Irreverence

AND

Satire

 

To Nysus

How shall we please this Age? If in a song

We put above six Lines, they count it long;

If we contract it to an epigram,

As deep the dwarfish poetry they damn;

If we write plays, few see above an act,

And those lewd masks, or noisy fops distract:

Let us write satire then, and at our ease

Vex th’ill-natured fools we cannot please.

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY

An Argument

I’ve oft been told by learned friars,

That wishing and the crime are one,

And Heaven punishes desires

As much as if the deed were done.

If wishing damns us, you and I

Are damned to all our heart’s content;

Come, then, at least we may enjoy

Some pleasure for our punishment!

THOMAS MOORE

Decalogue

Decalogue, n. A series of commandments, ten in number – just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice. Following is the revised edition of the Decalogue, calculated for this meridian.

Thou shalt no God but me adore:

’Twere too expensive to have more.

No images nor idols make

For Roger Ingersoll to break.

Take not God’s name in vain: select

A time when it will have effect.

Work not on Sabbath days at all,

But go to see the teams play ball.

Honor thy parents. That creates

For life insurance lower rates.

Kill not, abet not those who kill;

Thou shalt not pay thy butcher’s bill.

Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife, unless

Thine own thy neighbor doth caress.

Don’t steal; thou’lt never thus compete

Successfully in business. Cheat.

Bear not false witness — that is low —

But ‘hear ’tis rumored so and so.’

Covet thou naught that thou hast got

By hook or crook, or somehow, got.

AMBROSE BIERCE

Let Us All Be Unhappy On Sunday

We zealots, made up of stiff clay,

The sour-looking children of sorrow,

While not over jolly to-day,

Resolve to be wretched tomorrow.

We can’t for a certainty tell

What mirth may molest us on Monday;

But, at least, to begin the week well,

Let us all be unhappy on Sunday.

What though a good precept we strain

Till hateful and hurtful we make it!

While though, in thus pulling the rein,

We may draw it so tight as to break it!

Abroad we forbid folks to roam,

For fear they get social or frisky;

But of course they can sit still at home,

And get dismally drunk upon whisky.

CHARLES, LORD NEAVES

The Little Vagabond

Dear mother, dear mother, the church is cold,

But the alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm;

Besides I can tell where I am used well;

Such usage in heaven will never do well.

But if at the church they would give us some ale,

And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,

We’d sing and we’d pray all the livelong day,

Nor ever once wish from the church to stray.

Then the parson might preach, and drink, and sing,

And we’d be as happy as birds in the spring;

And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church,

Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

And God, like a father, rejoicing to see

His children as pleasant and happy as he,

Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel,

But kiss him, and give him both drink and apparel.

WILLIAM BLAKE

Waste

I had written to Aunt Maud,

Who was on a trip abroad,

When I heard she’d died of cramp

Just too late to save the stamp.

HARRY GRAHAM

On A Girdle

That which her slender waist confined

Shall now my joyful temples bind:

No monarch but would give his crown,

His arms might do what this has done.

It was my Heaven’s extremest sphere,

The pale which held that lovely deer:

My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,

Did all within this circle move!

A narrow compass! and yet there

Dwelt all that’s good, and all that’s fair:

Give me but what this ribband bound,

Take all the rest the Sun goes round.

EDMUND WALLER

Song

Pious Selinda goes to prayers,

If I but ask a favour;

And yet the tender fool’s in tears,

When she believes I’ll leave her.

Would I were free from this restraint,

Or else had hopes to win her;

Would she would make of me a saint,

Or I of her a sinner!

WILLIAM CONGREVE

The Canonization

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,

Or chide my palsy, or my gout;

My five grey hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout;

With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,

Take you a course, get you a place,

Observe his Honour, or his Grace;

Or the king’s real, or his stamp’d face

Contemplate; what you will, approve,

So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?

What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned?

Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?

When did my colds a forward spring remove?

When did the heats which my veins fill

Add one more to the plaguy bill?

Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

Litigious men, which quarrels move,

Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;

Call her one, me another fly,

We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die,

And we in us find the eagle and the dove.

