Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities Part 2

And once again we met; but no bandit chief was there; His rouge was off, and gone that head of once luxuriant hair: He lodges in a two-pair back, and at the public near, He cannot liquidate his 'chalk,' or wipe away his beer.

I saw him sad and seedy, yet methinks I see him now, In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon his brow."

Goldsmith's "When lovely woman stoops to folly," has been thus parodied by s.h.i.+rley Brooks:

"When lovely woman, lump of folly, Would show the world her vainest trait,-- Would treat herself as child her dolly, And warn each man of sense away,-- The surest method she'll discover To prompt a wink in every eye, Degrade a spouse, disgust a lover, And spoil a scalp-skin, is--to dye!"

Examples like these are numerous, and may be found in the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" of Theodore Martin and Professor Aytoun; "The Ingoldsby Legends"

of Barham; and the works of Lewis Carroll.

One of the "Bon Gaultier" travesties was on Macaulay, and was called "The Laureate's Journey;" of which these two verses are part:

"'He's dead, he's dead, the Laureate's dead!' Thus, thus the cry began, And straightway every garret roof gave up its minstrel man; From Grub Street, and from Houndsditch, and from Farringdon Within, The poets all towards Whitehall poured in with eldritch din.

Loud yelled they for Sir James the Graham: but sore afraid was he; A hardy knight were he that might face such a minstrelsie.

'Now by St. Giles of Netherby, my patron saint, I swear, I'd rather by a thousand crowns Lord Palmerston were here!'"

It is necessary, however, to confine our quotations within reasonable limits, and a few from the modern writers must suffice. The next is by Henry S. Leigh, one of the best living writers of burlesque verse.

ONLY SEVEN.[2]

(A PASTORAL STORY, AFTER WORDSWORTH.)

"I marvelled why a simple child, That lightly draws its breath, Should utter groans so very wild, And look as pale as death.

Adopting a parental tone, I asked her why she cried; The damsel answered with a groan, 'I've got a pain inside.

I thought it would have sent me mad, Last night about eleven.'

Said I, 'What is it makes you bad?

How many apples have you had?'

She answered, 'Only seven!'

'And are you sure you took no more, My little maid,' quoth I.

'Oh, please, sir, mother gave me four, But they were in a pie.'

'If that's the case,' I stammered out, 'Of course you've had eleven.'

The maiden answered with a pout, 'I ain't had more nor seven!'

I wondered hugely what she meant, And said, 'I'm bad at riddles, But I know where little girls are sent For telling tarradiddles.

Now if you don't reform,' said I, 'You'll never go to heaven!'

But all in vain; each time I try, The little idiot makes reply, 'I ain't had more nor seven!'

POSTSCRIPT.

To borrow Wordsworth's name was wrong, Or slightly misapplied; And so I'd better call my song, 'Lines from Ache-inside.'"

Mr. Swinburne's alliterative style lays him particularly open to the skilful parodist, and he has been well imitated by Mr. Mortimer Collins, who, perhaps, is as well known as novelist as poet. The following example is ent.i.tled

"IF."

"If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet, Then who would care to borrow A moral from to-morrow?

If Thames would always glitter, And joy would ne'er retreat, If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet.

If care were not the waiter, Behind a fellow's chair, When easy-going sinners Sit down to Richmond dinners, And life's swift stream goes straighter-- By Jove, it would be rare, If care were not the waiter Behind a fellow's chair.

If wit were always radiant, And wine were always iced, And bores were kicked out straightway Through a convenient gateway: Then down the year's long gradient 'Twere sad to be enticed, If wit were always radiant; And wine were always iced."

The next instance, by the same author, is another good imitation of Mr.

Swinburne's style. It is a recipe for

SALAD.

"Oh, cool in the summer is salad, And warm in the winter is love; And a poet shall sing you a ballad Delicious thereon and thereof.

A singer am I, if no sinner, My muse has a marvellous wing, And I willingly wors.h.i.+p at dinner The sirens of spring.

Take endive--like love it is bitter, Take beet--for like love it is red; Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter And cress from the rivulet's bed; Anchovies, foam-born, like the lady Whose beauty has maddened this bard; And olives, from groves that are shady, And eggs--boil 'em hard."

The "Shootover Papers," by members of the Oxford University, contains this parody, written upon the "Procuratores," a kind of university police:

"Oh, vestment of velvet and virtue, Oh, venomous victors of vice, Who hurt men who never hurt you, Oh, calm, cold, crueller than ice.

Why wilfully wage you this war, is All pity purged out of your breast?

Oh, purse-prigging procuratores, Oh, pitiless pest!

We had smote and made redder than roses, With juice not of fruit nor of bud, The truculent townspeople's noses, And bathed brutal butchers in blood; And we all aglow in our glories, Heard you not in the deafening din; And ye came, oh ye procuratores, And ran us all in!"

In the same book a certain school of poets has been hit at in the following lines:

"Mingled, aye, with fragrant yearnings, Throbbing in the mellow glow, Glint the silvery spirit burnings, Pearly blandishments of woe.

Ay! for ever and for ever, While the love-lorn censers sweep; While the jasper winds dissever, Amber-like, the crystal deep;

Shall the soul's delicious slumber, Sea-green vengeance of a kiss, Reach despairing crags to number Blue infinities of bliss."

The "Diversions of the Echo Club," by Bayard Taylor, contains many parodies, princ.i.p.ally upon American poets, and gives this admirable rendering of Edgar A. Poe's style:

THE PROMISSORY NOTE.

"In the lonesome latter years, (Fatal years!) To the dropping of my tears Danced the mad and mystic spheres In a rounded, reeling rune, 'Neath the moon, To the dripping and the dropping of my tears.

Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom, (Ulalume!) In a dim t.i.tanic tomb, For my gaunt and gloomy soul Ponders o'er the penal scroll, O'er the parchment (not a rhyme), Out of place,--out of time,-- I am shredded, shorn, uns.h.i.+fty, (Oh, the fifty!) And the days have pa.s.sed, the three, Over me!

And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me!

'Twas the random runes I wrote At the bottom of the note (Wrote and freely Gave to Greeley), In the middle of the night, In the mellow, moonless night, When the stars were out of sight, When my pulses like a knell, (Israfel!) Danced with dim and dying fays O'er the ruins of my days, O'er the dimeless, timeless days, When the fifty, drawn at thirty, Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise!

Fiends controlled it, (Let him hold it!) Devils held for me the inkstand and the pen; Now the days of grace are o'er, (Ah, Lenore!) I am but as other men: What is time, time, time, To my rare and runic rhyme, To my random, reeling rhyme, By the sands along the sh.o.r.e, Where the tempest whispers, 'Pay him!' and I answer, 'Nevermore!'"[3]

Bret Harte also has given a good imitation of Poe's style in "The Willows," from which there follows an extract:

"But Mary, uplifting her finger, Said, 'Sadly this bar I mistrust,-- I fear that this bar does not trust.