Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations
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Andrew Lang >> Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations
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This etext was produced from the 1911 Longmans, Green and Co.
"Ballades and Rhymes" edition by David Price, email
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Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations
by Andrew Lang
Introduction
BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA.
Ballade of Theocritus
Ballade of Cleopatra's Needle
Ballade of Roulette
Ballade of Sleep
Ballade of the Midnight Forest
Ballade of the Tweed
Ballade of the Book-hunter
Ballade of the Voyage to Cythera
Ballade of the Summer Term
Ballade of the Muse
Ballade against the Jesuits
Ballade of Dead Cities
Ballade of the Royal Game of Golf
Double Ballade of Primitive Man
Ballade of Autumn
Ballade of True Wisdom
Ballade of Worldly Wealth
Ballade of Life
Ballade of Blue China
Ballade of Dead Ladies
Villon's Ballade of Good Counsel
Ballade of the Bookworm
Valentine in form of Ballade
Ballade of Old Plays
Ballade of his Books
Ballade of the Dream
Ballade of the Southern Cross
Ballade of Aucassin
Ballade Amoureuse
Ballade of Queen Anne
Ballade of Blind Love
Ballade of his Choice of a Sepulchre
Dizain
VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS.
A Portrait of 1783
The Moon's Minion
In Ithaca
Homer
The Burial of Moliere
Bion
Spring
Before the Snow
Villanelle
Natural Theology
The Odyssey
Ideal
The Fairy's Gift
Benedetta Ramus
Partant pour la Scribie
St. Andrews Bay
Woman and the Weed
"Rondeaux, BALLADES,
Chansons dizains, propos menus,
Compte moy qu'ils sont devenuz:
Se faict il plus rien de nouveau?"
CLEMENT MAROT, Dialogue de deux
Amoureux.
"I love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily
set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably."
A Winter's Tale, Act iv. sc. 3.
INTRODUCTION
Thirty years have passed, like a watch in the night, since the
earlier of the two sets of verses here reprinted, Ballades in Blue
China, was published. At first there were but twenty-two Ballades;
ten more were added later. They appeared in a little white vellum
wrapper, with a little blue Chinese singer copied from a porcelain
jar; and the frontispiece was a little design by an etcher now
famous.
Thirty years ago blue china was a kind of fetish in some circles,
aesthetic circles, of which the balladist was not a member.
The ballade was an old French form of verse, in France revived by
Theodore de Banville, and restored to an England which had long
forgotten the Middle Ages, by my friends Mr. Austin Dobson and Mr.
Edmund Gosse. They, so far as I can trust my memory, were the first
to reintroduce these pleasant old French nugae, while an anonymous
author let loose upon the town a whole winged flock of ballades of
amazing dexterity. This unknown balladist was Mr. Henley; perhaps
he was the first Englishman who ever burst into a double ballade,
and his translations of two of Villon's ballades into modern
thieves' slang were marvels of dexterity. Mr. Swinburne wrote a
serious ballade, but the form, I venture to think, is not 'wholly
serious,' of its nature, in modern days; and he did not persevere.
Nor did the taste for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is
almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as
easily written as the majority of sonnets. Either form readily
becomes mechanical, cheap and facile. I have heard Mr. George
Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to the
rules, without pen and paper. He spoke 'and the numbers came'; he
sonneted as easily as a living poet, in his Eton days, improvised
Latin elegiacs and Greek hexameters.
The sonnet endures. Mr. Horace Hutchinson wrote somewhere: "When
you have read a sonnet, you feel that though there does not seem to
be much of it, you have done a good deal, as when you have eaten a
cold hard-boiled egg." Still people keep on writing sonnets,
because the sonnet is wholly serious. In an English sonnet you
cannot easily be flippant of pen. A few great poets have written
immortal sonnets--among them are Milton, Wordsworth, and Keats.
Thus the sonnet is a thing which every poet thinks it worth while to
try at; like Felix Arvers, he may be made immortal by a single
sonnet. Even I have written one too many! Every anthologist wants
to anthologise it (The Odyssey); it never was a favourite of my own,
though it had the honour to be kindly spoken of by Mr. Matthew
Arnold.
On the other hand, no man since Francois Villon has been
immortalised by a single ballade--Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
To speak in any detail about these poor ballades would be to indite
a part of an autobiography. Looking back at the little book, 'what
memories it stirs' in one to whom
'Fate has done this wrong,
That I should write too much and live too long.'
