XXXII Ballades in Blue China [1885]

For them I hold, I will ye wot
They sorrow, but they slumber not,
They have no lust to sing,
And never comes a merry voice,
Nor doth a soul of them rejoice
Until their uprising.

SANCTA LUCIA

I am a Queen of Paradise,
And who shall look on me, I wis,
His spirit shall find grace.
Whoso dwells with me walks along
In gardens glad with small birds’ song,
A flowered and grassy place,
Therein the souls of blessèd men
Wait each, till comes his love again,
To look upon her face!

SANCTUS PAULUS

Thou, Sir Diabolus, art shent,
I wot that well ye might repent,
But till Midsummer fall in Lent,
Ye will not cease to sin.
Get thee to dungeon underground
And sit beside thy man, Mahound.
I wot I would ye twain were bound
For evermore therein.

Fugiat Diabolus ad locum suum.

STOKER BILL

A BALLAD OF THE SCHOOL-BOARD FLEET

Which my name is Stoker Bill,
And a pleasant berth I fill,
And the care the ladies take of me is clipping;
They have made me pretty snug,
With a blooming Persian rug,
In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.

There’s my Whistler pastels, there,
As are quite beyond compare,
And a portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist skipping;
From such art we all expect
Quite a softening effect,
In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping.

And my beer comes in a mug —
Such a rare old Rhodian jug!
And here I sits æsthetically sipping;
And I drinks my grog or ale
On a chair by Chippendale —
We’ve no others in our modern training shipping.

There’s our first Liftenant, too,
Is a rare old (China) Blue,
And you do not very often catch him tripping
At a monogram or mark,
But no more than Noah’s ark,
Does he know the way to manage this here shipping.

But the Boys? the Boys, they stands
With white lilies in their hands,
And they do not know the meaning of a whipping:
For the whole delightful ship is
Like a dream of Lippo Lippi’s,
More than what you mostly see in modern shipping.

Well, some coves they cuts up rough,
And they calls æsthetics stuff,
And they says as we’ve no business to keep dipping
In the rates, but ladies likes it,
And our flag we never strikes it —
Bless old England’s new Æsthetic Training Shipping!

NATURAL THEOLOGY

ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισιν
ἔυχεσθαι·  Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.

    Od. iii. 47.
“Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good,
But He was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
And breaks the Thunder-bird’s tremendous wings;
But still we cry to Him, —We are thy brood—
O Cagn, be merciful! and us He brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
And in the desert opens water-springs.”

So Qing, King Nqsha’s Bushman hunter, spoke,
Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,
When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke
Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:
And suddenly in each man’s heart there woke
A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.