The phoenix riddle hath more wit

By us; we two being one are it.

So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.

We die and rise the same, and prove

Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,

And if unfit for tomb or hearse

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;

And if no piece of chronicle we prove,

We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;

As well a well-wrought urn becomes

The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,

And by these hymns, all shall approve

Us canonized for love:

And thus invoke us, ‘You, whom reverend love

Made one another’s hermitage;

You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;

Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove

Into the glasses of your eyes;

(So made such mirrors, and such spies,

That they did all to you epitomize);

Countries, towns, courts beg from above

A pattern of your love.’

JOHN DONNE

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears

Night and morning with my tears,

And I sunned it with smiles

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright,

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine —

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning, glad, I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

WILLIAM BLAKE

A Little Lamb

Mary had a little lamb,

She ate it with mint sauce.

And everywhere that Mary went

The lamb went too, of course.

ANONYMOUS

The Latest Decalogue

Thou shalt have one God only; who

Would be at the expense of two?

No graven images may be

Worshipp’d, except the currency:

Swear not at all; for for thy curse

Thine enemy is none the worse:

At church on Sunday to attend

Will serve to keep the world thy friend:

Honour thy parents; that is, all

From whom advancement may befall:

Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive

Officiously to keep alive:

Do not adultery commit;

Advantage rarely comes of it:

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,

When it’s so lucrative to cheat:

Bear not false witness; let the lie

Have time on its own wings to fly:

Thou shalt not covert; but tradition

Approves all forms of competition.

The sum of all is, thou shalt love,

If any body, God above:

At any rate shall never labour

More than thyself to love thy neighbour.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

The Righteous Man

The righteous man will rob none but the defenceless,

Whatsoever can reckon with him he will neither plunder nor kill;

He will steal an egg from a hen or a lamb from an ewe,

For his sheep and his hens cannot reckon with him hereafter —

They live not in any odour of defencefulness:

Therefore right is with the righteous man, and he taketh advantage righteously,

Praising God and plundering.

The righteous man will enslave his horse and his dog,

Making them serve him for their bare keep and for nothing further,

Shooting them, selling them for vivisection when they can no longer profit him,

Backbiting them and beating them if they fail to please him;

For his horse and his dog can bring no action for damages,

Wherefore, then, should he not enslave them, shoot them, sell them for vivisection?

But the righteous man will not plunder the defenceful —

Not if he be alone and unarmed — for his conscience will smite him;

He will not rob a she-bear of her cubs, nor an eagle of her eaglets —

Unless he have a rifle to purge him from the fear of sin:

Then may he shoot rejoicing in innocency — from ambush or a safe distance;

Or he will beguile them, lay poison for them, keep no faith with them;

For what faith is there with that which cannot reckon hereafter,

Neither by itself, nor by another, nor by any residuum of ill consequences?

Surely, where weakness is utter, honour ceaseth.

Nay, I will do what is right in the eyes of him who can harm me,

And not in those of him who cannot call me to account.

Therefore yield me up thy pretty wings, O humming-bird!

Sing for me in a prison, O lark!

Pay me thy rent, O widow! for it is mine.

Where there is reckoning there is sin,

And where there is no reckoning sin is not.

SAMUEL BUTLER

The Laws Of God, The Laws Of Man

The laws of God, the laws of man

He may keep that will and can

Not I: Let God and man decree

Laws for themselves and not for me;

And if my ways are not as theirs

Let them mind their own affairs.

Their deeds I judge and much condemn

Yet when did I make laws for them?

Please yourselves, Say I, and they

Need only look the other way.

But no, they will not; they must still

Wrest their neighbor to their will,

And make me dance as they desire

With jail and gallows and hellfire.

And how am I to face the odds

Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?

I, a stranger and afraid

In a world I never made

They will be master, right or wrong;

Though, both are foolish, both are strong

And since, my soul, we cannot flee

To Saturn or to Mercury

Keep we must, if keep we can

These foreign laws of God and man.

