A Satire Anthology

Автор

Carolyn Wells

Год написания книги

2017

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O WHAT harper could worthily harp it,
Mine Edward! this wide-stretching wold
(Look out wold) with its wonderful carpet
Of emerald, purple, and gold!
Look well at it – also look sharp, it
Is getting so cold.

The purple is heather (erica);
The yellow, gorse – call’d sometimes “whin.”
Cruel boys on its prickles might spike a
Green beetle as if on a pin.
You may roll in it, if you would like a
Few holes in your skin.

You wouldn’t? Then think of how kind you
Should be to the insects who crave
Your compassion – and then, look behind you
At yon barley-ears! Don’t they look brave
As they undulate (undulate, mind you,
From unda, a wave).

The noise of those sheep-bells, how faint it
Sounds here (on account of our height)!
And this hillock itself – who could paint it,
With its changes of shadow and light?
Is it not – (never, Eddy, say “Ain’t it”) —
A marvellous sight?

Then yon desolate, eerie morasses,
The haunts of the snipe and the hern —
(I shall question the two upper classes
On aquatiles, when we return) —
Why, I see on them absolute masses
Of filix or fern.

How it interests e’en a beginner
(Or tyro) like dear little Ned!
Is he listening? As I am a sinner,
He’s asleep – he is wagging his head.
Wake up! I’ll go home to my dinner,
And you to your bed.

The boundless, ineffable prairie;
The splendour of mountain and lake,
With their hues that seem ever to vary;
The mighty pine-forests which shake
In the wind, and in which the unwary
May tread on a snake;

And this wold with its heathery garment
Are themes undeniably great.
But – although there is not any harm in’t —
It’s perhaps little good to dilate
On their charms to a dull little varmint
Of seven or eight.

Charles Stuart Calverley.

OF PROPRIETY

STUDY first Propriety, for she is indeed the pole-star
Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair;
Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society,
The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros.
Verily, Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed, being naked;
Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice;
And when she is drest, behold, she knoweth not herself again!
I walked in the forest, and above me stood the yew —
Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade;
Then I pass’d into the citizen’s garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape
(The giant’s locks had been shorn by the Delilah-shears of Decorum),
And I said, “Surely Nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!”
I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky,
And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he rose.
Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch,
Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up the water;
And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder,
Must yield to him that danceth and “moveth in the circles” at Astley’s.
For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade,
And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another.
A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upward,
And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety;
He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure;
Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.

Charles Stuart Calverley.

PEACE: A Study

HE stood, a worn-out City clerk —
Who’d toil’d, and seen no holiday,
For forty years from dawn to dark —
Alone beside Caermarthen Bay.

He felt the salt spray on his lips;
Heard children’s voices on the sands;
Up the sun’s path he saw the ships
Sail on and on to other lands;