Part 1 — THE LAST PEER. (continued 2)
Reading edition
II.
O, Fortune, fickle as the breeze! O, Temptress, at the shrine of gain! O, sweet and bitter!—all in vain I come to thee for monied ease! "The chances surely run," she says; But prick the series with a pin; Mark well; and then go in and win!— Or lose! for there are but two ways. And still the phantom, Fortune, stands And sings with siren silvery tone; Music that I may reach alone With empty purse and empty hands! And shall I still this fickle fair With constant energies pursue? Or do as other people do— Escape the tangles of her hair?
XXVII.
I envy not in any mood The mortal void of Mammon's lust, Who never to a chance will trust, And never Fortune's favours woo'd. I envy not the plodding boor, Whose stupid ignorant content Cares not if odds on an event Are 2 to 1 or 10 to 4. Nor him who counts himself as blest, And says, "I take the wiser way, Because for love alone I play, So gambling never breaks my rest." I hold it true, whate'er befall, I feel it when I lose the most, 'Tis better to have play'd and lost Than never to have played at all. (Name of Author not known).
PUNCH TO SALISBURY.
I hold it true, whate'er befall, Though Jingo bounce and patriot rail, 'Twere better far to meet and fail, Than never try to meet at all.
THE RINKER'S SOLACE.
I hold it true whoe'er may fall, I feel it when I tumble most, 'Tis better to have rinked and lost Than never to have rinked at all. Tennyson (revised).
BEHIND TIME.
She looked quite cross—her face had not The smile that once lured one and all, While waiting at that seaside spot For him she loved;—divinely tall; Her sloe-black eyes showed restless change, Small sparks of anger you might catch, And yet those eyes you could not match, Were you throughout the world to range, "Alas! I'm getting weary, weary— Waiting here for Fred; He said he'd take me sailing—query? He's not come yet," she said. "He asked me when we met last night, If I would like a sail or row; I answered 'Yes,' with great delight; He said at one o'clock we'd go. 'Tis now five minutes past the hour, And where is he, I'd like to know? Oh! if I did not love him so I'd punish him—and show my pow'r. But oh, alas! it is so dreary When I am not with Fred; I feel like Moore's lamenting Peri: Why won't he come?" she said. The tear-drops then welled from her eyes, And down her damask cheek they crept; Her bosom heaved with sundry sighs, She cried, "I'll no excuse accept. I will not speak to him," said she; "How dare he keep me waiting here!" When suddenly, approaching near, Her tardy swain she chanced to see; And then, forgetting she'd been weary, She cried, "Oh, here comes Fred!" And somehow then she seemed less dreary, "How nice he looks!" she said. H. C. NEWTON. From Tom Hood's Comic Annual, 1884.
The Poet Laureate's cruise with Sir Donald Currie, in the autumn of 1883, was an event of some importance, as he was then afforded an opportunity of reading his poems to a select audience of Royal personages; it is generally supposed that it was during that trip also that the Prime Minister offered him the title, his acceptance of which has since been the subject of so much comment and censure. Punch (September 22, 1883) described the voyage to the north in the following comical medley of parodies of the Laureate's poems:—
A LAUREATE'S LOG.
(Rough Weather Notes from the New Berth-day Book.)
MONDAY.
If you're waking, please don't call me, please don't call me, CURRIE dear, For they tell me that to-morrow t'wards the open we're to steer! No doubt, for you and those aloft, the maddest merriest way,— But I always feel best in a bay, CURRIE, I always feel best in a bay!
TUESDAY.
Take, take, take?— What will I take for tea? The thinnest slice—no butter,— And that's quite enough for me!
WEDNESDAY.
It is the little roll within the berth That by-and-by will put an end to mirth, And, never ceasing, slowly prostrate all!
THURSDAY.
Let me alone! What pleasure can you have In chaffing evil? Tell me, what's the fun Of ever climbing up the climbing wave? All you the rest, you know how to behave In roughish weather! I, for one, Ask for the shore—or death, dark death,—I am so done!
FRIDAY.
Twelve knots an hour! But what am I? A poet, with no land in sight, Insisting that he feels "all right" With half a smile—and half a sigh!
SATURDAY.
Comfort? Comfort scorned of lubbers! Hear this truth the Poet roar, That a sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering days on shore. Drug his soda, lest he learn it when the Foreland gleams a spec In the dead unhappy night, when he can't sit up on deck!
SUNDAY.
Ah! you've called me nice and early, nice and early, CURRIE dear! What? Really in? Well, come, the news I'm precious glad to hear; For though in such good company I willingly would stay— I'm glad to be back in the bay, CURRIE, I'm glad to be back in the bay!
It is now somewhat more than fifty years since a young, and comparatively obscure writer addressed some presumptious lines to a lady of noble family, in which he sneered at her claims of long descent, ridiculed nobility generally, and concluded by advising her to go out amongst the poor, to teach the children, and to feed the beggars.
The tone of the poem was censorious and offensive; but Lady Clara Vere de Vere, to whom it was addressed, let it pass unnoticed by, knowing that "Everything comes to those who know how to wait," and now this last daughter of a hundred Earls has written a good-humoured rejoinder to the first Baron Tennyson, in which she playfully assumes her age to have remained what it was fifty years ago:—
Baron Alfred T. de T., Are we at last in sweet accord? I learn—excuse my girlish glee— That you've become a noble Lord; So now that time to think you've had Of what it is makes charming girls, Perhaps you find they're not so bad— Those daughters of a hundred earls. Baron Alfred T. de T., When last your face I chanced to see, You had the passion of your kind, You said some horrid things to me; And then—"we parted," you to sail For Oshkosh, in the simple steerage, But now—excuse my girlish glee— You reappear, and in the peerage! Baron Alfred T. de T., Were you indeed misunderstood That other day I heard you say, "'Tis only noble to be good?" I really thought you then affirmed— 'Tis so the words come back to me, "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood." Baron Alfred T. de T., There stand twin-spectres in your hall, And as they found you were a Lord Two wholesome hearts were changed to gall; The two, an humble couple they, I think I see them, on my life, The while they read of "Baron" T., The grand old Adam, and his wife! Trust me, Baron T. de T., From yon blue heaven above us bent, This simple granger and his spouse Smile as you read your long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, Nor must you think my language cruel, It seems—excuse my girlish glee— Consistency's a lovely jewel. Baron Alfred T. de T., I know you're proud your name to own; Your pride is yet no mate for mine, My blood is bluer than your own. Don't bid me break your heart again For pastime, ere to town I go; I'll not do that, my noble Lord, But give you something that I owe. Baron Alfred T. de T., When you were in that angry fit You turned to me and thundered out, "Go, teach the orphan girl to knit." I am an orphan girl myself, And that my knitting you may see, Here is a mitten that I've knit— Excuse my gushing, girlish glee.
Now, there was another young lady who was treated with scant courtesy by the author of Locksley Hall, and she, too, has written a reply to the love-sick ravings of the young poet:—
COUSIN AMY'S VIEW.
SCENE—The neighbourhood of Locksley Hall.
Enter Lady AMY HARDCASH (ætat. forty), with a book of poems and several children.
LADY AMY loquitur.
CHILDREN, leave me here a little; don't disturb me, I request; For Mamma is very tired, and fain would take a little rest. 'Tis the place, the same old place, though looking somewhat pinched and small. Ah, 'tis many and many a day since last I looked on Locksley Hall! Then 'twas in the spring of life and love—ah, Love, the great Has-been! Love which, like the year's own Spring, is very nice—and very green! In the Spring the new French fashions come the female heart to bless, In the Spring the very housemaid gets herself another dress; In the Spring we're apt to feel like children just let loose from school; In the Spring a young girl's fancy's very apt to play the fool. On the moorland, by the waters he was really very nice; There was no one else at hand, and I—forgot Mamma's advice. He indulged in rosy raptures, heaved the most suggestive sighs, Said the very prettiest things about my lips and hazel eyes. All his talk was most poetic, all his sentiments were grand, Though his meaning, I confess, I did not always understand. So that, when he popped the question, I did blush and hang my head, And,—well, I dare say the rest was pretty much as he has said. * * * * LOCKSLEY'S famous—yes, and married, notwithstanding his fierce curse, To a dame with lots of gold and very little taste for verse. Nice to be a Lion's Lady in Society, no doubt! Not so nice to smooth his mane at home when Leo is put out. Talk of tantrums! Read these lines he published after—well, the jilt, Pitching into poor Mamma, and charging me with nameless guilt! Dear Mamma! I thought her hard—but I'm a mother now myself, And, I know what utter nonsense is the poet's scorn of pelf. * * * * "Woman is the lesser man!" I hold that false as it is hard. The most womanish of creatures surely is an angry bard. Yet, sometimes, when, as at present, Spring is brightening all the land, Comes that longing for the fields, SIR RUFUS cannot understand; Comes a ghostly sort of doubt if e'en Society can give All, quite all, for which a well-loved woman might desire to live; Comes a memory of his voice, a recollection of his glance, Thoughts of things which then had power to make my maiden pulses dance; Comes,—but I'm extremely stupid. Well, I know if our dear FAN Took a fancy for a poet, I should soon dismiss the man. Here she comes! She'll wed, I hope, rich Viscount VIVIAN ere the fall. She ne'er had had that chance, had I espoused the Lord of Locksley Hall! Punch, June 1, 1878.
In a magazine entitled The Train, published in 1856, there was a poem called The Three Voices, written by Mr. Lewis Carroll, who has since become famous for his quaintly humorous works. This was a parody of the obvious truisms, the muddled metaphor, and vague reasonings contained in Tennyson's Two Voices, and Mr. Carroll has wisely inserted it in his last collection of poems (Rhyme? and Reason? Macmillan and Co.), it is somewhat altered from its original form, and is much heightened in its effect by the intensely comic, and ably drawn, illustrations of Mr. Arthur B. Frost.
Unfortunately, this clever parody is too long to quote entire, and an extract gives but a faint idea of its terribly grotesque sorrows, and its whimsical burlesque of the Laureate's reasoning in The Two Voices:—
THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach, Her tongue was very apt to teach, And now and then he did beseech, She would abate her dulcet tone, Because the talk was all her own, And he was dull as any drone. She urged "No cheese is made of chalk;" And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk, Tuned to the footfall of a walk. Her voice was very full and rich, And when at length she asked him "Which?" It mounted to its highest pitch. He a bewildered answer gave, Drowned in the sullen moaning wave, Lost in the echoes of the cave. She waited not for his reply, But, with a downward leaden eye, Went on as if he were not by. Then, having wholly overthrown His views, and stripped them to the bone, Proceeded to unfold her own. * * * * "Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss Of other thoughts no thoughts but this, Harmonious dews of sober bliss? "What boots it? Shall his fevered eye Through towering nothingness descry The grisly phantom hurry by? "And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air; See mouths that gape and eyes that stare, And redden in the dusky glare? "Yet still before him, as he flies, One pallid form shall ever rise, And bodying forth in glassy eyes. "The vision of a vanished good, Low peering through the tangled wood, Shall freeze the current of his blood." Till, like a silent water-mill, When summer suns have dried the rill, She reached a full stop, and was still. To muse a little space did seem, Then like the echo of a dream, Harped back upon her threadbare theme. Still an attentive ear he bent, But could not fathom what she meant: She was not deep, nor eloquent.
But, in truth, Tennyson has never failed so signally as when he has attempted to be metaphysical, and although his admirers have written many essays to explain the profundity of his ideas, and the beauties of his philosophy, their explanations seem to require some explaining, whilst it also seems that general readers fail to discern the charm in his would-be philosophical writings.
The Higher Pantheism may be taken as an instance. It commences thus:—
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains— Are not these, O Soul, the vision of Him who reigns? Is not the vision He? tho' He be not that which he seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why; For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I!"
There are several other couplets which do not tend to unravel the poet's tangled web of thought, whereas if we turn to The Heptalogia (Chatto and Windus, 1880), we find the whole mystery treated with much greater lucidity of expression in The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell.
ONE, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is: Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this. What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under: If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. Doubt is faith in the main; but faith on the whole is doubt: We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without? Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover: Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over. * * * * God, whom we see not, is; and God who is not, we see; Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle we take it is dee.
The clever little work, from which the above is an extract, was published anonymously, but has been ascribed by the Athenæum, and other authorities, to a no less distinguished poet than Mr. A. C. Swinburne. Its full title is—