A. E. HOUSMAN

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Having a glasse of blessings standing by,

‘Let us,’ said he, ‘poure on him all we can;

Let the world’s riches, which disperséd lie,

Contract into a span.’

So strength first made a way;

Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure;

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,

Rest in the bottom lay.

‘For if I should,’ said he,

‘Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessnesse;

Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,

If goodnesse leade him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.’

GEORGE HERBERT

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

To The Virgins, To Make Much Of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may go marry:

For having lost but once your prime,

You may for ever tarry.

ROBERT HERRICK

Why So Pale And Wan, Fond Lover?

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prithee, why so pale?

Will, when looking well can’t move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Prithee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Prithee, why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can’t win her,

Saying nothing do ’t?

Prithee, why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame! This will not move;

This cannot take her.

If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her:

The devil take her!

SIR JOHN SUCKLING

Rich And Poor; Or Saint And Sinner

The poor man’s sins are glaring;

In the face of ghostly warning

He is caught in the fact

Of an overt act —

Buying greens on Sunday morning.

The rich man’s sins are hidden

In the pomp of wealth and station;

And escape the sight

Of the children of light,

Who are wise in their generation.

The rich man has a kitchen,

And cooks to dress his dinner;

The poor who would roast

To the baker’s must post,

And thus becomes a sinner.

The rich man has a cellar,

And a ready butler by him;

The poor man must steer

For his pint of beer

Where the saint can’t choose but spy him.

The rich man’s painted windows

Hide the concerts of the quality;

The poor can but share

A cracked fiddle in the air,

Which offends all sound morality.

The rich man is invisible

In the crowd of his gay society;

But the poor man’s delight

Is a sore in the sight,

And a stench in the nose of piety.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

To A Millionaire

The world in gloom and splendour passes by,

And thou in the midst of it with brows that gleam,

A creature of that old distorted dream

That makes the sound of life an evil cry.

Good men perform just deeds, and brave men die,

And win not honour such as gold can give,

While the vain multitudes plod on, and live,

And serve the curse that pins them down: But I

Think only of the unnumbered broken hearts,

The hunger and the mortal strife for bread,

Old age and youth alike mistaught, misfed,

By want and rags and homelessness made vile,

The griefs and hates, and all the meaner parts

That balance thy one grim misgotten pile.

ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN

The Constant Lover

Out upon it, I have loved

Three whole days together!

And am like to love three more,

If it prove fair weather.

Time shall moult away his wings

Ere he shall discover

In the whole wide world again

Such a constant lover.

But the spite on ’t is, no praise

Is due at all to me:

Love with me had made no stays,

Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she,

And that very face,

There had been at least ere this

A dozen dozen in her place.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING

The Sorrows Of Werther

Werther had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter;

Would you know how first he met her?

She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,

And a moral man was Werther,

And for all the wealth of Indies,

Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sigh’d and pined and ogled,

And his passion boiled and bubbled,

Till he blew his silly brains out,

And no more by it was troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body

Borne before her on a shutter,

Like a well-conducted person,

Went on cutting bread and butter.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The Despairing Lover

Distracted with care,

For Phyllis the fair;

Since nothing could move her,

Poor Damon, her lover,

Resolves in despair

No longer to languish,

Nor bear so much anguish;

But, mad with his love,

To a precipice goes;

Where a leap from above

Would soon finish his woes.

When in rage he came there,

Beholding how steep

The sides did appear,

And the bottom how deep;

His torments projecting,

And sadly reflecting,

That a lover forsaken

A new love may get;

But a neck, when once broken,

Can never be set:

And that he could die

Whenever he would;

But that he could live

But as long as he could;

How grievous soever

The torment might grow,

He scorn’d to endeavour

To finish it so.

But bold, unconcern’d

At the thoughts of the pain,

He calmly returned

To his cottage again.

WILLIAM WALSH

On A Certain Lady At Court

I know the thing that’s most uncommon;

(Envy, be silent, and attend!);

I know a reasonable woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a friend.

Not warped by passion, awed by rumour,

Not grave through pride, or gay through folly,

An equal mixture of good humour,

And sensible soft melancholy.

