped of the hard tyranny of a mother:

"We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me. He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me. He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered, I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered. I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness; Bright gems were in my hair,--how I hated their brightness! He called me by my name as the bride of another. Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!"

In future, when the reformers of marriage have had their way, we shall read:

"The world may think me gay, for I bow to my fate; But thou hast been the cause of my anguish, O State!"

For even when true love is regulated by the County Council or the village community, it will still persist in not running smooth.

Of these passions, then, Mr. Bayly could chant; but let us remember that he could also dally with old romance, that he wrote:

"The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall."

When the bride unluckily got into the ancient chest,

"It closed with a spring. And, dreadful doom, The bride lay clasped in her living tomb,"

so that her lover "mourned for his fairy bride," and never found out her premature casket. This was true romance as understood when Peel was consul. Mr. Bayly was rarely political; but he commemorated the heroes of Waterloo, our last victory worth mentioning:

"Yet mourn not for them, for in future tradition Their fame shall abide as our tutelar star, To instil by example the glorious ambition Of falling, like them, in a glorious war. Though tears may be seen in the bright eyes of beauty, One consolation must ever remain: Undaunted they trod in the pathway of duty, Which led them to glory on Waterloo's plain."

Could there be a more simple Tyrtaeus? and who that reads him will not be ambitious of falling in a glorious war? Bayly, indeed, is always simple. He is "simple, sensuous, and passionate," and Milton asked no more from a poet.

"A wreath of orange blossoms, When next we met, she wore. The expression of her features Was more thoughtful than before."