The Ballade of the Tweed, and the Rhymes a la Mode, were dedicated
to the dearest of kinsmen, a cricketer and angler. The Ballade of
Roulette was inscribed to R. R., a gallant veteran of the Indian
Mutiny, a leader of Light Horse, whose father was a friend of Sir
Walter Scott. He was himself a Borderer, in whose defeats on the
green field of Roulette I often shared, long, long ago.
So many have gone 'into the world of light' that it is a happiness
to think of him to whom The Ballade of Golf was dedicated, and to
remember that he is still capable of scoring his double century at
cricket, and of lifting the ball high over the trees beyond the
boundaries of a great cricket-field. Perhaps Mr. Leslie Balfour-
Melville will pardon me for mentioning his name, linked as it is
with so many common memories. 'One is taken and another left.'
A different sort of memory attaches itself to A Ballade of Dead
Cities. It was written in a Theocritean amoebean way, in
competition with Mr. Edmund Gosse; he need not be ashamed of the
circumstance, for another shepherd, who was umpire, awarded the
prize (two kids just severed from their dams) to his victorious
muse.
The Ballade of the Midnight Forest, the Ballade of the Huntress
Artemis, was translated from Theodore de Banville, whose beautiful
poem came so near the Greek, that when the late Provost of Oriel
translated a part of its English shadow into Greek hexameters, you
might suppose, as you read, that they were part of a lost Homeric
Hymn.
I never wrote a double ballade, and stanzas four and five of the
Double Ballade of Primitive Man were contributed by the learned
doyen of Anthropology, Mr. E. B. Tylor, author of Primitive Culture.
A tout seigneur tout honneur!
In Ballade of his Choice of a Sepulchre, the Windburg is a hill in
Teviotdale. A Portrait of 1783 was written on a French engraving
after Morland, and Benedetta Ramus was addressed to a mezzotint (an
artist's proof, 'very rare'). It is after Romney and is 'My
Beauty,' as Charles Lamb said (once, unluckily, to a Scot) of an
engraving, after Lionardo, of some fair dead lady.
The sonnet, Natural Theology, is the germ of what the author has
since written, in The Making of Religion, on the long neglected fact
that many of the lowest savages known share the belief in a
benevolent All Father and Judge of men.
Concerning verses in Rhymes a la Mode, visitors to St. Andrews may
be warned not to visit St. Leonard's Chapel, described in the second
stanza of Almae Matres. In the writer's youth, and even in middle
age,
He loitered idly where the tall
Fresh-budded mountain-ashes blow
Within its desecrated wall.
The once beautiful ruins carpeted with grass and wild flowers have
been doubly desecrated by persons, academic persons, having
authority and a plentiful lack of taste. The slim mountain-ashes,
fair as the young palm-tree that Odysseus saw beside the shrine of
Apollo in Delos, have been cut down by the academic persons to whom
power is given. The grass and flowers have been rooted up. Hideous
little wooden fences enclose the grave slabs: a roof of a massive
kind has been dumped down on the old walls, and the windows, once so
graceful in their airy lines, have been glazed in a horrible manner,
while the ugly iron gate precludes entrance to a shrine which is now
a black and dismal dungeon.
"Oh, be that roof as lead to lead
Above the dull Restorer's head,
A Minstrel's malison is said!"
Notes explanatory are added to the Rhymes, and their information,
however valuable, need not here be repeated.
A BALLADE OF XXXII BALLADES.
Friend, when you bear a care-dulled eye,
And brow perplexed with things of weight,
And fain would bid some charm untie
The bonds that hold you all too strait,
Behold a solace to your fate,
Wrapped in this cover's china blue;
These ballades fresh and delicate,
This dainty troop of Thirty-two!
The mind, unwearied, longs to fly
And commune with the wise and great;
But that same ether, rare and high,
Which glorifies its worthy mate,
To breath forspent is disparate:
Laughing and light and airy-new
These come to tickle the dull pate,
This dainty troop of Thirty-two.
Most welcome then, when you and I,
Forestalling days for mirth too late,
To quips and cranks and fantasy
Some choice half-hour dedicate,
They weave their dance with measured rate
Of rhymes enlinked in order due,
Till frowns relax and cares abate,
This dainty troop of Thirty-two.
ENVOY.
Princes, of toys that please your state
Quainter are surely none to view
Than these which pass with tripping gait,
This dainty troop of Thirty-two.
F. P.
TO
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Un Livre est un ami qui change--quelquefois.
1880.
1888
BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER.
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
Id. viii. 56.