‘Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?’

Yes, she has one, I must aver:

When all the World conspires to praise her,

The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.

ALEXANDER POPE

On A Painted Woman

To youths, who hurry thus away,

How silly your desire is

At such an early hour to pay

Your compliments to Iris.

Stop, prithee, stop, ye hasty beaux,

No longer urge this race on;

Though Iris has put on her clothes,

She has not put her face on.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Impromptu On Charles II

God bless our good and gracious King,

Whose promise none relies on;

Who never said a foolish thing,

Nor ever did a wise one.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

The Georges

George the First was always reckoned

Vile, but viler George the Second;

And what mortal ever heard

Any good of George the Third?

When from earth the Fourth descended

(God be praised!) the Georges ended!

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

When A Man Hath No Freedom

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,

Let him combat for that of his neighbours;

Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,

And get knock’d on the head for his labours.

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,

And, is always as nobly requited;

Then battle for freedom wherever you can,

And, if not shot or hang’d, you’ll get knighted.

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

The Politician

Carven in leathern mask or brazen face,

Were I time’s sculptor, I would set this man.

Retreating from the truth, his hawk-eyes scan

The platforms of all public thought for place.

There wriggling with insinuating grace,

He takes poor hope and effort by the hand,

And flatters with half-truths and accents bland,

Till even zeal and earnest love grow base.

Knowing no right, save power’s grim right-of-way;

No nobleness, save life’s ignoble praise;

No future, save this sordid day to day;

He is the curse of these material days:

Juggling with mighty wrongs and mightier lies,

This worshipper of Dagon and his flies!

WILFRED CAMPBELL

The Modern Politician

What manner of soul is his to whom high truth

Is but the plaything of a feverish hour,

A dangling ladder to the ghost of power!

Gone are the grandeurs of the world’s iron youth,

When kings were mighty, being made by swords.

Now comes the transit age, the age of brass,

When clowns into the vacant empires pass,

Blinding the multitude with specious words.

To them faith, kinship, truth and verity,

Man’s sacred rights and very holiest thing,

Are but the counters at a desperate play,

Flippant and reckless what the end may be,

So that they glitter, each his little day,

The little mimic of a vanished king.

ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN

Epitaph

The angler rose, he took his rod,

He kneeled and made his prayers to God.

The living God sat overhead:

The angler tripped, the eels were fed.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

We Live In A Rickety House

We live in a rickety house,

In a dirty dismal street,

Where the naked hide from day,

And thieves and drunkards meet.

And pious folks with their tracts,

When our dens they enter in,

They point to our shirtless backs,

As the fruits of beer and gin.

And they quote us texts to prove

That our hearts are hard as stone,

And they feed us with the fact

That the fault is all our own.

It will be long ere the poor

Will learn their grog to shun

While it’s raiment, food and fire,

And religion all in one.

I wonder some pious folks

Can look us straight in the face,

For our ignorance and crime

Are the Church’s shame and disgrace.

We live in a rickety house,

In a dirty dismal street,

Where the naked hide from day,

And thieves and drunkards meet.

ALEXANDER McLACHLAN

The City Of The End Of Things

Beside the pounding cataracts

Of midnight streams unknown to us

’Tis builded in the leafless tracts

And valleys huge of Tartarus.

Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;

It hath no rounded name that rings,

But I have heard it called in dreams

The City of the End of Things.

Its roofs and iron towers have grown

None knoweth how high within the night,

But in its murky streets far down

A flaming terrible and bright

Shakes all the stalking shadows there,

Across the walls, across the floors,

And shifts upon the upper air

From out a thousand furnace doors;

And all the while an awful sound

Keeps roaring on continually,

And crashes in the ceaseless round

Of a gigantic harmony.

Through its grim depths re-echoing

And all its weary height of walls,

With measured roar and iron ring,

The inhuman music lifts and falls.

Where no thing rests and no man is,

And only fire and night hold sway;

The beat, the thunder and the hiss

Cease not, and change not, night nor day.

