The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

What if we call it fifty years! 'Tis steep!
To climb so high a gradient? Prate of guides?
Are we not roped? The danger? Nay, the Turf,
No less nor more than mountain peaks, my friend,
Hears talk of Roping—but the Jubilee!
Nay, there you have me: old Francesco once
(This was in Milan, in Visconti's time,
Our wild Visconti, with one lip askance,
And beard tongue-twisted in the nostril's nook)
Parlous enough—these times—what? ‘So are ours’?
Or any times, i'fegs, to him who thinks—
Well 'twas in spring ‘the frolic myrtle trees
There gendered the grave olive stocks’—you cry
‘A miracle’!—Sordello writeth thus—
Believe me that indeed 'twas thus, and he,
Francesco, you are with me? Well, there's gloom

220

No less than gladness in your fifty years,
‘And so’, said he, ‘to supper as we may.’
‘Voltairean’? So you take it; but 'tis late,
And dinner seven, sharp, at Primrose Hill.

Robert Browning.

221

The Poet and the Jubilee

Poscimur!

By A. D.

A birthday Ode for Meg or Nan,
A Rhyme for Lady Flora's Fan,
A Verse on Smut, who's gone astray—
These Things are in the Poet's way;
At Home with praise of Julia's Lace,
Or Delia's Ankles, Rose's Face,
But ‘Something overparted’ He,
When asked to rhyme the Jubilee!

He therefore turns, the Poet wary,
And thumbs his Carmen Seculare,
To Ph(ce)bus and to Dian prays,
Who tune Men's Lyres of Holidays;
He reads of the Sibylline Shades,
Of Stainless Boys and chosen Maids.
He turns, and reads the other Page,
Of docile Youth, and placid Age,

222

Then sings how, in this golden year
Fides Pudorque reappear—
And if they don't appear, you know it
Were quite unjust to blame the Poet!

Austin Dobson.

223

On any Beach

By M. A.

Yes, in the stream and stress of things,
That breaks around us like the sea,
There comes to peasants and to kings,
The solemn hour of Jubilee.
If they, till strenuous nature give
Some fifty harvests, chance to live!

Ah, fifty harvests! But the corn
Is grown beside the barren main;
Is salt with sea-spray, blown and borne
Across the green unvintaged plain.
And life, lived out for fifty years,
Is briny with the spray of tears!

Ah, such is life, to us that live
Here, in the twilight of the gods,
Who weigh each gift the world can give,
And sigh and murmur, What's the odds
So long's you're happy? Nay, what man
Finds happiness since time began?

Matthew Arnold.

224

Ode of Jubilee

By A. C. S.

Me, that have sung and shrieked, and foamed in praise of freedom,
Me do you ask to sing
Parochial pomps, and waste, the wail of Jubileedom
For Queen, or Prince, or King!

Nay, by the foam that fleeting oars have feathered
In Grecian seas;
Nay, by the winds that barques Athenian weathered—
By all of these
I bid you each be mute, Bards tamed and tethered,
And fee'd with fees!

For you the laurel smirched, for you the gold, too,
Of magazines;
For me the Spirit of Song, unbought, unsold to
Pale priests or queens!
For you the gleam of gain, the fluttering cheque
Of Mr. Knowles;
For me, to soar above the ruins and wreck
Of Snobs and ‘Souls’!

225

When aflush with the dew of the dawn, and the
Rose of the mystical vision,
The spirit and soul of the men of the
Future shall rise and be free,
They shall hail me with hymning and harping,
With eloquent art and Elysian—
The singer who sung not but spurned them,
The slaves that could sing ‘Jubilee’;
With pinchbeck lyre and tongue,
Praising their tyrant sung,
They shall fail and shall fade in derision,
As wind on the ways of the sea!

A. C. Swinburne.

226

Jubilee before Revolution

By W. M.

‘Tell me, O Muse of the shifty, the man who wandered afar’,
So have I chanted of late, and of Troy burg wasted of war—
Now of the sorrows of menfolk that fifty years have been,
Now of the grace of the commune I sing, and the days of a queen!
Surely I curse rich menfolk, ‘the Wights of the Whirlwind’ may they—
This is my style of translating “Αρπυιαι—snatch them away!
The rich thieves rolling in wealth that make profit of labouring men,
Surely the Wights of the Whirlwind shall swallow them quick in their den!

227

O baneful, O wit-straying, in the burg of London ye dwell,
And ever of profits and three per cent. are the tales ye tell;
But the stark, strong Polyphemus shall answer you back again,
Him whom ‘No man slayeth by guile and not by main’.
(By ‘main’ I mean ‘main force’, if aught at all do I mean;
In the Greek of the blindfold bard it is simpler the sense to glean.)
You, Polyphemus shall swallow and fill his mighty maw,
What time he maketh an end of the Priests, the Police, and the Law;
And then, ah, who shall purchase the poems of old that I sang;
Who shall pay twelve-and-six for an epic in Saga slang?
But perchance even ‘Hermes the Flitter’ could scarcely expound what I mean,
And I trow that another were fitter to sing you a song for a queen.

William Morris.