Ah! leave the smoke, the wealth, the roar
Of London, and the bustling street,
For still, by the Sicilian shore,
The murmur of the Muse is sweet.
Still, still, the suns of summer greet
The mountain-grave of Helike,
And shepherds still their songs repeat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.
What though they worship Pan no more,
That guarded once the shepherd's seat,
They chatter of their rustic lore,
They watch the wind among the wheat:
Cicalas chirp, the young lambs bleat,
Where whispers pine to cypress tree;
They count the waves that idly beat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.
Theocritus! thou canst restore
The pleasant years, and over-fleet;
With thee we live as men of yore,
We rest where running waters meet:
And then we turn unwilling feet
And seek the world--so must it be -
WE may not linger in the heat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!
ENVOY.
Master,--when rain, and snow, and sleet
And northern winds are wild, to thee
We come, we rest in thy retreat,
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!
BALLADE OF CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE.
Ye giant shades of RA and TUM,
Ye ghosts of gods Egyptian,
If murmurs of our planet come
To exiles in the precincts wan
Where, fetish or Olympian,
To help or harm no more ye list,
Look down, if look ye may, and scan
This monument in London mist!
Behold, the hieroglyphs are dumb
That once were read of him that ran
When seistron, cymbal, trump, and drum
Wild music of the Bull began;
When through the chanting priestly clan
Walk'd Ramses, and the high sun kiss'd
This stone, with blessing scored and ban -
This monument in London mist.
The stone endures though gods be numb;
Though human effort, plot, and plan
Be sifted, drifted, like the sum
Of sands in wastes Arabian.
What king may deem him more than man,
What priest says Faith can Time resist
While THIS endures to mark their span -
This monument in London mist?
ENVOY.
Prince, the stone's shade on your divan
Falls; it is longer than ye wist:
It preaches, as Time's gnomon can,
This monument in London mist!
BALLADE OF ROULETTE.
TO R. R.
This life--one was thinking to-day,
In the midst of a medley of fancies -
Is a game, and the board where we play
Green earth with her poppies and pansies.
Let manque be faded romances,
Be passe remorse and regret;
Hearts dance with the wheel as it dances -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette.
The lover will stake as he may
His heart on his Peggies and Nancies;
The girl has her beauty to lay;
The saint has his prayers and his trances;
The poet bets endless expanses
In Dreamland; the scamp has his debt:
How they gaze at the wheel as it glances -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette!
The Kaiser will stake his array
Of sabres, of Krupps, and of lances;
An Englishman punts with his pay,
And glory the jeton of France is;
Your artists, or Whistlers or Vances,
Have voices or colours to bet;
Will you moan that its motion askance is -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette?
ENVOY.
The prize that the pleasure enhances?
The prize is--at last to forget
The changes, the chops, and the chances -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette.
BALLADE OF SLEEP.
The hours are passing slow,
I hear their weary tread
Clang from the tower, and go
Back to their kinsfolk dead.
Sleep! death's twin brother dread!
Why dost thou scorn me so?
The wind's voice overhead
Long wakeful here I know,
And music from the steep
Where waters fall and flow.
Wilt thou not hear sue, Sleep?
All sounds that might bestow
Rest on the fever'd bed,
All slumb'rous sounds and low
Are mingled here and wed,
And bring no drowsihed.
Shy dreams flit to and fro
With shadowy hair dispread;
With wistful eyes that glow,
And silent robes that sweep.
Thou wilt not hear me; no?
Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep?
What cause hast thou to show
Of sacrifice unsped?
Of all thy slaves below
I most have laboured
With service sung and said;
Have cull'd such buds as blow,
Soft poppies white and red,
Where thy still gardens grow,
And Lethe's waters weep.
Why, then, art thou my foe?
Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep?
ENVOY.
Prince, ere the dark be shred
By golden shafts, ere now
And long the shadows creep:
Lord of the wand of lead,
Soft-footed as the snow,
Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep!
BALLADE OF THE MIDNIGHT FOREST.
AFTER THEODORE DE BANVILLE.
Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old,
Beneath the shade of thorn and holly-tree;
The west wind breathes upon them, pure and cold,
And wolves still dread Diana roaming free
In secret woodland with her company.
'Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite
When now the wolds are bathed in silver light,
And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey,
Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.
With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold
The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee,
Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold
Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be,
The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy;
Then 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright,
The sudden Goddess enters, tall and white,
With one long sigh for summers pass'd away;
The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.