And moving at unheard commands,

The abysses and vast fires between,

Flit figures that with clanking hands

Obey a hideous routine;

They are not flesh, they are not bone,

They see not with the human eye,

And from their iron lips is blown

A dreadful and monotonous cry;

And whoso of our mortal race

Should find that city unaware,

Lean Death would smite him face to face,

And blanch him with its venomed air:

Or caught by the terrific spell,

Each thread of memory snapt and cut,

His soul would shrivel and its shell

Go rattling like an empty nut.

It was not always so, but once,

In days that no man thinks upon,

Fair voices echoed from its stones,

The light above it leaped and shone:

Once there were multitudes of men,

That built that city in their pride,

Until its might was made, and then

They withered age by age and died.

But now of that prodigious race,

Three only in an iron tower,

Set like carved idols face to face,

Remain the masters of its power;

And at the city gate a fourth,

Gigantic and with dreadful eyes,

Sits looking toward the lightless north,

Beyond the reach of memories;

Fast rooted to the lurid floor,

A bulk that never moves a jot,

In his pale body dwells no more,

Or mind or soul, — an idiot!

But some time in the end those three

Shall perish and their hands be still,

And with the master’s touch shall flee

Their incommunicable skill.

A stillness absolute as death

Along the slacking wheels shall lie,

And, flagging at a single breath,

The fires shall moulder out and die.

The roar shall vanish at its height,

And over that tremendous town

The silence of eternal night

Shall gather close and settle down.

All its grim grandeur, tower and hall,

Shall be abandoned utterly,

And into rust and dust shall fall

From century to century;

Nor ever living thing shall grow,

Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass;

No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow,

Nor sound of any foot shall pass:

Alone of its accursèd state,

One thing the hand of Time shall spare,

For the grim Idiot at the gate

Is deathless and eternal there.

ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN

Sally In Our Alley

Of all the Girls that are so smart

There’s none like pretty SALLY,

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

There is no Lady in the Land

Is half so sweet as SALLY,

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

Her Father he makes Cabbage-nets,

And through the Streets does cry ’em;

Her Mother she sells Laces long,

To such as please to buy ’em:

But sure such Folks could ne’er beget

So sweet a Girl as SALLY!

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

When she is by I leave my Work,

(I love her so sincerely)

My Master comes like any Turk,

And bangs me most severely;

But, let him bang his Belly full,

I’ll bear it all for SALLY;

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

Of all the Days that’s in the Week,

I dearly love but one Day,

And that’s the Day that comes betwixt

A Saturday and Monday;

For then I’m drest, all in my best,

To walk abroad with SALLY;

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

My Master carries me to Church,

And often am I blamed,

Because I leave him in the lurch,

As soon as Text is named:

I leave the Church in Sermon time,

And slink away to SALLY;

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

When Christmas comes about again,

O then I shall have Money;

I’ll hoard it up, and Box and all

I’ll give it to my Honey:

And, would it were ten thousand Pounds;

I’d give it all to SALLY;

She is the Darling of my Heart,

And she lives in our Alley.

My Master and the Neighbours all,

Make game of me and SALLY;

And (but for her) I’d better be

A Slave and row a Galley:

But when my seven long Years are out,

O then I’ll marry SALLY!

O then we’ll wed and then we’ll bed,

But not in our Alley.

HENRY CAREY

Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff

‘Terence, this is stupid stuff!

You eat your victuals fast enough;

There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,

To see the rate you drink your beer.

But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,

It gives a chap the belly-ache!

The cow, the old cow, she is dead;

It sleeps well, the horned head…

We poor lads, ’tis our turn now

To hear such tunes as killed the cow!

Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme

Your friends to death before their time

Moping melancholy mad!

Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad!’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,

There’s brisker pipes than poetry.

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,

Or why was Burton built on Trent?

Oh many a peer of England brews

Livelier liquor than the Muse,

And malt does more than Milton can

To justify God’s ways to man.

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink

For fellows whom it hurts to think:

Look into the pewter pot

To see the world as the world’s not.

