University of Virginia Library

So endeth Song the First!

Long years
Ere you and I, my love, were born,
The Outcast sail'd away, his ears
Full of mad music of the Morn.
Once more upon the lonely Main
He dree'd his weird of bitter pain,
Haunted' by dreams where'er he flew
Of that sweet Child of sun and dew.
But ten years later, and every ten
At intervals 'twixt now and then,
He landed wearily again
And sought—what still he seeks in vain!
The record tells us of his quest
From north to south, from east to west,—
Affairs with most delightful ladies
Of every clime beneath the sun,
From far Cathay to sunny Cadiz,
From Ispahan to Patagon,—
Of all religions and complexions,
Of every shape and every fashion;
He learn'd all phases of affections,—
The dark sultana's introspections,
The Persian concubine's soft passion!
Thus lightly roaming here and there,
Seeking his fate from zone to zone,
Betimes he came to Weimar, where
Jupiter-Goethe had his throne:
This stately Eros in court-breeches
Deign'd with our Pilgrim to converse,
But bored him hugely with set speeches
And pyramids of easy verse,—
Of which some solid blocks still stand
Amid Saharas of mere sand.
In Germany he spent a year
Of wondrous love and strange probation—
What of that land of bores and beer
He thought, you in good time shall hear,
If I survive for the narration.
Soon afterwards I find that he
Roam'd southward, into Italy,
And standing near St. Peter's dome,
Was present at the sack of Rome.
Thence in due time he wander'd right on
To Paris, where, some years ago,
He saw the garish lamps flash bright on
The Second Empire's feverish Show—
A Fair by gaslight—booths resplendent,
Bright-tinsel'd players promenading,
Street lamps with handsome corpses pendent,
Couples beneath them gallopading,
Soldiers and journalists saluting,
Poets and naked harlots dancing,
Drums beating, panpipes tootletooting,
State wizards gravely necromancing;
And in the midst, the lewd and yellow
God to whom wooden Joss was fellow,—
Enwrapt in purple, painted piebald,
Cigar in mouth, lacklustre-eyeball'd,
Imperial Cæsar Punchinello!
But now, alas! I hesitate
Before I venture forward, dreading
My Hero's own unhappy fate,—
The people's scorn, the critics' hate,
For dark's the path my Muse is treading!
And this strange poem is compounded
Of mixtures new to modern taste,
And Mr. Stead may be astounded
And think my gentle Muse unchaste.
Until we reach the journey's end,
(Finis coronat opus!) many
May dream I purpose to offend
With merest horseplay, like a zany!
Mine is a serious song, however,
As you shall see in God's good time,
If life should crown my long endeavour,
And grant me courage to persèver
Thro' this mad maze of rakish rhyme.
I who now sing have been for long
The Ishmaël of modern song,—
Wild, tatter'd, outcast, dusty, weary,
Hated by Jacob and his kin,
Driv'n to the desert dark and dreary,
A rebel and a Jacobin;
Treated with scorn and much impatience
By gentlemanly reputations,
And by the critics sober-witted
Disliked and boycotted, or pitied.
I asked for bread, and got instead of
The crust I sought, a curse or stone,—
And so, like greater bards you've read of,
I've roamed the wilderness alone.
But that's all o'er, since I abandon
The ground free Mountain Poets stand on,
And kneel to say my catechism
Before the arch-priests of Nepotism.
Henceforth I shall no more resemble
Poor Gulliver when caught in slumber,
Swarm'd over, prick'd, put all a-tremble,
By Liliputians without number.
The Saturday Review in pride
Will throne me by great Henley's side,
The Daily News sound my Te Deum
Despite the Devil and A thenœum;
Tho' Watts may triple his innuendoes,
And Swinburne shriek in sharp crescendoes,
The merry Critics all will pat me,
The merry Bards bob smiling at me,
All Cockneydom with crowns of roses
Salute my last apotheosis!

For (let me whisper in your ear!)
Of Criticism I've now no fear,
Since, knowing that the press might cavil,
I've joined the Critics' Club—the Savile!
And standing pledged to say things pleasant
Of all my friends, from Lang to Besant,
With many others, not forgetting
Our school-room classic, Stevenson,
I look for puffs, and praise, and petting,
From my new brethren, every one.
A Muse with half an eye and knock-knees
Would thrive, thus countenanced by Cockneys;
And mine, tho' tall, and straight, and strong,
Blest with a Highland constitution,
Has led a hunted life for long
Thro' Cockney hate and persecution.

And yet—a terror trembles through me,
They may blackball, and so undo, me!
In that case I must still continue
A Bard that fights for his own hand:
Bold Muse, then, strengthen soul and sinew
To brave the Liliputian band!
I smile, you see, and crack my jest,
Altho' my fate has not been funny!
Storm-tost, and weary, and opprest,
The busy Bee has done his best,
But gather'd very little honey!
My life has ever been among
The drones, in deucèd rainy weather,
I've hum'd to keep my heart up, sung
A song or two of the sweet heather,
Nay, I've been merry too, and tried,
As now, to put my gloom aside;
But ah! be sure the mirth I wear
Is but a mask to hide my care,
Since on my soul and on my page
Fall shadows of a sunless age,
And sadly, faintly, I prolong
A broken life with broken song.
As Rome was once, when faith was dead,
And all the gentle gods were fled,
As Rome was, ere on Death's black tree
Bloom'd the Blood-rose of Calvary,
As Rome was, wrapt in cruel strife
By black eclipse of faith and life,
So is our world to-day!—and lo!
A cloud of weariness and woe,
Dark presage of the Tempest near,
Fills the sad universe with fear,
And in this darkness of eclipse,
When Faith is dumb upon the lips,
Hope dead within the heart, I share
The Time's black birthright of despair;
Hear the shrill voice that cries aloud:
‘The gods are fallen and still must fall!
King of the sepulchre and shroud,
Death keeps his Witches' Festival!’

Hark! on the darkness rings again,
Poor human Nature's shriek of pain,
Answer'd by cruel sounds that prove
The Life of Hate, the Death of Love.
Now, since all tender awe hath fled,
Not only for the gods o'erhead,
But for the tutelary, tiny,
Gods that our daily path surround,
The kindly, innocent, sunshiny
Spirits that mask as ape and hound,—
Since neither under nor above him
Man reverences the powers that love him,
What wonder if, instead of these
Who brought him gifts of joy for token,
Man looking upward only sees
A hideous Spectre of the Brocken,
And 'mid his hush of horror, hears
The torrent-sound of human tears?
The butcher'd woman's dying shriek,
The ribald's laugh, the ruffian's yell,
While strong men trample on the weak,
Proclaim the reign of Hate and Hell.
And in the lazar-halls of Art,
And in the shrines of Science, priests
Of the new Nescience brood apart,
Crying, ‘Man's life is as the Beast's!’
There is no goodness 'neath the sun—
The days of God and gods are done,
And o'er the godless Universe
Falls the last pessimistic curse!

Old friends, with whom in days less dark
I roam'd thro' green Bohemia's glades,
While ‘tirra lirra’ sang the lark
And lovers listen'd in the shades,
When Life was young and Song was merry,
And Morals free, and Manners bold,
When poets whistled ‘Hey down derry,’
And toil'd for love in lieu of gold,
When on the road we trode together
Old honest hostels offered cheer,
And halting in the sunny weather
We gladden'd over pipes and beer,
Where are you hiding now? and where
Is the Bohemia of our playtime?
Where are the heavens that once were fair,
And where the blossoms of the May-time?
The trees are lopt by social sawyers,
The grass is gone, the ways asphalted,
Stone walls set up by ethic lawyers
Replace the Stiles o'er which we vaulted!
See! with rapidity surprising,
Thro' jerry-building ministrations,
Neat Literary Villas rising
To shelter timid reputations;
Each with its garden and its gravel,
Its little lawn right trimly shaven,
Its owner's name, quite clean, past cavil,
Upon a brass plate neatly graven!

And lo! that all mankind may know it,
We are respectable or nothing,
The Seer, the Painter, and the Poet
Must go in fashionable clothing—
High jinks, all tumbling in the hay,
All thoughts of pipes and beer, are chidden,
The girls who were so glad and gay
Must be content in hodden-gray,
Nay, merry books must be forbidden.
And—ecce signum!—primly drest
Here come the Vigilance Committee,
Condemning Murger and the rest
Because they may corrupt the City!
Vie de Bohème!—Life yearned for yet,
En pantalon, en chemisette—
Life free as sunshine and fresh air,
Now gets no hearing anywhere,
And o'er a world of knaves and fools
The Moral Jerry-builder rules.

Moral? By Heaven, I see beneath
That saintly mask, the eyes of Death,
The wrinkled cheek, the serpent's skin,
The sly Mephistophelian grin!
And where he wanders thro' the land
The green grass withers 'neath his tread,
While those trim villas built on sand
Crumble around the living-dead.
Under the region he controls
Sound of a sleeping Earthquake rolls,
And at the murmur of his voice
The Seven Deadly Sins rejoice!
Meantime, the Jerry Legislator,
Throttling all natures broad and breezy,
Flaunts in the face of the Creator,
The good old-fashioned Heavenly Pater,
This gospel—‘Providence Made Easy!’
Proving all gods but myths and fiction,
He treats man's feeble constitution
With moral drugs and civic friction,
To force the work of Evolution;
Shows ‘Rights’ are merely superstition,
And Freedom simply Laisser faire,
And puts a ban and prohibition
On Life that once was free as air.
Behold the scientific dullard,
Cocksure of healing Nature's plight,
Turning Thought's prism many-colour'd
Into one common black and white,
Measures our stature, rules our reading,
Tells us that he is God's successor,
And vows no man of decent breeding
Would seek a wiser Intercessor.
For ‘Rights,’ read ‘Mights,’ aloud cries he,
For ‘Thought,’ ‘Paternal Legislation,’
And substitutes for Liberty
The pompous Beadles of the Nation.
Aye me, when half Man's race is run,
The screech-owl Science, which began
By flapping blindly in the sun,
Huskily croaking, ‘Night is done!
Hark to the Chanticleer of Man!’
Now goose-like hops along the street
Behind the Priests and Ruling Classes,
And fills the air where birds sang sweet
With vestry cackle, as it passes!

Ah, for the days when I was young,
When men were free and songs were sung
In old Bohemia's sylvan tongue!
Ah, for Bohemia long since fled,—
The blue sky shining overhead,
Men comrades all, all women fair,
And Freedom radiant everywhere!
Ah, then the Poet knew indeed
A tenderer soul, a softer creed,
And saw in every fair one's eyes
The light of opening Paradise;
Then, as to lovely forms of fable
Old poets yielded genuflection,
He knelt to Woman, all unable
To throw her corpse upon a table
For calm æsthetical dissection!
Zola, de Goncourt, and the rest,
Had not yet woven their witch's spell,
Not yet had Art become a pest
To poison Love's pellucid well!
We deem'd our mistresses divine,
We pledged them deep in Shakespeare's wine,
And in the poorest robes could find
A Juliet or a Rosalind!
And when at night beneath the gas
We saw our painted sisters pass,
We hush'd our hearts like Christian men
Remembering the Magdalen!
Well, now that youth no more is mine,
I worship still the Shape Divine,
And to the outcast I am ready
To lift my hat, as to a lady;
But when I hear the modern cry,
Mocking the human form and face,
And watch the cynic's sensual eye,
Blind as his little soul is base,
And see the foul miasma creep
Destroying all things sweet and fair,
What wonder if I sometimes weep
And feel the canker of despair?

That mood, thank God, is evanescent,
For I'm an optimist at heart,
And 'spite the dark and troubled Present
See lights that stir the clouds apart!
Rare as the dodo, that strange fowl
(Now quite extinct thro' persecution),
Despite the hooting of the owl
I still preserve my youth's illusion,
Believe in God and Heaven and Love,
And turning from Life's sorry sight,
Watch starry lattices above
Opening upon the waves of Night,—
Find shapes divine and ever fair
Thronging with radiant faces there,
While hands of benediction wave
O'er these wild waters of the grave.

Et ego in Bohemiâ fui!
Have known its fountains deep and dewy,
Have wander'd where the sun shone mellow
On many an honest ragged fellow,
And for Bohemia's sake since then
Have loved poor brothers of the pen.
I've popt at vultures circling skyward,
I've made the carrion-hawks a by-word,
But never caused a sigh or sob in
The heart of mavis or cock-robin,
Nay, many such (let Time attest me!)
Have fed out of my hand, and blest me!
So when my wayward life is ended,
With all my sins that can't be mended,
And in my singing rags I lie
Face upward to the cruel sky,
The small birds, fluttering about me,
While birds of prey and ravens flout me,
May strew a few loose leaves above
The Outcast whom so few could love,—
And on my grave in flower-wrought words
The Inscription set, that men may view it,—
‘He bless'd the nameless singing birds,
Loved the Good Shepherd's flocks and herds,
Et ille in Bohemiâ fuit!’