She gleans her silvan trophies; down the wold
She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee
Mixed with the music of the hunting roll'd,
But her delight is all in archery,
And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she
More than her hounds that follow on the flight;
The goddess draws a golden bow of might
And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay.
She tosses loose her locks upon the night,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.
ENVOY.
Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite,
The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight:
Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray
There is the mystic home of our delight,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.
BALLADE OF THE TWEED.
(LOWLAND SCOTCH.)
TO T. W. LANG.
The ferox rins in rough Loch Awe,
A weary cry frae ony toun;
The Spey, that loups o'er linn and fa',
They praise a' ither streams aboon;
They boast their braes o' bonny Doon:
Gie ME to hear the ringing reel,
Where shilfas sing, and cushats croon
By fair Tweed-side, at Ashiesteel!
There's Ettrick, Meggat, Ail, and a',
Where trout swim thick in May and June;
Ye'll see them take in showers o' snaw
Some blinking, cauldrife April noon:
Rax ower the palmer and march-broun,
And syne we'll show a bonny creel,
In spring or simmer, late or soon,
By fair Tweed-side, at Ashiesteel!
There's mony a water, great or sma',
Gaes singing in his siller tune,
Through glen and heugh, and hope and shaw,
Beneath the sun-licht or the moon:
But set us in our fishing-shoon
Between the Caddon-burn and Peel,
And syne we'll cross the heather broun
By fair Tweed-side at Ashiesteel!
ENVOY.
Deil take the dirty, trading loon
Wad gar the water ca' his wheel,
And drift his dyes and poisons doun
By fair Tweed-side at Ashiesteel!
BALLADE OF THE BOOK-HUNTER.
In torrid heats of late July,
In March, beneath the bitter bise,
He book-hunts while the loungers fly, -
He book-hunts, though December freeze;
In breeches baggy at the knees,
And heedless of the public jeers,
For these, for these, he hoards his fees, -
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.
No dismal stall escapes his eye,
He turns o'er tomes of low degrees,
There soiled romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies;
Each tract that flutters in the breeze
For him is charged with hopes and fears,
In mouldy novels fancy sees
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.
With restless eyes that peer and spy,
Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees,
In dismal nooks he loves to pry,
Whose motto evermore is Spes!
But ah! the fabled treasure flees;
Grown rarer with the fleeting years,
In rich men's shelves they take their ease, -
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!
ENVOY.
Prince, all the things that tease and please, -
Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears,
What are they but such toys as these -
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?
BALLADE OF THE VOYAGE TO CYTHERA.
AFTER THEODORE DE BANVILLE.
I know Cythera long is desolate;
I know the winds have stripp'd the gardens green.
Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight
A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been,
Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!
So be it, but we seek a fabled shore,
To lull our vague desires with mystic lore,
To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile;
There let us land, there dream for evermore:
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle."
The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate,
If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene
We watch the bolt of heaven, and scorn the hate
Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen.
Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen
That veils the fairy coast we would explore.
Come, though the sea be vex'd, and breakers roar,
Come, for the air of this old world is vile,
Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar;
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle."
Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate
Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen,
And ruined is the palace of our state;
But happy Loves flit round the mast, and keen
The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.
Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,
Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar,
Yet haste, light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;
Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore:
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle!"
ENVOY.
Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
Ah, singing birds your happy music pour!
Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle!"
BALLADE OF THE SUMMER TERM.
(Being a Petition, in the form of a Ballade, praying the University
Commissioners to spare the Summer Term.)
When Lent and Responsions are ended,
When May with fritillaries waits,
When the flower of the chestnut is splendid,
When drags are at all of the gates
(Those drags the philosopher "slates"
With a scorn that is truly sublime), {1}
Life wins from the grasp of the Fates
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
When wickets are bowl'd and defended,
When Isis is glad with "the Eights,"
When music and sunset are blended,
When Youth and the summer are mates,
When Freshmen are heedless of "Greats,"
And when note-books are cover'd with rhyme,
Ah, these are the hours that one rates -
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
When the brow of the Dean is unbended
At luncheons and mild tete-a-tetes,
When the Tutor's in love, nor offended
By blunders in tenses or dates;
When bouquets are purchased of Bates,
When the bells in their melody chime,
When unheeded the Lecturer prates -
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
ENVOY.
Reformers of Schools and of States,
Is mirth so tremendous a crime?
Ah! spare what grim pedantry hates -
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
BALLADE OF THE MUSE
Quem tu, Melpomene, semel.
The man whom once, Melpomene,
Thou look'st on with benignant sight,
Shall never at the Isthmus be
A boxer eminent in fight,
Nor fares he foremost in the flight
Of Grecian cars to victory,
Nor goes with Delian laurels dight,
The man thou lov'st, Melpomene!
Not him the Capitol shall see,
As who hath crush'd the threats and might
Of monarchs, march triumphantly;
But Fame shall crown him, in his right
Of all the Roman lyre that smite
The first; so woods of Tivoli
Proclaim him, so her waters bright,
The man thou lov'st, Melpomene!
The sons of queenly Rome count ME,
Me too, with them whose chants delight, -
The poets' kindly company;
Now broken is the tooth of spite,
But thou, that temperest aright
The golden lyre, all, all to thee
He owes--life, fame, and fortune's height -
The man thou lov'st, Melpomene!
ENVOY.
Queen, that to mute lips could'st unite
The wild swan's dying melody!
Thy gifts, ah! how shall he requite -
The man thou lov'st, Melpomene?
BALLADE AGAINST THE JESUITS.
AFTER LA FONTAINE.
Rome does right well to censure all the vain
Talk of Jansenius, and of them who preach
That earthly joys are damnable! 'Tis plain
We need not charge at Heaven as at a breach;
No, amble on! We'll gain it, one and all;
The narrow path's a dream fantastical,
And Arnauld's quite superfluously driven
Mirth from the world. We'll scale the heavenly wall,
Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!
He does not hold a man may well be slain
Who vexes with unseasonable speech,
You MAY do murder for five ducats gain,
NOT for a pin, a ribbon, or a peach;
He ventures (most consistently) to teach
That there are certain cases that befall
When perjury need no good man appal,
And life of love (he says) may keep a leaven.
Sure, hearing this, a grateful world will bawl,
"Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!"
"For God's sake read me somewhat in the strain
Of his most cheering volumes, I beseech!"
Why should I name them all? a mighty train -
So many, none may know the name of each.
Make these your compass to the heavenly beach,
These only in your library instal:
Burn Pascal and his fellows, great and small,
Dolts that in vain with Escobar have striven;
I tell you, and the common voice doth call,
Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!
ENVOY.
SATAN, that pride did hurry to thy fall,
Thou porter of the grim infernal hall -
Thou keeper of the courts of souls unshriven!
To shun thy shafts, to 'scape thy hellish thrall,
Escobar makes a primrose path to heaven!
BALLADE OF DEAD CITIES.
TO E. W. GOSSE.
The dust of Carthage and the dust
Of Babel on the desert wold,
The loves of Corinth, and the lust,
Orchomenos increased with gold;
The town of Jason, over-bold,
And Cherson, smitten in her prime -
What are they but a dream half-told?
Where are the cities of old time?
In towns that were a kingdom's trust,
In dim Atlantic forests' fold,
The marble wasteth to a crust,
The granite crumbles into mould;
O'er these--left nameless from of old -
As over Shinar's brick and slime,
One vast forgetfulness is roll'd -
Where are the cities of old time?
The lapse of ages, and the rust,
The fire, the frost, the waters cold,
Efface the evil and the just;
From Thebes, that Eriphyle sold,
To drown'd Caer-Is, whose sweet bells toll'd
Beneath the wave a dreamy chime
That echo'd from the mountain-hold, -
"Where are the cities of old time?"
ENVOY.
Prince, all thy towns and cities must
Decay as these, till all their crime,
And mirth, and wealth, and toil are thrust
Where are the cities of old time.
BALLADE OF THE ROYAL GAME OF GOLF.
(EAST FIFESHIRE.)
There are laddies will drive ye a ba'
To the burn frae the farthermost tee,
But ye mauna think driving is a',
Ye may heel her, and send her ajee,
Ye may land in the sand or the sea;
And ye're dune, sir, ye're no worth a preen,
Tak' the word that an auld man'll gie,
Tak' aye tent to be up on the green!
The auld folk are crouse, and they craw
That their putting is pawky and slee;
In a bunker they're nae gude ava',
But to girn, and to gar the sand flee.
And a lassie can putt--ony she, -
Be she Maggy, or Bessie, or Jean,
But a cleek-shot's the billy for me,
Tak' aye tent to be up on the green!
I hae play'd in the frost and the thaw,
I hae play'd since the year thirty-three,
I hae play'd in the rain and the snaw,
And I trust I may play till I dee;
And I tell ye the truth and nae lee,
For I speak o' the thing I hae seen -
Tom Morris, I ken, will agree -
Tak' aye tent to be up on the green!