And faith, ’tis pleasant till ‘tis past:

The mischief is that ’twill not last.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair

And left my necktie God knows where,

And carried half way home, or near,

Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:

Then the world seemed none so bad,

And I myself a sterling lad;

And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,

Happy till I woke again.

Then I saw the morning sky:

Heigho, the tale was all a lie;

The world, it was the old world yet,

I was I, my things were wet,

And nothing now remained to do

But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure

Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,

I’d face it as a wise man would,

And train for ill and not for good.

’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale

Is not so brisk a brew as ale:

Out of a stem that scored the hand

I wrung it in a weary land.

But take it: if the smack is sour,

The better for the embittered hour;

It should do good to heart and head

When your soul is in my soul’s stead;

And I will friend you, if I may,

In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:

There, when kings will sit to feast,

They get their fill before they think

With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.

He gathered all the springs to birth

From the many-venomed earth;

First a little, thence to more,

He sampled all her killing store;

And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,

Sate the king when healths went round.

They put arsenic in his meat

And stared aghast to watch him eat;

They poured strychnine in his cup

And shook to see him drink it up:

They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:

Them it was their poison hurt.

— I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

A. E. HOUSMAN

A Satirical Elegy

His Grace! impossible! what, dead!

Of old age, too, and in his bed!

And could that Mighty Warrior fall?

And so inglorious, after all!

Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,

The last loud trump must wake him now:

And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,

He’d wish to sleep a little longer.

And could he be indeed so old

As by the newspapers we’re told?

Threescore, I think, is pretty high;

’Twas time in conscience he should die.

This world he cumber’d long enough;

He burnt his candle to the snuff;

And that’s the reason, some folks think,

He left behind so great a stink.

Behold his funeral appears,

Nor widows’ sighs, nor orphans’ tears,

Wont at such times each heart to pierce,

Attend the progress of his hearse.

But what of that, his friends may say,

He had those honours in his day.

True to his profit and his pride,

He made them weep before he died.

Come hither, all ye empty things!

Ye bubbles rais’d by breath of Kings!

Who float upon the tide of state,

Come hither, and behold your fate!

Let pride be taught by this rebuke,

How very mean a thing’s a duke;

From all his ill-got honours flung,

Turn’d to that dirt from whence he sprung.

JONATHAN SWIFT

Dr Johnson

Here lies poor Johnson. Reader! have a care:

Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear:

Religious, moral, generous and humane,

He was, but self-conceited, rude and vain:

Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute,

A scholar, and a Christian, yet a brute.

Would you know all his wisdom and his folly,

His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy,

Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit,

Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and spit.

SOAME JENYNS

Bardolph Redivivus

When Plato in his cradle slept, the bees

Swarmed at his lips, for so the legend goes;

But, fickle creatures, coy and hard to please,

They sure mistook, and settled on your nose!

Mayhap it is your wife who love to teaze,

And on your patient knob incessant blows

Doth strike for her own sweet amusement’s sake.

Perchance it cometh of the drams you take,

This subtle, fiery redness-who can tell?

Ay, who can tell, great nasal organ bright!

What vintages and distillations dwell

Pent in those caverns awful in our sight?

Dark with the morn, but, in the darkness, light,

A purple cloud by day, a flame by night!

CHARLES MAIR

The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken Of Such As He Sometime Enjoyed

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not once remember

That sometime they have put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking in continual change.

Thank’d be fortune, it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once, in special,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

And therewithall so sweetly did me kiss,

And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’

It was no dream, for I lay broad waking:

But all is turn’d now, through my gentleness,

Into a bitter fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go, of her goodness;

And she also to use new fangleness.

But since that I unkindly so am served,

I fain would know what she hath deserved.

SIR THOMAS WYATT

Upon Julia’s Clothes

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

The liquefaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

That brave vibration each way free,

O how that glittering taketh me!

ROBERT HERRICK

Woman

When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can soothe her melancholy?

What art can wash her tears away?

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from ev’ry eye,

To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom is — to die.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Somebody

Somebody being a nobody,

Thinking to look like a somebody,

Said that he thought me a nobody:

Good little somebody-nobody,

Had you not known me a somebody,

Would you have called me a nobody?

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The Workman’s Song

Come all ye weary sons of toil,

And listen to my song,

We’ve eat oppression’s bitter bread,

And eat it far too long.

Oh poverty’s a dreadful thing,

Her bite is always keen,

Oppression’s foot is always shod,

And greed is always mean.

The great, the greasy multitude,

Should neither think nor feel,

They’ve but to lick the hand that holds

Their noses to the wheel.

ALEXANDER McLACHLAN

Some Can Gaze And Not Be Sick

Some can gaze and not be sick,

But I could never learn the trick.

There’s this to say for blood and breath,

They give a man a taste for death.

A. E. HOUSMAN

The Hyænas

After the burial-parties leave

And the baffled kites have fled;

The wise hyænas come out at eve

To take account of our dead.

How he died and why he died

Troubles them not a whit.

They snout the bushes and stones aside

And dig till they come to it.

They are only resolute they shall eat

That they and their mates may thrive,

And they know that the dead are safer meat

Than the weakest thing alive.

(For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,

And a child will sometimes stand;

But a poor dead soldier of the King

Can never lift a hand.)

They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt

Until their tushes white

Take good hold of the Army shirt,

And tug the corpse to light,

And the pitiful face is shown again

For an instant ere they close;

But it is not discovered to living men —

Only to God and to those

Who, being soulless, are free from shame,

Whatever meat they may find.

Nor do they defile the dead man’s name —

That is reserved for his kind.

RUDYARD KIPLING

The Ruined Maid

‘O ’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?’ —

‘O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?’ said she.

— ‘You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

And now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!’ —

‘Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,’ said she.

— ‘At home in the barton you said ‘thee’ and ‘thou’,

And ‘thik oon’, and ‘theäs oon’, and ‘t’other’; but now

Your talking quite fits ’ee for high compa-ny!’ —

‘Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,’ said she.

— ‘Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak

But now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek,

And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!’ —

‘We never do work when we’re ruined,’ said she.

— ‘You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

And you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem

To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!’ —

‘True. One’s pretty lively when ruined,’ said she.

— ‘I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!’ —

‘My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be,

Cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined,’ said she.

THOMAS HARDY

’Twas Ever Thus

(In imitation of Thomas Moore)

I never reared a young gazelle,

(Because, you see, I never tried);

But had it known and loved me well,

No doubt the creature would have died.

My rich and aged Uncle John

Has known me long and loves me well,

But still persists in living on —

I would he were a young gazelle.

I never loved a tree or flower;

But, if I had, I beg to say

The blight, the wind, the sun, or shower

Would soon have withered it away.

I’ve dearly loved my Uncle John,

From childhood to the present hour,

And yet he will go living on —

I would he were a tree or flower!

HENRY SAMBROOKE LEIGH

Infant Innocence

The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;

He has devoured the infant child.

The infant child is not aware

It has been eaten by the bear.

A. E. HOUSMAN

In Memoriam

Willie had a purple monkey climbing on a yellow stick,

And when he had sucked the paint all off it made him deadly sick;

And in his latest hours he clasped that monkey in his hand,

And bade good-bye to earth and went into a better land.

Oh no more he’ll shoot his sister with his little wooden gun;

And no more he’ll twist the pussy’s tail and make her yowl, for fun.

The pussy’s tail now stands out straight; the gun is laid aside;

The monkey doesn’t jump around since little Willie died.

MAX ADELER

Nonsense

Good reader, if you e’er have seen,

When Phoebus hastens to his pillow,

The mermaids, with their tresses green,

Dancing upon the western billow;

If you have seen, at twilight dim,

When the lone spirit’s vesper-hymn

Floats wild along the winding shore,

If you have seen, through mist of eve,

The fairy train their ringlets weave,

Glancing along the spangled green; -

If you have seen all this and more,

God bless me! what a deal you’ve seen!

THOMAS MOORE

Finis

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.

Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:

I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR